THE
NON-STOP
STOWAWAY
[Illustration]
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_THE_ NON-STOP
STOWAWAY
The Story of a Long Distance Flight
[Illustration]
WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY
CLAYTON KNIGHT
A Gordon Volland Publication
_Published by_ The Buzza Company _Craft Acres_
CHICAGO MINNEAPOLIS NEW YORK
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[Illustration]
Copyright, 1928
The Gordon Volland Publications
The Buzza Company
Minneapolis, U.S.A.
(All rights reserved)
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Copyright, Great Britain 1928
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Printed in U.S.A.
FIRST PRINTING
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PREFACE
_THIS is a story for boys who want to know of the thrills and joys of
Aviation. It is written by a war flyer who was a pilot with a squadron
at the front and who there learned to know how he and other young men
reacted to those dangerous moments when lightning-quick decisions were
necessary._
_He has seen many boys learning to fly, and observed how most of them,
after they had learned, acted in a crisis with the utmost coolness
whether it was the sing of a bullet or the miss of a motor that brought
the warning of danger._
_He knows that those flyers were wrong in their belief during the war
that no flying in peace time could equal the thrill and tingle of the
nervous excitement which they were then experiencing._
_Since the war ended, the design of planes and engines has so far
advanced that distances are being spanned now that they never then
believed possible._
_Nature has put dangers in the paths of our modern flyers, as great or
greater than that of an enemy, for from the moments of the dangerous
take-off with tremendous loads of fuel, until the landing on another
Continent, there can be no relaxation._
_And after watching the planes leave for long ocean flights where no
safe landing can be made for many hours, we have come to realize and
appreciate the strain these pilots are under._
_When several of these bidders for long distance honors have_ _failed to
appear at their announced destination and when, after a frantic search
has been carried on over land and sea, the world has been forced to
admit that no trace—not even a stick of wood or a rag of fabric—can be
found, then it is comforting to think, to hope, that =somewhere=, a safe
landing has been made._
EDITOR.
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CONTENTS
_EARTH_
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE PLANE TESTED 9
II A NARROW ESCAPE 23
III TROUBLE BREWS 36
IV THE PLANE IS CHRISTENED 45
V READY TO HOP 53
_AIR_
VI THE FLIGHT IS ON 74
VII MID-ATLANTIC 88
_AFTERWARDS_
VIII CONDITIONS CHANGE 106
IX ANOTHER WORLD 116
X KIWI GETS HIS WINGS 136
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[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
THE PLANE TESTED
SUPPER was over. The man and the boy, although they had finished, seemed
in no hurry to clear the table. Darkness had come, and through the
windows of their little houseboat twinkling lights on the shore half a
mile away were reflected in the quiet waters of the bay. All was still
except for the putt-putt of a motor-boat a long way off. The man in blue
trousers and white shirt with the collar open seemed to be listening for
something. The boy tried hard to get him to talk.
“How long will Dad be, do you suppose?” “Will he come back by train, or
will he fly back?” were some of his questions.
Jack’s reply to them all had been, “We’ll see.”
The boy thought to himself, “What a silly answer,” but that seemed to be
all the silent sailor man would say. He looked little enough like a
sailor now, and not nearly as grand and imposing as when he had met the
boy and his father in New York as they stepped off the train on their
arrival from the West nearly a month ago. At that time he had appeared
in his uniform of blue with gold braid and gold wings. As they had
driven out from the station across the crowded city with its strange
noises and bewildering lights, there had been time to do little more
than notice the slim straightness of him.
His Dad had said to Jack, after the first greetings were over, “Well,
here’s the young fellow I wrote you about. I couldn’t leave him out
West, and besides he will be a great help around the hangar.”
And Jack had replied, as he shook hands, “One more Kiwi for our camp.”
“Right,” said Dad, “but I have had to make him a promise that he won’t
be a Kiwi for long.”
Kiwi was a good enough name in its way, and it did seem to stick to him
wherever Dad went. All his boy friends knew him as Snub but, of course,
the boys knew so little about flying and few of them knew where the name
of Kiwi came from.
Dad had told him that during the war—and Dad had been there, so he
should know—all of the officers who did not fly had come to be known as
Kiwis, named after a bird from Australia or New Zealand “which had wings
but did not fly.”
[Illustration]
So Kiwi he was. There seemed a promise in the name that one of these
days he would learn to fly, for, after all, a Kiwi _did_ have wings. It
was something to start with, and on all the flights he had gone on with
Dad he had kept his eyes open and now felt that he understood all that
had to be done to control the plane.
Often when they had landed after a flight, old war-time friends of Dad’s
would come over with a loud “Well, Skipper, how’s the boy doing? Going
to send him off solo[1] soon?”
Footnote 1:
After a pupil completes his training with an instructor, who has a
duplicate set of controls, then he is sent on his first solo flight.
To fly solo is to fly alone.
And Dad would reply, “Not yet awhile. He has a lot to learn and there’s
plenty of time yet.”
So on that first meeting with Jack, as they rolled across the bridge to
Long Island, Kiwi had wondered if this broad-shouldered sailor-flyer
could be coaxed into teaching him.
