Ruth Elder, boarding the American Girl for Le Bourget, Paris, October 11, 1927.
Ruth Elder, boarding the American Girl for Le Bourget, Paris, October 11, 1927.
Everybody in France is eager to see this audacious girl succeed in proving that she is not a weak woman. If she does succeed, that lovely American will have a triumph as great as Lindbergh’s. The daring and self-confidence of the American Girl has imbued the public opinion with the conviction that she will succeed. There will be no pessimistic predictions that sought to discourage flights since the recent scenes of transatlantic disasters.
—THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 12, 1927
The newspapers sold out when they hit the streets the next morning.
With the telegram from the navy still nestled at the bottom of the wastebasket and the news that Grayson, pilot Bill Stultz, and navigator Brice Goldsborough had left in the predawn hours, Ruth wasn’t going to spend another second standing in that hangar, talking.
“Tow her out!” she said to George as soon as she heard Dan Shear’s revelation. “Let’s get the fuel on board and tow her out to the runway. We can beat her slog of a plane. There’s no way I’m giving this to her.”
George, surprised by Ruth’s forcefulness, instead headed over to the office at Roosevelt Field to call for the latest weather report. If it was clear, he’d abide by Ruth’s choice, but if it looked problematic, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
Chaos erupted inside the hangar. Once the news got out that Grayson had indeed taken off, reporters began swarming into the American Girl’s hangar, asking for comments, throwing questions from every direction now that Ruth and George looked like they had lagged behind.
“If the weather is favorable, we’ll be gone by dusk,” she told them as she helped load the fuel tanks onto the American Girl. “But right now, fellas, I have five hundred twenty gallons of fuel to load up.”
George came back with a promising look on his face. Ruth stopped loading once she saw him come in with the weather report from Doc Kimball, the assistant United States meteorologist for the Weather Bureau.
“Along the Great Circle route, we’re facing seven hundred miles of fog, then some stormy weather, but we’re good after that,” he said.
That was the route Grayson was taking; the American Girl, however, had a flight plan to dip south once over the Atlantic, hopefully avoiding most of the bad weather.
“But I don’t have a report of what’s going on in the southern portion,” George said. “We’d have to wait until morning. Dan Shear said Grayson was stopping off in Old Orchard in Maine first, probably overnight. We could catch up easily if you wanted to wait.”
Ruth thought for a moment. “No,” she said, looking George in the eye. “I want to go now. This is not about beating Frances Grayson. Not really. I’m just mad that she snuck off this morning like some dog that stole a chicken bone out of the trash. This is about you and me and everyone who has worked together for this flight. This is about all of our test flights, all of our calculations, each turn of your wrench, every time you wiped your hands on that rag. This is about coming in here every morning for a month to find out we can’t take off. This is about your wife being here and my husband not being here. This is about all of that. I don’t care about beating her, but I do care about losing all that we have worked for. I care too much to not take off as soon as possible.”
George nodded in agreement. He felt the same way. He was glad that Ruth had the fire in her that she did; they might need all of it if they were going to make it across the vast span of the Atlantic.
“All right,” George said. “Tell your folks; I’ll tell my wife. We’ll leave as soon as we’re loaded.”
She had said good-bye to her parents, her sister, and Aunt Susan; she gave Joyce a mushy peck on the cheek and a little squeeze. Ruth’s mother slipped a tiny Bible into Ruth’s hand and was under strict orders not to cry; Pherlie wouldn’t dare, and gave her a jade Chinese ring for good luck. Daddy just shook his finger at Ruth and said, “Be a brave girl,” then gave her a quick, tight hug.
“Bring me some chocolate from France, and a nice little French husband,” Aunt Susan joked, but as soon as a tear appeared in the corner of her eye, she kissed Ruth and then hastily walked away.
“I’m very happy,” Ruth exclaimed, jumping up and down, not able to contain her excitement. “This is the greatest day of my life!”
