Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
EN ROUTE TO SAN BERNARDINO
Marvel Crosson looked over her right shoulder, then her left, checking to see if any of her competitors in the large-engine airplane class were catching up to her. On this short of a flight, under a half hour, making up a minute of separation from her ought to be impossible.
Ahead she saw two specks: airplanes flying the exact same track she was. Those would be the last two girls in the light-engine class. She was gaining on them in her larger-engine plane.
Of course, the power in the heavy-engine planes had been limited to well below what most of the women flew in their own airplanes.
It was ridiculous that many of the pilots and their sponsors had to scramble at the last minute to buy or build airplanes that fell under the maximum engine displacement limits the race committee had set for them.
She supposed the committee was concerned that if the women raced in planes as powerful as those flown by men, the women might make the trip faster and embarrass their male National Air Race counterparts participating in a simultaneous derby of their own.
Thankfully, the men’s route ran well north of the women’s, so they wouldn’t risk crossing paths and causing airspace conflicts with one another.
Concentrate on flying, Marvel. A cocktail of emotions rippled through her.
The main ingredient was her excitement to finally be racing.
She’d been anticipating this race all summer long, and her impatience to get to this point had been hard to contain.
Her other main feeling was pride, not only in herself for making it to the top echelon of women pilots in the world but also in these accomplished women aviators for being willing to come together and pit their skills against one another in friendly competition.
The male pilots behaved differently. Some of them refused to race each other and made excuses about needing to make sure folks all over the country got to see airplanes and air shows.
But the way her brother, Joe, told it, those guys had fragile egos and didn’t want to lose against other famous pilots.
Dear me, what would those poor men do if a woman pilot beat them one day?
Focus, darn it! A twist of fear tightened her gut.
She knew better than to get distracted like this.
An airplane could get away from a pilot who didn’t pay attention to every little detail of how it was operating, where it was going, and what should happen next.
Yep, anticipation was the name of the game in safe flying.
Always keep one step ahead of the machine.
And in the case of this race, one step ahead of what the other pilots might do.
Speaking of which, she glanced over her right shoulder and saw downtown Los Angeles below and nothing but blue skies above.
She swiveled her head to look over her left shoulder and was jolted by surprise.
Not one but two airplanes were visible right behind her.
In fact, they were close enough for her to identify Louise Thaden’s plane pulling even with Pancho’s Travel Air.
How was that possible? Supposedly, Marvel’s plane was significantly faster than both of theirs.
She topped out at 168 knots, and both of their Travel Airs had never been clocked going faster than 156.
She should be pulling away from them. For that matter, she should have already caught up with the last of the lower-powered airplanes in front of her.
She checked her airspeed and frowned. Only 150 knots? What on earth?
She pushed on the throttle and was startled to realize it had slid back in its housing beside her left knee. How had that happened? She made a mental note to have her mechanic tighten up the throttle handle and make its movement stiffer when she landed in San Bernardino.
The engine responded to the throttle, but it seemed to hesitate for a moment before reacting. Was that normal? Her old plane didn’t do that. Regardless, her airspeed indicator began to creep up. 152. 154. Come on, baby. Show Louise and Pancho what you’ve got.
How come she hadn’t noticed the throttle’s backward slide or her airspeed decreasing? Strange. Normally, she noticed even the most minute details about her plane while she was in the air. Speaking of which, it dawned on her that her engine sounded . . . off.
She concentrated on its deep roar. If this were her own plane, she would say the engine was running a bit rough.
But she’d had so little time in this plane she couldn’t tell if that growl beneath its rumble was normal or not.
By the end of this race, she would be able to tell.
But not now. She and her new baby hadn’t bonded just yet.
Nine days and 2,800 miles from now, she would know everything there was to know about this sleek new plane: its maximum performance, its foibles, and even its flaws.
For surely it had a few of those. No airplane was perfect, no more than any person was.
Most of her fellow competitors were in the same boat, flying new planes or their own planes but with major engine modifications to qualify for this race. They all would be feeling out their planes and getting to know them for the next couple of days.
The engine made a popping noise as if a cylinder had misfired.
Hmm. Could be a problem with a cylinder bushing or maybe a problem with a fuel line.
Could it have twisted or maybe gotten some foreign object lodged in it?
For that matter, it could be a problem with the fuel itself.
Walter Beech had built this new engine specifically to burn Shell’s new Aviation 100 gasoline.
Army engineers had figured out not long before that a fuel high in aromatics worked best with high-compression pistons.
And the higher the compression, the more power each piston put out.
The more power the engine produced, the faster the airplane could fly.
And for military pilots, having more speed than the other guy meant the Americans won their dogfights and stayed alive.
As much as regular people enjoyed watching acrobatic air shows and air races like this one, they seemed not to realize that the purpose of pilots pushing the envelope of their planes’ performance, figuring out and practicing new acrobatic maneuvers, and working with engineers to eke ever more speed out of their planes was not solely for the public’s enjoyment.
All of this was ultimately about making sure United States military pilots were the best in the world, flying the best planes in the world.
She was passionate about advancing aviation in America, and she knew many of the other women were, too. As much fun as flying was, they all had a higher purpose in doing this.
Marvel Crosson. Get your head back in your cockpit and stop thinking about everything but flying!
What was wrong with her? Her brain never meandered like this, let alone when she was flying.
Now, where was she? Oh, right. Her engine seemed to be running a bit rough, and she’d been wondering if the Aviation 100 she was using was the problem.
She highly doubted it was the fuel. The army had spent a great deal of time and money developing and testing its new fuel, made specifically for airplanes.
Not to mention, Walter Beech had put the fuel through its paces thoroughly before switching over to using it in his planes.
As for her engine, it had been extensively bench-tested burning Aviation 100, and she had complete faith in Walter’s expertise when it came to building this engine to operate at peak efficiency using the new gas.
Walter had even gone to considerable expense to ship a supply of the new fuel to every stop along the route of this race for her.
Don’t second-guess yourself. If the engine’s running rough, it’s not the gas.
She pulled her map out from beneath her left thigh to make sure that while her mind had been wandering, her plane hadn’t wandered off course as well.
She guessed the San Bernardino Mountains off to her left was three miles away, which put her slightly to the right of her planned route.
She banked the plane gently to the left, so as not to lose any speed in the turn.
San Bernardino was nestled at the base of the mountains the city was named after, and each of the pilots had to decide how close to the mountains they were willing to go to shave a few seconds off their race time.
Because of how fast her plane was, she could afford to be a little safer and stay farther away from the mountains than the other racers.
She knew from years of experience flying in Alaska that mountain ranges came with lots of thermal updrafts and downdrafts, which could swirl into turbulence bad enough to force a plane to slow down to avoid tearing its wings off.
She checked behind her once more and was startled to see Louise and Pancho still gaining on her. They must be flying all out. Either that, or they’d both figured out how to get a little more speed out of their engines than had been advertised before the race. Clever. Sneaky, but clever.
She grinned, relishing the competition. Go ahead. Throw the best you’ve got at me, ladies. I’m still going to win this race.
The citrus grove below her ended, and a quick check of the map and her watch confirmed she had another twelve minutes of flight time.