by Max Hennessy
No one felt like going home. The news of the arrival of the White Bird would inevitably reach the airport first and everyone hung about the hangars long after the estimated time of arrival.
‘Headwinds,’ Sammy said in a flat voice. ‘They’ll have been delayed.’
But there was a strange gap in time. If Nungesser and Coli had passed Newfoundland early in the morning, they’d already completed the worst of their journey and there ought to have been confirmed reports of their appearance somewhere over the American continent. The New York Times was suddenly running sober stories that seemed to refute all the earlier sightings, because no one, it seemed now, had ever clearly seen the Frenchmen after they’d left Ireland and if they had, in fact, crossed the Atlantic, they would inevitably have made for the safety of the land and should have been over Maine by the early afternoon.
In the early evening they drove from Long Island over the Queensboro Bridge and down to the Battery through the deep lanes of the Forties, already lined with taxis found for the night spots. Round the J. P. Morgan building, the Stock Exchange and the government offices there were big cars, small cars, new cars and old cars, even one or two horsed carriages, and Battery Park was thick with people lining the water’s edge. Faces were growing anxious in the gloom.
Ira stared at the sky in the growing darkness, then he cocked his head and tried to listen for the drone of an engine over the noise of the traffic and the anxious voices all round him. He didn’t expect to hear it. He had waited in the past on too many aerodromes for too many missing aeroplanes to return.
‘Come on, Sammy,’ he said, turning away at last. ‘I don’t like wakes.’
Part 3: The Flight
Chapter 1
Nungesser was lost. The newsboys were shouting ‘Extra’ on the corners and the newspapers were printing headlines which one minute said he’d been picked up and the next said he hadn’t. The Navy was still scouring the silent northern waters for the great white-painted biplane, but there was already something of a funeral oration about the stories the press were carrying now.
The two airmen had said goodbye to their relatives and friends in the earliest light of the day and, as the first grey glow gave them their route, they had climbed from an open touring car into the White Bird in front of thousands of Parisians who had been making their way all night to Le Bourget to see them off. As the motors had started, they had posed for photographs in their heavy flying kit, but as they had climbed into their seats all that could be seen of them had been the tops of their heads in the open cockpit.
There had been silence and tears as the White Bird had begun its run. News had not long been in that a compatriot, St Romain, was missing with two companions while trying to fly the South Atlantic from the bulge of Africa, and Nungesser’s attempt had seemed to most of the crowd like self-immolation. His machine weighed almost five and a half tons and its speed was surprisingly low. The crowd had gasped as Nungesser had made his first attempt to lift it into the air.
The wheels had risen only a few feet before the heavy aeroplane had banged down again on to its bulging tyres, but after another 300 yards, three-quarters of a mile from their starting point, Nungesser had at last managed to get it off the ground and it had disappeared from the sight of the crowd towards the west, climbing slowly, agonisingly slowly, up to 300 feet. Five hours later, its detachable undercarriage discarded, it had been firmly sighted off southern Ireland, thundering out into the Atlantic against an increasing headwind.
The following day’s reports, which said it had been seen over Newfoundland, had sparked off celebrations in France, and as French newspapers had described its landing in New York and had even quoted Nungesser’s greetings to the New World, impromptu parades had filled the streets of Paris. Then, however, as the hours had trudged well beyond the time limit, the New York Times had found that the reports were false. The plane had in fact never been seen again after it crossed the coast of Ireland. Somewhere over the gloomy Atlantic, where the depression had deepened and the headwinds had begun to lift the tops off the grey waves, Nungesser and Coli had vanished into the mists and the rain.
* * *
‘Six dead!’ Fred Loerner’s voice as he brought the finality of the news to them was shocked and worried, and beginning to be a little sceptical. ‘Captain, is it worth it?’
Ira said nothing and Loerner went on: ‘Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of highly complicated machinery destroyed already,’ he persisted. ‘Hell, the leader writers are asking if it oughtn’t all to be called off and I’m not surprised. Some guy in France – some general – is comparing you all with gladiators.’