George Haldeman held his wife’s hand and told her sternly, with a smile, “You are not to worry.”
She smiled back and said, “You know I never do.”
The crowd around the American Girl, now sitting on the edge of the runway, was expanding by the moment. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people, surged onto the field, eager to get a look at the crazy girl who was going to attempt the impossible. Police had been called in to keep the crowd manageable. Ruth looked out from the hangar and laughed at it all before heading out to the plane; a wicker hamper on her arm contained sandwiches, broth, coffee, and apples.
Wearing the knickers her mother had made her, a dark sweater, a man’s shirt, a smart little black tie, and a scarf around her head, she stood up on the wing, placed the hamper in the plane, and waved to the crowd; a roar answered her back. Under her arm was her stuffed Felix the Cat, brought along for luck and security, and the tiny Bible. She plumped her curls with her hands, pulled out a compact, powdered her nose, and blew a kiss to the crowd before yelling out, “I’m off to Paris to buy an evening gown!” which was met with whoops and hollers before she climbed into the cockpit with a smile that almost matched the length of the wingspan. George climbed in beside her and started the engine.
The crowd moved back slightly but was reluctant to lose their last glimpse of Ruth Elder and the American Girl taking off. Slowly, the Roosevelt Field crew and policemen moved the crowd back carefully until there was enough clearance that George gave a thumbs-up. The crowd went mad.
The plane lurched forward quickly once as George began moving it, rolling it with caution and ease. He and Ruth had taken off countless times with an equal load on test flights. He was not nervous, his hands calm and steady on the column. His wife waved from the middle of the crowd, but he could not see her.
The plane continued down the field, picking up speed, faster, quicker, bumpier.
From the crowd, all eyes were on the little maroon and orange plane that raced down the runway, its motor whirring, almost unheard over the cheering of the people there to see it off. Then, suddenly, it was in the air, just above the runway at first, then climbing higher and higher as it passed over the horizon, the sun barely behind it, and flew on eastward to challenge an ocean.
Lyle Womack, at his desk in Panama, was unaware that Ruth was five hundred, seven hundred, one thousand, twelve hundred feet in the air, climbing toward the dark Atlantic, and would not discover it until he read about his wife’s departure the next day in the newspaper as headlines about her spread around the world.
RUTH ELDER BRAVE, BUT TRULY FEMININE
Powdered Her Nose and Arranged Her Curls as Plane Roared for Takeoff
TRIUMPHED OVER TROUBLES
Sea Flight Disasters Caused Fear Among Her Backers, but They Yielded to Her
—THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 14, 1927
While all the Mackay children gathered at Seamore Place to bid farewell to their parents as they left on their trip to Egypt, it was Elsie, Kenneth, and Bluebell who took the train with them to Liverpool for their departure.
Lady Inchcape had rallied; after months of careful recovery, she insisted that she was back up to the speed of her old self, although the rest of the family knew she was a bit slower in walking, lost her breath easily, and could commit to doing only so much at once. The last thing she wanted to be was a bother, so it was with great hesitation that she permitted her children and niece to accompany them to the pier. She acquiesced only when Elsie reminded her that they would not see one another until the end of March, when Elsie’s work with the Viceroy of India would be complete enough for her to join her parents in Egypt.
Once their parents were settled in their first-class compartment, Kenneth motioned for Elsie to meet him outside.
“I know your secret,” he said immediately once Elsie had slid the door closed.
“And what would that be, dear brother?” she replied with a wry smile.
“Your little plane ride with a one-eyed pilot,” he said simply, then turned and began walking toward the dining car. Elsie’s face dropped.
She caught up with him in a few well-paced steps.
“Who told you?” she whispered. “How do you know?”
“Does it matter?” he sighed. “You probably didn’t tip one of your waiters enough. Or someone eavesdropped. Or someone has a loose tongue. I don’t know. But it’s just a matter of time before it falls on the right ears.”
