Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-03-12

and strain and you fancy you near anu
see Things, and then your fears con-
centrate on a noise behind you. and sud
denly you realize that you are gone
the tail has come loose! 1t Is rafting
on its broken wires now. and at the
next plunge it will be wrenched off COM
pletely and leave you helpless in the
one awful straight drop down to the
earth that is lurking under the clouds
thousands Of feet below you.
You look around in sudden panic.
knowing that it will do no good, yet in
stinctively searching to see if there is
anything possible you can do to save
yourself. You can't look long. SO you
take quick glance over your shoulder
and find the tail in frst-class shape.
holding the machine to her work and
looking strong enough to balance a ma
chine with two men your size.
Completely rea Ssured, You turn again
bly, shaken by these few moments of panic.
but YOU make up your mind that II shali
not occur again. and you grit your teeth
and shove her nose upward once more.
X i
And then, suddenly It begins all over
again. You hear that horrible rattle in
the tail-this time there can be mis-
take. The tail has come loose and you
are about to plunge down to destruction.
Again You look around in panic-and
again YOU find all safe and sound.
The effect Of such constantly recurring
panics can easily be imagined. Only
few minutes of such strain are needed
TO shatter the strongest nerves. and once
the nerves are gone a man imagines all
sorts of silly but terribly real things, and
the agony becomes intense.
In reality, though it would not seem
so from the telling, this and other sorts
or fear that come to one while he is
aioft are usually so quick that they pass
in flash and the danger is over almost
before the aviator can realize it. 1t keeps
him busy; every nerve and every fac
ulty is worked to its utmost to overcome
the danger. and there is only g. lightning
like passing sensation Of awful horror.
He does not really have time to know
how scared he is until he comes down to
earth, and then he lives that awful mo-
ment a thousand times in his waking
and sleeping moments afterward. So it
happens that fear most frequently comes
to the airInan after he has reached the
ground and has time to think of what he
has gone through several thousand feet
up in the air.
But once in a while we do get caught
under circumstances that make flying a
long-continued torture, and one of these
times that I shall never forget occurred
to me during the meet at Lanark. Scot
worlds altitude record.
1 had started up. without any purpose
other than of giving an exhibition flight.
As everything was working beautifully
and my motor was singing that regular
humming song that gives the aviator such
sense Of security and power, I rose
gradually in big circles and was, I should
say, $500 or 5000 feet high when I sud-
denly heard above the sound Of the en-
CINE an unusual and most disagreeable
Tapping sound at my left.
CHANGING along the front OF the plane
on that side, l was Mortified to see that
something was loose and was being torn
this way and that by the pressure of
the air. through which I was going at
rate Of about sixty miles an hour. This
Tapping something vibrated far too fast
for me to see clearly what it was, but
as tried to cast about in my mind what
the possibilities were I was suddenly over
whelmed with the Supplying realization
that the only thing it could be was a
piece of the fabric with which the frame
work or the rib was covered. and which
gives the supporting surface of an aero
plane. To the layman the full import of
such realization cannot be understood
in its full force. Briefly, it meant that
the cloth which alone held me in the air
had begun to rip on that side, and I
knew that at the tremendous speed at
which l was going 1T would take only one
good rip Of the wind under such a small
opening to tear the entire fabric from
front to rear. whip it off the frame and
leave me absolutely unsupported on that
side to go crashing below, helpless to
avert the disaster and certain of meeting