SOUTH AFRICA: Ulrich & the Airplane

To 17-year-old Ulrich Leibbrandt an airplane was just about the most exciting thing in the world. Every free moment he had, Ulrich spent at a small airfield near Capetown (used by two aircraft companies for charter flights and flying instruction). There, Ulrich made fast friends with Pilot Peter Lome and Flying Instructor Dave Worthington, a couple of ex-R.A.F. men, who to Ulrich’s delight sometimes took him up for a flip around. It was much more fun than going to school or helping with his headmaster’s pet project, i.e., planting grass on the school’s playing fields. One day last week Ulrich told his schoolmates: “I hate this silly grass planting. I won’t be here on Monday, yet you’ll see me.”

Solo on Coke. Early Monday morning, carrying a satchel filled with bottles of Coca-Cola and rolls of toilet paper, Ulrich went to the field. No one was about. Ulrich wheeled a shining silver Auster 90-h.p. monoplane out of its hangar, set the controls, turned over the propeller, and crawled into the cockpit. Ulrich had never handled the controls of a plane before, but he had watched his pilot friends. He opened up the throttle, hobbled down the runway, rose bumpily into full flight.

When Pilot Lome arrived at the field half an hour later, he was puzzled to see the silver monoplane in the sky. Then Lome noticed something dropping from the plane. It turned out to be a white handkerchief tied to a cardboard container in which Ulrich had placed a message: “Fed up with school, also am dodging appointment with dentist.”

Ulrich buzzed off across Capetown’s suburbs in the direction of Wynberg Boys High School. Spotting his schoolmates planting grass below, he went into a dive, swooped low over their heads. Just to make sure of his objective, he turned his craft around and buzzed the target area a second time. Then he made his bomb run. Smack over his gaping classmates, he dropped the toilet paper, which fluttered in long streamers on the playing field of Wynberg. Ulrich pulled out of his dive at 120 mp.h., and headed home.

Mission Accomplished. Back at base, Lome and Worthington had frantically summoned police, the fire brigade and an ambulance. Returning from his mission, Ulrich circled the field and dropped a message saying he would try to land if his friends below would signify—by firing a green Very light—that he would not be punished for his prank. Lome gave him the green light. Then Ulrich dropped another message: he did not know how to land.

Lome and Worthington went up in a Piper Cub and, while Worthington took the controls, Lome, hanging halfway out of the plane, held up a 3 by 4 ft. board, on which he had scrawled: “Ulric. Please land. Use flaps. Fifty-five miles per hour.” When Worthington brought his Cub alongside the Auster, Ulrich went into a mock dogfight, playfully charging the Cub, then swooping off again. Finally, after six clumsy trial runs over the field, each time close to cracking up, Ulrich managed to set his craft down without a bump. He had been in the air 3½ hours, drinking Coke for energy. When his pilot friends rushed to him, they found him in a dead faint, among empty Coca-Cola bottles.

At week’s end, Ulrich was still in bed, being treated for shock. Said Headmaster William Bowdon: “I’ve pointed out to the other boys that when stripped of its glamor Ulrich’s action was to take what didn’t belong to him and endanger the lives of other people. But the boys still regard him as a hero.”

Said Ulrich’s mother: “It was very naughty of him. As soon as he’s fit, I suppose hell be back hanging about the aerodrome again.”