By the Seat of My Pants: A Pilot’s Progress from 1917 to 1930

By Dean C. Smith

By the Seat of My Pants is Dean Smith's story of his life as a flying cadet in WWI, an airmail pilot in the 1920's and, lastly, as the lead aviator in Admiral Byrd's 1928 Antarctic expedition. Told in a self-deprecating style with a matter of fact sense of humor, it is an engaging read from start to finish. Passages describe airmail runs heading West with no maps or runways available, and Smith's exciting take on the Byrd Expedition is a version of events not in the official records.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aviation Pioneers
• Release date: Mar 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716133336

Book preview

Pilot

Preface

Ihave the temerity to write this story because it is about aviation and because I got into it early, back in what is now my grandfather’s war. Without true premeditation but mostly by the whim of fortune—I insist good fortune—I blundered into becoming an aviator. By equally unlikely chance I joined the Air Mail, the Pony Express of air transportation that sired our airline system. Then I went off on an Antarctic expedition that made first use of the air in that region. During those years nearly all flying was an individual enterprise, usually performed solo, so to tell of it with authority seems to require depicting my own adventures. So be it.

I was born in Oregon at the turn of the century. If this story was not to depend on aviation I would write at length about my family; about the parents of my mother, Martha and Andrew Harris, who crossed the plains in a covered wagon a hundred years ago to homestead at Cove, Oregon, and of their adventures with bandits, horse thieves, and Indians; about my father marrying Rhoda Harris and taking her off to a mahogany camp in the interior of Nicaragua, where she became one of the first white women to live in its jungle. I would like to include details of my father returning to La Grande and buying the Owl saloon, then the Elk, and finally operating the Foley House bar as a highly respected member of the community. I would like to write about northeastern Oregon with its snow-capped peaks and alpine lakes, and of learning to fish for trout in snow-fed streams as clear as liquid air, and hunting in forests of thick spruce and ponderosa pines so tall we had to shoot the blue grouse with a rifle. However, those happenings are so remote we had better start with 1917, which is still a long way back, goodness knows.

Woodcut print of a kite, 1635

Part One

Aviator, 1917 Style

ON A STIFLING AFTERNOON in early August, 1917, a long train of decrepit tourist cars, crammed with raw recruits, slowly chugged past the outskirts of San Antonio until it was alongside an army air station, Brooks Field, and ended a four-day haul. It stopped, not at a platform or siding, but out in the open prairie just past the edge of a new encampment. Through the car windows the rookies could see a field of tents, thousands of them, their rows of white pyramids stretching behind the train as far as they could see.

Ahead there was nothing, but open sandy ground sparsely covered with yellow grass a few inches high. Called by shouts relayed from car to car, the men climbed out, each lugging a barracks bag, and eventually lined in a row parallel to the train. An army private, sporting the white hatband denoting a flying cadet, came along the row counting the men into lots of 150 each, leaving a gap after each lot. Then in the baking sun they waited listlessly, as soldiers always wait, while a second lieutenant worked his way along the train, attending to each lot in turn. Eventually he reached a lot near the end and faced them, front and center.

Attention! he ordered. You men will make up the 125th Aero Squadron. All men with previous military experience, one pace forward.

There was no response.

A long moment passed. Finally a gangly, long-drawn-out youth spoke up: I have been to military school, if that is any help to you.

This seemingly innocent move was perhaps the most consequential act this soldier would ever make, man or boy. It was an unlikely chance there would be no ex-servicemen in his particular lot. Then, too, the lad knew it was a sound rule never to volunteer for anything in the army, but tired and bored with standing there he spoke up in hope of avoiding a longer wait. Had he not, it is likely he would have remained a buck private the rest of the war; as it was, it started him on a career he followed for much of his life.

Let us have a look at him. First off, he had no business to be in the army at all. He was but sixteen years old and the minimum age was legally eighteen. Thin, nigh on to skinny, his legs seemed to split his torso clear up to his breastbone and dangled size-thirteen feet, prominent in yellow army shoes. He undoubtedly had been passed by the recruiting office because of his six feet four and a precocious, deep bass voice. His face was high cheek boned, featuring an oversized nose and a full-fleshed mouth. His hair was black and straight, his eyes light hazel green.

