Every once in a while the motor would get rough again, and Eddie would reach down and take another swig. He said it took him the whole quart of gin to smooth that motor out and get the ship over the mountains and onto Curtiss Field.
One of the customs in the army, if you were out on a cross-country flight, was not to look at the weather map to see if the weather was all right to go home, and not to look at your ship to see if it was in good enough shape to make the trip, but to look in your pocket and see if you had enough money to stay any longer.
I didn’t have, so I piled into my old wing-radiatored PW-8 and took off from Washington for Selfridge Field. I knew I was going to have trouble with the radiators.
I climbed slowly on reduced throttle, reaching for the cold air of altitude. I watched the water temperature indicator, but before it registered boiling I was surprised to see steam coming from the radiators. I remembered then. Water boils at a lower and lower temperature the higher you go. I still thought the lower temperatures of altitude would offset that, so I throttled my motor to the minimum necessary for level flight until the radiator stopped steaming, then opened it a little and tried to sneak a little more altitude before it steamed again.
I worked myself up to six thousand feet like that. I was watching for steam for the umpteenth time, hoping to make Pittsburgh before I ran out of water, when I saw white smoke coming out of the exhausts. I was out of water and was burning the oil off the cylinder walls.
I cut the switches. The speed of my glide kept the prop turning over like a windmill. I picked a field in the country and started talking to myself: “Take it easy—Slow her down—Come around—Don’t undershoot whatever you do—Hold it now, you’re overshooting—Slip it—Not too much—You’re undershooting again—Kick those switches on—Gun it—All right, kick him off—Watch those trees—The fence now—You’re slow—Let ’er drop, the field’s small—Wham!—Watch your roll—Ground loop at the end if you have—You don’t—You made it.” I always talk to myself like that in a forced landing.
I don’t remember how much water I put in the thing. I do remember that there was only a pint in it when I had landed. And I had kept from burning up the motor!