Philip A Embury Journal #3

Rhone motor. Brownie had never used a Rhone motor before so didn’t know too much about it. He took off all right but when he got up about fifty feet he choked the motor and it died on him. He was the Sopwith machines in front of their hangars. He fell off on a wing and landed right between two Sops without hurting either one. It two two men to pull Brownie out of the wreckage, but he wasn’t hurt at all. That was another one of Davidson’s orders to send us off on crosscountry with a strange motor. Brownie by rights should have been

broken up pretty badly, but it wasn’t Davidson’s fault that he wasn’t. — Dan Currier had another forced landing. This is his third time at trying to make his voyage. Every one of these machines should bee in the junk pile, but Davidson is running the school. Believe me, sometimes you feel like letting the Major have his way and kick you out. Tonight while at the movies the siren blew, and we all rushed out to see where the fire was. A Caudron in taking off had the motor quit, and hit some tree tops and the wires to the siren which made a commotion and blew the siren. The plane

hit in the field at the end of the Y.M. The machine was wrecked, but the monitor and pupil got off with only a few scratches. While out at the wreck one of the Y.M. ladies hollared “air raid”, our signal to look out for the Major. She saw him coming down the road and wanted to warn the boys. The word of warning was sufficient for all of us to scatter and run. I suppose it pleased his Highness to see us all so well diciplined.

Sunday July 14 ‘18.

Stayed in bed until noon. Was going to go down town to the celebration, but it rained,

Monday July 15 ‘18.

Got out the voyage hangar at 4:15 this morning to get a machine for my voyage. I got a machine, but it was too cloudy to start at daylight. And it rained a little during the fornoon. It cleared up so that I could start at 2 P.M. I started out in a machine that had just come from the repair shop, and had never been tested. She turned up alright on the ground so I took off. The buss ran fine up to 400 meters when my engine started missing. I tried to climb on up, but could only get to 600 and no further. By that time I was almost to

Chateau-Renault when the engine began missing worse than ever. I was about half way to Soloure but decided to turn back, as I knew where I was going then, and wouldn’t trust to luck to finding Soloure. My engine wouldn’t turn up enough to keep me flying level, so I headed for home and kept loosing altitude all the time. I landed and had two cold scilinders. The mechanics fixed them up and I took off again. This time I only got a little past Mouey when the engine went bad on me again. When I peaked to land the engine threw oil all over, and covered