Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, November 30, 1924, Page 8

WO HS We wee S28 ne n4uonimyesa Ane hee B B B B B BRED ASYISSSES PAGE EIGHT (Continued from Page One) ers set about it. To ensure success the Americans believed that there ‘were three essential factors to be taken in.o consideration. First, not only to have an aerial cruiser capabe of making the flight but to have a fleet of them, so that at least one would stand a good chance of ma Blob ng the circuit of the nave supply bases might be the slight- their being needed, the co-operation of service, includ navy, diplomatic eau of fisheries, reve! coast guard services, an to get the help of American private concerns engaged in business in for- eign lands, thus eliminating just as many elements of risk as poss,bie from an undertaking that.was sure to be frought with danger every moment no matter how many pre- cautions might be taken in advance. For instance, the complete destruc: tion of one of the escort panes in Oregon, Major Martin's crash into mountain in the Aleutian islands, nd the sinking of Wade's cruyer, “Boston,” in the north Atlantic, only give us avhint_as to the hazards of the entire journey, Third, and of equal importance, was the task of picking the ablest e country, men who @ three essential qual- grit and stamina, for Flyers. adquar- about all of the maps ond, combined ities of sI beet ar ids throughout yi 1 information as to climatic ccnditions from the Arec- tle « e to the equator and from nd to Arabia, as well as every odd bit of Information that the slightest value in at- s most ambitious of all tempting t adventure Ame other things, the air serv- 1 to get the consent of twenty- two foreign governments over which, the American air cruisers hoped to ; way. Nor was this con- > gotten with a mere wave of the hand. For instance, the bol- shevists said ‘ doing” so far nding in their territory was con- rned, And it took months to con ese that it would be allow American military to fly over their land. They to have the notion at first whoe afiair might be a er Yankee way of finding out w the land of Nippon could attacked by air. The sinal world flight commit- tec in Washington was made up of Captains Lorenzo Snow and W. D. andt d Lieutenants R. J. Clair Streett, Erik Nel- s Cc, Crumrine. Brown an, and all agree who had to do with the world flight that no one {s more en- titled to credit for the success of the great adventure than he. Revise Route of Rivals. A careful study of wor'd wide cli- matic conditions convinced Brown and Streett that the sanest way would be for the American airmen This picture was taken at Langley Field, Va., to right are Lieuts. Nelson, Wade, and Schulze; THRILLING ADVENTURES OF RO | om \|"TROUBLE SHOOTING |WORLD FLIGHT ij Lieutenant Ogden Also Called “Hank” THE AVIATOR'S WORST JINX—FLOWERS At Vancouver, Wash., in the first stage of the world ffght, Mayor George L. Baker of Portland, Ore., pre- Left to right are Lieut. Oakley Kelly, commander of Portland roses to the air Magellans. -ieut. Smith, Major Martin, Mayor Baker, Lieut. Wade, Lieut. Arnold and L, + Jenkins, the port- (Pacific and Atlantic Photo). flying her right across from Pacific} of food they should avoid And on this occasion in some places the fog was so dense and ‘0 low -hat it forced us right down between narrow walls of the canyon “The worst stretch was through the Tehachapi pass a little over half way from Santa Monica to Bakers: field. The only real danger*here was the possibility: of having a forced landing in that gorge, or plane attempting to turn ba: were so.many of us going through In Dayton the general looked the Douglas biplane over and fi- in his slow decisive case of a fracture, how to resuscitate a drowning man, and a host of other Sergt. Alva companion, Martin chose if you are satisfied that she is all right, I guess she will Smith picked Leigh Wade decided on Henry Og- den, and Erik Ne!son. selected “Smil- " Harding, who had worked under him for years, 3 The last week in February both mechanics were ‘ordered to the Douglas plant in Santa Mon- ica to watch the so that each Picking the Right Airmen. time Nelson had no idea that he was going to be select- ed_to take part in the flight. fact, hé was quite sure that he would not be, because he had already tak- en part in more than his share of the other great flights and It was the policy of the vide up the honor of taking part in major flights between as many of the hundred or more ablest pilots in| would have been almost impissible for a plane to have turned ‘around between the two walls without col- liding with one of the others. “Coming out of the northern end of the pass, we left the fog behind into the bright sun- shine of the San Joaquin valley. A moment’ later and we were. looking down on the thoiisands of black oil surround Bakersfield. Farther off to our right disappear behind us to thé southeast were the yéllow sands of the inhospitable Mojave desert, where I had ‘worked many years before. ‘The rest of the flight over. the cultivated. lands of the San Joaquin yalley to Sacramento, was made in gorgeous weather dnd un:| eventful, except that Major Martin || Sian i ‘ hadiastirced instdisig’ which. delayer Se: ‘|| pers.