Still another type of work was the testing of completed planes. No Wiljohn ship was permitted to leave the factory until it had been thoroughly tried out.
Hal Dane was up in one of these new planes now—and was coming down in a wrong spin.
It was a new type training ship that the navy had ordered. In the work it was built for, the plane might never be put to any particular stress and strain. Yet no flyer can predict what risk may suddenly be thrust upon any ship up in the air. So, like all planes constructed at the Wiljohn Works, it had to be subjected to the worst conditions that might ever overtake any aviator.
All in the course of his usual everyday work, Hal Dane had been ordered to take her up and put her through her paces. First he was to shoot for altitude, next dive vertically, full engine, for eight thousand feet, then straighten out to volplane safely to ground in circling glides.
At twelve thousand feet he had gone into the dive, but instead of falling straight, some faulty mechanism of the ship had hurled it into the dread left spin. Many an aviator would have crawled out then and sought safety in a parachute jump. Young Dane had gone up to test this ship, and test it he would, fighting it down to a last margin for a safety leap.
Three times he exerted every ounce of strength that was in him towards a right pull so that the torque or twisting force of the motor would bring him out of the spin. But the machine would not respond. Another thousand feet—a wrench! And, ah, he had done it, she was coming straight! Mentally, Hal began cataloging the spiraling, the drop, the wrench he had just been through, trying to visualize the engine faults that had brought these on. Too much weight here, not enough strength there. Bad faults, but there were remedies.
She was diving pretty now, straight on, like something shot out of a cannon mouth.
Then at seven thousand feet down things began to happen. Before Hal Dane could realize it, the ship literally shattered to pieces under him. A crash, a rending, a tearing!
He jack-knifed forward across the safety belt and force hurled him head-on against the board, knocking him unconscious. A fuselage gone crazy, wings torn off, tail torn off, shot in sickening whirls towards the ground. Strapped to it, rode Hal Dane, stunned into the unconsciousness of “little death,” while real death rose up with the ground to meet him.
As he fell, rushing air partly cleared his brain. But a flying-man’s instinct, not conscious thought, set his hands to fumbling the safety belt, to feeling for the ring of his parachute cord. Instinct freed him, sent him climbing to the edge to step off into space.