The Jerrie Mock Story. Nancy Roe Pimm

of effort, the brothers took five roundtrip train rides from Dayton, Ohio, to Kitty Hawk. They endured horrific storms, ridicule, and disappointment after disappointment. That December, Orville and Wilbur finally succeeded in making the first engine-powered flight.

       FLIGHT THREE

      BERMUDA BOUND

      FLYING AT an altitude of 7,500 feet, Jerrie finally felt at peace, alone in her plane. She flew over mountains and marveled at the patchwork of land below her. As she flew past Richmond, Virginia, she tingled with excitement at the thought of finally living her dream of flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Jerrie reached down and released the long-distance radio antenna wire. The wire, one hundred feet long, unraveled and hung below the plane, but the radio stayed silent. Jerrie looked down at the needle on the meter. It should have been moving, searching for a signal, but it remained motionless. She leaned in closer to the meter, but all was silent. She heard nothing, not a peep.

      Jerrie wondered if she needed a long-distance radio to make a safe crossing over the ocean. She had never discussed the possibility of a radio failure with Lassiter or Weiner, so she had no idea what to do. Should she land in Richmond? Should she turn back and go home? After all the planning and all the excitement, how could she possibly let so many people down? Jerrie looked down at the triangles that marked the course on the charts of her flight plan. She was told to report at each triangle. Now what would she do? So many people were counting on her. She just couldn’t turn back before she even left the country. She felt that she would rather face her first flight over the ocean without communication than to turn back and go home a failure.

       JERRIE MOCK IS SHOWN THE NEWLY INSTALLED LONG-DISTANCE RADIO ANTENNA

      Susan Reid collection

      Jerrie got on her short-range radio. She informed the air traffic controller that she was on the proper channel, but had no contact with New York Oceanic, one of the four major international airspaces of the United States. The controller in the tower gave her another frequency to try. Jerrie tried it, knowing all the while that it wouldn’t work. Her long-range radio was dead. But communicating with the controller gave her time—time to make a decision. Would the Air Force be angry if she tried to fly over the ocean without a radio? If she told someone what was happening, would they tell her to turn back? As she considered all the pros and cons of flying without a long-range radio, the transmission to the tower nearly faded away. Jerrie’s hands shook as she picked up the microphone and called the controller one last time. She told him she would call again when she was close to Bermuda. With the decision made, she took a deep breath and pointed Charlie over the vast blue ocean before them.