Books › Blue Book v055 n01 [1932-05], 1932 › scan 5
Scan 5
Blue Book v055 n01 [1932-05], 1932
40 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1With the Night Mail—1932
3By LELAND JAMIESON
5Illustrated by George Avison
7GREENSBORO to One Hundred, Greensboro to One Hundred, Greensboro calling Mailwing Number One Hundred. Go ahead."
9The radio operator chanted the call, turned off his transmitter and listened acutely in his earphones for the distant answer. But none came, and after two minutes the operator tried again. Still nothing but faint static reached his ears.
11He began calling Spartanburg:
12"Greensboro to Spartanburg, Greensboro to Spartanburg. Go ahead."
13"Spartanburg to Greensboro," came the reply. "O. K. Go ahead."
14"I've been trying to get a message through to One Hundred," the Greensboro operator said. "I can't work him—think something could be wrong?"
15"He's got no receiver for any messages except the radio beam and weather broadcasts. Didn't you know that? Mail ships don't carry 'em."
17The Greensboro man was new. He had been at work on this line only a week. "No," he came back. "Well, I'll have it broadcast as a special weather report, then. But it'll be the best weather report that pilot ever got!" He switched off the air, called the Department of Commerce station two miles away, and talked for a few moments.
19The Department of Commerce operator, following this conversation, switched off the guiding finger of the beam, and went on the air with the strangest message any air mail pilot, flying on his run, could get.
21Johnny Lee, the pilot of One Hundred, was out of Greensboro with Schedule Four, night mail for Atlanta. The weather was bad, but flyable. Spartanburg, the next stop, reported three hundred feet. Greensboro, behind, had had two hundred when Johnny went in and came out of there. Atlanta, at the end of the run, had seven hundred—for this night relatively good.
23So Johnny was sitting in his cockpit smoking a cigarette, his eyes glued to his turn indicator, his ears tuned to the long, unbroken squeal of the radio beam which was guiding him upon his course. He was flying blind, but he had been flying blind all the way from Richmond, and he had done it so much that it was as easy for him as flying visually.
25Suddenly the beam went off. Johnny Lee came up in his cockpit as rigidly as if the engine had stopped. His radio was his salvation—the thing, and the only thing, which would bring him into Spartanburg. The way to get killed was to try to get down and fly under a ceiling like this. Once a man "pulled up" it was impossible to get down without great risk.
27But the beam was followed, a moment later, by a voice that Johnny recognized as coming from Greensboro. Since the broadcast wasn't on regular schedule, he listened carefully. It might be a warning of a dangerous weather condition developing ahead.
29"Double-U—R—Double-U, Greensboro, North Carolina," the voice began in an unmodulated monotone that pierced the earphones. "Special broadcast to pilot Lee, southbound on Trip Four. Special broadcast to pilot Lee, southbound on Trip Four—"
31Johnny was tensely alert. Specials like this almost always meant some potential danger—another ship about to pass him in the "soup," or a recall because of weather, perhaps an order to get down at the first emergency field he could find. But what came to his ears brought a broad grin to his face.
33"Pilot Lee, you are the father of a baby girl, born tonight at nine fifteen. Pilot Lee, you are the father of a baby girl, born tonight at nine fifteen. Congratulations. Everybody sends you congratulations. Double-U—R—Double-U, Greensboro, North Carolina." The voice stopped and, following a short pause, the whistle of the beam once more stabbed as an unbroken sound into the earphones.
35JOHNNY sat there, almost unable to believe his ears. His spirits soared, and he grinned for no reason at all except that he felt better than he had in a long time. "But, damn it," he muttered, "why didn't they tell me something about Mary? Still, no news is good news—she's bound to be all right."
37When his ship slid off on a wing and the wires tuned up to a crescendo in the rising blast of air, he came back to some semblance of unified endeavor and started flying again. He had, for the time being, forgotten that he was even in the air. He was thinking about his wife, and wondering what a baby of his would look like. It was his first.
39His thoughts were a medley of hopes and conjectures when the beam began to narrow, pulling him in toward Spartanburg. It was difficult, now, to keep the plane in the thin line; wind drift and the inaccuracies of instrument navigation caused it to slide from side to side occasionally, and during those times either the A or the N merged with the steady on-course whine. And, too, Johnny was thinking very little about the way he flew.
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