"What was the matter, Jimmie?" I asked him, referring to the flight he
had spoken about in the newsreel. "Were you on top of the stuff for a
long time?" I continued, generously implying that of course he had had
enough bad weather to force him to fly on top of the clouds and out of
sight of land for so much of the trip that naturally he got off his
course.
"No," he explained, "I wasn't on top. I was in it for ten and a half
hours. I couldn't get on top because I picked up ice above sixteen
thousand feet. I couldn't go under for several reasons. I had high
mountains to clear. I would have made even slower time and run out of
gas before I got to New York if I had flown low, because my supercharged
engine required 15,000 feet to develop its full power and its most
efficient gas consumption. So I had to fly in it. Also I got mixed up on
some radio beams. Some of them are stronger than others. I figured the
strongest ones the closest, which wasn't always true. I learned a lot on
that trip. I think I could hit it on the nose the next time."
He was talking shop to a fellow professional. I could immediately see
that 200 miles off under the conditions he had had to contend with had
not been bad at all. I wouldn't have blamed him if he had explained to
the public a little more than he did. But when he said to them, without
the shadow of an alibi, "It was just another piece of bum piloting," I
thought it was pretty swell.