“Soon I was floundering in snow up to my waist. I stumbled along all that day, all that night, and at daybreak came to the edge of the woods. The going was slow and tiresome. Frequent stops for rest were necessary. During these times I could feel my feet getting numb. But I carried a map of the country in my head, and knew there was a barn about three miles ahead. I struggled toward it all that day, while the blizzard raged and blotted out everything at times. By noon I was progressing at a snail’s pace; my leg muscles almost refused to function. About three o’clock I came close enough to the barn to see that there was no house, but it was clear now, and I could see one about three-quarters of a mile farther on. During all this time I was very weak, for I had eaten nothing in almost thirty-six hours.
“At dusk I came to the house, and they took me in, rubbed my frost-bitten feet with snow, and filled me with warm food and hot coffee. After struggling through snowdrifts for thirty-six hours without food or drink, you can imagine that I was pretty tired. I was. I hit that bed so hard that I slept almost twenty hours. I didn’t wake up until far into the next afternoon.
“The report from Rock Springs that I was missing pretty well disrupted the Air Mail Service for two days; for sixteen planes from the Rock Springs and Salt Lake fields suspended flying to look for me. Finally, my machine was located from the air by Bishop, of Salt Lake City. There was no telephone at the ranch; no way whatever of advising the searchers that I was safe. But, at the end of my nap, I was able to get on a horse and ride with my Good Samaritan ten miles to the nearest telephone. At that place some rescue parties, equipped with horses and bobsleds, met us and took us to Salt Lake, where we arrived the evening of the following Tuesday. The plane was recovered about ten days later.”
“What about your tail spin?”
“That,” replied the pilot, “is something that I don’t care to remember. It isn’t very often, you know, that a man who goes into a tail spin lives to tell of the experience. I don’t know to this day what caused me to fall into that spin, unless it was the condition of the weather and the loss of flying speed.
“The facts of the case are these: I ran into a blizzard one January day. The wind was dead against me, and I soon found that I couldn’t buck it, even though my ship would make two miles a minute. I tried it for half an hour, and made a little progress, but snow was falling so heavily that I could scarcely see a hundred yards ahead. I flew and flew and flew, trying to get around the storm, but it was impossible without going too far off the route. Then I tried to climb over it, and got to 18,000 feet, or about three and one-half miles, which is the ‘ceiling’ or limit of a De Haviland.
“By this time I was rather dizzy and exhausted. It was then that I lost consciousness and went into the tail spin. Recovering, at a point about a mile and a half above the ground, I managed to ‘come out of it,’ as they say, by bringing the machine to an even keel. But I was feeling so wobbly by this time that the plane almost immediately fell into another spin. I have no recollection whatever of what I did; probably I worked the controls instinctively. There was no banking indicator on my plane, so it was almost impossible, with snow swirling all around and my view of everything shut out by the blizzard, for me to tell when I was flying on the level. As I say, my memory is hazy about that second spin; all I know is that in some miraculous fashion I came out of it—only to fall into another! My hands and feet worked the controls automatically, I guess, as I swirled like a falling leaf toward the earth. The fall was a dizzy one, I can tell you.
Pilot Robert H. Ellis
“By good luck, rather than because of any effort of mine, I came out of my third tail spin. I can’t recall going into the fourth—and last—spin, but I dimly remember bringing the ship to a flat spiral about a hundred feet from the ground. Then I struck a tree, and the machine went crashing to the ground. I was unconscious for five hours, but was warmly dressed, so that freezing was not added to my list of injuries. These, in fact, were slight; merely a few cuts and bruises. If I hadn’t carried snowshoes in the cockpit, however, I probably would have perished, then and there. We all carry snowshoes, emergency rations, and a rifle, now. And our machines are equipped with banking indicators to show when they are on an even keel.”