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Aviation History
1927
1927 - 0867.PDF
NOVEMBER 10, 1927 W C%S$%L [" FLIGHT " Photographs A " BLUEBIRD " ON TOUR : During the past week Mr. Charles H. Blackburn and Lieut. A. M. Blake have been making a demonstration tour of Southern England on one of the new Blackburn " Bluebird II " machines with Armstrong-Siddeley " Genet " engine. Side-by-side seating is a feature of this machine. Note the door in the side of the fuselage. COL. CHARLES LINDBERGH'S OWN STORY* IT will be a surprise to the numerous readers of Col. Lind- bergh's own story that it is not devoted exclusively to his epic flight from America to Europe. But they will find immediate compensation in the intensely interesting account of his flying career which, although so thrilling, only began in 1922. Few flying men have made such a meteoric rise in aviation in such short time, and as we are as interested in the man as in his feats that have made him so prominent, he was therefore wise in giving us the story of his life. The early struggles he endured in order to follow his ambition are surprising. He has roughed it in a manner that some- how we had never been led to expect, after the impressions gathered from the flood of publicity about him. He joined a flying school in America in 1922, and when ready to solo he was unable to afford the bond imposed by the company to cover any possible damage to the machine. So he had to delay his solo flight for many months. Meanwhile, he went all over the States " barnstorming " with another pilot. (" Barnstorming " is an equivalent term for our " joy-riding.") Lindbergh's particular job was to provide the hair-raising stunts, such as wing-walking, parachute descents, etc. When visiting a fair once, they found their field too far from the crowd, so to attract attention, they dropped a dummy from the air, which fell in a very lifelike manner. Hut the crowd did not respond with the expected curiousity, and then they discovered that a live competitor had dived off a machine into the Yellowstone River, which had Ixx-n a far greater attraction ' In time Lindbergh Ixmght his own machine, a " Jenny," fitted with a Curtiss OX-5 engine, and although he had still not flown solo, he took off one day, until the right wing dropped, then he decided to land. After a few weeks spent in practising, he started off across the States on his own " barnstorming " trip. He took up passengers who would faint to-day if they knew what little experience their pilot had had. He tried his first loops with a negro passenger on lx>ard, but although he got the " Jenny " on its back twice. he could not get it over ; then he decided his method of looping was wrong. In accordance with pre-arranged plans, this negro had fluttered a red handkercief over the cowling during the flight to assure his ground friends that he was enjoying himself. During the experimental looping, the fluttering stopped ! *We~ pilot and'Plane. By Charles A. Lindbergh. (Putnam: 7s.8d.net.) After these tours, which made him used to cross-country flying, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service, and he gives us a very vivid account of the fine but severe flying training received. The standards compelled are so high that American Army pilots must, without exception, be extremely efficient. It was whilst flying in formation that his machine came into collision with another, and both pilots had to jump for safety with their parachutes. After obtaining his commission, he left the Service and filled in his time at " barnstorming " again, until joining a new air mail line between St. Louis and Chicago as chief pilot. Twice he was forced to abandon his machine at night on this service and drop with a para- chute. He has saved his life on four occasions in this way. In his book, Col. Lindbergh treats his Atlantic flight as a mere item in his adventurous career ; devoting hardly more attention to it than to other events. He writes the whole book in bare, unadorned language, wasting no time on his thoughts and feelings which accrued during his most thrilling air experiences, and giving an undeviating straightforward story, that is extremely readable and will please the multitude immensely. It is a book that is remarkable for what is left out. Lindbergh is never introspective. Practical men rarely are. The introspective pilot would not live very long. Lindbergh treats his great ocean flight simply as a flight from here to there, not as a long, lonely, dangerous and hazardous adventure. Perhaps nothing gripped our imaginations so intensely at the time as that stage of this flight through the night over the vast, empty, fog-bound ocean ; but Lindbergh effectively disposes of it in less than a page ; telling us little more than that darkness set in at 8.15 p.m. and dawn broke at 1 a.m. That supreme moment when he first sighted Ireland, after those hours of blind progress through endless clouds of all densities, draws no exultation from him. In the written word he is strangely stoical. His story travels as fast as he flew, never pausing or diverting to discuss anything except the present, but despite his brevity, his tenacious clinging to facts rather than feelings, we somehow feel and respond to his vivid experiences just as easily. For they were of a nature that would touch and quicken the dullest imagination. Col. Lindbergh is a great man, and he possesses a greatness that attracts our affection and not our fear. His simple, modest, unassuming narrative will enhance our regard for him. 783
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