“_Take Her Up and Try a Spin_”
I went to Boistfort High School, a consolidated country school about
nine miles from our farm. There were fifty-six pupils in the whole
school, quite a contrast to the big 3000-student schools in Southern
California. The superintendent of Boistfort School, Carl Aase, was a
most unusual man and to me, at least, a very generous one. For some
strange reason my teachers have always made a lasting impression on
me. I can recall everything about them, including their names: in
kindergarten, Mrs. Wallin; first grade, Mrs. Clark; second grade,
Mrs. Meade; third grade, Mrs. Thomas; fourth grade, Mrs. Humphries;
fifth grade, Mrs. Paymiller; sixth grade, Mrs. Blossom. And so on.
Carl Aase, an intelligent and resourceful man, became a good
friend of my father’s. He visited our farm frequently, but he
didn’t let this friendship stand in the way of doing his job, or
of administering discipline to incorrigible boys. In this respect,
he was quite like my father. Mr. Aase never displayed anger or
emotion. Like the other farm boys, when I reached the age of fifteen
I was a tough, scrappy youngster. We boys used to fight often, and
occasionally Carl Aase would suspend me from school. He was very calm
and matter-of-fact about it. “Scott,” he would say, “don’t wait for
the school bus today. Just walk on home right now.”
At first I was not an exceptional student. My grades averaged about
“B.” They improved later when I was seriously preparing for college.
But at sixteen my interests were many and my time too limited for
concentrated study on anything but aviation, for which I was not
given credit in school. I joined in 4-H Club work and raised several
prize dairy animals. I was also intrigued by photography. I converted
one of the unused rooms on the second floor of our home to a dark
room. I took all the photographs and made the woodcuts for the school
yearbook. I had no time for sports such as football, tennis, or
swimming, and I haven’t found time for them yet.
The farm and the school absorbed most of my hours. I got up early
to do my chores, spent most of my day at Boistfort, in the evening
returned to my chores, and then to my private room on the second
floor. But there was one other spot to which I was drawn like a metal
filing to a magnet: the Chehalis municipal airport. I didn’t get
there as frequently as I wanted to. When I went, it was in secret. I
didn’t want to trouble my parents with my ambitions to be a pilot.
Although he never mentioned it directly, I believe my father hoped I
would study law or medicine. A professional education, he thought,
was a necessary part of a gentleman’s preparation for life.
The Chehalis municipal airport was a cow pasture adorned with two
skeletal airplane hangars, a tiny CAA weather shack, and a tattered
wind-sock. It was home for about a dozen old wire-and-fabric
airplanes, several of them derelicts and veterans of the first World
War, which had then been over for eighteen years. The field was
operated by a man named Donahoe, who somehow managed to stay one step
ahead of the sheriff. The people who hung about that airport were,
I think, typical of the depression era, young and old who almost
on faith alone stuck with aviation, consciously and unconsciously
knowing its future. Some, like me, were called “airport bums.”
Chehalis Airport was a Garden of Eden to me. The pilots to a man were
my special heroes.
Whenever I had the money, which was seldom, although the amount
required was ridiculously small, I took flight instruction from
anybody and everybody. I was lucky to squeeze in one hour a month;
many months went by during which I received no instruction at all.
It was slow going and I’m not certain that the instruction was top
quality. But I was learning, inching toward my first solo flight.
It finally came quite unexpectedly, and it turned out to be rather
exciting.
“Why don’t you try it by yourself?” one of the pilots said to me
one day at the airport. At this time I probably had accumulated
about seven or eight hours of flight instruction. A solo flight was
technically illegal: I had no student permit. But at Chehalis there
was a sort of devil-may-care attitude about rules and regulations. A
small knot of airport hangers-on gathered around us. “Yeah, Scotty,
take her up and try a spin.” The crowd broke up with laughter.
I crawled into the cockpit of the Curtiss Robin. It was a high-wing
monoplane powered by a cranky OX-5, the engine that was used in
World War I. Someone spun the prop and soon I was bumping over
the cow pasture toward the end of the strip. Without fear or
hesitation--indeed, very happily--I gunned the engine and horsed the
Robin gracefully into the air. The deep green Chehalis Valley spread
out below me. The engine, laboring heavily, took me to 4,000 feet,
which was about the ceiling of that airplane.
