nightmares of endless falling
in space: he would wake up
bedeviled by terror. He had
seen actual out-of-control
planes twist and spin as they
fell. He knew how to right
a plane for long enough to
clamber from a biplane cockpit
onto a wing and dive into
space. He knew how to protect
the ripcord, how to fall clear of
an aircraft so parachute lines
could deploy properly. He
knew to carry a flashlight so
he could check his canopy and
his approach to the ground if
an emergency jump was made
at night. However, he did not
know what an actual jump was
like. He could only imagine.
He could only wonder, and
keep on having a bad dream
now and then. Twenty-year-old
Lindbergh decided he ought to
make a jump to learn what to
expect. He intently watched
Charlie Hardin make a jump in
June 1922. Lindbergh once
wrote ‘The novice has a poet’s
eye. He sees and feels where
the expert’s senses have been
calloused by experience,” and
he eloquently described what
he saw and felt: I watched
him strap on his harness and
helmet, climb into the cockpit
and, minutes later, a black dot
falls off the wing two thousand
feet above our field. At almost
the same instant, a white
streak behind him flowered
out into the delicate wavering
muslin of a parachute a few
gossamer yards grasping onto
air and suspending below
them, with invisible threads,
a human life, and man who
by stitches, cloth, and cord,
had made himself a god of
the sky for those immortal
moments. A day or two later,
when I decided that I too must
pass through the experience
of a parachute jump, life rose
to a higher level, to a sort of
exhilarated calmness. The
thought of crawling out onto
the struts and wires hundreds
of feet above the earth, and
then giving up even that
tenuous hold of safety and of
substance, left me a feeling of
anticipation mixed with dread,
of confidence restrained by
caution, of courage salted
through with fear. How tightly
should one hold onto life?
What gain was there for such
a risk? I would have to pay
in money for hurling my body
into space. There would be no
crowd to watch and applaud
my landing. Nor was there
any scientific objective to be
gained. No, there was deeper
reason for wanting to jump,
a desire I could not explain.
I t was that quality that led
me into aviation in the first
place it was a love of the air
and sky and flying, the lure of
adventure, the appreciation
of beauty. It lay beyond the
descriptive words of manwhere immortality is touched
through danger, where life
meets death on equal plane,
where man is more than man,
and existence both supreme
and valueless at the same
instant. Once having made
a jump under the tutelage of
Charlie Hardin the experience
rid Lindbergh’s mind of dread
that struck during sleep. He
later wrote: “I’d stepped to
16| FlyUAA| www.FlyUAA.org| November Issue
the highest level of daring, a
level above even that which
airline pilots could attain.’’ He
returned to Lincoln, Nebraska
for more flight instruction, then
spent until the end of October
1922 on a barnstorming tour,
being a mechanic for another
owner’s plane and doing
wingwalking and making
exhibition parachute jumps,
still without having soloed.
The following year there were
other long barnstorming trips,
ranging from Wisconsin to
Florida. With his wingwalking
and parachuting, Lindbergh
was gaining a lot of flying time,
but still he had not made a
solo flight. He remedied that
situation after spending a
winter at home in Minnesota
with his father, who cosigned
for a $900 bank loan so his
son could buy a surplus army
airplane. In March 1923 he
spent $500 for Curtiss “Jenny”
with a 90-horsepower engine,
a creaky, tattered plane that
could fly only 70 miles an hour
at top speed, and could only
slowly climb to seventeen
hundred feet. No flying license
was required in those days,
so making sure he had a full
fuel tank, he lifted the rickety
Jenny off the ground for his first
solo. His lengthy passenger
experience, all the while paying
sharp attention to everything
that happened to create flight,
and his innate skills got him
into the air and safely back to
the ground on several takeoffs
and landings. However, he
once almost crashed the Jenny
by lifting off too soon and then
bounced so hard the landing
gear was almost wrecked. He
rarely made the same mistake
twice and at day’s end he had
mastered his plane’s many
quirks and learned flight under
his control. Now he could fly
anywhere he chose. Late
in 1923 he flew to St. Louis,
Missouri to be a spectator at
the International Air Races
at Lambert Field, located in
farming country some ten miles
northwest of the St. Louis
business district. Lindbergh
wrote: “There are no runways,
but the clay sod is good surface
for any size of aircraft during
summer months. In freezing
weather, gusty winds and
deepening ruts make operation
difficult.” He admiringly looked
over the many newer types of
high-performance planes in the
races and determined he would
apply to be a Flying Cadet in
the U.S. Army, deciding that
would “be my only opportunity
to fly planes which would roar
up into the sky when they
were pointed in that direction,
instead of having to be wished
up over low trees at the end of
a landing field. “
Flying Cadet Training and First
Emergency Parachute Jump
Lindbergh enrolled as a flying
cadet in the U.S. Army in
1924 and his first emergency
jump happened early in flight
training. It was from an open
cockpit, single-seat SE-5 scout
biplane, on March 5, 1925 as a
student pilot at Kelly Field, near
San Antonio, Texas. Lindbergh
and another cadet on a training
mission had a midair collision
at about 5,000 feet as they
attacked a DH4B “enemy”
bomber. In their dive on the
bomber several hundred feet
below, Lindbergh, after seeing
no other plane near, pulled up
and jumped. His excerpted
official report noted: “I passed
above the DH and a moment
later felt a slight jolt, followed
by a crash.... “I closed the
throttle and saw an SE-5 with
Lieutenant McCallister in the
cockpit a few feet away on
my left. He was apparently
unhurt and getting ready to
jump. “Our ships were locked
together with the fuselages
approximately parallel. I
removed the belt, climbed out
to the trailing edge of the —
the ship was then in a nearly
vertical position and jumped
backward from the ship as far
as possible. “I had no difficulty
in operating the pull ring and
experienced no sensation of
falling. The wreckage was
falling nearly straight down
and for some time I fell in line
with its path. Fearing the
wreckage might fall on me, I did
not pull the ripcord until I had
dropped several hundred feet
and into the clouds. “During
this time I had turned one half
revolutions and was falling
flat and face downward. The
parachute functioned perfectly;
almost as soon as I pulled the
ripcord and the risers jerked on
my shoulders, the leg straps
tightened, my head went
down, and the chute was fully
opened....
“Next I turned my attention
to locating a landing place. I
was over mesquite and drifting
in the general direction of a
plowed field which I reached
by slipping the chute. Shortly
before striking the ground I
was drifting backwards, but
was able to swing around in
the harness just as I landed
on the side of a ditch less than
100 feet from the edge of the
mesquite. Although the impact
of the landing was too great for
me to remain standing, I was
not injured. The parachute was
still held open by the wind and
did not collapse until I pulled on
one group of the shroud lines.”
(Lt. McCallister also bailed out
successfully. )
Lindbergh wrote about
parachutes and military flying:
“There is a saying in the
service about the parachute:
‘If you need it and haven’t got
it, you’ll never need it again!’
That just about sums up its
value to aviation.” New Second
Lieutenant
Three months later, he was
commissioned a second
lieutenant in the Air Service
Reserve Corps, with silver
wings from the army. (Only
eighteen cadets graduated
from a class of 104.)
Lindbergh then joined the
St. Louis, Missouri firm of
Robertson Aircraft Corporation
as chief pilot for the company’s
line of commercial planes. On
a June 2nd test flight of a new
design, Lindbergh made his
second emergency jump.
Emergency Bailout No. 2
Performing spins, the aircraft
failed to respond to the pilot’s
insistent, forceful attempts
Issue No vember| www.FlyUAA.org| FlyUAA| 17