Russ Simpson, American flying instructor in the Gosport School in England during the war and at present an airplane broker on Roosevelt Field, took off in one of the old Jennies to fly the first electric sign ever flown over New York City at night. While he was gone a ground fog rolled in over the airport.
Pretty soon the fellows on the ground heard him coming back. They could hear his motor, but they couldn’t see his ship. They knew he couldn’t see the airport. He was stuck on top of the fog.
They decided to help him. They got cans of gasoline and poured them on the old outbuilding which stood a little way out from the hangars and set fire to the rickety structure. They tore up all the spare motor crates they could find and piled them on top of the blaze. They got the fire so big they were afraid for a while that the hangars were going to catch. They were trying to make a red glow in the fog so Russ could tell where the field was.
Finally they heard Russ’s motor cut. They heard the ship glide in and heard it hit. They could tell from the noise it made when it hit that it had cracked up.
They jumped into a car and went rushing all over the airport in the darkness and the fog looking for the wreck. It took them half an hour to find it, so Eddie says.
When they did, they found Russ sitting on top of it, smoking a cigarette. Their almost burning the hangars down had all been in vain. Russ hadn’t seen any red glow at all. He had simply mushed down through the stuff and hit the airport by luck.
[HELPING THE ARMY]
After I was graduated from Brooks and Kelly, the army transferred me to Selfridge Field in Detroit. There was nothing much doing around Selfridge, and I was getting a little bored. I heard they were giving an air show at Akron, right near my home town. I thought it would be fun to go out there to see my old friends and give a stunt exhibition. I got the necessary permission from the higher-ups and started out in a Tommy Morse. The Morse planes were pretty near obsolete by that time, and the service was trying to replace them as fast as possible with newer models. There were only a few of them left.
When I got to Akron there was a lot of excitement going on over the air show. I told myself I was going to give them the works—show them what a local boy could do. The first part of my program went off fine. I looped, barrel-rolled, dove, etc. I had figured out a trick landing as the grand finale that would pull the customers right out of their seats. The landing didn’t turn out so well. I misjudged my distance and ended up on one wing. It was pretty humiliating. There was nothing to do but wire Selfridge Field to ship me another wing. They wired back to the effect that there were no more wings available at the moment and that I should crate the ship home. That stumped me. I had no idea how to dismantle a plane. I studied the old Morse from every angle, but I couldn’t find the solution. I had to get the plane in a crate, and I had to do it quickly. I used a saw. I sawed off the good wing, the damaged wing, and the tail surfaces. I crammed them into a crate and sent them on their way. The plane of course had to be junked.