“Tell me what you heard,” Elsie insisted. “I need to know what is being said.”
“Just exactly that. You and Captain Hinchliffe are planning a transatlantic flight,” Kenneth relayed simply.
“I’m only a backer,” she said. “At this point I don’t know if I’m flying or not. I don’t know if we’re going to India or to New York. Nothing has been decided. We don’t even have an airplane yet.”
“No,” Kenneth said. “But you bought one. Hinchliffe just came back from America. After three days there. Why else would he be there?”
Elsie didn’t know what to say next. She did not want to lie to her brother, but she also did not want to jeopardize the plans that had been made. It could all very easily be blown apart.
“Are you going to tell him?” she finally asked.
Kenneth sighed and looked out the window at the landscape that was rushing by.
“You’ve put me in a hard place, Else,” he said. “All I can really do is take you at your word, and you know I trust you. But he’s going to find out eventually, even if he is in Egypt. It’s only a matter of time before this hits the papers, and when it does—”
“Don’t tell him, Kenneth,” Elsie pleaded. “Let me work out a way.”
“Please learn from your mistakes,” her older brother said.
Elsie’s mouth tightened.
“That is a horrible thing to say,” she whispered harshly. “Horrible. I thought that, out of anybody, you understood. You married who you chose. No one said a word about it. You weren’t chased by the police from country to country or arrested afterward. You were able to marry with your friends and family around you. And you were not exiled. I was not afforded any of those luxuries.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kenneth said. “You saw the difference in Father when you came back. He had aged a million years, and all you did was marry an actor and share a loo with peasants. Imagine for a moment what would happen to him if you never came back. Not to mention that it would destroy Mother—probably kill her.”
He was right, and Elsie knew he was right. It was precisely the reason she wanted to keep it all as quiet as possible: there would be no need to worry her parents in the upcoming months before the flight. She had the fullest confidence that the trip would be such an absolute success that there was no reason to worry at all. However, she would not put that weight particularly on her mother when this was such a crucial time in her recovery.
“Let them make this trip to Egypt,” Elsie concluded. “I want them to be settled and Mother to be stronger before I write to Father and tell him I am backing Hinchliffe’s attempt. You have my word I will do so, Kenneth, I just ask that you not say anything before then.”
Kenneth nodded immediately. “You have my word,” he promised.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Do you really think you can make it?” he asked as he lit a cigarette. “It’s a long way across that ocean. Ask Princess Löwenstein.”
“With the right plane and the right pilot, yes,” she answered quickly. “Hinchliffe is the most respected pilot in the world. His experience is unparalleled. And the Stinson we bought is the best, most advanced ship ever manufactured for safety and long-distance flights. And if we leave at the right time of year, the odds are actually with us, not against us.”
“You repeatedly say ‘us,’ ” Kenneth observed. “Are you really sure you haven’t made up your mind to take this risk?”
“I have made no decisions yet,” Elsie said. “But I do want to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. I want that very much.”
Kenneth raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and took a deep breath.
“I would love to see you surrounded by glory,” he finally said. “But just to keep seeing you would be enough for me.”
The door to the Mackay compartment slid open and Bluebell took one step into the hall.
“Where did you slink off to?” she called to her cousins. “Uncle James and Aunt Janey are wondering where you went!”
Elsie smiled and walked back with Kenneth close behind.
“There they are!” Lady Inchcape said as her two children returned and took their seats. “We were thinking about going to tea in the dining car.”
“In a moment, dear,” her husband murmured as he read the newspaper. “We just got on the train. Let me catch my breath.”
“Of course,” Lady Inchcape agreed. “I was afraid the children might be hungry.”
“I am fine, Mother,” Elsie assured her. “Please don’t worry about me.”
“I am your mother,” Lady Inchcape replied. “Everything you do worries me!”
“Have you seen this, Elsie?” Lord Inchcape passed over the newspaper so she could see it, tapping his finger on the front page.
