Plane Speaking

What did twelve pence purchase some forty years ago?

That is an easy one for me as that was the cover price of my weekly magazine entitled "Speed and Power"- dedicated to planes, cars, trains, ships and science fiction. It was also the total allowance of pocket money that I received from my parents every seven days.

The publication started in 1974 but only ran for some 89 or so issues before it was taken over by the mega-magazine of Look and Learn.

I lost interest in it after that.

Rather geekily I have kept my collection together and from time to time I browse and reminisce about the amazing technology of that era although such has been the pace of progress in the last four decades that everything featured as revolutionary then does now seem rather crude, basic and clunky.

Speed and Power also did features on characters and events centred on transport and one from the November 7th edition of 1975 is worth re-telling.

It was about a 31 year old aviator, Douglas Corrigan from California who on July 16th 1938 took off from Floyd Bennett Field, New York with the intention of making a non-stop flight across America to Los Angeles.

This was quite a challenge over 2000 miles and particularly so in his choice of plane-a single engined Curtiss Robin, 8 years old with no radio and the most basic of instruments, some of which he had made himself. Corrigan was actually more of an aircraft mechanic than an experienced pilot perhaps lacking a bit of natural ability and aptitude for an endurance flight.

His map for the westerly journey was to be gauged using a page from a school atlas.

Corrigan's attire was only a leather jacket and his rations restricted to a couple of chocolate bars, fig snacks and some water.There was no parachute on board.

Fully laden with extra fuel tanks it took 3000 feet of runway to lurch airborne and gradually ease up to 500 feet, the required height to set off on the planned course.

Unfortunately, a combination of disorientation and stupidity saw Corrigan mis-read the compass set down on the floor near his feet. He unwittingly took up not a westward inland line but, following the wrong end of the needle, began one of the strangest flights in aviation history.

With no means of communication from those on the ground who quickly realised that he was flying in the opposite direction Corrigan remained oblivious to his error. At a cruising altitude of 3000 feet he found himself between two layers of dense cloud giving no chance of visibility of ground landmarks and certainly giving no hint that he was heading out over the Atlantic Ocean.

His actual view from the cockpit was impeded in a forward direction by a bolted on fuel tank and with another wedged in behind his seat. The only real view was acheived by rolling the plane sideways and looking out that way.

Ten hours into the flight a fuel leak washed around his feet and fearing a fire he frantically stabbed a hole in the floor pan with a screwdriver and by banking steeply any surplus liquid was able to drain off and a fireball disaster was averted.

The loss of fuel led Corrigan to consider an emergency landing but any serious thoughts of this would require daylight.

By his reckoning he would shortly have to climb to 8000 feet to clear the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas. At that height there was always a risk of icing up and sure enough a rain storm turned to sleet freezing on the fuselage and wings. De-icing involved poking a long pole out of the window to chip away at the covering on the wings.

Corrigan felt it would be wise to descend to slightly warmer weather and emerging through the cloud base he was shocked to see nothing but a mass of ocean.

At first he thought that he had overshot the west coast and was above the Pacific but then with horror realised the magnitude of his navigational error.

Now airborne for 26 hours he had reached the point of no return.

The sole option was to carry on and hope that the fuel supply lasted.

Ironically, Corrigan had asked for official clearance to emulate the exploit of his great hero Charles Lindbergh in crossing the Atlantic 12 months earlier but was denied permission on the grounds of the lack of airworthiness of the veteran plane. He was now doing it by mistake.

The fuel situation was a major concern but luckily a strong prevailing westerly had swept him along without depleting the on board reserve.

Two hours further on Corrigan sighted a rocky headland and with the engine straining on the last drops of kerosene he was able to land at Baldonnnel Airport, to the south west of Dublin.

The newspapers lapped up his epic story calling him "Wrong Way Corrigan", although many did not believe that he had flown the entire Atlantic in error. He was however a National Hero and returning to New York was given a ticker-tape parade along Broadway.

Corrigan denied any intention and laughed when the Liars Club of America elected him an Honorary Member.