AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2019 - 97

P&E

NEVER AGAIN

I lived through a
graveyard spiral
Airspeed indicated 200 mph as the 'Angel'
spun crazily toward Lake Michigan
B Y D O N L . TAY LO R ( R E P R I N T E D F R O M AO PA P I LOT , M A R C H 1 9 5 8 )

BEFORE YOU READ THIS ACCOUNT, you
should understand that the author is
definitely not a daredevil, tomorrow-bedamned, reckless flyer. Trained by an
ex-Navy instructor and skilled in many
phases of VFR weather, I have always conscientiously maintained what I believed
was a wide margin of safety record in my
hundreds of hours of flying in the Midwest,
South, and a part of Mexico, and up to now
I have passed the final and absolute test of a
pilot's flying ability: I am still alive.
The event which I shall relate from personal experience can also happen to you,
you VFR loggerhead, even if-and especially
if-you are the most confident VFR pilot in
the world.
It was a promising dawn, with a clear
August sky above and the first hint of sun
streaking across the sky. I hitched my shoulder harness and taxied across the field to
the end of the long paved runway. Sky
Harbor Airport, at Indianapolis, seemed like
home to me. It was home to my pampered

two-seater. She was a Cessna 140, named
Carol's Angel because of her unfailing habit
to carry me gently and safely at every opportunity to my fiancée in Milwaukee.
Heading northwest at 2,000 feet, to
use the best available winds, my thoughts
turned to the vacation ahead. Nine days of
leave from the U.S. Army! And this lieutenant would start them off right. A brief stop
in Milwaukee would be enough to embark
the young lady for whom the Angel served,
and then we would be flying to a week of
fun at Onaway Island in central Wisconsin.
The first signs of low-flying clouds
appeared as I crossed the familiar Wabash
River. Automatically, I cranked up my
Lear VHF set and called Lafayette radio
for another weather check. The report
was the same I heard at takeoff, Chicago
and Milwaukee, both 8,000 feet with rain
showers. Visibility, 3 and a half. I hung up
the earphones and relaxed.
When I reached the southern shore of
Lake Michigan, there was a layer of haze

above the water, through which I could
barely discern the big peninsula of Inland
Steel where it juts out into the blue. At my
altitude of 2,000 feet, however, the air was
clear. I could distinguish cloud outlines at
higher altitude ahead of me.
The Chicago Heights weather report
came through as I charged out over the
water. It was still reassuring. I elected to
fly above the cloud layer, which hung ominously before me. With Milwaukee showing
8,000 feet, I should be able to climb easily
over the wall of white clouds, fly at least
1,000 on top, and then drop in for a routine
VFR landing when I smelled Schlitz.
The haze thickened, however, as I
reached 5,000 feet. I had been out of contact
with the ground for about five minutes. But
I was apparently above the cloud wall. All
I had to do was wait it out and then coast
back down beyond the white mist. The
difficulty was that it became increasingly
nerve-wracking to separate the cloud mass
from the "clear" air. The visibility was down
to about a mile and a half, I estimated. I
crossed my fingers and hoped that the jets
from Glenview Naval Air Station played
their tag elsewhere.
There, at last, was a dark spot ahead,
which could be nothing else except the hole
in the clouds for which I had been waiting.
Impatiently, I turned the Angel's head 5
degrees and raced toward the hole. Before
I realized what had happened, I plunged
headlong into the thickest black cloud I
ever hope to see. I had fooled myself into
the worst spot a pilot can find: I was flying
blind, without a turn and a bank indicator.
The instant I hit the cloud mass, I
banked steeply to the right, in an effort
to make a belated 180-degree turn and
recover. I did, however, was render the
compass useless for direction, because
from that moment, onward, the compass
gyrated madly. But that is scarcely a marvel, because so did the airplane! I attempted
to straighten out when I guessed that I was
headed south. But regardless of my control,
the Angel just didn't feel straight and level.
In my imagination, I was still in a steep right
bank, although I realized that I had the left
rudder pedal jammed into the floorplate.
The impression of a right bank was so vivid
that I couldn't lift my left foot! I watched the
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2019

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