Show oft GOD IS MY COPILOT C CO wp PILOT I 1 LOT col robet robert alscott RELEASE the no atory thus thai lari far after many on an astory ull a tempts attempts t scott finally makes make west welt point and in the summer lumner of cl 1932 after being graduated fradua ted and commissioned as ai a second lieutenant of 0 infantry goes to europe which be tours loan on a motorcycle ye ae ile he li Is happy w when hen he finally arrives at randolph its u dolph field texas and becomes an air cadet for or to fly has been his lifes dream lie Is graduated rom relly field from and has some lome wings pinned on his chest h el lie li is now an army pilot allot then came am orders to report la in H hawaii a wall w which hie leaves cave 8 scott cott pretty blue as he be wanted to set get married to a tin girl in georgia to whose home borne he had driven over miles while on week weekend end trips trip from texas ile he tells the general about hit his plight CHAPTER IV it took them teem thirty minutes to find out that the mere tact fact that I 1 was traveling in a car with a western license plate make me pretty boy floyd who they said was on the prowl in that area I 1 finally had to telephone the commanding officer of mitchel field and as he know m me e all he could say bay was that an officer by the name ot of lieutenant scott ott was supposed to be on the way to mitchel achel from kelly anyway I 1 still dont think I 1 looked iven even then like pretty boy floyd my arrival at my new station was the start of a hectic time for the air corps first I 1 began to try to work to in some flying time by volunteering for every flight I 1 could get I 1 had an especially good break when I 1 got on the department of commerce weather flights I 1 used to have to get up at two in the morning and take off no matter what the weather was at a m on one of these I 1 found myself in quite a bit of trouble As soon as I 1 took oft off I 1 went on to instrument flying and climbed up through the heavy clouds in the curtiss falcon am known the then f as 1 is an 0 39 out to the tide side fast fastened en e d to the N struts I 1 could dimly see the which was to record the changing weather as we climbed to as a high as the ship would go it was necessary to climb at a contant tant three hundred feet a minute which in several thousand feet became fairly monotonous I 1 finally adjusted the stabilizer so that the ship chip would climb this altitude and then all I 1 had to do was to keep the wings straight and level with the turn and bank indicator and the course constant cons taht with the gyro but I 1 had bad reckoned with without ou t real knowledge of flying my first indication adl of trouble came at some sev onty enty five hundred feet when I 1 was sed to see the reflection of the moon down directly beneath nay my ship chip I 1 then forgot all caution and tried to fly by partly on 0 n instruments and pertly partly by visual r reference efe rence this I 1 lear learned ried pretty soon was about impossible tor for I 1 went into the nicest spin I 1 have ever seen recovering about four thousand feet below I 1 tried it again but the same thing happened I 1 then realized that after I 1 had bad set my stabilizer for the steady climb of three hundred feet per minute as the fuel was used the weight of the ship decreased and the nose went up tor for the fuel was of course forward this gradually precipitated a stall which turned into a spin as s the big conqueror twisted the fuselage from propeller torque I 1 had to resolve to do all my anstr instrument u flying by hand until the automatic pilots were perfected later that afternoon I 1 looked at the graph paper baber of the barometer recording and there were two little jagged lines plainly showing where the ship had bad lost nearly four thousand feet in two spins the weather flights got pretty monotonous no and I 1 would take off from mitchel and fly up over boston then let back down to my home base finally the meteorologist caught on and told me to please stay over the area as he had other weather ships taking the same readings over boston these flights taught me enough to save my life when the army took over the airmail contracts a little later in the year it if you remember 1934 there was trouble between the government and the air lines concerning airmail contracts to me even this was a lifesaver life saver in securing flying time for all of us had recently been ordered to fly by no more than tour four hours a month this was the bare m minimum 11 1 imura to receive flying pay and as a it turned out tor for many the best way to get killed in airplanes its still a game that takes constant practice t fee the weather we flew in to carry the mall mail during the winter of 1834 1934 was about the worst in history I 1 sometimes think the powers on high collaborated to give us a supreme test there were