Elsie’s eyes darted to it immediately, even without her father’s direction.
DARING AIRWOMAN
American Girl Attempts Atlantic Flight
REFUSED TO BE DISCOURAGED
Elsie had to reach down deep into her bones to gather enough control so she didn’t snatch the paper out of her father’s hands immediately.
“Why, look at that,” she said casually. “May I?”
Her father relinquished his grip on the newspaper and Elsie tilted her head as she read the article.
“What is it?” Bluebell asked.
“Some harebrained girl in America has got it into her head to fly across the Atlantic from New York,” Inchcape said, shaking his head. “The American government tried to stop her, but she took off anyway. I don’t understand it. Why are people so eager to fly directly into the face of death? I will never understand. I will never understand.”
Ruth Elder, Elsie learned, had finally taken off, although Elsie had never heard of her until Hinch came back and told her about the girl pilot and her impressive plane that he had seen at Roosevelt Field. Elsie’s pulse began to beat behind her eyes and she felt heat surge up behind her ears like a prickly collar.
The story didn’t say much more than that, except that Miss Elder had a copilot and was planning on following the shipping lanes after a 1,200-mile leg flying eastward.
“I certainly hope the girl makes it,” Lady Inchcape said. “I like that kind of spunk. If Lindbergh did it, I don’t see why a woman can’t. It’s only flying a plane; she’s not building a house, for heaven’s sake. Hopefully, she’ll have better luck than Princess Anne, the poor dear.”
“I think it sounds exciting,” Bluebell added. “Flying is wonderful. When Elsie took me up in her plane, I don’t think I ever felt so free.”
“I’m with Mother,” Kenneth tossed in. “I hope the girl makes it and puts an end to this ridiculous race of who wants to be first. Let her have it and then let’s be done with it before more people die for vanity.”
The compartment was quiet for a moment.
“Do you think it’s merely vanity, Kenneth?” Elsie asked. “Or could it possibly be the accomplishment of doing what is said can’t be done? If discovery and achievement were nothing but vanity that should be discouraged, we’d all be wearing furs and living in caves.”
“That might not be so terrible,” Lady Inchcape said, laughing. “You love furs, Elsie.”
“Yes,” Elsie said, smiling wickedly. “I do. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pushing boundaries. Just think if this sort of air flight was possible back and forth across the ocean.”
“It would mean my company would go bankrupt,” Lord Inchcape grumbled. “And we’d all end up in a cave with no furs.”
And then he smiled.
“I know you understand what I mean, Father,” Elsie said, playfully slapping Lord Inchcape on his bony knee. “Your father was a great adventurer. He had that same spirit.”
“And the Atlantic swallowed him,” Lord Inchcape said, looking directly into his daughter’s face. “My hope is that the Atlantic never takes anyone I dearly love again.”
Elsie returned her father’s calm, unambiguous look, then took his hand and squeezed it.
“Let’s go for tea,” Lady Inchcape suggested, rising from her seat. “I don’t care whether or not the lot of you is fine, but I am starving.”
“You said they’d be fools to leave now!” Mabel yelled into the phone. “And yet, Charlie, two women have taken off for Europe in the past day!”
“It’s a death mission, I told you,” Levine said on the other end of the connection. “Just you wait and see. Now, I’m not wishing nothing bad on neither one of ’em, but, Mabel, it’s a crazy time to fly. Do you wanna be the Queen of the Air or do you wanna sink to the bottom of the sea? With all of that jewelry, you’d sink fast.”
“I just can’t believe that little girl is on her way to Paris right now,” Mabel complained, walking across her bedroom, further pulverizing the ancient Chinese vase that lay shattered on the floor in a spray of pieces. “She’s stealing my crown, Charlie! Frances Grayson already landed in Newfoundland to fuel up and is taking off for Denmark at this very minute! I’ll tell you, the next time you talk to Acosta, tell him I want to go as soon as possible. Cuba, Paris, the Arctic, I don’t care. I just have to be out there flying somewhere soon.”