I flew about over the valley for ten or fifteen minutes, turning,
twisting, and tracing lazy eights in the sky. This, I thought, was
it, the absolute ultimate! Here man had a new view of his life and
the world. He was detached, removed from the detail of it--the mud,
the privy, the school fights, the chicken house, the slights and
denials. Here, high in the sky, man’s vision was unobscured. He
could see far and wide, the whole picture of God’s world, a model of
grace and perfection. At the same time there was challenge: a man, a
brain, some muscle, and a machine pitted against the air, a basic and
important element of that earthly perfection.
I was an ace now, zipping low over the battlefield returning to my
aerodrome in France. Then I was Lindbergh, passing over wild Nova
Scotia, eight hours out of New York, ready to bank over the cold gray
Atlantic. Then I was Benny Howard, poised on the end of the runway
at Burbank Airport in tiny _Mr. Mulligan_, ready for an incredible
1500-mile non-stop flight to Cleveland. Then I was Scott Crossfield,
setting off in a new plane of his own design to break the Los
Angeles-to-New York record.
The long years of denial made these moments far more endearing and
meaningful than I can possibly describe. I wondered: did more denial
lie ahead? Maybe I had better squeeze every drop out of this flight.
Maybe I had better see how far I could go: find out where nerve left
off and fear began. Find out, in one fell swoop, if I had it.
“Try a spin,” the crowd had said. Well, while I’m about it, why
not? The crazy thought absorbed my attention. I climbed higher. I
deliberately pulled the nose up steep and stalled out. The Robin’s
right wing dipped. Earth and sky alternated in the windshield. I was
spinning.
Suddenly I was aware of a strange and startling noise, a kind of
banging, foreign to the ordinary noise of the plane. What was it?
Quickly I pushed the stick forward and the rudder pedal hard left and
brought the Robin to normal, level flight. The noise disappeared. Was
I imagining something? What happened?
I climbed back to altitude and dropped the Robin into a second spin.
Once again the fearful racket began. Again I brought the Robin to
normal flight. No, I definitely was not imagining the noise. It was
not my nerves. It happened when I put the ship into a spin. Curiosity
overwhelmed me. What was it?
For the third time I climbed and spun the Robin. This time when the
clattering began, I strained and looked behind me, searching for the
answer. Then I found it: the rear door of the plane was loose. In
ordinary flight the slipstream kept it firmly in place. But in the
spin gyrations it was banging open and shut. I laughed aloud at my
concern.
Time was running out. I had to land. I banked in a large circle and
lined up on the cow pasture. The Robin ghosted down. Her wheels
struck the soft grass and she clung. I taxied toward the knot of
people near one of the hangars, shut off the engine and climbed out,
showing not a trace of excitement or elation. I was as dead-pan as an
undertaker.
“How’d it go?” someone asked.
“Good,” I said. I knew they had watched the three spins. There was no
need to brag about it.
“No trouble?” Then with a start I realized I was the subject of a
practical joke. The crowd _knew_ what happened to the Robin’s door
in a spin. I was being hazed, like a college freshman. But I was
determined to give them no satisfaction.
“None at all,” I replied. I read disappointment on all their faces.
I returned to the farm and my chores. At the dinner table that night
I felt very proud. But I dared not say why.
* * * * *
Carl Lienesch visited us from time to time on the farm. He no longer
worked for the Union Oil Company. He had moved to Seattle, where
he took a job as a Civil Aeronautics Board inspector. One day he
proposed that I go up to Seattle with him to watch the first flight
tests of Boeing’s new Clipper.
Compared to anything I had seen, the flying boat looked huge,
squatting on Lake Washington, on the eastern edge of Seattle. It had
four powerful engines mounted high on the metal wing, and a towering
single tail. The test pilot was Eddie Allen.
Eddie Allen would have been quite surprised, I’m certain, to know
how much the young man standing on the Lake Washington dock knew
about him. By then my files on test pilots matched or surpassed my
files on racing pilots and other famous characters in aviation. Jimmy
Doolittle was far and away the most famous U. S. test pilot. On the
East coast the top dog was James Taylor, who flew mostly for Grumman.