Ira managed a twisted smile. ‘Perhaps he’s not far wrong,’ he commented.
‘They’re saying’ – Loerner gestured despairingly – ‘they’re saying that all that’s required’s a good engine and a lot of luck and that anyone with sufficient skill and enough financial backing ought to succeed some time.’ He frowned. ‘I reckon even success’ll have its drawbacks,’ he ended. ‘It’ll only encourage a whole lot of others without any skill and without any backing. I reckon it’s time somebody called a halt!’
The arguments seemed indisputable and, remembering Cluff’s inexpert preparations, Ira could almost agree. Yet it wasn’t as simple as Loerner made it, he knew. Technology couldn’t stand still. It rested as much on the courage of fliers like Nungesser and Coli as it did on the graphs and the columns of figures worked out by the designers who sat crouched with their set-squares over their tilted desks. There had to be a challenge, there had to be a risk to life, or nothing would ever move forward, and without such men as Nungesser there would never be any point in the figures or the graphs. Unless men were prepared to risk their lives to prove them right or wrong the whole thing came to a standstill and there could be no hesitant step forward towards the next goal. Knowledge that was worth anything had always been paid for with blood, and Nungesser’s death gave all the other crews not only a reprieve, but, like Davis’s, probably also a little more knowledge.
The competition was still far from over, but they were all feeling depressed, nevertheless. Sammy’s face had worn a stunned expression as they had left the Battery and headed back towards the hired car.
* * *
The afternoon newspapers were full of the deepest depression. Nungesser’s disappearance seemed to have cast a blight over the whole aviation scene. After a whole night of searching, nothing had been picked up in the dark northern waters that gave any hint of what had happened to him.
Even relations between America and France seemed to be suffering as a result of the disaster, and the American ambassador in Paris was said to be seeking to delay the departure of any further machines because he believed that the arrival of American-built aeroplanes in France just then, with the fate of Nungesser and Coli still in doubt, might be misinterpreted. It was being claimed there by the disappointed French that the American Weather Bureau had refused to provide the reports Nungesser needed of the western shores of the Atlantic; had even given him misleading information to prevent him beating the crews now poised in New York.
Anti-American feeling had been strong for some time in Europe. The whole of the Continent was still in debt to the United States and, like all receivers of doles, no one thought very highly of the donors. The war-loan dispute had been going on far too long, and the apparent triumph of Nungesser and Coli had seemed to indicate that the arrogant and wealthy Americans didn’t have an option on success. The gloom that had followed the first transports of joy was deeper because of the false success. The rumours that now swept Paris were only a symbol of it and the American press was being roundly damned for its wild inaccuracy and the irresponsible reports of the first false sightings.
Woolff seemed as numbed by Nungesser’s disappearance as if he’d been a personal friend.
‘Chamberlin was waiting to fly out,’ he said heavily. ‘But nothing happened.’
‘Perhaps they’re down somewhere
between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia or Nova Scotia and Maine.’ Ira was not without feeling, but flying was a profession where the deaths of friends had to be faced without alarm and he was already occupied with the next step. ‘They’re supposed to be able to float.’
‘Yeah,’ Woolff nodded. ‘I guess we’ll find out in tomorrow’s papers.’
Everywhere on the airfield radios were blaring. No one seemed to have the courage to turn them off in case the programme should be interrupted by the flash message that would announce that Nungesser was safe. It was almost as though by switching off they would be cutting off the last hope of rescue. There was a desire everywhere to see the Frenchmen saved.
The public desperately wanted someone to succeed, yet each fatality, headlined and pictured to the extreme, only served to whet its appetite for more, because there was something of the twilight heroes of legend about these young men who were flying off into the stormy skies against the vast resources of the tempestuous ocean that lay athwart their route. And even as the newspapers held their mourning rites, a new contender had appeared in the west, as prepared as Nungesser and Coli had been to offer himself to the advance of aviation. The young airmail pilot testing his machine in San Diego was reported to have left for the East Coast to join the race, a young, untried, unknown man with an unknown aeroplane who was proposing to make the journey to Paris alone.
