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Copyright, 1013 by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserves
LlflColA^Eeachey, Death's
Pycemaker.
Nine
Men
Killed
by Im
itating
i His
■ Desperate Feats, Lincoln Beachey, the World’s Most
Daring Aviator,Tells Why He Is Afraid to Fly Again
By Lincoln Beachey
I HAVE just been asked by a syndicate to fly in Europe. I
could easily make at least $100,000 on one contract, but
I have refused. I will never fly again. Fear has driven
me out of the skies for all time. Not fear of my own death
or the dread of bodily injury for myself has made me give
up an art which I dearly love, but the blame and remorse for
the death of brothers aviators who went crashing into eternity
trying to “out-Beachey Beachey.” I have quit as pacemaker
for Death.
I invented the “Vertical Drop,” or, as the newspapers call
It, the “Dip of Death,” the “Dutch Roll,” the “Ocean Roll,” the
“Turkey Trot,” the “Figure Eight,” which is also known as
the "Spiral and Reverse.” Death taught me each one of them.
Nine of my friends were spurred on to try these things, and
every one of them is dead. Phil Parmelee, John Frisbie,
Rutherford Page, Horace Kearney, Billy Badger, Eugene Ely,
Charlie Walsh, Cal Rodgers and Cromwell Dixon, fine boys all
of them. And one by one they have hurtled down, clutching
at the robes of God, to smash on earth!
Death has left me alone, has allowed me to do impossible
things, because I was a good servant to him. I am tormented
with a desire to “Loop the Loop” in the air. I know that
I can do it, but I know that no one else can do it. I know
that if I ever go im into the air again I will pull off this
“Loop the Loop.” And then many men will be taken in by
Death trying to do the same thing because I have done it.
They say I have shown wisdom rare in a gambler, for
I quit the game when I was a winner. I knew I was a des
perate gambler. Death was always my opponent, and I
gave tremendous odds. My life was always my own stake—
my life against a few dollars. It isn’t wisdom that makes me
quit. It’s deadly fear for others.
In Chicago last September the mother of Horace Kearney
came ,o me even while Horace was thrilling the crowds in
GrV .t Park because of his daring. She begged me, weeping,
not to teach Horace any more of my tricks. Horace spoke up:
“Mother, I must be a top-liner or nothing in this game. I
must be as good as Lincoln Beachey or take a back seat,
mother. So long as Lincoln is flying I must do the tricks
he does.”
Three months later he was dead.
Charlie Walsh’s wife begged me have Walsh cut out my
death-inviting spirals. I tried to, and he thought I was jealous.
“Beachey does them, and I must if I am to get any of the
big money,” Walsh told her. Two weeks later Charlie went
into the deadly reverse spiral. A little wire snapped and he
was dead when they picked him up.
I was flying at Albuquerque, N. M., when a wire from
Glen Curtiss told me that Mrs. Walsh and her two fatherless
babes would pass through there the next day. In the baggage
car of the limited was the body of my former team-mate. In
her compartment of the Pullman Mrs. Walsh made me feel
like a wanton murderer as she told me
how Charlie died, determined to master
my spiral. .
I sent some tickets to the widow of
Eugene Ely in San Francisco when I flew
there last Winter. She sent them back.
“I cannot bear to see you fly again,” she
wrote. “I can’t forget that Eugene would
be with me now if he had never seen you
fly.”
After Horace Kearney died Mrs Kear
ney wrote me a pitiful letter reminding me
of her request of a few months previous
in Chicago.
“If only he had never seen you and tried
to emulate your flying,” she wrote.