His only claim to grace of looks might be his hands, large yet slender, with long tapering fingers, usually sure and dexterous. At this date I cannot be certain I remember this boy perfectly. In many ways he seems a stranger, yet he was I those years ago.

The lieutenant asked me if I knew drill; I told him I had been a captain in the cadet corps at school. All right, take temporary charge of your squadron; march the men over and get a cot and two blankets for each. He pointed to a stack of cots and a pile of blankets as high as a hotel. Each new squadron, in order of their number, will lay out a new tent row parallel to the one behind. Line up the cots on the ground where the tents are to go. I will be along directly and tell you what to do next.

We set up the cots as the officer had instructed, bare on the prairie grass, and waited for him to return. Our batch of recruits had been staged out of Vancouver Barracks, in Washington State, a week of dreary traveling ago. We had been issued clothing—one olive-drab uniform of wool with the pants cut like riding breeches and the blouse buttoning to a high hooked collar, one khaki ditto, a work suit of denim, a pair of wide bulbous-toed shoes, a stiff-brimmed campaign hat, and a pair of canvas leggings. We had also been given some cotton underwear, shirts, socks, a mess kit, and an enameled cup.

Our gear was stowed in rope-tied canvas barracks bags, which held all our possessions. The men sat on their barracks bags, and waited. Hours passed. It was growing dusk and we had had nothing to eat since morning. Apparently it was up to me to do something about food.

I walked up the lines of tents to the older part of the post, passing milling crowds of newcomers that seemed in a state of complete disorganization. Somewhere I had read that the regular army noncom was the man who made the wheels go round. With that in mind I kept going until I located the top kick of a prewar squadron, identifying him by his hash marks and insignia, a sergeant major. He explained how the new arrivals were being fed, or attempting to be fed, and where to find a mess tent. And mattresses and tents? Oh, it was too late to do anything about them tonight, but come back in the morning. Yes, he’d show me then.

Back at my squadron, I had the men break out their mess kits, curious contraptions that opened into two pans with handles and a knife-fork-spoon gadget, all designed to heat fast and get cold still faster. Back we slogged along the tent lines, a mile or more, until at last we found where we could queue up and eventually be served some food.

That meal was our first contact with slumgullion, a dipperful, supplemented by a hunk of bread and a mug of coffee. We ate out in the open, squatting with our backs to the gusty wind in an effort to keep the blowing dust and sand out of our stew. Hunched as we were, the sharp wind still spread a veil of dust over our plates. Someone said he thought we had enlisted to fight for our country, not to eat it. In the end, we were all singing our old favorite, You’re in the army now.

We wolfed our food, sand and all; we sloshed our mess kits in some GI cans of water, and we made our way back to our particular piece of prairie. That night we slept, or tried to sleep, in the open. The bare cots, springs but no mattresses, soon made waffles of our backs. We lay, then, rolled in our blankets on the ground, or sat huddled like Indians.

It may seem incredible, such chaos and lack of supervision, but tens of thousands of recruits were pouring into the camp before facilities could be prepared and with only a handful of officers available. During that first month, I was told, we had over 100,000 recruits on the post.

After breakfast that first morning I sought out George Poulter, one of the older men of our group, who seemed most apt to be a natural leader, and took him with me to see my top kick friend of the evening before.

The sergeant directed us in getting tents, gear, supplies, and in setting up our squadron organization. By following his daily advice, we stayed well ahead of the other new squadrons and shortly found ourselves a going concern, with a supply sergeant, a mess sergeant, cooks, and a full list of noncommissioned officers.

Our lieutenant was delighted with us, only hopping into our headquarters tent to sign any necessary papers and going on to spend his time with the several other rookie squadrons under his command. Poulter took over as first sergeant, and I became drill sergeant. Each day the squadron went through all the routines I had learned at military school.