- On several occasions tt turn. him for thirty minutes. 3 Superstitions of Aviators. “An enthusiastic crowd gave us a noisy welcome when we landed at Mather field, outside Sacramento. Sacramento was,where I had once made my headquarters and all of my old friends were out to welcome us. And that night the present day lescendants of the old forty-niners who discovered gold in California, gave a chamber of commerce ban- quet “for us-and presented’ us with good luck charms to protect us from evil rpirits on’ our flight. Some of us were given horse shoes and the others rabbits’ feet. ‘As a matter of fact, the members of the flight proved to be rather sharply divided regarding supersti- Leigh Wade, knocks on wood half’a dozen umes a day, gets into cold ‘sweat if any- LIEUT. HENRY H. 0GDE! studied all night long so that his in. one lights three clgarets off the same match and. had a, row with Hank Ogden on one occasion when ‘the latter walked under a ladder on a 7 ship in the north Atlantic. Erik, on|@bout as far south as it is possible the other hand, sccffs at all-super-|to get in these United States, Hen- stitions but one, the-one that seems|ry Horatio Ogden.spént his youth to be universal among airmen, the} playing with pickaninnies jon his superstition that a tragédy is~ al-| father’s cotton plantation just a few most sure to occur if you carry} miles west of the Mississippi river, flewers “in your’ plane. “The next morning we flew over} So he got his soft southern accent! had his first flight, the orchards and placer gold fields} from his darky, mammy, of central California and headed up| Woodville, Miss., sounds prosaic| crews building motors for the goy- the Sacramento river towards Eu-|enough, but these little towns of a| ernment in the atr gene. Evidently the rabbits’ feet and| few thousand people like Woodville] Montgomery. For horse shoes that had been presented} haye a habit of producing distin-| months he worked on dif, to Ogden and Wade were something | guished men. Woodville has had its| of engines, such as of a jinx, because they were forced | share of celebrities, of whom Henry | Rhones, Cleggetts, and Hispano Sui- down iear the little town of Cotton-| Ogden, one of the first six men to wood in northern California .at the} circumnavigate the world by air, is head waters of the Sacramento river,|the most recent and the most dis-| in the building of the wings, fusel- The} tinguished. So Woodville now has| age, and other parts of an airplane trouble was due to loss of water re-|two genuine claims to fame: first, : building of jan would be air service to di- tail of cons’ Clover Field, Santa Monica, fifteen miles from selected as the official starting point and’ plunged rik was the first man chosen. lieutenants was settled upon as the zero hour when the’ four American world cruisers were to hop off on the first leg of the flight that waa to add one of the most thrilling and inspiring pages to the man’s conauest over Lieut. Smith’ Lowell Snjith, ne the leader of the round the ad fown up and Wown the Pacific coast"many times before. fad made thirty or forty southern California to Sound during recent years, and not a single one of them by So “Silent” Smith is the man ‘no can best tell the story other two to stand by as alternates if for any reason one of the first three happened to American soil. five, it was thought advisable In addition to these Story of Hop. who Minally high rank to take command and to ‘The men chosen | as all the wor'd knows, were Maj. Frederick L. Martin, mander, and Lieuts. Lowell Leigh Wade and Erik Nelson as the pilots of the other three cruisers. Lieuts. Leslie Arnold and Le Claire Schultze were to be the alternates, world flight, trips from for instance, MAPPING OUT THE WORLD FLIGHT. during the preliminary schooling of the globe girdlers. Left just. west, of Mount _ Lassen, Maj. Fred Martin and Lieut. Arnold, to fly around the world in exactly the opposite direction to that which had been taken by the aviators of a)! other ccuntries. That is, to fly west instead of east, in order to able to ts Iceland, € during the summer: Then the next problem was to plane—a ship really r more than any- that might be required