‘Hell, Ira, he can’t be any good! There’s no money behind him!’
It was a fallacious argument but it appeared to suit Woolff’s low spirits. Even the news that Bert Acosta – finally sick of Levine’s manoeuvrings – had thrown the Bellanca camp into a panic by withdrawing from the crew on the lame excuse that he weighed more than Bertaud, didn’t help to jerk him out of his misery, and he railed on about the youngster from San Diego as though he had a personal dislike for him. ‘He must be nuts, trying it alone! Who’s going to do his navigation?’
‘Who is he anyway?’ Sammy said, and his indignant question echoed the thoughts of the whole continent. No one had heard of the young pilot until a week or two before and the newspapers still continued to spell his name in a variety of ways. No one seemed to know anything about him, except that he existed, that he had superintended the building of his plane in San Diego, and that he had some means of piloting it with a periscope from a closed cabin so far back he had no forward view.
It was known that he was too young to have served in the war and that his career couldn’t match that of any of those famous names who had been and were still involved in the competition, and that a lot of his life had been spent barnstorming, parachute-jumping and performing hair-raising feats on the wings of planes for the excitement of gala crowds in the Middle West.
It didn’t seem exactly the background for a long-distance pilot and he didn’t seem a very serious contender, but even in his loneliness there was a curious purposefulness, as though he’d weighed up the risks and was prepared to take them. He had taught himself to fly, it seemed, on an old Jenny, was a pilot in the National Guard with a useful background of army discipline, care and training, and he had carried mail through hundreds of hours of night flying – a factor which couldn’t be ignored because night flying was something on which none of them was very experienced.
‘Me,’ Acosta admitted. ‘I’m strictly a fair-weather pilot and nothing else.’
Behind the mourning for Nungesser and Coli, and the concern with whether the Bellanca would sort out its legal problems and the Courtney its financial difficulties, there was a vast new interest stirring, a new upheaval of excitement that seemed to surpass even the ballyhoo and publicity stunting that had gone on already. With the disappearance of Nungesser and the emergence of the young man from San Diego, the contest really had become a little like a gladiatorial contest. As one contestant was removed from the scene by death and others still had trouble buckling on their armour, the crowds were getting ready to cheer a new champion.
A new and exciting hero had appeared – though he was still competing for space in the newspapers with the loss of Coli and the heroic Nungesser – and the whole of New York was suddenly poised waiting for his arrival.
* * *
Ira was sitting with his feet on the desk, smoking and trying to persuade himself he was relaxed and indifferent, when Alix appeared. She had not been near them since her father’s financial collapse, but now, just as she had been when Davis and Wooster were killed at Hampton, she was in need of reassurance once more.
Her arrival at the hangar had gone almost unnoticed. The press, concerned with the imminent arrival of a new and possibly more exciting competitor, had soon lost interest in the Courtney. Financial troubles usually meant an abrupt disappearance and a quick sale and no one really seemed to believe any more that the Courtney was still in the race.
Ira lowered his feet as she appeared. Though the press seemed to regard their failure as highly likely, failure in itself didn’t make news, but to Ira the very possibility meant a great deal more. They had all of them – Alix, himself, Sammy and Woolff – invested far more than they could really afford and if they went down they would lose far more than their reputations. Every penny they had was aboard the Courtney and if she failed to get off the ground they would be left only with the clothes they stood up in.
Alix appeared to be carrying the load for the lot of them, just at that moment. She looked thin and tired, as though she’d spent several sleepless nights worrying over it, but as she saw Ira’s eyes on her, she lifted her head with a hint of the old imperiousness and tried to face his gaze without hesitation.
‘I thought there might be something I could do,’ she offered in brisk no-nonsense tones that hid a great deal of uncertainty.
