I took off in my low-wing Lockheed Sirius at dark and flew along the lighted beacons through the mountains. Half an hour later I ran into broken clouds at 4,000 feet. I flew under them. Soon they became solid and I couldn’t see the stars overhead. I saw lightning ahead of me flashing in the darkness.
Water began to collect on my windshield. The air got very rough. A beacon light that had been flashing up ahead of me disappeared. I noticed the lights of a town beneath me getting dim. For a second I lost sight of them entirely. I nosed down to get out of the clouds.
A brilliant flash of lightning lit the darkness around me. I saw the rain driving in white sheets and caught the flash of a beacon through it. I nosed down toward the beacon and started circling it. I knew by my altimeter that I was down lower than some of the mountain ridges around me. I looked for the next beacon but couldn’t see it through the raging thunderstorm. I didn’t dare strike out in the general direction of the next beacon in the hope of finding it. I might hit a mountain top.
Another blinding flash of lightning surrounded me with glaring light. I saw the dark bottoms of the clouds and the black top of the next ridge I had to pass over. Then blackness and the slashing rain with only the friendly beacon under me.
I fought my way from beacon to beacon for an hour. The lightning flashes receded farther and farther behind me. I began to see from beacon to beacon. Stars appeared overhead. They were very dim. I was flying in a haze.
I passed over Hadley Field, New Jersey, and saw its boundary lights burning cheerfully. I continued on toward Roosevelt Field. I was almost home now.
I noticed the lights of the towns beneath me getting dimmer. I looked up. The stars were gone. I looked down again. The lights had disappeared! I was flying blind in a thick fog. I began to fly by instruments. I pulled up. At 3,000 feet I saw the stars. I was on top of the fog.
I swung around to go back to Hadley Field. Its lights were covered. I saw the lights of what I figured was New Brunswick. I started circling them. I knew Hadley Field was only a few miles from there. The lights of New Brunswick began to blot out. Hey, what the hell! I said out loud to myself.
I saw a segment of the rotating beam of a beacon break through a hole in the fog and make about a quarter of a turn in the darkness before it disappeared. That’s the beam from Hadley beacon! I was saying all my thoughts out loud now. I flew over to where I figured the center of the beam was and started circling. The top of the fog looked pretty bright there. I decided that Hadley had heard me and had turned on its floodlights.
I eased back on my throttle, settled into a spiraling glide, and sank down into the fog, flying by instruments. The opaque white fog got more and more luminous. Individual bright spots, greatly blurred, began to appear. I figured they were the boundary lights of the field. My altimeter read very low. I broke through the bottom of the fog at about two hundred feet. I was over Hadley. I flew low into the blackness back of the field and came around and landed.