Pegasus Express

MY business has a subsidiary in San Francisco, and it is necessary to go out several times a year, so I fly. Why?

In the first place, I may have a prejudiced-in-favor ear because I was once an active pilot; but it is from the depths of banking business that I now cock my eye, so it is a fishy and hardboiled eye. The ear has kept abreast of the remarkable progress in air transport, but the eye is from Missouri, and, to some extent, knows what hazards to look for. On top of this standoff are the following three reasons: —

Speed. I leave New York soon after nine o’clock on Monday morning and am in Oakland at two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. By train, I should get there on Friday morning.

Thrift. The round-trip air fare is $288, and all meals are on the airway company. By train it costs $317, including lower berth and the twenty-two meals in the dining car.

Enjoyment. To see America from the sky, unveiling her beauty, state after state, range after range, river after river, is unforgettable — a gift of pride and wonder and delight.

American enterprise has given to the United States the distinction of possessing, in this coast-to-coast route, the longest lighted airway in the world, 2700 miles, with nine hundred air lighthouses, chaining together Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Reno, and Oakland. It was not made to order from blueprints. Its evolution paid the price of all our earlier speed crusades, the Pony Express, the Overland Stage, the railroads; it cost the sweat of pioneers, the lives of many of them.

I plank down my money on a commonplace counter — a random business man and in the usual hurry — and ask for ‘Oakland, round trip.’ And what do I get in return? What does it take to transport me high over the Alleghenies, across the great farms of the Plains States, over the high plateau ending in Cheyenne, through range upon range of the desolate Rockies to Salt Lake City, past the desert, up across the last snowy ridge of the High Sierras?

Investigation shows that this is exactly what it takes: 12 transport pilots in six relays; 500 mechanics, dispatchers, inspectors, and so forth; 126 teletype station keepers; 35 observers at weather call stations; 16 airports; 77 intermediate fields; 111 lighted emergency fields; 73 weather stations; 232 twenty-four-inch searchlights; 529 beacon lights.

Suppose we make the trip and see for ourselves the why and wherefore of this formidable list.

I

The bus drives up before the terminal, to find the tri-motor already waiting on the concrete ramp. The whole outfit has been minutely inspected and passed by the ground staff.

The pilots have been standing by for an hour, all three engines started ten minutes before the bus was due. From now on, everything has to click into place unerringly.

A long canvas alleyway runs from the terminal to the door of the ship. The passengers pass into the waiting room, while the baggage is loaded into the hollow metal wings. The handlers and the two pilots wear guns, for the ship is carrying United States mail; it is already aboard.

The weather looks very pleasant here over Newark, but if we think that is of practical importance we are wrong. The first leg of this trip is 404 miles nonstop to Cleveland. Even fifty miles away, up in the mountains, it may be raining cats and dogs. A hundred miles away there may be a zero ceiling, fog down to the tree tops.

So at the very outset we encounter the most vital part of the system — the part which meets the airway requirement that exact weather information in precise terms be had for each block of the route before a ship is cleared. Guessing, rheumatic-knee forecasting, and groundhog philosophy are all barred. The information must be in writing, must come from trained observers ahead of the airplane, and must be hot off the griddle.

While we are having our tickets examined, a teletype machine is chattering in a back room. Watching it are our pilot, the field manager, and an assistant. Across the flats, up into the mountains, down the other side through the Ohio farms, is a long string of Department of Commerce weather stations, each one with a machine on this circuit, each one with a trained meteorologist watching the weather above and around the airway. One after another, the twelve stations from Newark to Cleveland are giving the exact weather conditions as observed within the past five minutes.

On the wall hangs the big synoptic map made up by the weather people every three hours, showing every weather system over the entire United States at the moment it was made up. The pilot and manager already have the Eastern end of that by heart.