On the West coast the top dog was Eddie Allen, who was also Boeing’s
Chief Engineer. As I have said, he began his career with the old
NACA shortly after World War I. At Boeing his word was considered
law. He participated in the design of the airplane he would fly. If
he didn’t think a piece of equipment ought to be on an airplane, it
wasn’t put on the airplane. There was no great gap between Allen and
the airplane designers. He _was_ an airplane designer.
I watched as Allen taxied the mammoth plane through the water. The
engines roared to life and the plane plowed through the water gaining
speed. Allen lifted it a few feet into the air and splashed it back
down again. A short while later he returned to the dock. The Clipper
lacked fin area. Allen directed that two additional fins be added to
the airplane.
As we were driving back to Chehalis, Lienesch, visibly impressed by
the flight, was garrulous. His expensive Auburn was making nearly a
hundred miles an hour.
“Now, Scotty,” he said, “if you’re going to get into the aviation
business, Allen’s job is the one you want to shoot for. That’s the
top of the ladder. You don’t want to be a barnstormer, or a racing
pilot, or a military pilot. Get a degree. Be an engineer. Help
build the airplanes. Then fly them and find out what you did wrong.
Then fix it. That’s a real profession. It has dignity as well as
excitement and challenge. You can combine all your energies and focus
them toward one single objective: to improve the airplane. Who knows,
maybe you might contribute something in this never-ending, restless
urge of man to do better.”
I was profoundly impressed.
* * * * *
My father’s limitless energy and meticulous research--his drive for
perfection--had a telling effect on the farm as the months rolled by.
It was still far from a show place, but it was no longer bruised and
battered. The herds were growing and producing. The chickens were
profitable and were pointed to as examples by the County Agents. The
barn had a new addition. We had stemmed the sea of mud somewhat with
gravel walkways. The main house was equipped with an indoor toilet.
The farm produced enough money to support us and to send my older
sister, Elena Ruth, to the University of California in Berkeley.
Although it appealed to me not at all, I was caught up in the rural
way of life and naturally influenced by the people. As the son of an
increasingly successful farmer, and naturally competitive, I took
some pride in contending with the sons of other farmers. I became
a leader in our 4-H Club. My pure-bred Guernsey bull, which I had
nursed to a beautiful showpiece, won many prizes at county livestock
fairs and brought me an invitation (which I accepted) to represent
the State of Washington in the International Livestock Show in
Chicago. I was also assured of a scholarship to Washington State
College provided I majored in agriculture.
None of this gave me any real satisfaction. My basic interest lay
elsewhere and was deeply rooted. I liked to pal around with the
farmers’ sons, but they were not my closest friends. Indeed, my
really close friends seem a strange lot to me now. I probably fitted
in perfectly.
One of my friends was a ham radio operator, Art Beal, who was
about forty years old. I first met him when he came to the farm to
investigate my weird radio-transmitter signals which were disturbing
the airways. He taught me a great deal about radio and helped me
build the radio-control model. Through him I met Elden Reed, about
twenty-five years old, and Bill Young, about twenty-eight, and blind
from birth. All three were avid hams; they never seemed to sleep. All
of us, together with a tomboy about four years older than I, Louise
Wilrich, became fast friends. Art, Elden, and Louise all learned to
fly at Chehalis.
Bill Young was an extraordinary person. He lived on a small pension,
alone except for his seeing-eye dog, and picked up extra money tuning
pianos. In Nature’s strange way, having denied Bill sight, she
developed his ears to perfection. Bill was often the only operator
who could pick up signals from North Africa. During the war the Air
Force used his cheap home-made gear and sensitive ears to communicate
with North Africa when military radio could not get through. I
remember the time when a thief broke into Bill’s house, robbed him,
and killed his seeing-eye dog. I think that if the rest of us had
caught the thief we would have killed _him_.
When we went to the Chehalis airport to fly, or just to shoot the
breeze with Donahoe and the other pilots, Bill always came along.
However, the airplane was something of a mystery to him. He walked
about, feeling the wings, the fuselage, and the propellers. But
it was too big and complex and he couldn’t “see,” as he said, the
whole concept of the plane. I think this distressed him considerably
because in that crowd we talked of little else besides radio and
airplanes. Bill’s inability in this regard touched me, because to
me Bill was a kindred spirit, a piece of nature’s bruised fruit. I
helped him to understand the airplane by bringing along my models.
