“Otherwise—why? Why should men like Hawker and Alcock, with all their biggest risks behind them, wash out on puny little expeditions that they undertook with no more thought than they would have given to drinking a cup of tea? Why should a ship running free and smooth catch fire in the air, for no good reason that is earthly?
“There is a reason, of course, but it has nothing to do with physical or mechanical flaws, if you ask me. The flaw is not the cause. You’ve got to look for the cause in something behind the flaw. Did you ever hear of ‘Last Crash’ Cobb?”
The story of Billy Cobb, and how he came to his last crash, was one of Norris’ classics. There is no denying that it points a moral if you want to look at it that way.
This is what Halliday, the old crew chief, told the accident-investigating officer.
He was standing just outside hangar number three about six-thirty of that simmering August evening when Captain Cobb came in with No. 59. The pilot had executed his customary landing, a tight spiral directly over the field, followed by a spin and two accurately timed fishtails which brought the ship to ten feet where it leveled off up the wind and hovered swiftly to the ground.
Up to this point nothing unusual. Then the fantastic. A tire burst as the wheels touched. The crew chief heard the sharp report. A wheel crumpled. The right wing lurched sharply up and No. 59 dove into a sudden cart wheel.
The crew chief was heading across the field, calling “Ambulance!” as he went, before the tangle of ripped canvas, splintered spars and tortured wires came to rest on its back, quivering.
There followed a significant stirring amid the mass of débris. The crew chief uttered a prayerful ejaculation of relief and stopped running. He saw a man emerge from the wreck of No. 59. It was Cobb—unrecognizable! His face was black with blood; his goggles⸺ But the rough preliminary transcription—slightly reconstituted—from the sergeant major’s stenographic notes of the investigation tells the amazing incident in the words of the only close-up witness.
“Well, sir,” the crew chief deposed, “like I said, I stopped when I seen the captain was starting to crawl out. I thought he was all right. I seen officers crawl out o’ lots worse’n that, in my time, an’ start cussin’ as healthy as you please.
“But the minute I got a good look at Captain Cobb I knew different. You couldn’t see his face for blood, an’ by the way he put out his hands, kind o’ feelin’ ahead of him, I knew he was blind. His goggles, like you seen, was all crushed into his eyes.