The weather is put on the tape at twenty minutes past every hour on this circuit. An hour ago there was some doubt about the Cleveland weather, so our ship has been held five minutes to get the 9.20 report. It is all right. As it comes in on the tape it is copied on to the clearance form. To the pilot, who has been flying over these mountains for ten years, the figures convey a picture of each mile of the route as accurately as if he were being shown a photograph of it. In a few minutes it is finished, and the two men have before them the exact weather for the whole four hundred miles, not as it was some hours ago, or even thirty minutes ago, but as it is now.

If there is the slightest doubt, the ship is held until the situation clears up. You and I can fret and fume and point derisively at the blue sky above us, but neither the pilot nor the manager will sign the form until he is ready, which means until he is sure. They operate on the shiny old principle that the way to keep out of trouble is to avoid getting into it.

The manager signs the form. Then the pilot signs it. Note the wording: ‘I . . . consider conditions suitable for the scheduled flight. Signed . . . Pilot in Charge.’ The pilot strides through to the ship. The manager nods to the waiting-room clerks.

‘All aboard, please!’

The Company assumes that someone may be feeling nervous, so we get a positive barrage of cheer. The clerks smile, the manager smiles, the baggage boy grins; we walk along the covered gangway and pass a man at the door of the ship; he smiles. At the forward end of the cabin the co-pilot is standing, facing aft. He sm — Well!

We snuggle back into our chairs, nine of us, ignorant of the elaborate work which has preceded our departure and of the three-thousand-mile network of men standing by for our take-off.

‘Fasten your safety belts, please, until the ship is in the air.’ That is in case we hit a bad bump while running fast along the ground.

The manager eyes his wrist watch. For about a minute there is a lull. The ship vibrates gently from the idling engines.

‘Time!’

The door is slammed. And, in passing, if you ever hear of anyone jumping or falling out of a transport airplane, put no more stock in it than you would in an oyster mine in Death Valley. It would give two strong men a workout even to crack the door open six inches against that 120-miles-perhour slip stream from the propellers.

The ship moves off the concrete apron, down to the end of the runway. Before he turns into the wind for the take-off, the pilot holds the machine on the brakes and guns each engine wide open for a test. We listen to the whinnying of thirteen hundred horses. Then he turns her. Off to one side of the runway stands a man with a big flag. When all is clear he waves it. We’re on our way!

Even as daylight shows under the big tires, the teletype in the terminal building is chattering again. Every station from Newark to Cleveland is told that we have taken off, is warned to stand by and report us, field by field, as we roar overhead. Everything is prearranged, everything clicks.

We must look a brave sight as we swung up, all clean and shining white metal, over the airport boundaries, headed for the blue Pacific. But that message on the tape makes short work of us.

PX 96 SMITH CV D9.25 NK

(Position Report. Airplane No. 96. Pilot Smith. Destination Cleveland. Departed 9.25 A.M. Signed: Newark)

II

We gain height. In a few minutes the engines are throttled down to cruising speed; we level off. We seem to be suspended in space while the country rolls slowly by far below. A toy earth is framed in our slightly quivering window. The big wing stretches out utterly motionless over hill and valley shrunk to the dimensions of a Lilliput. For a moment we are as gods, complacently surveying our world from a more splendid chariot than ever Phaëthon drove.

Then the co-pilot comes along the alleyway. Methodically he takes the tickets, compares the baggage checks, and finally to each of the gods he gives a piece of chewing gum and a little cotton wool.

The gum is useful in very bumpy weather, but that is not often encountered except in thundery conditions. Air sickness is rare. Flying one steaming afternoon last summer across Ohio, under low broken clouds, I had the bumpiest flight I have ever experienced, but I noticed that out of eleven passengers only one was sick.

The cabin is heated; our overcoats are folded in the racks above. We have little hickeys beside our seats to regulate the amount of air admitted through a slot in each window.

The co-pilot retires to the cockpit, leaving the door open, so that we can see both pilots sitting there, the big instrument panel before them, the dual controls, the telephone headsets clamped over their ears. In addition to all the weather information, the ship is being called every twenty minutes on a set schedule, and a report is required. We are on what is called the 2-22-42 schedule, and at precisely those minutes past each hour the pilot gets the call in his earpieces.