“That made me think,” Levine said. “I think we should make flotation suits, too.”
“They looked like water bugs in those suits!” Mabel roared. “I would rather drown than have my last ensemble make me look like a cockroach.”
“We could put a diamond somewhere on yours,” Levine offered.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked directly.
“I will be soon,” he answered.
“I can’t believe you let a little hick from Alabama beat me,” she said, looking for something else to throw.
“It’s not over yet, Mabel,” Levine reminded her. “There’s some really terrible weather out there.”
“Really?” Mabel squealed, at last feeling a glimmer of hope. “Well, thank God!”
“The most important thing for you, Mother,” Elsie said as she clasped her mother’s hands in both of her own, “is that you rest. Get plenty of sun, and make Father wait on you hand and foot.”
Lord and Lady Inchcape were moments away from boarding the ship that would sail them to a climate Lady Inchcape required to make a full recovery.
“I hate to think of you alone at the holidays,” she said, furrowing her brow. “It will be our first Christmas apart since, well, you remember. Since you came back.”
“On the contrary, Mother, I promise you I shan’t be alone. I’m going to try to kidnap everyone and spend some time at Glenapp. I’ve the holiday pageant to organize. I will have my hands full, I assure you.”
“Please give everyone in Ballantrae my holiday wishes,” Lady Inchcape said wistfully. “I know, with you, the holiday pageant is in wonderful hands. And I look forward to seeing you in the spring.”
Lord Inchcape stood briskly behind her, tapping his silver-tipped cane against the wooden plank of the pier. He was always impatient when it was time to depart, particularly on one of his own ships.
“I’m leaving everything in your hands, Elsie,” he said. “I know you can manage.”
“I will always do my best,” Elsie replied. “Please take good care of Mother.”
“Indeed,” he said gruffly. “And I am giving you one more project to helm. I want you to personally prepare the apartments for Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles on the Ranchi for their voyage to Egypt in March. I hope that you will be on board with them.”
“Of course I will see to Princess Mary, and I will try my best to sail with her,” Elsie said. “If the Viceroy of India is completed by then, you shall see me.”
“One more thing,” Lord Inchcape said. “Captain Hinchliffe is indeed a capable pilot. An expert. There’s no one better. Shot down six German aeroplanes, was in the battalion that conquered the Red Baron. Quite respectable, despite his injuries. But if I discover that you plan to fly alongside him, there will be no flight, do not doubt it.”
And with that, he turned, took his wife’s arm, and started up the gangplank, his silver-tipped cane tapping at every step.
The American Girl had flown for six hours before it hit the first storm—right after the steamship American Banker had sighted the plane. Ruth and George approached it apprehensively; from the new moonlight that had just begun to show, they could see the tall stack of clouds waiting for them on the horizon, with nothing visible beyond it. It looked like the mouth of a monster, Ruth thought, ready to eat them in one easy bite.
“You’ve flown through storms before,” George reminded her. “We knew this was coming. I’ll try to get through as soon as possible, but with almost all of our fuel still on board, we are nowhere near our optimum speed. Lindbergh flew through these same storms. He got through just fine.”
“I’m not worried, George,” Ruth said, snuggled in her thick wool jacket. Despite the cabin heater, it was freezing in the plane. Both she and George wore their helmets, gloves, jackets, and scarves; they knew that the weather right off the coast, especially near the fogs of Newfoundland, would be the coldest of the trip.
It began to rain far ahead of the dark tower in front of them, and the wind began to pick up, jostling the American Girl a little from the north. The weather remained steady as George flew onward, closer to the first ration of jeopardy that the Atlantic had waiting for them.
