"What is the weather to New York?" I asked the weather man at the
air-mail field at Bellefonte, Pa.
"Clear and unlimited all the way," he told me.
I took off in my low-wing Lockheed Sirius at dark and flew along the
lighted beacons through the mountains. Half an hour later I ran into
broken clouds at 4,000 feet. I flew under them. Soon they became solid
and I couldn't see the stars overhead. I saw lightning ahead of me
flashing in the darkness.
Water began to collect on my windshield. The air got very rough. A
beacon light that had been flashing up ahead of me disappeared. I
noticed the lights of a town beneath me getting dim. For a second I lost
sight of them entirely. I nosed down to get out of the clouds.
A brilliant flash of lightning lit the darkness around me. I saw the
rain driving in white sheets and caught the flash of a beacon through
it. I nosed down toward the beacon and started circling it. I knew by my
altimeter that I was down lower than some of the mountain ridges around
me. I looked for the next beacon but couldn't see it through the raging
thunderstorm. I didn't dare strike out in the general direction of the
next beacon in the hope of finding it. I might hit a mountain top.
Another blinding flash of lightning surrounded me with glaring light. I
saw the dark bottoms of the clouds and the black top of the next ridge I
had to pass over. Then blackness and the slashing rain with only the
friendly beacon under me.
I fought my way from beacon to beacon for an hour. The lightning flashes
receded farther and farther behind me. I began to see from beacon to
beacon. Stars appeared overhead. They were very dim. I was flying in a
haze.
I passed over Hadley Field, New Jersey, and saw its boundary lights
burning cheerfully. I continued on toward Roosevelt Field. I was almost
home now.
I noticed the lights of the towns beneath me getting dimmer. I looked
up. The stars were gone. I looked down again. The lights had
disappeared! I was flying blind in a thick fog. I began to fly by
instruments. I pulled up. At 3,000 feet I saw the stars. I was on top of
the fog.
I swung around to go back to Hadley Field. Its lights were covered. I
saw the lights of what I figured was New Brunswick. I started circling
them. I knew Hadley Field was only a few miles from there. The lights of
New Brunswick began to blot out. Hey, what the hell! I said out loud to
myself.
I saw a segment of the rotating beam of a beacon break through a hole in
the fog and make about a quarter of a turn in the darkness before it
disappeared. That's the beam from Hadley beacon! I was saying all my
thoughts out loud now. I flew over to where I figured the center of the
beam was and started circling. The top of the fog looked pretty bright
there. I decided that Hadley had heard me and had turned on its
floodlights.
I eased back on my throttle, settled into a spiraling glide, and sank
down into the fog, flying by instruments. The opaque white fog got more
and more luminous. Individual bright spots, greatly blurred, began to
appear. I figured they were the boundary lights of the field. My
altimeter read very low. I broke through the bottom of the fog at about
two hundred feet. I was over Hadley. I flew low into the blackness back
of the field and came around and landed.
"What the hell are you flying in this stuff for?" the Hadley weather man
asked me.
"Because I was damned fool enough to take Bellefonte's weather report
seriously," I said.