Dad and Jack had been too busy talking to notice him. Dad was asking a
thousand questions: how much had they got done on the ship? ... were the
tanks installed yet? ... had the motor been shipped? Dad seemed upset
that more had not been accomplished. “We must get a hustle on if we’re
to get off by the 15th of June,” he had said.
After they had been riding for some time, Kiwi asked:
“Whose house are we going to, Dad?”
Dad turned to Jack, who hurriedly said, “Wait till you see. I have had a
wonderful idea. You remember Old Bert who used to fly the pontoons over
at Rockaway—who would loop any old crate they would let him fly? He has
a shipyard over here and is building houseboats—two sizes—and he thought
we would like to use one of the smaller ones—just one big room and a
little kitchen and a porch. We can moor it where we like, sleep under
the awning on top, and keep the car on the shore near by so that we can
run back and forth to the field. That will only take about twenty
minutes, and it means a good swim in the morning and another after
mucking around the hangars all day. Does the Kiwi swim?”
“Like a fish.”
“Well, that’s settled then.”
[Illustration]
A half hour later they swung down a long hill and into the main street
of a little town, nestling in a deep valley, with a long, lake-like arm
of the Sound coming nearly to the center of the village. They turned off
and wound through a big yard where piles of boards and planks and beams
rose up like top-heavy buildings along the narrow roads. The smell of
cedar and pine hung in the air. They drew up at the wide-open door of a
shed from which came the whine of buzz-saws and the pounding of hammers.
They had hardly stopped when a sunburned man appeared at the door,
evidently expecting them.
“Hello, Bert,” they called.
He rushed over to the car, shook hands with Dad, and there was a great
hubbub of questions and answers. He said their boat was waiting, and it
would be a tip-top place to spend a cool hour or so hearing all the
news.
They were rowed out, and Kiwi spent busy minutes exploring the little
houseboat. He came into the sitting room in time to hear Dad say to
Bert, “As soon as the backers came across with the money, I wired
Burrows to start work on the plane as we had planned it and to rush it
through so that we could make our tests and still get off in June while
the weather was good. Then I turned heaven and earth trying to find
Jack. I had no idea whether he was out East with the fleet or had come
back. When I did locate him, he was able to get leave from the Navy to
make the flight, and hopped a train for Washington and got right to work
on weather maps. He seems to have the navigation part of our trip very
thoroughly in hand. Tomorrow I will get over to the factory and see if
they cannot be hurried with the plane.”
And from then on there had been endless conferences with old friends and
new about equipment to be taken, routes to be followed, wind currents to
dodge. The days had stretched into weeks, and still the plane was on the
ground.
Kiwi had been taken to the factory twice. The plane looked enormous even
in its unfinished state. The body of the machine still lacked its
covering, but in its middle sat an enormous metal tank. Control wires
seemed to run in all directions. The big wing also carried two tanks,
and only the wing-tips were hollow. The engine was still missing. There
were reports that it had been shipped, but for days after that it did
not put in an appearance.
[Illustration]
Nearly always Jack and Kiwi spent the day on the houseboat or driving
over the winding country roads near by. Jack pored over maps and strange
charts. He brought home queer instruments and tested them from the roof
of their houseboat during the moonlight nights. They swam, and once or
twice they went fishing.
At last the day came when the plane was finished, and must be taken up
for its first test flight. Jack and Dad had talked it over the day
before, and it was decided that Jack and Kiwi should stay on the boat
and let Dad do the testing.
“You’ll get plenty of chances, Jack, later on, after I get the feel of
it.”
[Illustration]
So now Jack and Kiwi sat there on the houseboat after supper,
impatiently waiting for the sound of oars. About nine o’clock they heard
a little boat bump against their home, and both rushed out.
It was Dad.
“Jack, she flies—she really does! She lifted off the ground in about two
hundred yards and handled like a dream. Of course, there are some things
to be done, but they can be fixed when we get the plane over at our
field. You and I will go after it tomorrow and start our own work on
it.”
“May I go with you to bring it back, Dad?” Kiwi asked.
“Well, not this time. You’ll have other chances later on.”
The day that Dad and Jack went after the plane dragged endlessly for
Kiwi. He had been driven over to the airdrome early so that he could
welcome them when they arrived. Ordinarily he would have been interested
in the other planes that were busy about the fields. They were
continually hopping off and landing, being fuelled up with gasoline and
going up again. But today it was different. His mind was on Dad and
Jack, and he was constantly on the lookout for their return.
At last, late in the afternoon, the sound of a different motor drew the
attention of the pilots and mechanics to a new plane coming in from the
west. It circled the field several times, and came down to land at the
far end. Wheels and tail skid gently touched, and the plane rolled along
with scarcely a bump. It taxied up to the hangars and was soon
surrounded by an excited group curious to see all the new features of
this bird which was to attempt such a tremendous hop. For the word had
traveled that here was a new challenger for the long distance record.
Here was a machine, equipped with all the latest gadgets,[2] in which
two experienced flyers were planning to leave New York and not touch
their wheels again till they arrived in far off India.
Footnote 2:
A term used in referring to the instruments on a plane and the levers
or buttons which control them.
Its single huge wing glistened in the sunlight. The pilot and
navigator’s cockpit, covered with glass, was just in front of this wing
and behind the huge radial engine which was even then slowly and
smoothly turning the propeller. Just behind the wing in the body of the
machine was a tiny window, through which those who were tall enough
could peek in and see a small compartment behind the gas tank. The two
wheels of the undercarriage[3] bore massive balloon tires and were
further protected by large shock absorbers upon which the weight of the
plane rested. The whole plane was painted a brilliant orange.
Footnote 3:
The undercarriage consists of two wheels and a frame-work which are
attached to and support the body of the plane.
Switching off the engine, Dad stepped out with a happy smile. “So far,
so good.”
[Illustration]
Then came days of trying and testing. Fortunately they were favored with
splendid weather. For a day or two it rained during the morning, but
they were able to get in one or two flights before dark.
They took the machine up so that Jack could test his wireless. A Lieut.
Connors flew over from Washington with a small, compact set which he
hoped would be better than the one they already had in the machine. On
one of the tests it seemed as though the ultimate in wireless
transmission and reception had been accomplished for an airplane.
The machine went to two thousand feet, the wireless aerial was lowered,
and Kiwi stood beside Lieut. Connors, who was manipulating the receiving
set in the back of a small truck. Jack and Connors tested their signals
both flying away from and toward the receiving set. The dots and dashes
of the code came in equally strong either way.
Kiwi put on the head-phones to listen while Connors clicked out a
message to those soaring above. Jack had taught Kiwi the wireless code
for his name, and soon he was thrilled to hear “H-e-l-l-o K-i-w-i” come
down from the air.
However, there were other days when the set seemed not to work so well,
and it took hours of tinkering before all the troubles were found and
adjusted. The set in the plane was finally moved to a place away from
the main tank and the engine.
Then there was the compass to be corrected. Kiwi had not realized that
correcting a compass was such a long operation, although Dad had told
him that the magnetic compass in an airplane was a very sensitive
instrument. There was much iron and steel in the motor, and there were
many conflicting forces pulling the magnetic needle from its position
toward the north magnetic pole.
To compensate for these forces, small metallic rods had to be added.
So Kiwi followed as the plane was wheeled out onto a cement circular
platform on the ground away from the buildings. Marked on this circular
platform were the north, south, east and west points. Pointing the plane
due north, the bits of iron were placed in position in the compass to
counteract the attraction of the motor and other metal parts. These bits
of metal were about the size of the lead in a pencil, and were of
various lengths. After they had been inserted in holes provided in the
base of the compass, they were secured in place.
As soon as the needle pointed to the north as it should, the plane was
wheeled around till it pointed east and the process was repeated until
the compass had been corrected for each direction.
However, they knew that many times a pen-knife or some such similar
object in the pockets of a pilot would serve to throw the compass off
its proper direction.
Knowing the particularly delicate nature of compasses, the Skipper was
very cautious about putting too much trust in them, and insisted that
their compass be carefully checked.
[Illustration]
They also had an earth inductor compass, which was more reliable, but
which had to be adjusted by an expert from the factory.
The ride home from the field in the cool of the evening was usually
taken up with long discussions about balanced rudders and whether they
did not need more surface on the elevators.
Later on, even the evenings, which Kiwi always looked forward to, were
taken up with test flights. They tried out their navigation lights and
landing by flares.
Many evenings Kiwi would go sound asleep in the back of the car until
the voice of Jack awoke him suggesting that they rush home for their
swim and supper.
During all this time, coax as he would, Kiwi had not been taken on his
promised ride. Dad had always answered in that same hateful formula,
“We’ll see.” Why were grownups so fond of those two words? He promised
himself never to use that expression when he was grown up.
Kiwi had made many friends around the field—the men in greasy overalls
who tinkered with the engines, Old Bill who kept the lunch stand at the
end of the field and who had made his name famous for having packed the
sandwiches for several earlier cross-Atlantic flights. But there was a
scarcity of boys of his own age. There were plenty who were older and
who seemed to be able to convince the instructors on the field that they
could learn to fly.
Kiwi felt a lack of the proper arguments to use. He was sure he could
fly if they would give him a chance. But as soon as he brought up the
subject, they insisted on talking down to him as if he were a child.
Kiwi felt that it was Old Bill at the lunch wagon who eventually got him
his first ride in the new plane. His father and Jack had dashed down for
a hurried lunch, and Old Bill said to Kiwi, “Well, how does she handle?”
Kiwi had blushed to the roots of his hair and admitted that he did not
know. Whereupon Old Bill had turned to his Dad and said, “What, you
haven’t taken this boy up yet?” And his father had answered, “He’ll get
his ride—perhaps tomorrow.”
That night, after considerable pestering, his father gave him a definite
promise that if the next day were fine he’d get that first ride.
[Illustration:
_Old Bill_
]
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