fourteen pilots killed along that airmail run and most of them were killed because we bad no instruments tor for the ships or at t least not the proper type for flying blind we flew pursuit ships which carried fifty five pounds of mall mail we w flew old B 6 bombers that would carry a ton of mall mail at a speed of eighty miles an hour providing the wind in front of you too strong sometimes they almost went backwards we flew everything from a curtiss condor which mrs roosevelt had been using to the old motored tri trl fords nd we flew through the worst fh he v allu n the country the route that I 1 flew from rom chicago to cleveland to newark was what was known to all airmail pilots as the hell stretch and it was just that as I 1 found out retty pretty qui quickly akly sometimes people on new jobs got mixed up and sent the cleveland m mall ail in the wrong direction from towards omaha or sent the chicago mall mail from rom cleveland to new york the reverse direction just normal events amid the growing pains of 0 an army flying the mall mail once the control officer finally got a man in the air after sweating the weather out to the west tor for days I 1 saw his ship take off and disappear in the snowstorm then I 1 saw sam harris jump up forthe tor the U S me mall il truck had just driven up it was late and in the excitement of getting the ships clearance the eager pilot had forgotten to wait to have the mall mail loaded the control officer had to call him back and start all 11 over about that time when men had begun to die on airmail I 1 wrote a letter to this girl the same one I 1 had bad been going to see by automobile from texas htwa it was a a addressed to to her in case the old a ship hip hit some A W U col robert L scott jr author of god Is my copilot co pilot thing and I 1 carried it around in my pocket during all my trips of airmail I 1 nearly wore it out just carrying it but the ship hit bit anything and she see it in it I 1 must have just a asked s ked her to marry me all I 1 used to ask her anyway one night I 1 took off from chicago and came to cleveland they find the man who was supposed to take the mail on to newark I 1 found out later that he was r sick ick so I 1 talked them into letting me take the ship on east I 1 climbed in and headed out towards the bad weather when I 1 got to it following the experience I 1 had bad gained in the months before and the advice I 1 had received from the airline pilots I 1 climbed instead of diving to hunt tor for a way through ai at feet I 1 came out and over the louds clouds c I 1 was alone for or as tar far as you could see there were stars and a moon and down below were the swirling clouds over the alleghenies gh enies dropping their snow and ice if 11 I 1 had turned back towards cleveland I 1 would have had to let down in the dark and probably would have crashed so I 1 decided to head into the clear sky of the night at 18 feet and as the dawn came the th next morning I 1 started my letdown lor for at least I 1 would have light in which to make the landing my radio had not worked since ince s I 1 had got into the snow and ice so I 1 was flying merely by dead reckon ing I 1 let down somewhere over what I 1 thought was northern pennsylvania but alter after buzzing the town and reading the name found I 1 w was Is over binghamton new york I 1 flew on south having remembered a a field od at scranton pennsylvania and there I 1 landed the landing was quite an experience As I 1 dove over the field I 1 saw workmen there frantically waving their arms they were repairing the field but I 1 was about out of gasoline so I 1 came in motioning with my hand for them to get out of 0 the way the only damage was caused by my landing on one ot of the small red flags on a stick that one of the workmen had been waving he had hurriedly stuck it ta the ground when he saw me landing regardless and I 1 came down right on top of it but the small tear was ol of no consequence I 1 repaired it had coffee with the man in charge of the airfield and went on toward newark they had long ago given me up for lost tor for in that same night two other army pilots had met their death over the alleghenies once again I 1 felt elt that something had told me to climb when I 1 got to the bad weather and if that same thing had told those men to climb they would have sown flown through instead of going down abe they y might have disregarded a warning in a case like that we think its luck but maybe its not to me something had sala said get altitude dont roam around down here get altitude and eo it 0 on and I 1 think that after that things lust just took care of 0 themselves with airman over we w vent back to our usual duties at mitchel field things ort of settled down and I 1 began to make more flights and more automobile trips towards georgia georg a finally I 1 talked the girl into it we went