From Wax Wings to Flying Drones by Norman Ferguson

Author:Norman Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

LINDBERGH STAYED UP ALL NIGHT TO GET CALLED LUCKY

There’s an expression that goes, ‘There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are not many pilots named “Daredevil” who die in their beds.’ One person was to prove this aphorism.* His name was Charles ‘Daredevil’ Lindbergh; he was given this insurance-premium-raising nickname due to his keenness as a barnstormer. Chas was mad keen on doing wing walks, which are exactly as they sound – if you stay on the wing. Wing fallers tended to only do this once.

Luckily, Lindbergh gained a new nickname: ‘Lucky’, which came as a great relief to his insurance broker, friends and family. He still pushed his luck, did Lucky, parachuting four times from mail planes he was flying. One day Lindy was flying on a mail run from St Louis to Chicago when a thought struck him: did he leave the gas on? No, he’d definitely switched it off. Then another hit him: if he was going to have to sit in a bone-shaking aircraft for hours on end, why not arrange it so that he would be arriving in Paris, France, rather than Chicago, America? Then another thought hit him: had he locked the back door? These thoughts occupied him for a few more bone-juddering miles but the one about Paris would come back …

What brought it back was that old favourite incentive: a prize. The Orteig Prize offered $25,000 to the first aviator to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. In the 1920s this was a lot of money. It is also a lot of money nowadays if you find it down the back of a sofa. It was offered by Raymond ‘Moneybags’ Orteig, a New York hotel owner who was keen to drum up business, but who maybe didn’t see the flaw in the plan that encouraged flights from New York?

A few had a go. Former French ace René ‘Ace’ Fonck was one of them. In his specially designed Sikorsky S-35, the moustached French pilot roared down the runway in Long Island, America – not into the pages of aviation history but into a ball of flame, as the machine failed to leave the ground and overturned. It was a complete disaster, with two of the crew dying in the plane, which might have just been a tiny little bit overweight. It was luxuriously fitted out with mahogany and leather panelling, a couch, chairs and fine wines. To accident investigators this would start alarm bells ringing. Fonck had seventy-five kills during the First Awful War and now he had two after it.

They weren’t to be the only ones not to make it. Two American pilots were testing their American Legion airplane when, in avoiding some trees, their craft stalled and failed to avoid the ground.

Next up (or down) was another French war ace. Charles ‘Ace Aussi’ Nungesser chose to fly the Atlantic from east to west as the prize could be won if you flew that way, something that would have spoilt our joke up above.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.