Soon the jostling turned to bucking, and the rain that had pattered on the windshield was now slamming against it. George was relying solely on the instruments to tell him how high and where they were, trying to keep them at one thousand feet. Visibility was impossible: the blur of the constant downpour made it useless to try to see anything. George held on, pushing the plane forward as they surged deeper into the storm. As the seconds passed, more wind began to shriek around the plane that Ruth once thought so sturdy and big and safe. It now felt as if she were flying in a rattling Uneeda Biscuit tin with the top in danger of blowing off.
The plane dropped into an air pocket quick enough to make Ruth lose her breath. George got it back up as the plane tipped from side to side, battling both the wind and the rain that were so desperate to hold it back. George asked Ruth to take the controls; the plane needed refueling. He scrambled into the back to fuel the plane from inside. It wasn’t easy; with the amount of fuel tins they had on board, George was forced to lie over the tins and attempt to fuel it from the inside that way.
Ruth, now at the controls, struggled hard to keep the plane up; with its heavy load and the gale fighting against it, it took every ounce of strength she had to keep the yoke up and the plane out of the ocean below. Her arms were burning, her chest aching as the plane beat on, pitched at the whim of the wind.
It was clear to George that ice was forming on the wings, which would be the most alarming and critical obstacle they could face. Ice alone—even without the winds that they were dealing with—could grow heavy enough to pull a plane into the waves with little effort, and nothing could be done to fight it. He had not anticipated hitting such an accumulation of ice so early in the flight, but he was powerless against it.
After filling the tanks, he took the controls back from Ruth and realized how much rougher it was becoming even now. Ruth had managed to balance the plane despite the growing severity of the storm, to the point that he hadn’t spilled one drop of fuel.
The storm was massive, with the American Girl fighting through it all night. Neither Ruth nor George needed the caffeine pills they had brought aboard; the adrenaline surging through their bodies in the struggle to keep the plane airborne was enough to keep them alert and awake. Nor did either of them dip into the hamper and pick out a turkey or cheese sandwich. Together by turns, they bounced through the storm all night, dipping, falling, rising, bumping. The wind was howling so loudly Ruth thought it would drive her mad; it had begun to sound like a crying baby.
They were both exhausted after fighting the storm for hours. The engulfing darkness of the night did nothing to quell their fears, for they both wondered how much longer this storm could last and, more important, how much longer they could.
“It has to stop soon,” Ruth said as the plane shook, dipped, and was knocked about. “That’s the nature of things: there has to be an end. If there’s a beginning, there must be an end.”
But they struggled on, the fear of disaster now a constant, almost sitting behind them like a third passenger. When things seemed to be easing up, it would take only a second for another blast of wind to hit them, and the rain began to sound like gunfire as it struck the windows.
Blast after blast assaulted them. The rain was coming from all directions, and had, as George feared, turned to sleet. He felt the plane getting heavier, and it became more of a fight to keep her up at a decent level. He was slowly losing altitude.
The American Girl was sinking in the air.
“Ruth,” he said calmly after dropping one hundred feet in a matter of seconds, “I want you to put your life suit on.”
He didn’t need to tell Ruth why: she could see the instruments and had felt the drop.
“Dump the fuel, George,” Ruth said quickly. “We have to dump the fuel. In ten minutes, if that, we’re going to be in those waves. We have to lighten the plane. It’s the only thing we’ve got.”
“I know,” George said, beads of perspiration finally appearing both over his lip and on his brow. “I can’t keep her up, Ruth. The ice is dragging us down. Can you do it?”
Ruth nodded and scrambled into the back. She grabbed for the tins, each at least twenty pounds, and brought them up, one by one, dumping them out the window. On the fourth tin, she dared herself to look down and see how far they were from the water, and gasped when she saw it was only a matter of twenty or so feet.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered to herself, not wanting to let George know that she was terrified enough to turn to ice herself. She glanced at the wings; they were encased in long, thick tombs of ice, horizontal icicles forming off the edges like deathly streamers reaching back at least a foot.
In several minutes, she knew, they would be in the water.