At Tanforan, last November, I heard sev-
eral of the boys about the hangars talking J
about doing the “straight glide.” I wanted <$
to leave the field then, because when I flj
warned them they only laughed, and I was ^
in the grip of fear—not for myself, but be- K.
cause I was certain they would follow my
lead and go to their deaths. , K/
Why did I enlist as Death’s pacemaker? JW
Well, listen. The people demanded thrills flsr
in the first place. I was never egotistical
enough to think that the crowds came to I
witness my skill in putting a biplane [
through all the trick-dog stunts. There
was only one thing that drew them to my b
exhibitions—the desire to see “something Q
happen”—meaning, of course, my death. j
,They all predicted that I would be killed
while flying, and none near wanted to miss 0
being in at the death if they could help it. n
They paid to see me die. They bet that I
would, and the odds were always against !
did the most impossible things. Death didn’t touch me—although I a!>
ways felt him close behind. I was immune because I was too
good a pacemaker for him.”
The
“Vertical
Drop,”
Better
Known
as the
“Dip of
Death.”
The
Diagram
Shows
Also
the
Deadly
“Come
The memory of it all is now but a mad,
dizzy whirl through space. I know I came
down out of the heavens with the swish
of a great condor. I could hear the hys
terical applause as 1 turned up the nose
of my plane to ease the force of my drop
from the blue. I had coma down in a
straight glide at an angle of about forty-
five degrees. When I stepped down from
the machine I didn’t dare ask—I just
waited for someone to say: “Why,
Beachey, old man, your hair has turned
snow-w T hite!”
And that was the beginning of the “Dip
of Death.” It was the forerunner of all
that people have been pleased to call my
"air deviltry.” My defense of the “Dip of
Death” is that I was forced to take it, as
birdmen have since, and when 1 kept it up
I was furthering the interests of science
in that I was showing airmen that it was
possible to cheat death when your motor
Stalled above. It was all at the peril of
my own life and at the cost of all the lives
snuffed out in an attempt to follow in my
wake. Consequence, I held little
came straight down like a stone. As I
neared the ground I turned up the plane’s
nose and landed in. a distant part of the
field as gently as a bird.
And I’ve done it hundreds of times since.
No living thing has ever gone through the
air at the rate I went. One day we fig
ured the speed of the drop. From an alti
tude of 5,000 feet until the time 1 brought
up the plane’s nose near the ground I trav
eled at the rate of 156 miles an hour. Just
twenty-three seconds it took to cover the
distance!
The boys who tried*to follow me in that
drop, in most cases, went at it blindly. Be
fore taking up the planes I had been a
drigible balloon operator for five years.
Study of the air was a fad with me. When
I took up the planes I knew a little more
luck. He didn’t take the trouble to re
inforce his machine, and the result was
that when he made the drop the force of
the air crumpled the wings of his plane
up about him. He forfeited his life with
a smile.
Eugene Ely was showing a Georgia
crowd the “Dutch Roll.” When they dug
Gene out his last words were: "I lost con-
trol.”
Cromwell Dixon, a mere lad, wanted to
“be better than Beachey.” His machine
crumpled when he was trying the dip.
Cal Rodgers, the man who flew from
coast to coast, died in the surf near Los
Angeles doing the dip. Rodgers was dip
ping down and chasing sea gulls for the
amusement of the crowd. He plunged into
shallow water and died under his machine.
John Frisbie went down to bis death do
ing the “Ocean Roll.”
1 was engaged especially to do stunts at
the Chicago meet. I appeared on the last
two days only, but my antics in the air
saved the meet, they said. When th£
saw me perforin the first day they w r ere
betting in the Auditorium bar that I would
not live the meet out. When I flew over
Niagara Falls and down the gorge they
were betting two to one that I would not
attempt the feat and five to one that I
would never get out of the gorge alive. I
did, though, and landed in Canada in six
minutes, getting $5,000 for the feat. So
perhaps I’ve been forced to do these
stunts.
The aero-scientists said a man couldn’t
go up in the air and come straight down,
because the pressure on the top of the
biplane would crush it and turn the thing
over. With my hat off to science, I will
only say that I dropped straight down
daily for two years. There was pressure
on the top. Lots of times I thought the
canvas MIGHT burst, but it didn’t.
