Show FAMOUS bearline opt 0 do ta juggernaut from the sky by FLOYD GIBBONS Y YOU OU know by golly the cops sure do get ahead when I 1 was a kid cops used to walk and like it they used to call a cop a flatfoot then and he earned the name too earned it hiking around his beat until his arches busted down but the only flat feet on the force today are on the old timers this generation of cops ride around on motorcycles and in prowl cars and for the last ten years or so some of them travel in real style in planes and its an airplane cop who busts into the adventurers club tod today ay he is edward H Pol jr of brooklyn N Y sergeant of the aviation division of the police reserves and ed is bringing us a swell story of what happens when a landing plane misses the runway ed ought to know about that too he was right under the plane when it happened in 1926 ed was head of the beach crew at the fort hamilton police reservation and that job was just a shade more ticklish than flying itself tor for the beach crews principal duty was seeing that planes were safely landed on the skidway and that usually involved a lot of gymnastics with a speeding sky buggy ed was acting as a pivot it worked out me like this the skidway was a sort of a wooden ramp running from the top of the sea wall down to the water the tides ran pretty strong out at the end of that skidway and the planes coming toward it usually hit the water about a hundred yards awai away and taxied to it because of the tide though the planes had to come up at right angles to the ramp and where ed came in he stood out at the end of the ramp and as the planes came up he caught them by one wing and held fast turning himself into a sort of a pivot on which those sea planes could make a sharp turn it was no easy job swinging a moving plane around while it was coming out of the water but there was one guy who must have thought ed could pick em out of the air as a magician picks cards it all happened this way and it was another cop who started the whole business there was a flyer out at that field who went by the name of smoky joe and he was a wild man with a plane if there ever was vt suddenly the right wing pontoon hit the water one well one day smoky joe drove up at the field in a car and I 1 guess he must have been just as wild wilh a car as he was with an air buggy he was burning up the road and he had a motorcycle cop tailing right along behind smoky joe stopped at the air station and the cop started to write out a ticket good for a ringside seat at court the next morning smoky joe was pretty good at talking as well as driving planes and cars before he be got through he had the cop convinced that he ought to take a plane ride with him then smoky proceeded to give that cop the scare of his life smoky was giving the cop a thrill they piled into an N 9 says ed and smoky went up a thousand feet or so and went through everything in the book after almost taking theolane the plane and the cop apart he started down again and for a last bus big thrill decided to scrape along the top of the sea wall that was a trick a lot 0 of f the fliers used to do out of sheer deviltry especially on sunday when there was a crowd of people standing along the sea wall nose down out of the sky and zoom along the wall with one wing pontoon hanging a few feet over the wall and the other a few feet over the water ed says that many a time they had come so close to the ground that the beach crew had to duck for safety and what smoky was trying to do this time eds brother chip was working with him down on the runway and he and ed watched smokes plane come down neither one of us ed says knew what was on smokes mind and noting the tact fact that he was 50 feet above the water some yards up the bay we thought he was planning to come in I 1 stood on the end of the runway and chip stood in the middle both of us in readiness to land the plane the plane roared rik right bt at them some days when the tide was rough planes came in at a pretty last fast clip that usually ally bother us because we had learned to catch the planes while they were still going at fairly high speeds through the water but it did seem as if smoky was giving her the gun a little harder than usual for a man who wa was s expecting to land and then when the plane was a hu hundred adred yards away and still thirty or forty feet up in the air it swerved abruptly it headed t r tor for the wall and for that part of the wall where the skidway was built the part where ed and chip were standing 44 seconds away says ed and roaring it was just a matter of a couple straight toward us we were right smack in its path and it looked as it it would hit the skidway right on top of us there was no sense in ducking we duck far enough and no sense in trying to get out of the wicy way for we ba have e time she was 50 feet away and still coming on with a terrifying roar when suddenly the he right wing pontoon hit the water with the pontoon acting as a pivot the plane swung around I 1 As the plane swung the right wing swinging with it brushed past eds nose another fraction of a second later i in n hitting the water says the force of the crash cr ash ed and it would have cut both our heads off blew the wing off the struts and the fuselage broke in half ha if and all that happened to the cop and smoky was a shaking up and and ducking in the bay he was never going t to 0 f ed says that cop got back on shore swearing E set a toot foot off land again but the way ed has it figured out youre you re safer in the plane than standing down there at the end of the skidway 0 V NU service |