AERONAUTICS: Cartwheel

Dawn had just stolen over Long Island when an eager little man and a thoughtful taller one busied themselves about a monster silvery airplane with “Sikorsky-New York (crossed flags) Paris” painted on her engine gondolas and fuselage. It was on the plains of Westbury and perhaps a thousand people stood about, shivering in overcoats. The morning was not so chilly, but they were excited. In a, few minutes this plane would rush down a long, specially built dirt runaway, lift into the air, skim, climb, circle and head off for the Atlantic, Newfoundland, Ireland, Paris.

The little man, Charles Clavier, 33, regarded the ship’s radio equipment with dancing eyes. That was to be his job, to pick up weather signals midair; to study the air tides, take the radio compass bearings. It was work with which 18 years in the French navy, including four trans-Mediterranean air flights, had made him most familiar. He had brought over from France special instruments, contributed by the big corporation, Radio des Industries. After an annoying fortnight with U. S. customs officials, he had installed and tested his station while the ship’s engines and flying gear were perfected.

The engines and flying gear were what M. Clavier’s tall, slow comrade, Jacob Islamoff, 28, was inspecting one last time. He had worked on this ship, the S-35, ever since her designs were first unfolded in the Sikorsky shops. Out over the ocean it would be his task, not only to help Clavier with the radio, but to watch every cam and strut aboard. That they would flawlessly function he was certain, but he did eye for a moment the special “dolly” (wheeled landing gear) which had been added to help the S-35 leave earth, and which the pilots, once aloft, planned to drop away as excess weight.

Jacob Islamoff knew that this “dolly” had not been tested with the ship weighing over 20,000 lb. Also he knew that now, with a last-moment extra fuel tank added, the ship weighed 28,845 Ib. Earlier tests had come out decimal perfect; Designer Igor Sikorsky knew his business; the three Gnome-Rhone-Jupiter motors had demonstrated their power conclusively and would doubtless lift the whole weight free as a bird. But still, that “dolly” . . . However, Mechanic Islamoff said nothing.

He entered the plane’s rear cabin. His mother and father were in Constantinople; he would go and see them. Little M. Clavier, whose wife and three children waited at home, said: “I will never leave France again.”

The motors were roaring. M. le Capitaine René Fonck had thrown away his last cigaret,* waved his last diffident adieu and sat at the controls. By him sat Lieut. Lawrence W. Curtin, aide to Rear Admiral William A. Moffett of the U. S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. The S-35 lumbered forward. The crowd raced beside it. . .

“We had run about 3,200 ft.,” Lieutenant Curtin later told the coroner, “and obtained a speed of about 70 miles an hour. At this point, one of the wheels (the right-hand one) of the ‘dolly’ collapsed. …” To spectators it seemed that the “dolly” twice bumped heavily, failed to leave the ground. Captain Fonck said afterwards: “I intended to stop the plane but I was afraid it would tear into the crowd of automobiles. . . .” The crippled monster reached a gully at the runway’s end, turned a cartwheel, right wing down, and vanished from sight.

Instantly a 40-foot flag of gasoline flames shook itself up from the gully, furbelowed with black. Captain Fonck and Lieutenant Curtin were found struggling to their feet, 20 yards from the inferno they had escaped before it burst. The flames had their way for hours. Then, certain cinders, a Koran, a crucifix, indicated where Charles Clavier and Jacob Islamoff had burned behind jammed doors. There was no angry inquiry as to why the “dolly” had not been finally tested. Pilot Fonck, Lieutenant Curtin, Designer Sikorsky and his aids, were all exonerated by the coroner of criminal negligence. Some “fanatics” (he did not name them) plagued sad Capitaine Fonck for days afterwards, with “insinuations” (he did not describe them). He said he believed he could have controlled the plane if a rudder had not been sheared off by the broken “dolly,” which Jacob Islamoff, he thought, had released by the lever in the rear cabin.

In Paris, an investigation was begun into an astonishing message received by M. Fonck four stormy days before the disaster, a message signed by Commandant Weiss of the French Air Force saying “Abolutely start the flight, even if you drop in the ocean.” But sorrow predominated over scandal.

The first important announcement from Westbury was: another attempt at the flight, in another Sikorsky, by the Messrs. Fonck and Curtin, for Hotelman Raymond C. Orteig’s $25,000 prize, yes; for the advancement of aviation and French American amity, by all means; but mostly, in memory of the charred sacrifices— Operator Clavier, Mechanic Islamoff.

*An incessant smoker of cigarets, M. Fonck drinks no alcohol. To health, technical experience and adroitness he lays his war feats (126 enemy planes) and safety in civilian aviation. Last week. Pilot Callizo, altitude champion (TIME, Sept. 6), declared that while training for his heart-taxing ascents he cuts out tobacco as well as liquor, but includes “good red wine.”