Our knowledge of Atlantic weather is extraordinarily incomplete. Generally speaking, the machinery for securing the requisite data actually exists, but there are not funds to pay for its utilization. The Weather Bureau has no appropriation to meet the costs of the constant reports that should be radioed in by ships at sea, if the Bureau is to be able to forecast with accuracy precise detail conditions prevailing in various areas.
Meteorologists tell me, for instance, that if reports at intervals of say every four hours could be secured from vessels between America and Europe, much, if not all, of the uncertainty regarding trans-Atlantic weather conditions as they affect air travel could be avoided. Shortly, it seems probable, Congress will provide funds for such work. Possibly even an international code will be created, with the cooperation of the steamship companies themselves, so that supplying such data will be automatic. At present, providing it is purely a matter of individual accommodation, and the person getting it has to pay the transmission bills which are likely to be heavy.
Reports six times daily, say from a hundred different vessels, would permit experts on both sides of the Atlantic to lay out weather charts of incalculable value. The information sent would primarily include barometric pressure, temperature, wind direction and velocity and visibility.
Ultimately the exact position of storms and their movements will be determinable. With such information the fast-flying sturdy airships of the future can set their courses so as to avoid these storms, and to take advantage of favorable flying conditions.
CHAPTER XIII
RETROSPECT
PREPARATIONS ... the flight ... England ... our return ... the first receptions ... photographs, interviews ... New York, Boston, Chicago ... the many invitations not accepted because of lack of time ... mayors, celebrities, governors ... splendid flyers; Wilkins, Byrd, Chamberlin, Thea Rasche, Balchen, Ruth Nichols, Reed Landis ... speeches, lunches, radio microphones . . . acres of clippings (unread) ... editors, promoters ... settlement houses, aldermen’s offices ... gracious hostesses, camera-wise politicians ... private cars, palatial planes ... and then my book ... hours of writing piled up in the contented isolation (stoically maintained) of a hospitable Rye home ... friends, a few parties ... swimming, riding, dancing, in tantalizing driblets ... brief recesses from work ... Tunney vs. Heeney, my first fight (a boxer’s career is measured by minutes in the ring; an aviator’s by hours in the air) ... more writing—much more.
Such is my jumbled retrospect of the seven weeks which have crowded by since we returned to America.
Finally the little book is done, such as it is. Tomorrow I am free to fly.
Now, I have checked over, from first to last, this manuscript of mine. Frankly, I’m far from confident of its air-worthiness, and don’t know how to rate its literary horse-power or estimate its cruising radius and climbing ability. Confidentially, it may never even make the take-off.
If a crash comes, at least there’ll be no fatalities. No one can see more comedy in the disaster than the author herself. Especially because even the writing of the book, like so much else of the flight and its aftermaths, has had its humor—some of it publishable!