of it. nd a sult b’e of doin Out at Santa Monica, in Call there was'a pe who had desi; before, a plane that had proved suc cesrful both for land and sea flying. It had so impressed Lieut. Erik Nel- son that he urged Douglas to sub- mit a design for the world flight. In -fact, elson went out to Santa self and actually he'ped p t cruiser, a ship Monica ug that could be used either with pon- tcons at sea, or with wheels for flying over land. Douglas pr the theory and Ne¥on the practical ideas, The tw long and ofcen It w t sht between the man who designs things on pa- per and the stub rectionitertat neer why kne { he knoae'e ly from expe After the mod finished. Nel son demonstr 1 own confi dence in it by ho s into the cock pit and “giving the gun.” She mounted into the with the ease and grace of the bird she’ was: sup. posed to imitate, the American eagle Nelson took this first experimenta ship and risked his own neck by sulting from a broken connection.| because it is the/home of the old. landed: “beside | est weekly newspaper on the North ‘The ‘escort planes chem, ro Martin kept straight on to- ward Oregon. “In landing, Each pilot was to have the privilege | first leg of the round the world of choosing his own mechanician. Maj. Martin and his five fellow pilots were officially notified shortly before Christmas, 1923. field, Newport News, Va., they were put through’a six weeks’ intensive course in the subjects that Gen Pat- ‘Although we had planned to. hop the morning of the 17th of March, we were held up by the weather, and it was 9:30 before we finally got away. had been there since before daylight waiting in the cold to see us off, Arnold, air officer of the 9th corps area, and Maj. Martin sent Capt. Harold from Crissy field . ‘Wade tore off: his tail skid, but with the help of the boys in the escort-planes, he and Ogden got fixed up in a hurry, filled the radiator wtih water and took} The plantation owners around] of planes for 10 oft again, They arrived in Eugene} Woodville specialize in cotton, beans| ferred to Selfridge field, Detrolt only forty minutes behind us. . Oregon Bids Them God-Speed. “The: landing at Eugene was like| 8Teat cotton plantations, anid.a cot- coming home for me, because\I had| ton gin where his son, Henry Hor-| menting with’ aero engines in. his there for| tio or Henry “Houdini” as his fel- several years while in command’ of |!0W Magellans ‘called him, got his the squadron that patroled the for-| first knowledge of engines as he ests of Oregon and Washington on| tinKereti with the machines that ex-| hours that he got to doine It seemed as| tracted the seeds and packed his| daredevil stunts as town had|father’s bales of cotton. Henry’s| plane to plane. turned out to meet us and we had| father also runs the largest country| While still in ‘Texas, ho attempted another big banquet that night with | Store in that part of Mississippl. And| to fly from San Antonio te Tennee a lot more speeche: the capital, had no landing field, the / and we put them to ver; good use,| that nearly cost him his Ife. He governor had to come'to Hugene to] as you will see later on. and~a companion named Méshier wish us God-speed on behalf of the/ “Rushing back to Vancouver by | tok off from Kelly fleld, San An. people of Oregon. “The next morning we got away | because of the necessity of going so | late, they thought to reach Houston from Eugene and.pushed on to Port-| far, we jumped into our cruisers! and land, landing just across the river at| took off for Seattle. For an hour Vancouver, Wash., where all planes| we flew above the Columbia and|them sooner than they had antict. are obliged to descend. simply. be- cause the metropolis of Oregon too backward off around . At Langley kle the Atlantic hop via jreenland and Labrador Many peop'e would be most useful tg¢ men setting out on an undertaking of this kind, subjects such as the study of wind storms, world-wide climatic istent young Scotsman named Donald Douglas, sned a special torpedo seaplane for the navy several years Haviland to see where we could get ic and report- headquarters what medical and surgical knowledge might be valuable in case anything happened when the flyers were out of reach of a doctor. Trained by Specialists. leading meterological expert of the American army, Maj. wave them a special course ‘of lec- tures ‘on the subject to which he had devoted his entire life. them how they could tell by the di- rection and velocity of the wind and the nature of cloud formations just weather could be. es us impossible. Then Col. Maj. Martin e, because I had flown down the coast I told him that f{ could get So ,the major sald all right, and Instructed me to take the lead as soon as we got in the Arnold