Macready Jumps

Lieut. John A. Macready, veteran U. S. Army flier, has added another achievement to his long record of wonderful flights and adventures. With

Lieut. Oakley Kelly, he once flew across the U. S. in a 26-hour non-stop flight, With Kelly he established the world's endurance record, flying over Dayton for 34 hours. Officially Frenchman Lecointe still holds the world's altitude record, but on his last attempt to beat this Macready's barograph registered 43,000 feet and when he landed stiff and frost-bitten from the intense cold many experts were of the opinion that he had actually gone higher than the Frenchman. In addition to a few other records, he has the reputation of being one of the Army's most reliable test pilots, who can take up a new ship and come down and tell designers exactly what's wrong and what should be changed. This wonderful career is not an accident. Macready is a most pertinent example of mens sana in corpore sano. An amateur boxing champion, five foot six in height, he weighs only about 130 pounds, has broad shoulders and a trim waist. He keeps himself in perfect condition, is always mentally and physically alert. Certainly Macready needed all his alertness, coolness and skill in his hazardous exploit of last week. On a recent night flight from Columbus, Macready found his motor dead when passing over Dayton. The usual method of gliding to safety in some field or other was impossible in the pitch dark. With his altimeter reading between 3,000 and 4,000 feet, the pilot guided his plane to the outskirts of the town, to minimize danger to others, and stayed on board as long as he dared. He then unloosed his safety belt, crawled out on the wing, and jumped into 1,800 feet of darkness. The wind blew him clear, and he counted two before pulling the rip cord, so that the parachute might be clear of entanglement. Macready did not know whether he was upside down or not when he left the ship, or whither he was heading. But he heard the parachute snap open and knew well that he would land somewhere. Edward A. Wuichet of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce, walking below in the summer darkness was startled to hear a voice from the sky say: "Hello below ? Hey, down there?" The most peculiar conversation passed in the dark till the aviator landed on a 100-foot cliff, with scarcely a bump. When his plane came down in a crash it was immediately enveloped in flames. Crowds stood about in morbid curosity and horrified anxiety, helpless to extricate the man they thought buried beneath the wreckage, when Macready suddenly walked among them.

There is a feeling of distaste among many pilots against the parachute. And owners of planes and air mail superintendents have sometimes voiced the cruel sentiment that a parachute on board would make the pilot desert his plane too early, without the final effort to save it. There is not the slightest argument in favor of these points-of-view. Skillful as Macready is, the failure of his engine at dead of night would certainly have meant a termination of his valuable career if not for the huge, umbrella-like parachute. Jumping from a plane is sufficiently hazardous, and calls for real nerve, and none of the men who fly these ships should be deprived of this last resort or fail to practice for the awful moment when they must jump. Whether passengers can ever be made to undertake the sickening leap into space is another matter.