Sometimes we go two or three weeks without enough happening to write
about—but yesterday something occurred. They told me to take my altitude
test, and put me into the machine. In the altitude test the object is to
climb to a height of twenty-six hundred meters (eighty-five hundred
feet) and stay there for an hour. Well, I started with a good motor and
a joyous heart, for the weather had been bad for six days and I felt
like a horse that needs a run. The plane climbed wonderfully. There were
quite a few clouds in the sky, but I saw blue spots to go up through as
I circled high over the school. In the first fifteen minutes I had
climbed fifteen hundred meters, but once up there I found that the holes
in the sky had disappeared and there was nothing for it but to go right
up through the clouds. The low-hanging cloudlets began to whisk by and
the mist gathered on my glasses. Never having played around in the
clouds much, I didn’t know what was coming. Well, the mist grew thicker
and thicker, and looking down I found the ground fading away like
pictures on a movie screen when the lights turn on. I began to wonder
what I’d do without any ground under me. I soon found out when the
ground disappeared entirely. Have you been in a fog so thick that you
couldn’t see your hand before your face, and you sort of hesitate to
step any farther for fear of falling off the edge of something or
running into something? Then imagine going through such a fog at eighty
miles per hour.
When I had been out of sight of ground for less than a minute something
strange seemed to be happening. There was a feeling of unsteadiness, and
I thought maybe I was tipping a little. I tried to level up the plane,
and found I couldn’t tell whether it was tipped to right or left. The
controls went flabby, and then the bottom dropped out. You understand I
couldn’t see twenty feet—but I was falling—faster—faster. The wires and
struts of the machine began to whistle and sing and the wind roared by
my ears. I began to think very fast. No one has ever fallen far enough
to know what that speed is, and lived to tell about it, unless he was in
an aeroplane. There was no doubt about it, I was falling—falling like a
lost star. I was frightened, in a way, but there was so much
excitement—too much to think about to be panic-stricken. It was awful
and thrilling. You wonder what happened? Why, I tell it slowly. That is
how I wondered what was going to happen. The seconds seemed like
minutes. I began to reason about it. Was it all over? Had I made my last
mistake when I entered those clouds? Had all my training and education
for twenty-three years been leading up to this fall? It seemed
unreasonable and unjust. Still, there I was, falling as in a dream.
Well, I didn’t need my engine, I was going fast enough without it, so I
cut it off, but that’s all the good it did. I couldn’t see my propeller,
and yet I plunged downward. That’s right, I must be falling downward.
Ah! a bright idea. Downward, therefore toward the earth.
Then I recalled the fact that the lowest clouds were eighteen hundred
meters above the earth, and I was still in them. I must come out of them
before striking, so I waited. My head felt light; my eyes watered behind
the glasses. I remember watching the loose lid on the map box waving and
tilting back and forth; then suddenly I became aware of a shadow, a dark
spot, a body, and there, ’way off at the end of my wing, was a map of
the world coming at me. I headed for it and then slowly let the machine
come to its flying position and it was over. I was flying serenely above
the earth, with a surprising lack of concern. I had fallen a thousand
feet. That was the first one—the thrilling, fearful one.
But I hadn’t made my altitude, so I tried again, and fell the same. Many
times I tried. Once I saw the sun through the mist, and it was under my
wing instead of over it. I was then falling upside down. I do not know
the capers that that machine cut up there during the hour and a half of
my repeated endeavor to go up through that strata of cloud, but no
acrobatic was left unaccomplished, I am sure. Spirals, barrel turns,
nose dives, reversements—all unknown to me. I pressed on one side, then
on the other. I hung by the belt and pressed forward and backward. Again
I would fall into the open. Again I climbed into the clouds, but it was
all useless and vain. I could not keep my balance without the world or
the sun to go by. Then my motor began to miss, so I decided to go down.
Well, if a person has undergone all the dangers and surprises that the
air has to offer without being able to see what he is doing, he feels
perfectly at home doing anything when he has a clear outlook. I had
proved that the machine couldn’t hurt itself by falling a thousand feet
and as I was still some seven thousand feet high, I decided to
experiment, so I did spirals right and left, wing slips, nose dives and
tail slips, reversements and stalls, vertical banks and crossed
controls—everything, in fact, that I had ever seen done with the
machine. They were all simple, without terror, and quite safe. I failed
in my altitude, but I learned enough about the handling of that machine
to make up for a dozen failures. I’ll try my altitude again on a clear
day. I am glad I had the experience, for it gave me great confidence. I
did three hours of flying yesterday.
The most dangerous thing that happened was one time when I fell in the
clouds and the fall seemed longer than usual before the clear air was
reached. Suddenly I realized that my glasses were covered with snow, so
I took them off and found I had fallen two hundred meters below the
clouds while blinded by my glasses. Just to show how nicely balanced a
good machine is, I let go of the control about two minutes, while
cleaning my glasses, and steered entirely with my feet. My, but flying
is a wonderful game. If I come through, I’ll give you one royal ride in
heaven before I give up aviation.