Author of “The Sky Call,” “The Vindication of Smith,” Etc.
Most aviation stories are just good stories with aviation in
them. We have no objection to yarns of that sort. Those that
we have published have been decidedly good reading. This
aviation story is different--just how different you will
realize as you read it. “The Last Crash” is something new in
fiction--a real air story. Its author is a man who knows not
only the technique of the airman’s trade but also its
spirit. --The Editor
John Norris, whom you will remember as the man who flew the first
straightaway from Langstrom Field to Cristobal, had a touch of the
mystic in him, for all he was the sort of a man that good men favor. And
in this, it may interest you to know, Norris wasn’t different from most
men of his calling. He was different, however, in this respect, that he
was outspoken with his ideas about unearthly matters whereas most airmen
keep their mysticism to themselves.
If Norris knew you and liked you he would tell you stories--stories to
prove his conviction that “things do not _happen_; they are _arranged_.”
He was a fatalist, you see.
Being a fatalist is one of the characteristic peculiarities of the flyer
which he shares, perforce, in common with other men whose professions
keep their spiritual elbows raw with constant rubbing against the harsh
specter of sudden and violent death.
“There must be an explanation for the things that happen in the air,”
Norris once affirmed. “The papers call them ‘accidents’ but don’t you
believe it. They aren’t accidents. They are consummations.
“I think this: A man is given a course to run; he runs it; and then he
is wiped out. The manner, the time and the place of each man’s last
crash is already marked up on somebody’s office tickler at Cosmic
headquarters.
“Otherwise--why? Why should men like Hawker and Alcock, with all their
biggest risks behind them, wash out on puny little expeditions that they
undertook with no more thought than they would have given to drinking a
cup of tea? Why should a ship running free and smooth catch fire in the
air, for no good reason that is earthly?
“There is a reason, of course, but it has nothing to do with physical or
mechanical flaws, if you ask me. The flaw is not the cause. You’ve got
to look for the cause in something behind the flaw. Did you ever hear of
‘Last Crash’ Cobb?”
The story of Billy Cobb, and how he came to his last crash, was one of
Norris’ classics. There is no denying that it points a moral if you want
to look at it that way.
* * * * *
This is what Halliday, the old crew chief, told the
accident-investigating officer.
He was standing just outside hangar number three about six-thirty of
that simmering August evening when Captain Cobb came in with _No. 59_.
The pilot had executed his customary landing, a tight spiral directly
over the field, followed by a spin and two accurately timed fishtails
which brought the ship to ten feet where it leveled off up the wind and
hovered swiftly to the ground.
Up to this point nothing unusual. Then the fantastic. A tire burst as
the wheels touched. The crew chief heard the sharp report. A wheel
crumpled. The right wing lurched sharply up and _No. 59_ dove into a
sudden cart wheel.
The crew chief was heading across the field, calling “Ambulance!” as he
went, before the tangle of ripped canvas, splintered spars and tortured
wires came to rest on its back, quivering.
There followed a significant stirring amid the mass of débris. The crew
chief uttered a prayerful ejaculation of relief and stopped running. He
saw a man emerge from the wreck of _No. 59_. It was
Cobb--unrecognizable! His face was black with blood; his goggles---- But
the rough preliminary transcription--slightly reconstituted--from the
sergeant major’s stenographic notes of the investigation tells the
amazing incident in the words of the only close-up witness.
“Well, sir,” the crew chief deposed, “like I said, I stopped when I seen
the captain was starting to crawl out. I thought he was all right. I
seen officers crawl out o’ lots worse’n that, in my time, an’ start
cussin’ as healthy as you please.
“But the minute I got a good look at Captain Cobb I knew different. You
couldn’t see his face for blood, an’ by the way he put out his hands,
kind o’ feelin’ ahead of him, I knew he was blind. His goggles, like you
seen, was all crushed into his eyes.
“Well, sir, he staggered a step, or maybe two. Me, I was sort o’
paralyzed. I just stood an’ watched. The captain was a good friend o’
mine an’ it was my ship done it. I seen him stiffen up all of a sudden.
Then he laid himself down careful, just like he was easin’ into bed, you
might say. He didn’t fall, sir; he just laid down like he meant to be
comfortable.
“Well, then he raised up a little on one elbow, an’--an’---- Now, sir,
you says I got to tell you what I seen an’ I’m tellin’ you. You don’t
have to believe it, sir. But I wasn’t more’n twenty feet away, sir, an’
I _seen_ this, an’ heard it, too. Maybe it didn’t happen that way, but I
_seen_ it that way!
“The captain he raises up, like I said. An’ he appears to be starin’ at
somethin’ just over his head. He hadn’t his eyes any more but he was
starin’ just the same, _without ’em_. He kind o’ rubs his free arm
across his eyes--what was his eyes, that is--an’ his sleeve wipes away
the blood on his face. Then I seen that he was smilin’, sir. Yes,
smilin’! I ain’t never seen no smile like that, an’ I hope I never will!
“Well, sir, it might ’a’ been a second an’ it might ’a’ been ten minutes
the captain stays that way, propped up, starin’ at nothin’ my eyes could
see, an’ smilin’. Then he speaks. I could hear him plain. His voice was
as strong as mine right now and I could tell by it he was awful glad
about somethin’.
“This is what I hear him say: ‘Hello, Jennie, sweetheart. It’s the last
crash and you kept your promise. Let’s go!’
“He said that. You won’t believe it. Nobody believes it. But he did. An’
when it’s said he lays down again, flat on his back an’--an’--reaches up
with both hands. He seems to find somethin’ to take hold of there in the
air. For a minute I can’t make out what he’s doin’. Then I get it. He is
holdin’ somebody’s head close to his face--at least he thinks he is--an’
he is--he is--well, he is kissing somebody!
“After that, sir, his hands drop an’ he lays there an’ never moves
again. When I get to him he is dead as far as I can see. He’d got the
machine-gun butts in the head, the way they all do.
“I don’t know nothin’ more, sir, except that a little ways back from
where the ship crashed I found a bit of wood with a big nail in it.
Which might explain how that tire come to bust.”
How much of the old crew chief’s deposition actually found credence with
the members of the crash board and the personnel generally of Langstrom
Field, all of whom, of course, came into possession of more or less
elaborated versions of the story, cannot be definitely determined.
Publicly the old mechanic was scoffed out of court. The C. O., who was
worried for the state of his pilots’ nerves, took occasion to call the
talkative witness into private session and threaten certain unspeakable
consequences if he let his tongue grow any longer.
So that the affair was a three-week sensation, with everybody talking
about it and everybody proclaiming intrepidly that it was all
damfoolishness and very bad medicine for a flying field. There are
certain things that flying men always affect to disdain--and always take
more seriously than anybody else.
There was one particular discussion of the case, on the night of the
crash, in the lounge at the officers’ club. But to appreciate what
passed between the three, Norris, Weyman, and Crawley, who held that
quiet conference you must know many things that went before.