on up to west point and were married catharine Cathar lne really fits alt into Us this story because it was the trips over to georgia to see her from every place in the united states that not only made me drive an automobile but taught me cross country flying since I 1 had been flying in these later m months from wherever I 1 was by wao way of georgia from mitchel field I 1 was sent to panama and then began my real pursuit training in P I 1 roamed across the country of panama up into central america and down into south america I 1 was given a job constructing flying fields which we figured would some day protect the canal these fields were put in for the purpose of installing radio stations and also air warning devices to tell us when enemy planes approached the panama canal I 1 would have to go down on the colombian border and contact the natives some of whom were head hunters to work on these fields that we were building we would have to get the grass cut off and I 1 would make motions with a machete the long knife of the darlen darien indians and nd show them what we had to do to keep that field so that airplanes could land on it the natives work very well with us at first but we doctored a few of them for or chiggers and for or other infections under their fingernails which had become very inflamed fl or we flew men in to hospitals who needed operations and soon they began to appear more friendly by the time we left there they were calling me el doctor when my training of other pilots began I 1 realized the terror I 1 must have caused my own instructor for in training I 1 perceived my own faults better learning even to anticipate the mistakes the student would make and I 1 learned much about the peculiarities of man tor for on one occasion I 1 had a student who attempted to kill me I 1 dont know why he would have killed himself too one day I 1 was told to take out a cadet listed as an incorrigible anc and to try to find out what was wrong with him I 1 gave him forced landings and such and when he tried to glide down and land on a highway I 1 would take the ship and caution him about gliding low towards trucks and automobiles on one 0 of these tries as I 1 gave him a forced landing you do this merely by cutting the throttle to idling speed to see gee what the student will do he rolled the ship on its back and pulled it down in a dive towards the ground I 1 waited awaited as long as I 1 could and then I 1 took it away myself I 1 found that the man was glaring straight toward the trees w we e had almost hit I 1 landed the shi ship p and asked him what was the matter he appeared very sullen and so I 1 took him aloft again once more I 1 put the ship on its back and told him to bring it out immediately he pulled it toward the ground and I 1 knew it was intentional with alarm I 1 realia realized ed that with him almost frozen to the controls I 1 would have extreme difficulty taking the ship from him by force I 1 hurriedly kicked the right rudder which carried the halt half roll into a complete snap roll then I 1 went through every acrobatic maneuver I 1 knew until 1 I made him sick after that I 1 flew him back to randolph field with my own heart beating a little wildly As I 1 landed the ship two men stepped from behind a plane asking to see the student you just wait a minute I 1 said after all hes my student and I 1 have some things to say to him then they pulled gold badges out of their pockets to show me they were FBI men they had been looking tor for this student tor for a long time he had been a pilot before and lad had smuggled dope across the mexican border and I 1 believe to this day that to evade the arrest that was waiting tor for him he was trying to end it all but the worry I 1 had here her was that in ending it tor for himself he would have been ending it tor for me when I 1 first came to randolph wt w worked only half a day and had the th rest of the day to play around al golf to hunt or do anything wt wi wanted but as the belief that wai was coming got into a few american people we started the limited all corps expansion program we thet thee began working all day and I 1 wai moved up to a flight Comman commander dei and taught instructors tor for the gov was giving contracts to cl v vilian ilian corporations to train armi pilots the air corps was begin ning to grow As the years rolled into 1839 1939 1 I was moved to Califor california nio to become assistant district super visor of the west coast training center this job was to check all flying cadets cabets in the three school at san diego glendale and santi maria later on I 1 received my fical command that of the air carpi training detachment called cal aero academy at ontario califor n ola I 1 a I 1 worked w corked this up from forty two w cadets cabets until after one year wa w bad had nearly early six fix hundred TO BE CONTINUED |