‘Newark United calling Smith in 96. Go ahead, Smith!’

The pilot plucks the transmitter from his breast pocket, presses the button, and replies: —

‘Smith in 96. Smith in 96. I am over Beacon 69. Height four thousand. High scattered clouds. Unlimited. Okay. Okay.’

Newark repeats the message as it is typed for record, and signs off — with its receivers clamped tight to its head. Newark is still listening. At any second of any mile of the entire leg, all that our pilots have to do is to pick up their transmitters and speak. Vigilance is never for an instant relaxed.

If the weather changes ahead, the pilot is called and advised. He is even twice-advised, for the Department of Commerce is broadcasting the weather along the whole airway at short intervals. In summer, sudden changes are common over the Alleghenies, owing to local thunderstorms. No airplane has ever yet been struck by lightning, rumors notwithstanding; but a big storm begets wild weather, and, in spots, brings the ceiling dangerously low. The pilot is warned. If the storm is a small one, and the weather is clear on the other side, he flies around the storm or right over it. If the situation is doubtful, he sits down at the nearest airport or intermediate field and awaits better times.

We pass over Allentown, Pennsylvania, the first mountain station on the teletype circuit. The local operator clocks us, types the report on his machine, and thus Newark and every station to Cleveland are informed simultaneously of our whereabouts.

At 10.02 we are called again by Newark and report. Time passes easily. The speed indicator facing the passengers reads 120, the engines drone, and we go deeper into the mountains. When Newark calls us at 10.22 it is its last call, for we are passing into the protectorate of Bellefonte. The next call comes from there, dead on time, for all the ground clocks and the ship’s clock are synchronized.

Seen from our height, the mountains spread out like an unending sea of black-green waves, valley and ridge, in all directions; although they all look alike, we do not lose our way. The pilot knows almost every tree by heart. Even if he did n’t, he has his compass, he has the endless string of beacons to follow, and in his earpieces is a continuous singing note from the great range beacon at Bellefonte, guiding him as surely as a lighthouse guides the sailor.

Bellefonte is the halfway mark to Cleveland. If the westerly wind were any stronger, we should land here and take on more gas, but as it is we pass over with a brief salutation by radio. This is the heart of what used to be the ‘Pilot’s Graveyard’ in the old days, before they had weather reports and beacons, radio and emergency fields. In another hour the jagged mountains begin to calm down. Farming country appears. The co-pilot walks aft to the kitchenette, busies himself with the boxes and flasks, fits up little tables over our seats, and serves us luncheon — soup, sandwiches, fruit salad, and coffee.

Far ahead, the earth disappears under a long, solid line of motionless white-gray — a thick layer of clouds, exactly on our level. The blue sky begins to fill up; we have our first impression of speed as clouds flash by close overhead. The pilot drops down to three thousand to keep well below them. The call of the Cleveland beacon is interrupted while the weather men there give our pilot the exact ceiling over the airport, the visibility, the wind on the field, and various other items essential to the peace of mind of a transport pilot.

We lose height steadily. We run past the last few beacons and see the thousand-odd acres of the Linndale Airport. The dispatcher in the watchtower flashes our arrival to Newark and to Chicago. So far, in four hours, we have been reported twelve times by ground stations, eleven times by the pilots.

The pilots lean out of their windows and watch us disembark. Our last impression of them is a friendly smile. To us it is all very novel; to them it is just trip ump hundred and something. . . .

III

‘All aboard for Chicago!’

Twenty minutes later, and the announcers are shouting through the main hall of the terminal. Our same shining Ford, after inspection and a threehundred-and-fifty-gallon drink from the gasoline hoses, is being taxied back along the concrete apron. Two new pilots are aboard.

