Our Atlantic Attempt

Excerpt:

V. The Failure by H. G. Hawker


EARLY on Sunday, 18th May, the Sopwith 'Atlantic' aeroplane was all ready, tanks filled, and everything aboard, and after saying 'au revoir' to all our friends, sending our respects (and hopes of seeing him at Brooklands) to Raynham, and getting the Rolls-Royce engine nicely warmed up and ticking over contentedly, we got in and pushed off at 5.42 P.M. Greenwich time, that is 3.40 P.M. Newfoundland local summer time.

Getting off was just a bit ticklish. The wind was about twenty miles an hour east-north-east, and that meant that we had got to go diagonally across our L-shaped ground, just touching the hill that I have mentioned, and avoiding, if we could, a deepish drainage ditch which ran along the foot of it. All our trial flights both in England and in Newfoundland had been done with three-quarter load of petrol, and we knew very well that there would not be too much room with the full load on board. However, all was well. The going was rough and the hillside made her roll a bit, but we missed the ditch by inches and got into the air all right with a respectable distance to spare between our wheels and the trees. As soon as we were well up I throttled down and we started a steady climb out towards the Atlantic and towards the Ireland that we hoped to see inside the next twenty-four hours.

As soon as the coast had been passed, I pulled the under-carriage release trigger and away it went into the water. Simultaneously the finger of the air speed indicator went over to another seven miles an hour.

The sky was bright and clear to start with, but we had not got up many thousand feet, and I think had only been flying about ten minutes when we saw that Newfoundland’s staple product — fog — was hanging on to her coasts. But that didn’t worry us very much. The fog is never more than a few hundred feet thick, and we knew we should soon be leaving it behind. Grieve had been able to observe the sea long enough to get a fair drift reading, and the fog bank didn’t interfere with his navigation as it gave him the sort of horizon he wanted, being quite flat and distinct.

As far as the weather was concerned everything looked quite nice for some hours. We were comfortably jogging along at about 10,000 feet with nothing much in the way of cloud between ourselves and the vault of heaven, with the engine roaring contentedly as though it did not mean to misfire until the tanks were bone dry, and with the air speed indicator showing a decent 105 miles an hour. There were practically no bumps, and I could pretty well let the machine fly itself so long as I held her on the course that Grieve had laid down.

About 10 o’clock all the blue in the sky had turned to purple, the warm glint of the sun had faded from the polished edges of the struts, and the clouds below us became dull and patchy and grey, only giving us very infrequently a sight of the ocean beneath them.

A quarter of an hour later the weather conditions had noticeably changed for the worse. The sky became hazy and thick so that we could not see anything below us with any distinctness, but we could perceive clearly enough that there was some pretty heavy stuff ahead. However, there was only one thing to do. It wasn’t very solid so we just poked her nose into it and pushed through, but it was quite decidedly bumpy, and now and then a slant of rain would splash on to us. But that didn’t matter a bit, we were quite warm and comfortable and were expecting very soon to be able to leave this little patch of nasty weather behind us.

At about 11 (Greenwich mean time) I glanced at the water circulation thermometer and saw that it was a good bit higher than it ought to have been, although we were still slightly climbing. It was clear enough that everything was not right with the water, as the temperature did not go down as I expected it to when I opened the shutters over the radiator a little. However, we carried on, but we didn’t seem to be able to get rid of the clouds which now began to appear thicker and heavier than ever, and there was enough of them at lower levels to prevent any chance of our peeping at the sea.

By this time we had altered course a little to the northward, as from the information we had received at starting from the meteorological station we were expecting that the wind would tend to go more into that quarter. But it was none too easy for a decent course to be held, as the cloud formations we were running into were very formidable, and to say the least of it not without bumps. They were too high for us to climb over without wasting a good deal of petrol which we wanted naturally enough to economize in every way, and another reason why we didn’t want to climb was the increasing temperature of the water. So we just had to go round the clouds as best we could, but there were so many of them that Grieve never had a chance to take a sight on the stars.

A little later the moon rose and brightened things up, and the outlook could do with a bit of brightening. The water temperature in the radiator had risen from 168 degrees to 176 degrees Fahrenheit, in spite of the shutters being quite wide open, and it was quite obvious that something serious was amiss; otherwise the Rolls engine was running absolutely perfectly, the aeroplane was making no other complaints at all, and Grieve and I were happy and warm enough although the weather was so unkind.