The mornings were devoted to camp chores, the afternoons to drill and squadron matters, to policing, inspection, and the like. The major morning work was ditch-digging. The camp had grown, not like a mushroom, but like an explosion. Sanitary facilities were a dire need, with miles of ditches to be dug for water lines, conduits, and sewers. The men learned to sing a blues, its weary words a fateful dirge: I ain’t no aviator nor no aviator’s son, but I can swing the pick and shovel till the aviator comes.

With the instincts of a true soldier I avoided these opportunities for service and song by taking unto myself the medical detail. This consisted of leading the men on sick call to the post hospital for examination and treatment and then escorting them back to the squadron, a job well suited to my talents and inclinations. Not that I spared myself any more than drill sergeants are meant to do. We drilled, and we drilled hard. That is, each afternoon I would stand in the shadow of a tent at the edge of the parade ground and march the men in the sun, giving them cadence drill until their knees buckled. I developed a resonant voice that could boom squads right half a mile.

The rank of acting sergeant was giving a big boost to my self-confidence. I was far from proud of my record at military school. In the cadet corps, though I had made captain in my last year, I had been busted because of some defiant escapade and had graduated as a private. My new position of some authority in a society of adults promptly went to my head, and I developed a fair case of megalomania. This juvenile insanity did not lead to the downfall that one might prophesy, the downfall that was probably my due. Quite the contrary. Throughout my years in the army good fortune was my steady lot; even my disappointments seemed to turn into blessings. Not that I deserved it, but Lady Luck not only smiled on me, she wore a broad grin.

Our first three weeks at Kelly Field were spent in routine quarantine and no one could leave the camp. During quarantine we had our first payday. There we were, upwards of 100,000 men confined on the post, each with thirty dollars in hand. That night there developed a scene that would be difficult to imagine. Crap games you would expect, but not acres and acres of crap games, perhaps ten acres.

As it grew dark, kerosene torches were mounted on rods six or seven feet high, thrust here and there in the ground; blankets were spread at their bases and the games got underway. The entire area was covered by blankets and kneeling players, and milling, pushing, crowding soldiers trying to get into the games. Smoke rose in twists from hundreds of torches; their flames cast flickering pools of shifting light to highlight the avid faces of the kneeling players and throw grotesque shadows on the throng that churned between the games. Standing off, it was Inferno come to life.

To find a dipper to catch some of that flooding tide of silver, Pappy Born, Billy Twogood, and I went partners in starting a game. To combat competition we offered players the luxury of standing at a table, a mess table covered with a blanket, and a propped-up board against which to bounce the dice. Our system was to cut the center whenever there were consecutive passes, the amount depending on the size of the bet. In two hours we made a hundred and twenty dollars. Such prosperity was delirious.

I proposed to my partners that instead of cutting the center we bank the game—fade the shooter’s bets. Pappy and Billy thought it too risky and drew down their money, but like the proverbial treading fool, I undertook to bank the game alone with my winnings of forty dollars.

By all the laws of chance I should soon have been wiped out, but instead the money poured in. In no time I was a Croesus, or so I felt. I had stacks of silver dollars in front of me and my pockets full besides. My friend and early mentor, Top-kick Jones, appeared with his hands full of winnings from other games, but he couldn’t dent my luck. He lost two bets out of every three, doubled his bets, and soon was broke. He stood there for a little while, but when he saw someone else win a few bets he pulled a diamond ring off his finger and thrust it at me.

I need some shooting money, he said. The ring is worth five hundred bucks and I always get three hundred and fifty when I hock it. Lend me three hundred on it.

I examined the ring critically, although I couldn’t have told diamond from glass. I could hardly refuse him; he had been a decent sort to help us get our squadron going and we still depended on his advice nearly every day.

Shoot up to a hundred and fifty, I offered. I’ll keep the ring until you pay.

Shoot fifty, he said.

That’s way over the limit, but seeing it’s you, go ahead.

Ace deuce; boxcars; a point and a return of seven. Four rolls and he was broke again.

A corporal then insisted on shooting fifty bucks. He had a menacing look and I dared not refuse him. He shook the dice with muffled clicks and threw them with a sideways sweep against the board. They bounced back a couple of inches and stood, spinning like tops, until they dropped on seven. Shoot a hundred, he said.