It is raining slightly, the ceiling about twenty-five hundred. Again that signifies little; again the vital question is: What is it like ahead? Eight stations on the way to Chicago have just teletyped in their weather, and the pilot’s clearance shows fair ceilings all the way. We are due to run right through a ‘Low’ (area of low pressure), but it is clearing the other side of Chicago. If there is any change, if thick weather comes in across the airway from Indianapolis, we know that we shall be warned. The passengers troop out, a little gloomily. Eyeing the leaden sky pressing dismally down, as bad to the west as anywhere else, they are apt to distrust the co-pilot’s assurance that it is improving ahead.

Linndale sinks away. We level off at two thousand. Occasionally there seems to be a slight thickening in the air as we dash through a mild rainstorm. We look straight along the jagged underside of the cloud blanket.

In the sad light we reel off mile after mile of great fields. There are no spectacular bits, only the sheer impressiveness of millions of acres of farms — unbroken masses of fertility. The towns are like raisins in a charity plum duff.

Then the airway weather men are vindicated. Over the smoke of Gary and East Chicago we see a brilliant shaft pouring slantwise through the cloud curtain. It makes a huge ellipse of hazy yellow on ten miles or so of the damp earth. As we make our lefthand circle over the Chicago Airport, the whole west is dazzfingly bright; it is good to know that we are on our way to cloudless skies and open prairies.

When the guns are cut for the landing, and our arrival is flashed to Cleveland, New York, Omaha, and Cheyenne, we have been reported forty-one times and have used up twenty-eight of our airports (including emergency fields) and ninety of our airway lighthouses. The journey, so far, has covered seven hours, as against twenty hours in the fastest limited.

IV

Chicago is the aircraft depot where ships are changed. The airplane which brought us from Newark will have men working on it nearly all night.

When a ship rolls in from a trip, it is taken in hand by a squad of mechanics, licensed by the Government. Unlicensed men are forbidden by law to work on transport ships. Printed schedules are hung on the plane and on each engine, and the checking is systematized to a fine point.

The first thing is to refuel. This is to prevent moisture from condensing on the bare walls of the big wing tanks, and from forming a slug of water in the feed lines. Then the men work methodically down each list — radio men, instrument men, electricians, expert mechanics. Each division has to be signed for. Every two hundred hours the engines are taken out altogether and overhauled, in addition to the top checks they receive while in use. At the same time, the metal propellers are acid-etched for flaws.

If any important adjustments are made, the ship must be flown by a test pilot before any passengers are carried. When all is done, the machine is washed, dried, the three engines run up at full throttle, all the ship’s supplies counted over, and then and only then is the magic ‘O.K.’ card hung on its centre propeller.

Above the inspection shops is a floor comprising one of the nerve buds of the great trunk system which runs from Newark to Oakland. Here are the radio and the teletype and telephone circuits. Operators are on duty twentyfour hours a day. A pilot may call down at any time, and that pilot knows he will be answered instantly. . . .

Just now the operator is watching the airway clock. It is a big one, and its rim is crowded with combinations of letters. He picks up the transmitter. His eyes do not leave the minute hand. It reaches ten past the hour, opposite the letters ‘E.B.’ Time for an eastbound ship, between here and Iowa City, to report on the three-times-anhour schedule. The operator presses the transmitter button, makes the routine call.

‘Chicago calling Brandt in 641. Go ahead, Jack!’

A second’s pause, and the pilot’s voice rasps into the headpieces and the loud-speaker box. The operator repeats the message in a curious singsong tone.

‘All right, Jack, you’re approaching Sterling at three thousand weather fine clouds in east okay Jack. I am calling you again at thirty past at thirty past okay.’

A few minutes later the operator jerks his thumb at the teletype tape flickering out of the black box. We read it. It is Sterling reporting Brandt in 641 passing overhead. It all fits!

It is nearly time for our departure. The tape is cleared for our weather to come through. The pilot appears, and the manager. They watch the tape, while a clerk sits before it, ready to copy the weather on to the clearance sheet.

Time!

