FLYING IN A STORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 258, 29 October 1921, Page 17

FLYING IN A STORM.

I . (By G. WARD I'RICE.)

On % recent air tour of Germany from J cast to west, I had the experience of. • travelling" from Berlin to Konigsbcrg . (350 miles) in just as bad. weather as, ] for commercial purposes is considered i ( "livable.*' _ . .I 1 When we started from Berlin m a 'big j g all-metal Junker's monoplane, on the first'lap of our north-easterly flight to, f Stettin, the sky was packed with dense |, grey clouds, whose lower edges drooped | in'torn and trailing curtains to within ~ 500 ft of the ground. In addition, there | ' was a high following south-west wind. ] I All round hung the heavy grey blur of ] falling rain, through a stinging flurry,or which we occasionally dashed. Alter i about an hour's flying it became appar- , cnt that the pilot was lost, I Round and round the great aeroplane . circled. The long wings tilted clumsily j < ' in the gale like the pole of a tight-rope j j" Once the pilot dropped steeply to 100.; 1 ft.., trying to read the name ol a little I i sin"le-track railway station lost in the | forest. And at laet, scraping over the Hops of a row of trees, lie landed m a ' ion", narrow field containing a herd ot black and white calves, which stampeded | -fortunately in the opposite direction.. Then, as we came to a standstill, tn«r pilot remarked frankly: "I'm lost, I must go and find someone to tell me j where we. are." _ j As he clambered morosely out- into the rain the head of a determined old Got- j man lady passenger emerged from the cabin behind and demanded explanations., She had paid her fare, she stated, to lly; Isecurely and expeditiously from Berlin; I to Stettin, and not to cruise perilously about among the top branches of fir ! forests. . I Gulping with indignation, the pilot (lis- ' appeared, an incongruous figure in his 1 j heavy flying-overalls, clambering over fence's and jumping little streams. I It was over an hour before he returned | ! with a green-uniformed forester and the : information that a change of wind had pushed us about SO miles on the way to Tlamburg, at right angles to our coursc '; for Stettin. I For half an hour more the forester '! and I then laboured at twisting the proMpeller while the pilot switched the ig- ' nition off and oil, and the engine, its ' ardour cooled by long standing in the rain, refused to start. At last it splut- ' tcred into life, and we rolled to one end : fjof the field to start. | It was barely long enough to give the i , I run required, so that when we were about J forty yards from the row of poplars at ; the end and travelling at sixty miles ' an hour we were still on the grouud. I was holding my breath for an almighty smash when the pilot suddenly yanked his "joystick" back and the big 'plane rose at those trees as a racehorse flies a hurdle. We came over the tops of them like a rocketing pheasant, with, I should imagine, five feet to spare. Then began a labouring, lurching, buffeting struggle with the storm all the way to Stettin. The sky was still a mass of "filth," as airmen say, and now and again we plunged into the mad-j dening milky blindness of a fragment ot low cloud. But through it all the great aluminium monoplane, with its English engine, droned on as unperturbed as a liner rocking to a heavy sea. and. three hours late, we safely reached Stettin.—"Daily ' Mail."