sudgested the lookout for. fire: them through. Because Salem, He showed son's plane completed the day before and he had flown it down to San Diego to get adjusted and talled. So on'y three eattle together. to come along as soon as possible and join us in Seattle. Planes Crowd Narrow carrying pho: phers and newspaper men, took field with us. f having flown up and down vided started for they might expect to encounter cy- thunderstorms, other troublesome climatic obstacles in aviation to establish a landing field. of its own. At fifty miles an hour we motored Portland for another n, which was made memor- the presentation of bathing The people of Portland recom: should wear these underelothing, for any emergenc: one of the world’s authorities on from Clover me of. ¢xperimentation and « 1 course in ul staff lectured to the S regarding mended that we ing any of the oth- ugh any mountains a0, we would be read: We didn’t do that. but we did carr: them all the way around the world,” land. ous drugs which ir first ald kite, and advised the aviators as to the kinds vad placed in over them ig a rather ticklish job. . by Fellows in Air Service; ‘ Record Is Reviewed By LOWELL THOMAS. (Copyright, 1924, By Ci ao pers Syndicate and The McClure Newspapers Syndicate) “Trouble Shooting Henry” is the name by which Lieu- tenant Ogden of the world cruiser Boston is best known to his fellows in fhe air service. But just for short, they call him “Hank.” ! Then again they call him “Houdini,” both because he is a sort of wizard with engines and becatse he had'a mystérious habit of disappearing in nearly every city where the world flyers stopped. Nof until Dame Fortune picked him out one has entirely solved this mys-|to circumnavigate the world by air tery, but “Houdini” Ogden has aland take his place in history along secret volume, a little black book,| with Magellan ang Columbus. “‘Trou- in which are some hundreds of ad-| ble Shooting Henry's” sole ambition dresses that ought to give.a clue. |in life was to run a country store ‘A “trouble shooter” is a sort of a| ‘ike his father's and protect his cows doctor of engines. Whenever a Lib-|from the dreaded “Texas tick. erty or Hispano-Suiza, or any other} Like his associates, Wade and motor develops 'a bad cough, blind| Harding, Henry Ogden attended staggers, altitude sickness, or any|country school. Like all of the rest of the other thousand and one ail-|of the world flyers; excepting Erik ments that engines are subjected to,| Nelson, his ancestors were of Eng- “trouble shooters" Hke Henry Og-|lish origin and among the earliest den are Hed in to prescribe, or per-| colonists, to settle in America. His form a final autopsy and order the) mother comes from the same family interment of the deceased. |as “Ma" Ferguson, the newly elect- “Trouble Shooting Henry" ~ag-|¢@ Woman governor of Texas. clares .emphatieally that there f{s| Henry's life before he entered the nothing interesting or romantic} sir service was spent ainong the a about himself or anything that he|groes of the cotton p'antations, and ever did up to the time when he|he tells many interesting stories of was picked out to fly“around the|his associations with them. For in- world with Lieut. Wade. But as we|stancé there.is one old “Uncle Tom" shall see, he is not competent to{who has just passed the century pass judgment on the subject for|mark. Henry’s father has long this same Henry, who is so shy|since pensioned him off, and surely and modest, has done everything|few men ever did more to earn a from punching cows in the deita| pension. In the old slayery days, country along’ the Mississippi to| before this black Samson went to ‘eaping from plane to plane in mid-| work on one of the Ogden planta- alr after.the fashion of the late] tions, he was the propert: of a slave Lieut. Locklear, who. met his death| owner who was interested in eugen- doing a similar daredevil feat. ics. “Uncle Tom’ was, and still Is, “Trouble Shooting Henry” has a|® Slant. He stands over six feet southern accent thicker than the|Nnd has the chest development of a water in a Mississippi mangrove!