Evening star., 1938-08-15
By DEVON FRANCIS,

CLEtElAND, AuS. lo.-1I Ifc NlOtOi
was purring sweetly and the man who
sat hunched behind it gripped his con-
troll stick and nodded his head In .
atisfied way.
He was second in a field of six. In
30 minutes he might be lingering a
check for $500. Only quarter of it
would be his. because he was only
hired to fly this piece OF winged light
ming. But cut of 81 900 would be
something.
He caught glimpse of the second
pylon as us toe touched the left rud-
der pedal and he brought the stick
over for a vertical bank. He swung
into the straightaway between pylons.
Mentally he kept calculating his
chancesA
A man does that in the cramped
cockpit of racing plane. He has
more than enough to do. but his
thoughts wander. Sometimes he for
gets to pull the bits Of adhesive tape
of the edge OF his instrument panel
when he completes q circuit of the
course, and he loses count OF his laps.
A man can't think Of everything at
900 miles an hour.
Now he was ready to pull the stick
over for the third checkered pylon.
Easy would do it. If he miscalculated
he would be out Of control in frac-
ton of a second Or he might black
out"-lose consciousness or eyesight-
momentarily in too tight turn.
Then something went wrong
He never knew. His mount shot
skyward His fuselage spun on its
axis like cyliner. For Ave seconds
1t streaked upward like skyrocket.
Then, its energy spent, it teetered,
slid back on its tail and dived for the
ground as straight as plumb line.
At the pilots meeting the next day
they could only guess at what had
happened.
A dead man can't tell much,
In the last eight years, since Benny
Howard and kid named Gordon
Israel designed the first of the thin
winged. ultra high speed racing planes.
. score of pilots have gone out that
way. -Four have died since last Sep.
tember, and it's only guess as to
what happened.
But men still follow the races around
the country.
They are the money flyers" the
tainbow-chasers, salways hoping for a
break and the biggest piece of the
purse. Mostly they are quiet lot and
their wives are home-bodies..
When a friend stole up behind Mrs.
Art Chester of Los Angeles between
races at the Cleveland air show. the
biggest in the country, last Septem-
ber, she was reading q magazine on
gardening.
Discovered something for the
house." she conhded.
Air racing is pretty tough on the
wives. Mrs. Chester for years mas
begged Art to get out of the game.
All right, he says. pretty soon, and
how about a picnic? Picnics with
Mrs. Chester and their young son are
almost his sole diversion.
Why he races-why the others race
only Chester knows. and if that
question is put to him, he will feed
the gas to his motor. on a test block
In the back yard of his home on West
Seventy-third street, until 1t roars to
avoid answering.
Chester has turned down good jobs
as test pilot. Test plotting is push
over" compared with professional rae
ing, In Ave years he has collected
S45,000 in prize money-and, like the
rest of the clan. he is virtually as poor
as the day he started.
Money, perhaps.
There is always the chance Of
financial killing. Rudy Killing of Le-
mont, Ill. carried away $4,000 from
Cleveland last September only to lose
his life in view Of his wife and small
son at Miami In December.
Then there is the urge to competi-
ton.
A man likes to show his tail sur
strong enough to conquer that impulse,
to take it easy and fly the safe way.
Steve Whitman. the bespectacled for
mer school teacher from Oshkosh has
lived to tell about it because he won't
take chances.
Whitman stepped from the wreckage
and his tiny ship at Oakland last May
when he made forced landing, un-
scathed He knows how. He saw Gus
Gotch killed that same day, and at
Miami Killing and Frank Haines spun
to oblivion before his eyes.
There is pride in design
If a man builds ship he wants to
prove his ideas are right.
Harry Crosby of Los Angeles wants
to adapt to little machines for pri-
vate flying some Of the ideas he has
incorporated in his racers.
So men will fly and some, newt
ably, will die.
Jim Granger was tragic example.
One Of the finest airplane pilots in
the country. Granger ordered an ex-
ceptionally fast racer built. It would