An old Ford pickup truck barreled through an empty highway full of sand and swung around to catch up with putting a few feet above the head on a single-engine fixed-wing plane.
From the passenger seat of the truck, a man with a bucket stretched out on his torso was brightly drawn to another man hanging from the open door of a Cessna 172 aircraft with “Las Vegas: Hacienda Hotel.”
On the 36th day, Tim resided for an hour during his shift. When he woke up and sweated, they were in a canyon somewhere in Arizona, perhaps somewhere in California.
After the man pulls the bucket to the plane with the rope, he turns a little further from the ground, Nevada, California and Arizona again and again, returning to his crawl space, the plane is a little higher. It creeped up. Only for consumables twice a day.
By the end of their journey, two men on the plane had accomplished it in February 1959. Amazing featand it almost sacrifices their lives to them.
Fruit cake and gang
The entire adventure began with fruit cake. Apparently, eccentric travel columnist Warren “Dok” Bailey loved enough fruit cakes to buy his own fruit cake business.
The company worked well, but Bailey sold it for a considerable profit. He used some of the money to buy land north of Fresno, California, where he built a hotel. He called it Hacienda.
Bailey traveled a lot for his work. He stayed with all kinds and quality of accommodation. For years he had imagined what a perfect hotel would look like. And he will build it. He knew that.
The hotel business suited him and he quickly turned Hacienda into a chain.
Soon he was focusing on much larger, far more risky assets in Las Vegas. This hotel is located on the south side of a person from the time of the Vegas strip called Las Lac.
At the time, the strip was an isolated, undesirable area far from other casinos and hotels. In the middle of construction, funding collapsed. Suddenly, it was getting too troublesome. Everyone gave up on the hotel. They assumed it was too uninterrupted and too luxurious to get back the money.
Bailey signed a 15-year lease for $55,000 a month. To succeed, he has to make a big move. He has to rebrand the Vegas experience.
At the time, Vegas needed it. Most casinos remained firm in the mafia grip, and Wiseguy couldn't hide any funny business that often includes murder.
Selling strips
Bailey's Hacienda is a Mexican themed family casino and hotel that responds directly to the shady, mean old Las Vegas.
Put putt golf course. Go-kart truck. Huge swimming pool. All at reasonable prices. Retireers across America flock to iconic signs of neon horses and rider Hacienda. And he was right. But in its early days it was all a dusty and empty room.
All he needed was a trick. He tried the usual paths, including coupons, ads, fake reviews. He hired an attractive woman to hand over a flyer to pass by the car.
It was a time of something more dramatic. Like any other good salesman, he appealed to our imagination.
Please fly with me
Humans always wanted to fly. We always looked at the sky for hope. That's where we've always wanted to go.
In his life, Leonardo da Vinci wrote over 35,000 words and drew over 500 sketches of the nature of flying machines and air. He was obsessed with flying birds. He writes: There you were, so you'll always be back there. ”
Da Vinci couldn't foresee the Industrial Revolution.
The first commercially available liquid fuel internal combustion engine was invented in 1872. Aviation began 31 years later on December 17, 1903, and after four years of research and design efforts, it made history at 120 feet, 12. – Second flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina – First powered flight with heavier air machines.
We've become accustomed to flying by now, so it's easy to forget that it's just over a century. It's easy to forget that every time an airplane takes off or lands, it's a miracle. It's incredible that a 300-ton Boeing 747 can safely fly through the sky full of passengers and old pretzels.
Still, just as miraculously as flying, most of us find air travelling, heart-numbing and claustrophobic. An hour by plane is enough to irritate many people. I can't imagine 12 hours. More than that, flight attendants should supply infinitely small bottles of wine. Otherwise people will start snapping.
What kind of madman tests the limits of sanity by staying on the plane for a minute longer than necessary?
The Madman's Bet
The madman is Robert Tim, one of Hacienda's slot machine mechanics.
Tim was a man bear. He was a bomber pilot during World War II and was passionate about flying. He convinced Bailey that endurance flight was exactly what Hacienda needs to make its own name.