At about 11.30 I determined that something had got to be done to keep the water temperature down, and had already reached the conclusion that the most probable cause was a collection of rust and odds and ends of solder and so forth that had shaken loose in the radiator, and were stopping up the filter which prevents any solid substances from getting into the pump.

Very often one can get rid of this sort of stoppage by stopping the engine and nose diving, so giving the accumulation a chance to spread itself and the filter to clear, with the rust and dirt at the bottom edge of it and not all over it. At any rate, there was nothing else to do, so down went her nose and we dropped quietly from 12,000 to about 9000 feet. I then started the engine up again, and was tremendously relieved to see that the temperature kept moderate although we were soon climbing again. But all the same our anxiety was not to be put aside, because if we had to do the clearing process often it meant that we should waste a lot of petrol, which with the wind a good deal against us we certainly could not afford to do.

An hour later, 12.30 P.M., the thermometer had returned to 175 degrees F. We were now about 800 miles out, and the weather had shown no signs whatever of improving, so that we were forced into continuing our cloud dodging tactics. Down went the nose again, but this time our luck did not hold, and when we started to climb up the temperature rose perilously close to boiling point. So we tried again, but things only got worse instead of better, and very soon the water started boiling in earnest.

We had nineteen gallons in the engine, but she was pulling about 200 horse power and once she started boiling, in spite of the intense cold—the atmosphere was getting on for zero—I knew it would not take long for the water to evaporate. After the second time of asking unsuccessfully I got the machine up to 12,000 feet and throttled her down, so that she would just about stop at that altitude so as to give the water every chance. The top plane was covered with ice from the radiator, and the steam was spouting out like a little geyser from a tiny hole in the middle of it. But for some little time we were able to keep the temperature just a little below the fateful 212 degrees.

There was now not much difficulty about keeping a course, for the moon was well up, and our 12,000 feet took us above most of the clouds, so that now and then Grieve was able to take an observation on the stars which peeped out through gaps mostly to the northward. But about 6 o’clock in the morning we found ourselves confronted with a bank of black clouds as solid as a range of mountains and rearing themselves up in fantastic and menacing formations. They were at least 15,000 ft. high, so it was obviously useless to try and get over the whole lot, but when we couldn’t fly round them—going through them was out of the question after we had had one try at it—we had a shot at going over some of the lower ones, but each time we rose the water temperature rose too, and furious boiling set in. So it was no good going on with that scheme.

In the meantime I had had no other trouble whatever in flying the machine. With the aid of the few stars we saw occasionally she was quite easy to trim, and when we got engulfed in the blackness of the clouds every now and then one was able to keep her level with the compass and the bubble.

Very reluctantly we came to the conclusion that as we couldn’t go up we should have to come down, so we descended to about 6000 feet at about 6 a.m. Here it was blacker than ever, so down we went further and at about 1000 feet found things a good deal brighter with the cheerful sun just getting up to help us on our way.

Grieve’s observations on the stars had shown that we were now on our course and well in the ‘ Steamer Lane.’

Water that constantly boiled even at 1000 feet did not help matters, and what showed us that we had really lost a great deal (if only we could have slung a bucket over board and picked up a few gallons as we went along !) was the fact that in our drop down we had had a very narrow squeak indeed. No sooner had the engine stopped than it must have gone stone cold owing to the small amount of water in the jackets, though steam was coming out of the radiator relief pipe quite merrily for some little time. This fact we had not realized until when quite low down I opened the throttle and got no response whatever.

I then shouted to Grieve to get busy on the petrol pump, and he was very soon bending forward and pumping hard enough to push the carburettor needle valves right off their seats and flooding the jets with petrol.

But nothing happened at all except that the Atlantic rose up to meet us at rather an alarming rate. We were gliding down wind at a pretty good speed, the sea was very rough, and when we hit it I knew very well that there was going to be a crash of sorts, and that if he remained where he was Grieve would probably get badly damaged, as he would, be shot forward head first on to the petrol tank. So I clumped him hard on the back and yelled to him that I was going to ‘ land.’

We were then about 10 feet above the particularly uninviting-looking waves.

And then we had the biggest stroke of luck . . .