Connecticut western news., 1917-12-06
THRlLLERS IN AVIATION
Former Canaan Boys Experiences in
 the Air.

the Berkshire Courier, ana lS one or the most thrilling experiences yet pub lished.
 Dear Father:-
 Today your letters came with a lot more forwarded from Mohawk. We start for Texas Thursday and you had better address my next letters there.
 Today has been some day for me I've had more different sensations in an hour than ever had before in my whole lifetime. had been just hang ing around here the last few days with. out any flying because all the stick control machines in our flight are smashed or disabled, and I had never had instruction on the wheel. You know the Canadian "Curtiss' has the "Joyce'' stick control which is just wooden stick pivoted to the bottom of the fuselage and coming up between the pilots knees. This controls every thing but the rudder. The American "Curtiss' has a wheel control like an automobile.
 We'll, l got rather tired of hanging around, so asked for wheel machine. It wasn't any harder than the stick (except that you have to land faster because of the dehedral of the wings, and got off my instructors tests all right. Then this afternoon went up in another wheel for my altitude test 5000 feet up, shut off your motor and spiral down, landing in fifty-yard circle. It seemed so good to get up in the air again and 1t was such peach of day that thought I'd get, off some real flying. So climbed for about an hour until it seemed that could see half of Canada did some ''avions" and few figure eights to. start her with. Then I tried few vertical banks and got away with them in great shape. I began to think was becoming a real aviator. Then all of sudden another "altituder" went whistling by about hundred feet over me in the opposite direction. I knew l had pretty fast mechine and l thought it would be great sport to overhaul him. So with the confidence of my half dozen vertical banks. threw the ma chine around vertically into the wind. We'll, the long and the short of it js-I vent so far up on my ear that my rud der became my elevator and my cleva- tor my rudder Of course knew all this in theory. but in practice forgot it, and the result was that in jify was in the prettiest little spinning nose dive you eyer saw. Inever knew big machine could spin so fast. We'll. I tired every blamed thing I could think of on those controls (and was thinking fast) keeping opposite rudder to my spin; but might as we'll have tried to stop her spinning by sticking my hand out in the wind. And all the tine her old nose continued to point directly at the, forest below me and seemed to spin faster. And just as had begun to wonder just how hard wed hit that forest, felt the old bus begin to fatten out under me and l could make out the horizon rolling like mnd-because I was dizzy from my little spin. guess kept her level more by instinct than by anything else until my head stopped spinning, and you can bet I heaved a big sigh of I61I6L Wu0u X AOAb L0I hkOAS dS smooth as velvet.
 You know for 8 few seconds I thought the old earth would get me before got strengthened out, for was moving toward it at over hundred miles an honr with my engine running full blast. But you can bet the next bank I took was nearer 20 degrees than 180 degrees!
 Then had to climb for ten minutes to make up the height had lost in my little spin, and by the time that got up to my 5000 WAS feeling pretty good again. We get rather chilly ln those long climbs in spite of the clothes we wear and we've just got to do some. thing to keep wound up. Tucker Ga pal of mine from the $. of M. A. at Tech. ), and had promised each other that we'd do stall before we came down. We'll, the spinning nose dive took away about all the desire for any more stunts but when was just ready to come down l screwed up my courage and pulled the old wheel back against my stomach.
 In a stall you go straight up until you are vertical to the earth. Then when you lose all flying speed and feel the machine begin to vibrate and tremble, shut off your motor quick and hug the old wheel. For about half a second I hung up there nose up, and t:.en, O, boy! That ton and half of engine and aeroplane started for Mother Earth at about 100 per. Of course being tail first and the elevator lifted. it doesn't take long for that engine to swap places with the tail and we come down like this. Here follows a diagram of an aeroplane somersaulting
 You can imagine the sensation of diving nose-first at that rate of speed.
 And the worst of it was, just after the
 nose swapped places with the tail, the
 weight of the engine swunp the Dlane