In July I went on two weeks active duty at Richards Field, Missouri, where I instructed on Jennies and DH-4’s. In August I flew a Curtiss Oriole to Nevada, Missouri, to carry passengers during the Missouri National Guard encampment.
While at Nevada I received a proposition to fly in a circus in Colorado and, as there was no immediate prospect of starting work on the mail route, I accepted and when the encampment ended I flew the Oriole back to St. Louis and took a train west.
On arriving at the field a few miles east of Denver, I discovered the plane I was to fly to be the same Lincoln Standard that Lynch and I had flown to Montana three years before. We did a little barnstorming along the eastern slope of the Rockies preliminary to the start of our flying circus. We had contracted to exhibit before a number of fairs in Colorado and there was nothing barred in the exhibitions. We put on everything the committee was willing to pay for. At the smaller places we used only one plane, but at the more important exhibitions two were required.
We flew to the town where a fair was taking place about one day before we were to exhibit. In that way everything was in readiness for the circus and the next morning there was no delay in our performance.
We started with wing-walking. The performer would climb out of the cockpit and walk along the entering edge of the wing to the outer bay strut, where he climbed up onto the top wing, and stood on his head as we passed the grandstand. After finishing his stunts on the wing he would go to the landing gear and from there to the center section, where he sat while the plane looped and did Jenny Immelmans. From the center section he went to the tail and then, unless it was an unusual occasion, the wing-walking exhibition was over.
After wing-walking came the breakaway. This was accomplished by fastening a cable to the landing gear. The performer went out to the wing tip, fastened his harness to the loose end of the cable and to all appearances fell off the wing. No one on the ground could see the cable and a breakaway always produced quite a sensation. Iron loops were clamped along the cable for use in climbing back up.
One of our feature attractions was the plane change. A rope ladder was attached to the wing of a plane and as one ship flew past the grandstand with the performer standing near the tip of the top wing, a second plane with the ladder attached, passed over the first, so that the ladder was in easy reach of the performer. We usually made two fake attempts to effect the change and actually counted on the third for success. In this way the feat looked more difficult.
A parachute was attached to the opposite wing from the rope ladder. After the plane change was completed, the performer jumped off with the chute and the show was over.
In the evening we made a night fireworks flight. A series of candles, which when lighted emitted a trail of fire for several hundred feet behind the ship, was attached to each wing. After these candles had burned out, two magnesium flares started burning, lighting up the country below well enough to read a book very clearly. The display was set off by an electric battery in the cockpit.
When the plane reached an altitude of two or three thousand feet, a number of bombs were dropped to attract attention; then the switch was thrown in to start the trails and colored lights, and the ship looped and shunted around the comet-like trail of fire.
Our greatest difficulty in night flying lay in lighting the landing fields from which to operate. Sometimes a number of cars were on the field and I landed and took off across the beams of their headlights. Under such conditions the ground was well illuminated and landing very simple. On other occasions there would not be more than one car available and in one instance, on a dark night, I took off and landed by the light of a pocket flashlight which one of the men flashed constantly while I was in the air, to enable me to keep track of the landing field.
At one town in Colorado, we were booked for a fireworks exhibition to be given between darkness and midnight. We had been barnstorming during the day and on our way to this town we ran short of lubricating oil. By the time we had replenished our supply it was too late to get in before dark, and I had never landed at that town before. The owner of the plane, however, was sure that he could easily locate the landing field, even in darkness. He had been there many times and he knew that the field was “right next to the golf links.”
We arrived over the town and after circling a few times, I throttled the motor and shouted “Where’s the field?”
The reply was immediate and full of confidence, “Right next the golf links.”
“Well, where are the golf links?”
“I don’t know!”
I was up against another of the very amusing but equally serious incidents in barnstorming life. We were over strange territory on a dark night and with a rapidly diminishing fuel supply. It was imperative to land within a very few minutes, yet it was not possible to tell one field from another, and even the line fences were not visible.
I flew around until the outline of a strawstack appeared in the field below us. This field was outlined on one side by the lighter