The operators are all sitting at their machines. Omaha, Adair, Des Moines, Grinnell, Iowa City, Grandmound, Sterling, Waterman, tap out their pieces. To-night it is a set-up! Station after station reports: ‘Ceiling unlimited.’

The Boeing 80a taxies majestically down the apron — an eye-filling sight. It is eighty feet wide and weighs about nine tons loaded. It mounts 1575 horsepower in engines, for the machines on the western division have to fly at about twelve thousand feet before they reach Oakland. And, like ocean liners, they have to hold a lot.

It carries thirty meals, twenty-four blankets, twelve pillows, United States mail, baggage, one and a half million candlepower in parachute flares, twelve passengers, two pilots, and — a stewardess.

The newest career in the world, I suppose, is this business of being a sky-girl. The stewardesses spend their lives flying at two miles a minute in the big transports. Yet, oddly, some of the girls in this division have not seen the country over which they fly in months; it is all night flying. They are exceptional and attractive people, as you might expect — the cream of a huge waiting list. All are graduate nurses from big hospitals, bright and devoted to their work; and last, but not least, very smart and restful to the eye.

They are in charge of the passengers throughout the flight, and their job is to see that the passengers are comfortable. Often the stewardesses have their work cut out for them, for a good many mothers with babies travel in the big ships. The idea in employing graduate nurses was less to secure medical skill than to obtain disciplined and competent women, but occasions have arisen when their training has proved of value. A stewardess, for instance, was recently called upon to cope with a case of acute appendicitis; and the imperativeness of first-class radio equipment, so that the landing field ahead could be advised immediately, was once more demonstrated.

Five minutes before time, the mail and baggage are loaded aboard. An employee brings boxes of food, dinner and breakfast for all of us. The stewardess checks it over, besides the blankets and pillows and the ship’s papers, which are in her charge.

We get aboard. The ship seems very spacious; the roof is about seven feet high. There is a kitchenette, a washroom with hot and cold water, an individual light beside each chair. The stewardess offers us magazines. We settle back.

The grimness of Chicago fades; the air becomes very calm. The setting sun makes the ground haze glow so that the land ahead is invisible. We appear to fly into a great canopy of gold.

The flames from the engine exhausts show up. Another hour and night closes around us. Now begins the most interesting phase of all.

V

Along the aisle, around the baggage and mail compartments, up two steps, is the pilot’s compartment, dark except for the dim glow of the mass of instrument dials. The pilots have a clear view through their semicircle of glass windows.

The lights from the farms and the little towns sparkle like diamonds. Automobiles show up as twin pin points dotted along invisible roads. Again there is the illusion that we are motionless. Through the invisible disk of the centre propeller the lights approach slowly; others take their place. We seem cut off from the world, and for a moment there is an impression of utter solitude.

Then, dead ahead, there is a brilliant flash. It is repeated. Every ten seconds the two-million-candlepower airway beacon beckons us along the course. Far beyond, we can see another and another; sometimes as many as five are in sight at one time, part of an unbroken chain leading us westward, across the lonely prairies and over the towering Rockies.

Following each white flash there is a rapid dot-dash signal in red giving the number of the beacon, so that the pilots may know their exact position. At the base of each of these latticed steel lighthouses is a brightly illuminated slab with its number painted on and an arrow pointing along the airway.

At every third beacon we find a green light added to the white and red, — an emergency landing field, — and as we draw up to the beacon we see the rectangle of boundary lights marking its limits. By switching on the powerful head lamps sunk into the leading edges of the wings, the pilots can illuminate the field and make a landing. At all these fields we should find caretakers and telephone; at most of them teletype, radio, and supplies of gas, and so forth, besides.

On this airway the emergency fields average a distance of between twenty and thirty miles apart, right across the continent. A ship is thus always within seven minutes of a regular field except at two places, where the limit is fifteen. At other places the fields are three minutes away.

It has never happened, but it is possible that in the course of the myriad miles of night flying traveled by the line a passenger ship might have to make a forced landing in open country between fields. To provide for this the ship carries parachute flares. When one of these is dropped, it illuminates about one square mile of territory below it.

To-night the weather so far is clear. But no matter how thick it might happen to be (except in cases of dense fog) the single-seater mail planes would be on the job, flying from coast to coast, and would have to be taken care of. Sometimes the mail pilot cannot distinguish the beam until he is close to it, and as the beacon flicks by under his wings there is not time for identification. To provide for this each marker beacon sends out a continuous stream of automatically produced radio signals, giving its number. The signal is sent out sotto voce, as it were, so as not to interfere with other messages.

Thus each marker beacon has three functions: (a) to send out its twomillion-candlepower flash every ten seconds; (b) to flash its code number in red six times a minute; and (c) to send its number continuously on an automatic radio signal. Check, double check, and even triple check!

Dinner comes between Iowa City and Des Moines. The green-uniformed stewardess sets little tables and serves a three-course dinner, washed down with plenty of coffee.

How strange it seems, sitting here in an armchair, traveling at a hundred and twenty miles an hour through pitch darkness, four thousand feet above the farms — and munching dinner! What an insane vision it would have seemed to the ancestors of these farmers! Momentarily, it seems insane to us. . . .

Twenty hours from Chicago to the Pacific. First, covered wagons — fifteen miles a day; danger from Indians and starvation; births, deaths, marriages, under the canvas tops. Fifteen hard-fought miles! That was good going in a day — all of seven minutes, flying lime! The hard-driven stages in Lincoln’s time did it in twenty-two days. The Pony Express established a record of eleven days. In ’70, the railroad diminished it to five days and a bit. We, too, must give place. Soon the distance will be spanned in something like five hours.

The everlasting chorus in our world of noise and hustle: Save time! Save time! What are we going to do with all this time?

We are past Des Moines now. The weather has changed since we started and we are running out of some of our good stuff. The sky has clouded; we are flying only a few feet under a threethousand-foot ceiling. Only one lighthouse can be seen ahead. Forward in the darkened cockpit the pilots are using still another part of the ground organization — the radio range.

Every foot of the airway is covered by a range beacon. The next ahead of us is Omaha. It sends out a radio beam — that is to say, a narrow band composed of two interlocking signals, about seven miles wide, directed straight along the airway, like the beam of a lantern. The centre of the beam is in the form of a constant succession of very long dashes: —

On either side of this main beam are, in effect, other ones, each one carrying a constant succession of dots. Viewed as a whole, then, the range beacon is sending out:

So long as our pilot keeps on his course, in the very middle of the beam, he hears nothing in his earpieces but the steady stream of long dashes, calling him to the beacon. Let us suppose, however, that a strong northerly wind comes up, blowing across the course; he will be pointing on the proper compass reading, but the wind will be pushing him sideways off the airway. Now, as soon as he drifts over too far to the left, he runs into the attendant beamlet of dots. The long dashes break up into this: —

That forms the letter a in Morse. The signal tells him that he is running off the course to the south, and all he has to do is rudder back in until the dot fades out and he gets the uninterrupted dashes once again. If he overdoes it and swings over to the right, once again the dashes break up, and he hears: —

This forms the letter n, and he knows that he is too far north, so back he comes again.

Through this simple yet wonderful invention, the pilot can find his way blindfold. Frequently he does, when flying the mail in heavy weather. He may miss seeing half a dozen beacons in a row, but as he passes over each one he gets its sotto voce signal as a subtheme to the steady beat of the big range beacon he is making for.

So we make our extraordinary way. The main lighthouse ahead sends its invisible rays to guide us; the marker beacons give us their signals, light for us to see, radio for us to hear. The caretakers pass us along the teletype circuit just as a train is passed to successive blocks; the radio telephone keeps tabs on us from minute to minute. We are not going to get lost.

VI

The man in the watchtower at Omaha is waiting for us. As soon as he hears our engines, the great flood lights snap on, and the field lies below us bathed in brilliant silver. A big illuminated arrow shows the direction of the wind; the runway is outlined in colored lights, and so are all the buildings.

We sink into all this light, rumble along the concrete, pull up inside the hangar. Eight of the passengers stay in their seats, with only a yawn to show that they are alive. Two of us get out and stand around, blinking, feeling the cold after the heated cabin.

The stewardess remains, but we change pilots here. To-night we happen to strike the granddaddy of them all, Ham Lee, who flies the OmahaCheyenne stretch. He has flown more miles than any other pilot in the world — first in the Army, then the Air Mail service, and now with United; he has been piloting continuously for sixteen years and has covered over a million miles.

The transport pilots on a great airway are not quite what the uninitiated might expect. They are not young sprigs who put ads in the papers: ‘Any job, anywhere, any risk.’ Most of them are married men with children. It is not to be inferred that they are retiring elderly gentlemen with pontifical miens. These men are pretty tough hombres in their profession, superb pilots, saturated with experience bought in a bitter school, for bitter it was in the old days; but—they know too much to take chances.

Here is the record of the first ten, all of whom are still flying a full schedule.

Passengers Mail hurt lost None None None None None None None None None None None None None None None None None None None None

The average for all the pilots on the airway is four thousand hours. Back in the early war days, any pilot with one thousand hours was internation-

ally known for it. Now, he would have a poor chance of rating a co-pilot’s job on any big line.

Each man has to hold the highestclass Department of Commerce license, of course, and a Federal license as radio operator. All are put through a searching examination every month by the Company’s physicians. Their job is getting more complicated every day, as technical strides are made, and they have to know stuff which would have staggered a mere war flier. There are one hundred and fifty transport pilots on this airway, and some of them have made aviation history.

Unostentatious and mild-mannered, they nevertheless include some of the hardest white men there are, outside the Marines. They are the front-rank pioneers of our day, out on the frontiers of what has been a very dangerous game — the type of men the pioneers who opened up the West would have understood perfectly. They have filled up their record with the achievements of courage and sober judgment which mark the real trail breaker, and they seem to me a group of men to whom America may well point with pride.

VII

Off again. The tape says that it is raining around Lincoln, clear at North Platte. Our chairs are adjustable; the backs let down so that we can recline. The stewardess comes along with pillows and blankets, tips the seats back, props our heads, tucks us in with the blankets. The farm lights become very few and far between, the towns infrequent. No longer Middle West, but real West. The rain stops about an hour out of Omaha, the clouds scatter, and once more we have ‘ Unlimited ’ as the stars appear.

The cabin is weird. Ahead of me are nine shapeless bundles, stretched out immovable on both sides of the aisle. The white blurs of the pillows show where the heads must be. The whole cabin is filled with a vague, trembling blue light from the long blue flames of the outboard exhausts. Headlong speed, but no sign of life among the strange shadows, not a vestige of a ripple in the still night air. I peer up and down the inanimate line, look sharply over my shoulder and see the watchful stewardess. Her face is whitish-blue, her eyes give an instant’s reflection of the blue flame as she gets up to discover why one of her passengers is not asleep.

Soon after midnight we swing down for a landing at North Platte, where the wide, shallow river curves around this prairie airport. We pause long enough to refuel, get the weather ahead hot off the tape, then off again.

The landing at Cheyenne is a fast business. The field is six thousand feet high. The higher the field, the thinner the air; and the thinner the air, the less it supports the wings at low speeds.

Here we change pilots and ship. The stewardess also leaves us, but another one is waiting, looking much brighter than we feel; she leads us into the brilliantly lit restaurant for refreshments. Our next two pilots are in there, finishing their coffee. It is 2 A.M. Mountain Time, and we have half an hour’s wait.

Cheyenne is the nerve centre of the airway. Messages by radio and teletype stream in and out in the course of controlling the traffic. Overlooking the loading apron is the superintendent’s office. Maps show every mile of the airway, and a huge board with movable parts gives the present whereabouts of every airplane, pilot, and co-pilot on the line. Clerks come in and shift the numbers as the planes are reported, like stock changes in a broker’s office.

Just now there are five ships in the air between Chicago and San Francisco. The night superintendent has his eye on them. He has a headpiece and transmitter beside his desk, and for my edification he talks to one pilot over Reno, another approaching Salt Lake City, another leaving Iowa City, another about to land at Omaha. The static rasps; voices in turn mention heavy rain, clear sky, High Sierras, Rockies, the flat farm lands of Iowa; they report in Pacific, Mountain, and Central Time, out of the black night into the brightly lit office with the light oak desks.

We look down from the observation window at the upper wing of the ship waiting to take off to Salt Lake City with us. Newly washed, it shines under the loading electrics. The pilots are aboard, running the engines up; the stewardess is busy checking blankets and pillows and thermos flasks. A Government mail truck lurks in the background.

The mountain air is cold as I walk out, the stars are like lamps. The door slams, the dispatcher looks at his watch, the machine waits for a minute or so in the spotlight, the night superintendent gazing down at it from his big window. Then, our three engines making the windowpanes of the sleeping Cheyenne houses vibrate, we are signaled ahead to all the mountain stations. As we climb over the first range and pick up the Laramie beacon, I ask the stewardess to wake me well east of Salt Lake City. I stretch out for sleep.

VIII

She wakes me in good time. We are passing over Knight, one of the emergency fields in the heart of the mountains. Wild scenery. It is almost black in the valleys, rose and gray on the snow of the summits. The stewardess serves coffee. The faithful lighthouses still flash away beneath us, but Salt Lake City has a welcome sound.

The mountain valleys along which we have been flying close in. The Wanship field spots us and warns Salt Lake. We dash past the historic walls of Immigration Pass; the guns are cut immediately; we glide over the top step of the Rockies and stare at Salt Lake City seven thousand feet straight below the tires.

Wash-up, breakfast, morning papers, a smoke and look around, a fresh weather report, two new pilots, a new stewardess, and we are off into the brown desert and mountain country. The ranges, Humboldt, Ruby, Diamond, Cortez, Stillwater, appear like vast brown waves rolling majestically toward us. Some of the beacons are in such remote parts of the desert that it is not practicable to have a caretaker. The generating engines are turned on and off automatically by astronomical clocks which allow for the different seasons.

Our scenery sensibilities are getting a bit blunted. Most of the terrain is easy flying country, broad valleys separated by the ranges. The system is still working with unabated zeal. We pause at Reno, take on two more passengers, and climb away from that pleasant little sink of iniquity with its rows of neon-sign illuminated gambling houses, speak-easies, and the like. Our nose points high with a vengeance, for this is the most rapid climb of the whole trip. Ahead are the pine-covered and snow-clad slopes of the High Sierras; the powerful ship runs with the engines thundering wide open as we labor up the great incline.

We top out near Donner Gap, pass the Hump, with its mountains high on either side, and the whole foreground falls away in one sheer eleven-thousand-foot descent to the green plains of California — from the snow to the palm trees and oranges, from winter cold to the warmth of summer. How many a weary heart labored over these wind-swept, icy Sierras, to beat exultantly at the first glimpse of that Promised Land, unveiling its warm green wealth from horizon to horizon!

For us, too, it is a thrill, as the engines are cut to little more than idling speed and we sweep down at full glide over the Mother Lode of ’49, on to the rich cities built with the gold of these deserted mountain sides. The long flight is drawing to a close. . . .

Little towns, one after another, concrete roads, green fields, civilization. Oakland calls. We make our 181st and last report. We sink down over the roofs. The white streets of the first suburbs flick by beneath the undercarriage wheels. As the tires touch the concrete runway, the traffic man, unimpressed, turns from his window and taps out our valediction. It scurries back, relayed from one block to another, right across the Continent to Newark.

‘Number One, Coast-to-Coast Limited, now landing. On time!’