350 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



About this time it appeared that a crash landing in the river might 

 be necessary, so I removed my parachute in order to be able to swim 

 ashore. The water, on closer inspection, looked uninviting, and I 

 decided on a final try — this time for Newark Airport — and headed 

 across the Hudson, As soon as the river was crossed and the lights 

 south of Jersey City appeared, it became obvious that this last chance 

 was impractical. Thereupon I climbed up through the fog, which 

 was only about a thousand feet thick with crystal-clear skies above, 

 intending to fly west until past the thickly populated part of the 

 metropolitan area and then jump. The gasoline gage had been flutter- 

 ing on zero for some time. I noted about this time that my parachute 

 harness was off and promptly put it on. 



About over Kenilworth, beyond Elizabeth, I saw a revolving beacon 

 through a hole in the fog and a flat-looking area adjacent to it with no 

 lights. Hoping it might be an emergency field or at least an open area, 

 although realizing that it might be a woods or a lake, I turned the 

 landing lights on and dove through the hole and scouted the area. The 

 bottom of the fog was still very low, and I tore the left lower wing 

 badly on a treetop. The airplane still flew, although almost comj^letely 

 out of gasoline, so I returned to the most likely spot and crashlanded, 

 taking the impact by wrapping the left wing around a tree trunk near 

 the ground. The 02U-1 was completely washed out — quite beyond 

 repair — but I was not even scratched or bruised. 



The moral of the story is that had I been flying the NY-2 mounting 

 blmd-landing equipment and with the Full Flight Laboratory radio 

 station alerted at Mitchel, this would have been a routine cross-coun- 

 try flight with "no sweat." 



The flight pointed up the importance of constant radio communica- 

 tion between the aircraft and the ground, and the need for frequent 

 and accurate weather reports obtainable by radio during flight in 

 order to assure safe continuation or to indicate suitable alternate 

 destinations. It also indicated the desirability of a special light to 

 mark emergency fields for night landings. Later green lights were 

 used. 



In general, the weather a pilot could fly in safely was determined by 

 airplane characteristics, ground facilities and procedures, ground and 

 airborne equipment and instrumentation, the pilot's general skill and 

 his specialized knowledge of the local aids to air navigation, the ter- 

 rain, and the weather conditions to be expected in the area. 



DEVELOPMENT OF ALTITUDE-MEASURING INSTRUMENTS 



An important requirement in instrument landing was to have a 

 precise measure of altitude when approaching the ground for a land- 

 ing. The conventional barometric altimeters of the day measured, at 