Skillfully, Bailey designated it as a fundraiser for cancer research. It was a gamble, but for good reason: people will guess how long the plane will stay in the air. Those who estimate the closest time earn $10,000.
It takes about a year to build and customize the Hacienda Cessna 172. Currently, the air icon and the most produced plane of history, the Cessna 172 has been available since 1955.
TIMM and another mechanic installed a 95-gallon Sorenson berry tank on the plane. That way they could refuel the air with the help of a Ford truck and an electric pump. It was also equipped with an airplane so that engine oil could be changed while it was flying.
Approximately the size of a Toyota Camry, the Cessna 172's cabin can seat four people snugly (not a toilet). They removed all the seats except the pilot seats and converted the rest of the cabin into a small makeshift living area.
Tim had tried three marathon flights, but never stayed in the air for more than 15 days.
His second attempt was stopped with a massive boom. As he wrote in his diary, “One morning, the sky lit up at 4am.” He was in the air in one of 57 ground atomic bomb explosions that occurred in Nevada in 1958. .
To make things even more complicated, there was an attractive brand new flight endurance record. To beat it, the man must remain in flight for more than 50 days.
Medallion Status
Tim and his co-pilot, John Wayne Cook, took off from McCarranfield, Las Vegas, on December 4, 1958 at 3:52pm. Aircraft tires from below. If you land before the official landing, these will wear out.
Most often, they refueled Blythe (the desert town on the California-Arizona border) or shook to Yuma, Palm Springs, or Los Angeles.
Confined in that sloping space, their daily lives were similar to those of prison prisoners: many aimless reading and repetitive exercises and endless games – when they bustle around the sky Anything you spend time in. They sank a bit there, poured a bottle of water over their heads and “showered”.
They refueled in flight twice a day as hoses from the Ford tanker truck were latched into the abdominal tank.
The two men piloted in four hour shifts and tried their best to sleep as much as possible with four cushions made of thick foam. All the rattles and mechanical moans made it difficult to sleep.
Sleeping on the wheels
On January 9th, the 36th day of the flight, Tim fell asleep for an hour during his shift. When he woke up and sweated, they were in a canyon somewhere in Arizona, perhaps somewhere in California. Luckily, Autopilot was doing that job.
A few years later, he told reporters: “I flew two hours before I could recognize the lights and the city. I made a vow to myself that I would never tell John what had happened.”
He didn't say anything to Tim, but Cook knew it was close to a disaster.
“…2:55am and he [Timm] I was fighting insomnia. Autopilot went to sleep 4,000 feet at Blythe Airport, bringing the ½ path to Uma Aliz to 4,000 feet. I was very fortunate. I have to sleep more during the day. ”
All their food had to be mashed into jugs of thermos that were rolled up along with daily supplies. Every other day they got bath water, a large towel and a quart of soap.
I can see the darkness
On their journey, the plane's generator went out. It was used to power the airplane's internal lights and heating, and to pump fuel into the wing tanks. They then had to use a hand pump to move the fuel to the wings.
When it got really cold, they were wrapped in blankets and trembling. They had flashlights and had Christmas lights in their cabins, but the rest of them flew in the dark, beautiful, endless darkness.
In his diary, Cook wrote: Pump all gasoline by hand using minimal light. …Sitting in the darkness suddenly – don't realize how much this power is needed until the flashlight burns out for the panel light to fly.
By the end of the marathon flight, I lost my tachometer, autopilot, cab heater, landing and taxi lighting, abdominal tank fuel gauge, electric fuel pump and winch.
Several times the weather interrupted refueling and they had to scramble for new opportunities.
They broke the record on January 23, 1959, but lasted another 15 days until the spark plugs and engine combustion chambers were equipped with carbon, weakening the plane's engine.
64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes. They flew over 150,000 miles through the air and traveled around the Earth about six times.
Records exist to this day.
After the flight, Cook said: That's until my psychiatrist was opened for business in the morning. ”
But secretly, he is sure he missed that feeling, the way he lived in the clouds, the blue of the sky, above all, higher up, like a bird.
