The Airplane - Jay Spenser [84]
Laboratory business took Jimmy Doolittle to Buffalo one late winter day. Returning at night in the Vought O2U-1 on March 15, 1929, he headed south into deteriorating weather. To avoid unseen mountains, he planned to fly via Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady, Albany, and down the Hudson River Valley.
On the west side of the Hudson, Doolittle slowed up to pace the lit windows of a southbound train. It entered a ravine, forcing him to turn away. He considered landing at West Point’s parade ground, but conditions were just good enough to press southward. The lights of New York City welcomed him, but turning east around Battery Park toward Mitchel Field, he found the East River and all points south firmly socked in.
Governor’s Island was shrouded in fog, and so was the Yonkers Golf Course back up the Hudson. Doolittle started to land at Battery Park only to have a running figure wave him off. He couldn’t land there for fear of hurting the man.
The George Washington Bridge, built between 1927 and 1931, was half completed at that time. Doolittle flew repeatedly past its great vertical pilings not knowing they were there. By now it looked to him as if he would have to ditch in the river. He undid his parachute harness to be ready to swim for it, but on closer inspection the water looked decidedly uninviting.
He climbed again and headed westward through thickening fog, hoping to land at Newark Airport, but it too was socked in. With the gas gauge hovering on empty, he climbed to a thousand feet and broke out into a still, starry night. The only thing to do was to fly westward to a less populated area and hit the silk.
About this time he realized his parachute harness was undone. As he refastened it, a rotating beacon shining through a hole in the mists below caught his eye. It might denote an airport, and the dark area next to it might be the flying field. Turning on his landing light, he dove through the hole to investigate.
A treetop tore through the left wing. The Corsair still flew but was just about out of gas. Picking his best option in the scything landing light, Doolittle set down, purposely wrapping his left wings around a tree to take the impact.
The broken airplane’s fuselage came to rest on its side, and Doolittle emerged without a scratch. Fog had missed claiming another aviator.
On September 24, the Full Flight Laboratory team awoke to dense fog. It draped the field like a blanket, reducing the ceiling and visibility to zero. For Doolittle, it was the answer to a prayer.
“I decided to make a real fog flight,” he later recounted. “The NY-2 was pushed out of the hangar and warmed up. The ground radios were manned and the radio beacons turned on. I taxied out to the middle of the field and took off. Coming through the fog at about 500 feet and making a wide swing, I came around into landing position. By the time I landed 10 minutes after takeoff, the fog had started to lift.”7
Doolittle performed the world’s first blind flight on September 24, 1929, using instruments and procedures he had helped devise.
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
History’s impromptu first blind flight was logged with no witnesses beyond the immediate team. Already summoned, Harry Guggenheim and other observers arrived shortly thereafter to watch an official restaging of the event. Because the fog had now cleared and the airfield was again open, Guggenheim ordered Ben Kelsey—a young Army second lieutenant assigned as the project’s second pilot—to ride along in the front cockpit. Kelsey would take over only if another airplane showed up, spoiling the attempt; otherwise he would hold his hands high in the air to show Doolittle was at the controls.
The hood was again closed over Jimmy Doolittle. He taxied out and turned onto the beam-defined runway. Gunning the engine, he climbed straight ahead to a thousand feet, performed a standard-rate turn with the aid of a stopwatch, flew a timed downwind leg, and turned back toward the runway.
Descending to 200 feet, Doolittle leveled out and