I took off from Newark with about a seven-thousand-foot ceiling after
dark. The ceiling came down as I went farther and farther into the
mountains toward Bellefonte, but it didn't come down too much. I got to
Sunbury, about fifty miles from Bellefonte, and started into the worst
part of the mountains. Then I hit snow.
I went over the first big ridge on the blinkers, closely spaced red
lights between beacons in bad spots. It was thick in the valley beyond,
but I could just make out the beacon on the next ridge.
I flew up to it, couldn't see the next beacon, went on past from that
beacon as far as I dared, but couldn't find the next beacon without
losing that one. So I went back to it.
I made several excursions out toward the next beacon before I could find
it without losing the one I had. Then I couldn't find the next one.
I circled and circled about fifty feet over that beacon on the mountain
top in the driving snow. I couldn't go backward toward the last one. I
couldn't go forward toward the next. I was quite sure the next was the
field beacon at Bellefonte, but I didn't dare go out far enough to find
it.
I knew I couldn't sit there and circle all night. The snow was not
abating. I had to do something. Finally I pulled off the beacon in a
climbing spiral, headed off blind in what I thought was the direction of
the next beacon--what I hoped it was!--and hoped to see it under me
through the snow if I flew over it, and if not, to keep on going, blind,
until I flew out of the mountains, the snow, or both.
I was lucky, flew right over it, saw dimly down beneath me through the
driving snow the Bellefonte Airport boundary lights, spiraled down and
landed.
Not five minutes later an air-mail ship came in from the same direction
and landed. I asked the pilot how close he had come to the beacon I had
been circling. He said he had flown right over it. Can you imagine what
would have happened if I had still been sitting there circling that
beacon when he came barging along through the snow right over it? He
said he was flying on his instruments for the most part. He undoubtedly
wouldn't have seen me. I wouldn't have seen him. Our meeting probably
wouldn't have been so pleasant!