Finally I shouted, “You play with them. I’ll land,” and stuck my head out and looked around. We were already low. I picked a small plowed field, the only likely-looking one in the mountainous country, and started into it.
I was coming around my last turn into the field when I discovered high-tension wires stretching right across the edge of it. I was too low to pick another field. The field was too small to go over the wires. I had to go through a gap in the trees to get under them.
I kicked the ship around sidewise. The trees flashed past me on either side, and I hit the ground. The wires flashed past over my head. I used my brakes and stopped the fast ship very quickly in the soft ground. If we had rolled fifty feet farther we would have hit an embankment that rose sharply at the far end of the field.
I crawled out of my cockpit and started to help Lya out of her cabin. She was already emerging, fanning herself with a handkerchief. She spoke with a German accent.
“Oh, Jeemy,” she said, “all the way down I pray to God. But I thank you, Jeemy. I thank you.”
Johnny Wagner came up to me for his transport pilot’s license test. I was the inspector for the Department of Commerce. Johnny knew I was “tough.” As a matter of fact, he figured I was much tougher than I was.
I knew Johnny and liked him. He was crazy about flying and had worked hard to get his flying training. He had pushed ships in and out of hangars, washed them, acted as night watchman and office boy, done anything and everything to pay for his flying time. But I didn’t have the slightest idea how he flew. And after all, you may be a swell guy but not be able to fly worth a cent, and a transport test is supposed to determine whether you are safe to carry passengers.
I found out three minutes after Johnny got in the ship how he flew. Nevertheless, I made him go all through the test. When he came to steep banks I made him pull them in tight. He was reluctant to do it, so I took the ship to do it myself to show him. I could see right away why he was reluctant. It was the way the ship was rigged. It had a tendency to roll under in a tightly pulled in steep bank. But I wanted to see what he would do with it, so I made him do it. He did, and rolled right under into a power spin. He had gone into an inadvertent spin, the unforgivable sin in a flight test.