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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 1236.PDF
[/ycHT] threatened, so it seemed, to blow my head clean off my shoulders. There was nothing to do, and gradually it dawned upon me that this was quite the simplest machine I had ever flown. |'h>- KBM of security was remarkable, indeed. I was perfectly convinced by this time that nothing dreadful could possibly happen. I might have bees sitting in a Dreadnought, so steadily and solidly did the machine force its way through the air. I began to look around. The ground was about a thousand feet below, and the machine was still rising, although the inclinometer showed that the machine must have been doing so on a perfectly even keel. Another curious point was that the engine seemed somehow not to be pulling. The revolution indicator, however, showed that it was doing, if anything, a trifle over its normal 1,200 revolutions a minute. It was the evenness and smoothness of the turning of these fourteen cylinders that gave rise to this delusion. Surely about time I turned; so putting the nose of the machine down a few degrees, I pushed the rudder-bar over to the left. The big monoplane banked slightly, and the ground below, sheds, bushes, hedges, and everything, revolved through 180". I was now heading for the sheds, feeling perfectly comfortable, and enjoying myself immensely. Now that they were directly below me, and, forgetting all that my friends had told me about the terrors of a right hand turn with ® ® FROM THE F Lost la the Sky. TllKRK it something pathetic and prophetic in an unfinished manu script found in the desk of the late Miss Harriet <Juimby, the aviatricc who fell to her death at the Boston meet last July. Miss <vHlimby had prepared the data for an article for /.eshr's, relating her i'\pfiii-in cs while lost in her monoplane during flights in Mi-xico. Garden City and at other places. She had written the opening pages of the story. They are the last words she left for her readers in 1., <//,•'.\, to whom she tent her helpful messages every week. As they have a singular interest in connection witn her sad and untimely death, we print 1 hem herewith. The simple caption on the article, as written by her, was the one word, " Lost !" How DECEMBER 28, 1912. a big engine, I pushed my right foot forward, and swung round. Not until I was right round did I realise that I had accomplished a supposedly difficult manoeuvre. I straightened the machine out to get a clear run down to the ground in front of the sheds, and putting the elevator slightly forward, cut off the petrol. Immediately there was silence, except for the gentle hum from the pro peller and wing cables as I planed down. The machine touched ground, ran along, rapidly losing speed, bumped twice, and stood still. Almost before I had time to look round the machine was surrounded by a crowd of mechanics, all firing off questions in rapidly spoken French. I had little or no idea what they were talking about, but my stock phrase, " Ca marche bien" seemed to please them well enough. In fact, we were all very pleased ; the designer because another of his machines had proved eminently successful, the mechanics because they had followed the machine right through the works from crude steel and wood, and myself because I had done what little I had done. * * * * Just outside the aerodrome there is a little inn named, appropriately enough, " Le Progres dc l'Aviation." Anyone passing might have remarked a noisy group of oily-looking individuals sitting around one of the tables outside. Nothing short of " fizz " that morning ! ®. ® OUR WINDS. soon was fate to find its fulfilment reads as follows :— The unfinished manuscript LOST ! " Nobody likes to be lost. There is a wretchedness about it most pathetic. Our hearts go out to the lost child, we join in the search for the missing, whether we be strangers or neighbours. The instinct to go to the rescue is always the same. " It is a new experience to be lost in the >ky, but it is as real and trying as to be lost in the midst of earth's wilderness or on the infinite expanse of the waters of the sea. I speak with knowledge. Twice I have been lost in the sky while driving a monoplane. " The sense of loneliness and helplessness one feels while driving a thousand feet above the earth in a swiftly moving monoplane, with nothing but the everlasting sky above and the horizon around and with no sign of recognition from the distant earth below, is overwhelming and indescribable. One can do nothing but look and hope. One must drive on, amid the roar of the motor blade making its thousand revolutions a minute. '' The aviator who is lost feels no helping hand reached out to him. He looks for none. There is nothing to do except to Lieut. Krleget and Lieut. Frledensburg on their Harlan military-type monoplane, which was awarded first prize In the recent contest for flying round Berlin. 1228 A detail of the Bleriot military monoplane, showing; the means whereby, using a special lever, the shock-absorbers can be disconnected, allowing the machine to be lowered on to its knees, as it were.
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