/Cavéeman. His master was keen to swamp, thicker even than Louisiana| reed # face of giants for his cot- molasses. Born on a plantation] ton plantation, so he presented ‘this dusky stalwart with a harem, and today he is the father of sixty chil- dren; which tiés the'record of Brig- ham Young, and is exceeded only by the record of the late king of Slam, who held. the world's championship for many years, After Henry. had finished his high school work at. Woodville he went down to New Orleans to take a course in a business college. He Also spent several ‘summers working as a fur buyer—collecting ‘possum and coon skins from colored trap- ed out that-the furs he had bought Were stolen property, and once when he ‘caught the thief he and his friends tied the latter over a log, gave him a hundred licks with a strap, and then chased him out of the state. = = + Lieutenant’ Ogden ‘ts by far the youngest of the world fiyers. When America entered the world war he Was: only 17, having been. born on September 13, 1900, So he was not allowed to join the army until 1919, when_he entered the air service re. bait depot at Mongomery, Ala. Up to that time this youth, who Was destined to circumnavigate the world by air, not only had never been in an airplane, but he had never even seen on After a six weeks’ course in the construction of airplane motors, during which time he frequently structors would not be able to ask him questions that he couldn't an- swer, he showed such aptitude that he was made an instructor himself. Five months after he had enlisted he passed an examination that rait ed him to the rank of staff ser- seant, and he remained at Mont- gomery as an instructor in motors until the end of his first year, It was during this period that he Then for a time he was in charge of one of the “Trouble Shooting Henry. (@acific and Atlantic Photo.) between Baton Rouge and. Natchez. plate factory at another nine ferent types Gnomes, Le gas. Then he was transferred to the rigging department for instruction Next he got his first assignment as a “trouble shooter,” and in the summer of 1921 was transferred to American continent—the “Woodville | Ellington field, Houston, Tex., and Republican” (one of the most hard-| placed-in charge of the hangar used shelled Democratic papers in the| by visiting “ships.” ” From ‘th, ‘Solid South"), and second, because| he was transferred to the Rare "i it gave America one of its world| pair department where he was in re. charge of the inspection and repair months, until traiis. and cattle, and in the midst of this| During all of his years in the alr country, B. P. Ogden controls four | service he has spent the most of hic time when off duty either expert. own private shop or flying around in commercial planes owned by his friends. It was. during those off such jumping from on one occasion and ran into a fog motor car and losing another hour] tenio, late one afternoon, but not too before nightfall. However, as a re- sult of fog, night closed down over its tributaries, looking down-on great | Pated, They were obliged to fly log Jams, lumber mills, and the for-| above the clouds with nothing ‘ty ests that I had patroled so often in| ulde them but their compass, the:days when we scanned the coun-| Thinking that they must be some. try. for forest. tires, where in the vicinity of Houston, official ‘About a hundred miles from| they drove down, through the fog. Portland we ran head on into a] 1¢ was, pitch dark, so dark that they heavy rain pnd then encountered a] couldn't even see the struts of the dense fog, which ed us down] Plane 10 feet away, into a canon. Finally we were almost | ‘Co their consternation. they found among the tree tops, groping about | themselves over water, which they Uke owls, so we turned around, flew! figured must be the. Gulf’ of Gat back and spent the night in Port-:veston, a branch of the Gulf of Mex ico, Nearl: { FAME IS UNIQUE Photo shows Lieut. Ogden in the Impromptu costume which he wore when greeted by cheering thousands in Paris, (Copyright, Pacific and Atlantic.) —__——_— $$$ back in search of land, was inky black by now, but at last they made out a faint light, heading toward it, discovered that they were near the shore.\Then the gas ran out, and they simply had to find some place to put the bus down. When the wheels touched ground, the plane bounded back into the air for 30 or 40 feet and then» pancaked down and stopped dead, right astrad- dle of a 15-foot ditch. the ditch the laborers had piled dirt high on either s'de. Moshier had hit the pile on one side and this is what caused them to, bound back into.the air: "been unlucky and had hit 10 ‘feét farther-on, they would have dug the nose of the plane right into the mid., dle of the ditch and neither of them’ would ever have know what had happened. As it was, broke squarely in two. The machine gun mount hit Ogden in the face, knocking out all of, his front teeth. A piece of fusefnge went through his left arm. The contro) stick was driven through Lieutenant Moshier’s left side just under the ribs, but fortunately far enough to the left to prevent the injury being fatal. To maké matters still worse, both airmen were obliged to sit out in the morning because the night was too thick for them to move away from the plane without running the risk of falling into ed the