In less than five minutes, he wiped me out. I don’t suppose I had ever had fifty dollars in my hand before. Here I had just had, and lost, a thousand and more. However, Jones still owed me one hundred and fifty dollars, I had his ring and a few dollars still hidden away. It had been an exciting and fruitful venture. Contrary to the copybooks, no disaster pointed a moral. All I had learned was to watch out for professionals, which is perhaps not a bad lesson at that.

Two days after the crap game Master Sergeant Jones came around to talk about the money he owed me. Smith, he began, here’s a proposition. The post commander is going to authorize all squadron commanders to issue company warrants to their acting noncoms. Now a company warrant is only good till you’re transferred, or till the company commander busts you. The real thing to have is a regimental warrant. That’s permanent, good through transfers or anything, and you can’t be busted except by court-martial. Now if you’ll call off that hundred and fifty bucks I owe you and give me back my ring, I’ll fix it up, so you get a regimental warrant instead of that lousy company rating.

How on earth could that happen?

Well, as regimental sergeant major for the post, I handle all the paperwork for the adjutant and the colonel. There’s several hundred regimental warrants to go into the CO for signature. I can fill out the one with your name and slip it in with the rest. They’re supposed to carry a recommendation by the proposing officer, but I’m the one who checks them off for the adjutant. The colonel never reads the stuff.

What about the company commander? Doesn’t he have to sign too?

That’s where you come in. You take on the job of filling out the company warrants he’s going to issue. You just say the regimental sergeant major told you to get them ready. Then you slip in the regimental warrant I give you, signed by the colonel. You spread the lot in front of the lieutenant, with pencil marks where he’s to sign. And presto; you’re a permanent sergeant!

Suppose the lieutenant sees that it’s a regimental warrant?

Even if he does, he’ll figure it’s official. He’ll sign all right—no skin off his own ass.

Darned if it didn’t work out. It was fantastic. In just over one month’s time in the army, a sixteen-year-old kid had possession of a permanent sergeant’s rank in the regular army of the United States. In peacetime, you might put in ten or fifteen years. And in wartime even, I confessed to myself, it could never have happened but for the extraordinary confusion and disorganization of the moment. The illegality and immorality of the whole procedure did not even occur to me. I sewed on my chevrons and went about as though the whole thing was no more than my due.

There was a reason for my swelled head, if not a justification. When I was a boy in grammar school, like most boys I had frequently engaged in scuffles, tussles, and stand-up fights. I’d come home with torn, dirty clothes, with abraded knees protruding through gaps in my long black stockings, sometimes with a bloody nose crimsoning my shirt. This so horrified my mother that she forbade fighting, punishing me when I showed evidence. Overgrown, I was not strong. The boys my size found me easy to pick on. With a whipping waiting at home if I stood up to them, I sought to escape by hiding or running, and in time I became a considerable physical coward.

My father died when I was twelve, and my mother sent me away to school at The Principia, in St. Louis, Missouri. It was a long journey from our corner of Oregon, not only in distance, but in culture. It took five days and nights on the train, too long to return for any but the summer vacation, so that I remained the entire school year. Most of the students came from well-to-do, relatively sophisticated families. When I was a boy, my section of Oregon had a way of life little changed from the 1800’s. Not the Wild West, mind you, as in the movies, but pioneer country. The people were not much for polish, and tended to regard most easterners as dudes.

At school, I was acutely aware of a disparity in my manner of speech, values, and habits, and instinctively sought to find my place in the sun by flaunting authority.

As a student I avoided study, priding myself on getting by without it, and only opening the books that interested me. Although coeducational, Principia was then military for the boys. I passed through two years of grammar school and four of high and must be the only boy who ever spent six years there and graduated a private.

At school, as the war developed, the boys had made their heroes the famous aces. Men like Guynemer, Fonk, and Bishop replaced our homegrown athletic supermen as idols. These were the days of individual combat. The great fliers would roam over the lines like knights of old, flinging their gauntlets in the face of some specific enemy ace, daring him to do battle to the death. The newspapers made much of these duels in the air.