On my first solo in a Martin bomber, I started to take off and started
swinging to the left. I put on right rudder but kept on swinging to the
left. I ran out of right rudder and was still swinging to the left into
a line of mesquite trees. I eased the right motor off a little, but it
didn't help much. I couldn't cut the gun and stop before I hit the
trees. I could only hope to get into the air before I got up to them.
Suddenly my left wing started to lift, and it dawned on me like a flash
of shame what was wrong. I had had the wheel rolled to the right and my
left aileron down. The resistance of that down aileron had swung me to
the left at slow speeds, and I had fought it with right rudder, but now
at high speeds it was banking me to the right, and I still had on right
rudder. I was taking off in a right-hand bank with the controls set
fully for it. The left-hand motor was pulling stronger than the right.
I never kicked and pulled so many things so fast before as I did right
then. By some miracle I found myself fifty feet in the air instead of in
a heap. But I was flying exactly at right angles to the direction I had
originally planned.
Everything seemed to be all right, so I went around and landed. I gave
it the gun immediately on touching the ground and went around and landed
again.
This time I saw a lot of cars coming out toward me. Maybe that take-off
had looked pretty good. Maybe they thought I knew what I had been doing.
The two landings had been good. Maybe they were coming out to
congratulate me.
My instructor got there first. He ran over and started inspecting the
right wing tip. He was looking underneath it. "Hey, you," he shouted at
me when he looked up, "don't you ever get out and take a look after you
crack up a ship?"
I had dragged the right wing for several hundred feet. The under side of
the wing was badly torn up, and the aileron was just barely hanging on.