Bill Bruce on Forest Patrol

by Henry Harley Arnold

It was getting harder and harder to follow the railroad. Bill thought that they should soon reach the crest of the mountains and start to go down the other side, as the railroad by this time was almost in the low clouds.

All of a sudden Bill saw that the tracks made a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn ahead of him. The tracks had been steadily climbing to gain altitude, and now in order to gain more they turned back on themselves. Bill knew that he had led his Flight into a blind valley. He must turn around and follow the tracks, but where did they lead?

Bill had to make a wing overturn and come back, head on, at the other planes. Each plane in turn slid over to the side of the valley as Bill approached, but it looked as if he would surely collide with one of them before he passed the last. However, he cleared by inches and was maneuvering to pass the last plane when he saw that the railroad went into a tunnel.

It is bad enough to have to follow a railroad through a twisting, winding valley with barely enough room to handle the plane, but when that railroad runs into a tunnel, then the leader of the Flight is up against it to know just what to do. Bill had this situation confronting him. He did not want to back-track down the valley, for the clouds by this time might have settled down and shut off all possibility of getting out. Something had to be done, however, and must be done at once. The mouth of the tunnel was getting closer and closer.

The side of the mountain disappeared in the clouds above the tunnel. There was no way to tell how high that mountain extended above the bottom of the clouds. Bill could see the trees with their trunks below the clouds and their tops hidden, but that did not help any. He saw a deer, standing at first in an opening between the trees, suddenly turn and bound out of sight when it overcame its fright of the throbbing engines. Bill right there wished that he could change places with that deer.

He headed his plane straight at the mouth of the tunnel and then, just before reaching it, pulled back on the stick and went up into the clouds. Once in the mist, with all view of the ground cut off, he hesitated about what to do next. If he leveled off too soon he would crash against the sides of the mountain. If he held his plane in a climbing position too long, it would fall off into a spin. He tried to hold it at the same angle at which he had entered the clouds and hoped that it was sufficiently steep to follow the contour of the abrupt slope below him.

Bill held his plane in the climb for an appreciable period of time. He thought that he must have crossed over the crest of the Siskiyou Mountains and, accordingly, pushed forward on the stick. One of two things lay below him, either the side of the mountain or a level valley. In one case he would crash into the mountain, but in the other he would come out safely into the open. Which it would be, Bill had no means of knowing.

CHAPTER XI—INTO THE SMOKE PALL

When Bill Bruce went up into the clouds and disappeared from the view of the other pilots in his Flight, for a moment the men in the planes following were stupefied. It took some time for them to realize why this seemingly unnecessary dangerous maneuver had been performed. Then they came to a point where they saw the mouth of the tunnel and they could visualize what was ahead. They had no time to question the motives or judgment of their leader, for the tunnel was in their immediate front and other planes were thundering in their rear. They had no choice but to follow Bill Bruce. If they tried to turn, they would run the chance of colliding with the following planes. So each pilot in turn zoomed his plane into the clouds.

The Siskiyou Mountains run almost east and west, separating the Shasta Valley from the Medford Valley. Their crest conforms for that short distance, almost exactly with the boundary between Oregon and California. The railroad winds and twists in all manner of bends as it makes its roundabout way to the crest of the range. To one flying above the tracks, the curves seem unusually abrupt, but there is no other route for the tracks to follow in crossing the mountains. The only alternative is an exceedingly long tunnel through the base of the mountains. The expense of such a tunnel would be prohibitive on account of its great length, while the tunnel now used through the crest is really a very short one.