With these miniature versions he could “see” the airplane as a whole.
It was about this time that I began building my own life-size
airplane. The idea came to me one day when I read in one of the
many aviation publications I subscribed to that a French company,
LeBlonde, had produced a very lightweight, efficient gasoline engine
of 15 horsepower. One of these engines successfully powered a small
plane. There on the farm, over six thousand miles from France and the
nearest LeBlonde engine, the seed took root and sprouted. An engine
that small ought to be pretty inexpensive, I thought. If I built the
airplane, I would find a way to buy the engine.
As my father lacked enthusiasm for my flying, so he viewed with less
enthusiasm my plan to build an airplane. I suppose any rational
father would try to talk his son out of a scheme like that. But
in spite of my father’s advice to the contrary, I was determined
to carry the idea through. I worked late at night, drawing up the
plans and designing my vehicle, the sum product of a 17½-year-old’s
aeronautical know-how and skill with a pencil.
I had long talks with my school principal, Carl Aase, about the
material for the airplane. One problem was that the spruce I intended
to use in the wing, tail, and fuselage was very expensive. Aase
suggested that I substitute Port Orford cedar, which in the old days
the Indians used to build canoes. It was strong and flexible, a good
inexpensive local substitute. I saved my money and sent away for the
cedar. Since I had little money, I spaced the orders far apart.
I enjoyed building anything. This full-scale airplane that could
take me into the boundless sky turned into an intense work of
love. I doubt that ever in history an airplane was built with such
painstaking care for detail. Each piece of cedar--one-inch square
strips--was handled like a piece of gold. After steaming it into
shape, I sanded it carefully and then laid it in place. Then I tacked
it down with glue-coated nails (which I ordered as required, with no
allowance for surplus) and mortised each individual joint. As with my
models, I strove for perfection. It was slow going. It took months
and months to complete the fuselage. Then I saved for more cedar,
built some jigs and laid out the wing spars.
Though I worked on the airplane only after my chores were finished,
I always felt guilty about the time it took. In a way it was like
waving a red flag in my fathers face. He was becoming very attached
to his piece of the earth and its mounting production. I believe he
hoped I would share his enthusiasm and in time take over. Perhaps
because it was a symbol of my conflicting ambition, annoying to my
father, I never finished the airplane. It became a kind of unfinished
Hangar Queen--in this case Barn Queen. I would meet other Hangar
Queens later.
Carl Lienesch convinced me that my approach to my chosen profession
should begin with a solid college foundation in engineering. Upon
graduation from high school in June, 1939, my plan was to go straight
to basic freshman engineering at the University of Washington. But
this well-laid plan went astray. I was delayed a whole year by a
variety of factors.
In January of 1939, several months before I was to graduate, my
younger sister Mary Anne, fourteen years old, was stricken by polio,
and after a brief but severe illness she died in an iron lung. She
was a pretty girl, already determinedly planning a career on the
stage. Her sudden death was a stunning blow to my parents and me. It
brought us closer together than ever before. To leave for college
then, to leave my mother and father alone on the farm, seemed to
me like deserting them. (My older sister was still enrolled at the
University of California.)
The farm was simply too big for my father to operate alone. For
several years he employed a boy named Harold Jones, who lived nearby,
to help with the heavy work. Over the years Harold became another son
in the Crossfield home. But in 1939 Harold went away to college to
study agriculture, and my father could not afford to hire a full-time
employee to replace him. A year later it would be a different story.
But now my father obviously needed my help.
After turning these facts over in my mind, I decided to stay home on
the farm for one year. At the time it seemed a dreadful decision,
an agonizing delay, a frustrating denial. Yet I probably gained by
it. In 1940, through the combined efforts of my father and myself,
the farm was a going concern. We were able to afford automatic
milking equipment and--believe it or not--a tractor. I traded my old
Oakland jalopy (bought in high school for $26) for a 1935 Chevrolet
and tuned the engine to near-perfection. I filled in some lacking
school credits by taking correspondence courses in math, physics, and
chemistry from the University of Nebraska. I logged an increasing
number of flying hours at Chehalis airport with my constant
companions, Art Beal, Elden Reed, Louise Wilrich, and Bill Young.