FLIGHT TO TERROR

Before WWII, while I was a student at Cal Tech, the government was attempting to increase the number of available pilots. They had a program which paid for college students to take flight training as part of their studies. I took advantage of this program. After I had soloed, I would be sent out to practice spins and figure eights. We would do the figure eights around a chicken farm in San Fernando Valley.  It probably scarred the chickens to stop laying!

On one occasion I had been practicing my spins over what later became the Disney studios.  To spin I would pull the stick back and throttle down the engine until the plane stalled and would kick the rudder so it would fall off to one side and begin to spin.  On one occasion as I got ready for another spin I realized that I was past due to go do the figure eights.  Since I was still at a high altitude I would spin down to the lower altitude. Starting my spin, to my horror, I realized that my propeller had stopped and the engine had stalled. We were trained to always be aware of where we could have an emergency landing if one became necessary.  I looked down and it looked like the best place for an emergency landing would be in the dry riverbed wash.  At that altitude it looked like a good choice.

I didn’t want to use the parachute and loose the plane. I decided that would be a good time to test the possibility of starting the engine by wind-milling.  I went into a vertical dive, hoping to start my engine. As I lost altitude, the prop turned over, but did not continue running.  That was tantalizing and I decided to continue the effort to the last possible moment. As my altitude dropped, I realized that the point of no return was approaching when it would be too late to make a dead stick landing. Besides, what had looked like a nice landing spot from high altitude turned out to have big boulders which would have made for a disastrous landing.

At the last possible moment the engine started and I pulled out of the dive, dangerously close to the ground. I was too shaken up to try the figure eight and so I headed for Grand Central airport and made an extremely sloppy landing. I rushed in to the instructor and breathlessly said, “my engine stopped.” He looked up over his desk and said, “think nothing of it.”

We had our choice after 35 hours of instruction and soloing to get our private pilot’s license of skip that and continue flying up to 50 hours. Since I knew I could afford to keep a license open, I chose the latter and enjoyed using up the hours sight-seeing and circling my girl friends’ houses.