October 15, 1917.
Dear Bob:
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.
Dins.
Château du Bois, La Ferté-Imbault, France,
October 15 to 27, 1917.
Dear Mother: