by Ed Caesar
Wilson had no doubt. He could have bought another model: the Avro Avian, the Blackburn Bluebird, the Parnall Elf. But only one machine represented the kind of adventure he had in mind. He needed a de Havilland Moth. In particular, he wanted a Gipsy Moth—Johnson’s plane. He scoured the advertisements in the newspapers for the perfect machine, secondhand, if possible, to save money.
Wilson still had no idea how to fly.
* * *
Wilson spent Christmas Day at 101 Biddulph Mansions with the Evanses. Len carved the turkey. Wilson’s New Year’s resolution for 1933 was singular: scale the world’s highest mountain. Before he set off, though, he needed to train his body and his mind. As he searched the classified advertisements for an airplane, he made strenuous efforts to gain fitness for Everest. Wilson was quite earnest about his regime. He spent a few cold weeks alone, climbing some of Britain’s highest slopes—first, in the Lake District, walking on his own in the hills, and then in Snowdonia, in Wales’s mountainous north. Wilson must have known from his reading that Everest was a kingdom of ice, snow, crevasse, and serac. Climbing on the mountain would be nothing like a hike up Mount Snowdon, or a scrabble up the Old Man of Coniston. But he made no effort to learn the basic alpine techniques he would need: ice cutting, climbing in crampons, the use of the ax.
Wilson’s training was, at least, physically demanding—more than once, he walked between London and Bradford, a journey of nearly two hundred miles, in hobnail boots. In 1934, a doctor who had examined Wilson during his training wrote a letter to a Yorkshire newspaper saying Wilson was one of the fittest men the doctor had ever “run the tape over.” But Wilson was preparing himself purely to endure, as if toughness were the only quality required in the Himalayas.
If Wilson’s training was misguided, he was at least an intelligent shopper. Having read widely about previous Everest missions, he bought himself the best and most modern type of lightweight tent, made of airplane-wing canvas, which the Ruttledge expedition took for their high-altitude camps. Wilson bought woolen undergarments to keep himself warm, windproof climbing suits, and a down-lined sleeping bag. He bought a fourteen-pound oxygen canister, although he was of two minds about whether he would need it on the mountain. He bought a stills camera with a fifteen-second delay, to capture his ascent to greatness. He bought an altimeter to measure his height above sea level. He bought a Tommy cooker, a simple metallic device that burned solid fuel to heat a mess tin, on which, after his time in France and Belgium, he had plenty of experience.
Much of Wilson’s gear was bought, like an upmarket picnic hamper, at the department store Fortnum & Mason, on Piccadilly in London. Fortnum & Mason had provided the Everest expeditions of the 1920s with everything from caviar to woolly hats. Enid accompanied Wilson on some of the trips to the store. In their letters, they often refer to Fortnum & Mason with fondness. Evidently, these excursions held a thrill for them. They were out of sight of Len; two coconspirators on a covert mission. The equipment, meanwhile, piled up in Wilson’s London flat.
By February, Wilson had found his plane: a DH60.G Moth, previously owned by the Scarborough Flying Circus. It had been slightly damaged in an accident in 1932, and the price was knocked down. Wilson thought she was perfect. He arranged for her to be shipped to the Stag Lane airfield, in Edgware in suburban north London, which was adjoined by de Havilland’s hangars and the headquarters of the London Aeroplane Club. Wilson then had his Moth repainted and rechristened Ever-Wrest.
Wilson joined both the Royal Aero Club and the London Aeroplane Club and immediately began to take flying lessons. Nigel Tangye, Stag Lane’s senior flying instructor, became Wilson’s teacher. Tangye was horrified at his pupil’s stated objectives. Not only did Wilson want to fly to Everest, alone, and land on its lower slopes—a suicidal idea, Tangye thought—but Wilson wanted to leave that year. Indeed, Wilson’s proposed departure date was his birthday, April 21. Tangye had a little more than two months to turn a beginner into a flier able to cross continents. It was madness, in the instructor’s eyes. As the pair took more and more lessons together, Tangye attempted to dissuade Wilson from his scheme. Wilson would have none of it.
Wilson was not a natural aviator. The Moth’s rudder required delicacy on the pedals, and its control column rewarded a fine touch. The Gipsy Moth felt both substantial and featherweight. Her engine roared, but a big gust wobbled her. Wilson needed to make constant tiny adjustments to the rudder and the joystick to keep her level and on course. The mixture of three movements was tricky. He had to move the joystick side to side to control the ailerons, adjustable flaps at the edge of the wings, which modulated the angle of bank in a turn. He moved the stick backward and forward to adjust the elevators on the tail, which pointed the nose up or down. He controlled the rudder with his feet. Meanwhile, he’d have to make his way while navigating by paper maps, and by using the simplest instrument panel: a revolutions counter, an altimeter, a compass, a cross-level, an airspeed indicator, and an oil gauge.
Tangye found himself cursing his pupil as a lumbering nudge of a foot or a too-violent pull on the stick caused the Moth to lurch, slip, yaw, or dive this way and that. Meanwhile, Wilson’s left arm, still bearing the memory of 1918, was stiff and laggardly. Jean Batten, a taciturn but glamorous New Zealander and one of the pioneer fliers of the era, was a trained ballet dancer with sparrowlike alertness in the cockpit. Wilson, by contrast, was an altogether duller operator.
Still, he endured. He refused to be overcome by fear. These were his great qualities. He booked lesson after lesson with Mr. Tangye, for thirty shillings each—about £60 (or $77) in today’s prices. To grant an A license, an instructor had to be sure that his or her pupil was safe to fly alone. The period of assessment finished with three separate solo hours. It took Wilson a total of nineteen hours in the Moth, longer than average, to achieve this grade. But, by the end of February, he was flying solo.
By March he was living and breathing aviation. He rented a room near the airfield, at Holmstall Avenue, to cut his journey time in the mornings. In the evenings, he stayed out of the clubhouse bar and its temptations. (“I’m an apple and nuts man,” he would say, when he was invited for a drink, even if the truth was slightly more complicated.) Instead of drinking in the bar, he trained in the dark winter evenings, walking as much as fifteen miles around the perimeter of the airfield in his hobnail boots. The ordinary members of the club, who included some experienced and talented fliers, thought Wilson was crazier than a box of frogs.
Tangye, on the other hand, started to admire his unusual pupil, even if he thought Wilson would probably die on his flight to India. While waging a relentless campaign to dissuade Wilson from his scheme, Tangye also encouraged him to make some modifications to his Moth. Tangye suggested using extra fuel tanks, which could be stored in the front cockpit to give the Moth greater range: perhaps 700 or 750 miles, rather than the 350 miles or so it could now travel without refueling. Wilson had them fitted. Tangye also suggested that if Wilson was going to land on snow, he’d need some bigger wheels. Wilson took note. Given Wilson’s clunky landings, it seemed prudent to reinforce the Moth’s undercarriage. Again, Wilson took Tangye’s advice, and the de Havilland shop made the necessary adjustments.
* * *
Wilson had a decision to make about the newspapers. Was it a better idea to talk up his scheme with a few friendly journalists and publicize his plan, or to avoid unwelcome attention? He debated this matter with the Evanses back at 101. Bolstering the first position was the fact that previous Everest parties had used the newspapers to finance their expeditions—indeed, more than half of the total cost of the 1933 Ruttledge expedition was funded through a publishing deal with Hodder & Stoughton and the provision of newspaper articles to the Daily Telegraph exclusively. Everest sold newspapers, sold books, sold movies. If Wilson could drum up interest in his own stunt, there might be cash in it for him. It was a welcome thought. He had not had a successful business prospect in years, and his New Zea
land money would not last forever.
On the other hand, Wilson was not a part of an official expedition. He had requested that the Automobile Association collect the necessary permission for him to fly over Persia, but he had no means to gain permission to fly over Nepal, which barred his way to the mountain. Given his lack of credentials, it might have been better for Wilson to simply spin the propellers at Stag Lane, telling nobody, and fly off on his adventure unnoticed. Then, if he reached the summit of Everest and survived, his story could sustain him financially. He would be made for life.
The decision was easy. It may have dawned on Wilson that his wild plan would not stay secret anyway, and if he encountered problems with the authorities, it was better to have the newspapers on his side than against him. In any event, it was simply not in Wilson’s nature to keep his mouth shut. He had already told anyone who would listen what his precise plan was. His volubility was both his charm and his weakness. One evening at 101 in March, Wilson and Len Evans decided that they would court the newspapers and the agencies, with Len working part-time as Wilson’s publicity man, and taking a 50 percent cut of any money accrued—which turned out to be 50 percent of nothing. The newspapers were happy to cover Wilson’s plans. Aviators and eccentrics made “good copy,” in the Fleet Street jargon. But no paper wanted any formal or exclusive deal with him.
In late March, as the world began to notice him, Wilson embraced the role of a proto-celebrity. Even though he was little better than a beginner as an aviator, he talked about himself in the same breath as Jean Batten, who was about to attempt a flight from England to Australia in a Gipsy Moth. Batten was then living in a flat near Stag Lane, like Wilson, and eking out her meager funds by staying in every evening, eating scrambled eggs, and reading aircraft manuals. She wanted to beat both Amy Johnson’s women’s record of nineteen and a half days from England to Australia, set in 1930, and “Hustling” Bert Hinkler’s all-comers’ fifteen-and-a-half-day record, set in 1928.
Batten and Wilson became friendly in these few spring weeks. There may even have been a romantic spark. (Enid was certainly wary of Jean.) Wilson reassured Enid that he had no feelings for the New Zealand aviator. If there was an attraction, however, it seems to have been more on his side than on Batten’s. In an unpublished memoir written by Batten, she does not mention Wilson or his plans in her account of this period. Wilson’s letters and conversations, meanwhile, are littered with references to Batten. When Wilson visited some younger cousins in Bradford, he promised not only to take them up in his Moth on his next trip, but to bring Jean Batten for tea. The cousins were dazzled at the prospect, but neither promise materialized.
Wilson’s immediate family was less dazzled by his plans. Both Fred and Victor tried to dissuade Maurice from flying to India. Victor continued to wear the conflict in his body and mind, and he might have understood his younger brother’s need for adventure, even if he worried for his safety. But the family had already lost one treasured boy much too young. They did not want to lose another. Fred, a sensible, straightforward homebody, thought his younger brother was an irresponsible lunatic. Wilson’s mother, Sarah, reacted both with profound alarm and a pinch of pride. When the newspapers called, she would say that she believed her son to be “a very brave man.”
Back in London, Wilson decided to test his bravery. He arranged for a friend from Stag Lane to take him up in a plane. When the aircraft had reached sufficient height, Wilson jumped out and, after some dense seconds of free fall, deployed a parachute. Like his landings in the Moth, Wilson’s arrival on solid ground was ungainly. He strained his knees and hurt his feet so badly that they were giving him trouble months later, in Tibet. Still, he had proven the crucial point to himself: the years had not dulled his courage.
Shortly after his parachute jump, Wilson emerged from the underground tube station onto Piccadilly, where he saw two newspaper correspondents he recognized. The reporters asked him why he was limping. Wilson told them he had taken a parachute jump, simply to test his nerve, and had passed the test. The journalists recognized the gold that had fallen into their laps. They wrote up Wilson’s stunt for their newspapers. This happy accident had an unintended consequence for Wilson. When a report featuring Wilson’s parachute jump, and his subsequent plans to fly to Everest, made national news, it caught the attention of an official in the India Office, who expressed alarm that Wilson might be about to single-handedly wreck Anglo-Nepali relations with an unsanctioned flight over Nepal to Everest. The official wrote to the Air Ministry in London. The letter set in motion a plan to stop Wilson in his tracks.
* * *
On April 3, 1933, two Westland airplanes of the Houston–Mount Everest Expedition flew from Purnea in northern India, over Nepal, and above the summit of the highest mountain in the world. The pilots and observer-photographers in their open cockpits wore oxygen masks and electrically heated suits. The expedition took stunning photographs of Everest and the surrounding mountains. The following day, the Times, which had sent its aeronautical correspondent on the expedition at great expense in exchange for exclusive rights to the story, reported the mission’s success with glee. The headlines read:
CONQUEST OF EVEREST BY AIR
—
Lord Clydesdale’s Report
—
Two Airplanes 100 Feet over Summit
—
Close-Range Photographs
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Pilots’ Tribute to Engines and Aircraft
Wilson read the story and fantasized about his own success. He was nearly ready to take off on his own mission of conquest. His plan was to leave on his birthday, Friday, April 21, which was his favored date, both because of its happy personal association, but also because, in his superstitious way, he believed in the propitious qualities of numbers that added up to three. If the weather was bad, he would settle for leaving shortly afterward, on Monday, April 24.
The week before his proposed departure, he set off for Bradford in his Moth. He landed on the rugby ground at Bridlington, coming to a stop between the posts on the try line. On arrival, he gave many interviews to the waiting journalists—who had been primed to attend by Len Evans. Wilson then spent an hour or so talking with his mother.
During this trip, Wilson began to feel unwell with a fever. The only thing to do was to postpone his departure to the later date—April 24—and to hope for a swift recovery. The newspaper reports ran as planned in the daily and weekend editions. On Sunday, April 23, Reynolds News ran with a double-page feature on Wilson, headlined, “Most Amazing Air Adventure Ever Attempted.”
Meanwhile, the Sunday Chronicle ran a particularly long article about Wilson’s proposed flight and climb. The Chronicle said that Wilson had been a farmer in New Zealand, which might have held a grain of truth: it’s possible Wilson worked on a farm for a short period before meeting Mary Garden. The newspaper also reported that Wilson had conceived his notion to conquer Everest by air three years previously, when he lived in Wellington, which appeared to be entirely untrue. The Chronicle’s quotes, however, accurately show the confidence that Wilson exuded in these pre-expedition days.
“I have equipped and clothed myself to withstand arctic weather,” Wilson told the journalist. “Under my flying kit I am wearing half a dozen thick woolen jerseys. My boots have been specially made with insertions of cork, which should keep my feet from frost.” He also conceded, “I am taking a big chance.”
On that same Sunday, Wilson, now feeling better, made one last trip to Bradford. Nearing his destination, however, the engine of the Moth cut out above a little Yorkshire town called Cleckheaton. The engine would not restart. Wilson dipped the nose, then looked for somewhere to make an emergency landing. He saw a field that might serve his purpose. Inexpert as he was, he misjudged the approach, attempted to land in a crosswind, hit a hedge, flipped the plane, and finished suspended upside down in his safety harness. Remarkably, he was unhurt.
A little boy on a bicycle came to his aid. “Can I
help you, mister?” said the boy.
Wilson replied in the affirmative.
* * *
The Moth was badly damaged. Wilson made arrangements for her to be transported back to Stag Lane, where she arrived the following morning. The repairs would take at least three weeks. The delay was profoundly frustrating to Wilson. The window for climbing Everest before the monsoon hit, and snows prevented climbing on the mountain, was closing fast. Indeed, the three-week delay had probably already destroyed his chances of arriving at the mountain in time to attempt an ascent in 1933. For now, he put such negative thoughts to the back of his mind.
News of the crash spread fast. The following morning’s newspapers carried several reports. (The Morning Post, for instance, carried a short item titled “Everest Flight Postponed… Plane’s Forced Landing on Test Trip.”) Officials in the Air Ministry and the India Office again started to squirm. Wilson was not only serious about his mission, he appeared to be dangerous in an airplane.