The Chief of Police of San Juan; Porto
Rico, whom I know very well in a social
way—not through professional atten
tions—coined the saying: “To fly better
than Beachey means death.” Those words
seemed to be always before my eyes.
I love the game and believe in it. We
can’t even dream of t’he results yet to be
attained. I know I’ve got plenty of cour
age. I always felt sure of myself—so sure
that the thought Of death never even both
ered me. But my conscience won’t let me
go on with my work. Only one thing will
ever tempt me to take my place in an
aeroplane. If ever the United States iE
forced into a war, and Uncle Sam wants
me to fly for “Old Glory,” I’ll fly—but unti'
then I’m through
insisted that he could do anything 1 did. 1
helped to untangle his dead and broken
body from that very machine a few min
utes later. As we worked to clear him of
the maze of wires and canvas, his mech
anician turned to me and said:
' Mr. Beachey, Rutherford said just now,
before he went up, he was going to outdo
your stunts or break his neck.”
Just an unexpected puff of wind, and it*
was the end. He wouldn’t listen, and he
paid the price with his life. He was doing
what they call my “Dutch Rolls.”
Phil Parmelee was killed doing my “Fig
ure Eight.” 1 used to complete the entire
evolution with my hands off the levers,
guiding my machine with my knees and
the motion of my body oniv. Phil was de-
Both
Beachey’*
Inven
tions.
Badger,
Rogers
and
Dixon
Were
Killed
Trying It.
me away, I wanted them an to say as mey IfiMfl
filed out the gates, ‘''Well, Beachey was •
certainly flying some!”
My "Death Dip”—the vertical glide—
started through an accident that happened
to me when I was thousands of feet in the
air. 1 was up after the altitude lecord at
the Los Angeles meet. I was high above
the clouds. It was very wonderful, for
below me, as far as the eye could follow,
was a perfect sea of cloudy fleece that re
flected the golden sun in a dazzling way.
I felt like an angel—so mucn so that in the
ecstasy of the moment I began to sing
aloud. And in a twinkling Death seemed
.to creep upon me and reach out and touch me with a bony finger-tip. My
motor had stopped dead!
It is beyond my powers to describe my feelings in that dread mo
ment. I had been an airman since I was thirteen. Every move for self-
preservation flashed before me. 1 began to drop, drop, drop wflth ghastly
speed. Resolved to di ecalmly, I tilted the nose of the plane down at an
angle and began to glide. Through the clouds I whizzed, the wings of my
plane groaning as in very agony from the strain of the resisting air, which
rushed through the taut wires of the machine until it sounded as if some
unseen angel of death was playing my requiem on a giant harp.
i of Cal Rogers. He Tried the “Dip of Death,” Shown Opposite, Failed to Make the
and Was Dashed to Death. The Photograph Shows How the Aeroplane Fell Head Oi
termined to master that,
to do it.
Horace Kearney wanted to be the star
at our Los Angeles meet. “Do something
to outshine Beachey!” seemed to be the
cry. So he attempted a flight over the
ocean from Los Angeles to San Francisco,
where a meet was to follow shortly after
He took with him as a passenger Chester
Lawrence, automobile editor of the Los
Angeles Examiner. A single pontoon from
that machine is all that they ever found of
it. Kearney and Lawrence were never
seen alive nor were their bodies found.
Billy Badger, a college graduate and
rich, died in the “pit” at Chicago during
the big meet. Billy was doing my vertical
dip with the “come in.” Billy was ail cour
age and the jolliest fellow I ever knew. He
was happy-go-lucky and simply trusted to
’Come
He died trying
to get used to the increased air pressure.
Gradually I mastered it. One day, letting
only a few friends know of my intentions,
I determined to make a dead drop from an
altitude of 5,000 feet. Well, if I had failed
I wouldn’t be here to tell about it now. I
THt
VfVEBSt