spot, both plano and pilot were engulfed in flames, others chosen to carry the Any flag around the world by air, never dreamed that this honor was going to fall to him. others from different fields, he was headquarters Along with ordered to near Newport News, Va. of the world flight had already been se’ected and each of them kad tenta- tively chosen a second man to fly along as his mechanical expert. “There were six more of. us, and we worked for some weeks on the first Douglas cruiser, changing pon. toons and propellers in order to find out just which type would be the best for the trip,” says Lieut. Og. “We wanted to see which pon- toons would enable ‘take off’ from the water with the heaviest load, and which propeller wou'd make it possible to get off in the suortest space. But the six of us who appeared to be extras figur- ed. that we were merely mechanics who had no chance of getting in on However,, to our the cruiser to delight Maj. Martin drove up hangar one day and announced none of the mechanics had been de¥ Initely accented for the tri: swamp until an examination would be held Ina He said the men who gave account of themselves in examination would So I started studying and working During his five years as an avia. “trouble shoote: as I had never worked before in m pored over data which I thought might be usefu Qne day at Houston he was standing out in front of his own han: Lieut. Tinsley, tempted to make a landing: ley came down with the wind and directly toward one of the hangars. Seeing that he was in danger of hit- ting the hangar, he “gave her the gun” and attempted to ascend. he couldn't quite clear the roof. His wheels caught and his landing gear was ripped off, causing the plane to dive straight into another hangar across the company street. ley in his SE-5 passed through the first wall of this hangar, the wings of the plane stopped on the outside, while fuselage, crashed right ley had presence of mind enough to leap out of his cockpit and a mo- his gaso'ine tanks ex- ploded and both building and air- Plane went up in flames. escaped with nothing but a slight Lieut. Ogden was standing only a few feet away and saw the whole affair. Smith and Erik Nelson gave following day it was announced that the mechanics for the world fli would be Jack Harding, Alva Har Arthur Turner, and myself. ‘That was the hanplest moment of “The fact that at first skeptical about the feasibility of the undertaking did not dampen my en T knew that aviators of other countries had been attempting to fly around the world for several I_ knew that every exped! d been a failure and that the greatest airmen of them Ross Smith, the famous Austr who had flown half wa World from had started ment later to cireumnavi globe and met his death just was setting forth. But after I had how elaborate were the arrangements made by the alr serv ice, how advance men had been sett to every corner of the world over which the flight might pa supplies were being placed all alons the route, and how the navy and other branches of the government service were preparing to co-opt ate with us, I concluded that otf chances of success were far greateT than T had at first imagined. Nev ertheless, in my wildest dreams I never conjured up any picture thet even approached the hardships th® we were to endure. ‘ As I look back on {t now it When he left Ellington field for Detroit, Ogden accompanied teen airplanes that were being trans. ferred by air from Texas to Michi- He was one of three mechan- ics selected to keep the squadron in condition’ on the way and they suc- through without a forced landing. In Michigan he was again assigned trouble shooting’ of visiting planes that took part in the Detroit airplane races of 1922, and Afterwards remained ridgé fleld until called to Langley field, Virginia, for duty in connec- tion with the world flight. Selfridge field, Ogden Was again associated with Tinsley, who had gone through the hangar down in Texas. casion he watched Tinsley high tension wire without wrecking But a few weeks later Ogden was standing out on the field with the colonel when Tinsley “took A thousand feet off the ground his motor The moment it stopped the colonel remarked ‘to Ogden, had his ninth chance and lost." In- and took care like a nightmare, a nightn which at any moment I may awakt to find it all merely a figment of fancy; to find that I around the world, that I never wa In the air service, and that T am still manicuring cows along the Missi* “Tinsley has either pancaking somewhere or div- only chance, Tinsle of trying to ne down on the flying field. its momentum and when such a thing I= fmmediately went n Ogden and the colonel reach- made the mis. around and y OUtros gas, they turned] V