Americus times-recorder., 1919-07-13
DARING AVIATORS THRILL TF1RONG
Souther Lads Staged Gamest
Comeback Ever, Keeler's View;
Calls Circus Aerial Triumph

Irlend WolIe, one OF the pair who
came to Atlanta after Magrudey
and me. This was for the purpose
of photographing, if possible, Mr..
Vance while he was crawling abouc
on a Curtiss plane piloted by Mr..
McMullen. / say ''if possible" be- .
cause it may not have been pos
sible. Wolfe set sail after the
stunters and followed them about
the sky line like cat after
mouse. We were ordered not to
get too close to the stunt, so we
had to look as if we were careful,
but l don't think Wolfe was so
darned careful at that.
Chased The Stunters.
We chased them about while the
intrepid Mr.. Vance was standing
on the top plane, and out on the
end of the lower plane, and SIT
ting down on the landing gear un-
der the plane-and | can Cell you,
it was ticklish thing to watch,
1000 feet in the air at times and
down to less than 1000. | shot
four times, but the Lord knows
what | hit-angels, possibly. We
were well in range, however: a
hundred feet away. l should say. l
was flying without headgear or
goggles, having got away in a
hurry, and the breeze messes your
eyes up bit when you stick your
head out. 1t makes the back of
your neck prickle, too, to watch a
man strolling about negligently on
a plane that is sumetimes above
you and sometimes under you and
always with half a mile of moth
ing at all under him. AS | say,
the wind is pretty strong, just
sticking your head out in it.
Wolfe gave me dandy ride af-
ther the plane-crawling stopped.
We side-slipped nearly thousand
feet, left and right, and suddenly
flattened out over road full of
creeping automobiles. Wolfe sent
the plane racing along, not 20
feet above the ground, just by the
roadside. | waved graciously at
the fiuttering occupants Of the
cars, and then thought of how
trench or railroad train could be
raked with machine gun fire in that
way. Wolfe reversed and shot
back along the road-he was near
ly touching the corntops. Then we
stunted bit, well up in the air,
and came down.
rs Loops In 10 Minutes.
Lieut.. MacRae, Lieut.. Blackler
and Sergeant Gates entered the
looping contest. The latter won,
turning 25 loops in ten minutes,
while descending from 5000 feet
to 1000 feet. MacRae started
looping at the western edge of the
huge field and looped himself
clear out of sight to the eastward.
He reported that he lost count of
his loops and nearly forgot which
way the mess hall lay, but he got
back easily enough in time for
dinner.
was particularly interested in
the last exhibition of the day be-
cause l was in it. Greenawald and
Cronau from Carlstrom Field, Ar
cadia, Fla, were going to put on
combat and | talked myself into
the mechanics seat in Greenawald's
plane, his mechanic, nike Horan,
riding with Bob Cronau. l managed
it by remarking incautiously that
| never had been sick in a plane.
Greenawald said the combat stuff
was different from stunting. 1t is.
Those two planes, hurled through
the air by 150-horsepower Hispa-
no-Suiza motors, chased each other
about the sky, up and down-and
so frequently that | got absolutely
accustomed to seeing the ground
in front of me.
Jumps Out From Under You
The battle evolutions consist of
reverse turns, nose dives, wing
slips and what is called "whip
turn;" singularly vicious flip
with the rudder that causes the
ship to jump from under you. Part
of the time Cronau was on our tail
peppering US with an imaginary
machine gun; and part of the
time we We're trailing him, in po-
sition to blow him to bits, only
we hadn't gun. We tumbled
about the sky and twirled on one
wing-tip and slid and dived and
ran straight up again, and you can
hardly imagine what a job it is
watching one crazy plane from an
other crazy plane and keeping out
of the way of the "stick" and look
ing at the altimeter once in while
and occasionally at the ground.
Greenawald told me, after we
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