There was nothing that hadn’t been done a dozen times already but Ira found a list of figures for her to check. They had all been checked before by himself and Sammy and Woolff but he pretended they needed going over yet again for safety, because he knew that above all else she needed something to occupy her mind, full as it was of Nungesser’s fate.
She finished within a few minutes, and because he was unable to find anything else for her they sat talking uncomfortably, their conversation full of awkward little pauses.
She was taut-faced and tense, working round every subject imaginable except that of Nungesser and Coli, trying to discuss their own prospects while still trying to avoid the possibility of failure, even merely sitting still and staring blank-eyed at Woolff’s graphs and curves and the lists they’d made to make sure that nothing was forgotten.
Ira watched her warily, because she appeared not to want comfort, yet he knew her presence in the hangar was only because she needed to be among them.
While she waited, sitting silently, her brows down, her face pale, Cluff rang again, uneasily asking if Ira had heard anything about Nungesser that he, up in Newburgh, had missed.
‘There’s nothing,’ Ira said shortly. ‘Nothing’s been announced officially, but I don’t think there’ll be anything now.’
Cluff’s voice sounded dubious, as though he didn’t wish to believe what Ira was saying. ‘Surely someone’ll find them, Ira,’ he said.
‘Not now, Cluffy,’ Ira replied. ‘You know as well as I do that they won’t.’
As Cluff rang off, he turned to find Alix’s eyes on him. She was lighting a cigarette with nervous hands.
‘They’re saying your chances of survival are nil,’ she said abruptly. ‘They’re saying that nothing justifies the waste of money and loss of life, because in the end nothing’ll be gained from it.’
‘Who’re saying?’ Ira asked.
She moved her shoulders in a shrug. ‘People,’ she said. ‘In the restaurants. On the Elevated. On street corners.’
‘Let’s listen to the experts, shall we?’ Ira suggested, brushing the thought of failure aside. There was no room for doubt. If any of them doubted, none of them would ever leave for Europe.
She looked up at him, her eyes large and tormented. ‘Ira…�
�� she began. He turned to face her. ‘Ira…’ she said again, then she seemed to lose her courage and was unable to say whatever it was had been in her mind.
She screwed out her cigarette unsmoked and rose to her feet. ‘I’m going,’ she said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
She had removed her coat and hat and she now pulled them on again without speaking and moved to the door. Outside the office, in the hangar, she stopped again and glanced at the Dixie. She looked at Ira and managed an uncertain smile, then, turning her back on him, walked off across the hangar to where she had parked her car.
Ira stared after her in silence, wishing suddenly that Sammy were there, or Woolff. But Sammy was out on the airfield somewhere, probing the secrets of the other crews, and Woolff was arguing in one of the workshops with the Wright man, Ortese, about fuel pumps. He was still nervously concerned that Hughesdens would foist their pump on them, and was trying to reassure himself that, if they did, they could make it work.
The hired car drew away, the small figure of Alix hunched behind the wheel, and Ira turned back to his desk. He had just drawn the folder on the Dixie towards him when a newsboy put his head round the door and tossed across the late paper they always bought.
‘Have to hurry, Captain,’ he said. ‘The back runner’s coming up – fast!’
Ira opened the pages. Among the wild stories that contrived to make national heroes out of gangsters, football players and film actors, there was a startling new story reaching into the headlines from the mourning follow-ups for Nungesser and Coli.
FLYIN’ FOOL REACHES ST LOUIS. 1,550 MILES IN 14 HOURS 25 MINUTES.
‘Good God!’ Ira jerked the paper open in front of him on the desk.
He pushed his chair back and leaned over the sheets, his eyes following every detail of the story. In his own quiet way, without a crew, unhampered by the disputes that had plagued the Bellanca and were now hovering over the Courtney, and backed by a set of businessmen who provided only money and no advice to a man who knew his job better than they did, this new pilot from the west seemed to be moving more steadily towards his goal than anybody else. He had crossed the country from San Diego to St Louis in record time – farther than any pilot alone in a plane had ever flown non-stop before, and faster than anyone had ever travelled from west to eat.