Spy hangs self at Atlanta jail
Schroetter slashed wrists before using bedsheet
…
The Pittsburgh Press (March 31, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. – Not all of our air heroes are in uniform over Australia or on the flying fields of Britain. Some of them are sitting almost anonymously right here at home. Marshal Headle is one of them.
Headle is chief test pilot of the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., and one of the finest and most respected pilots in the aviation world. These next two columns tell the strange story of what happened to him.
It all happened in less than 10 seconds. Headle wasn’t even in a plane. The accident got brief notices in the Los Angeles newspapers, and then was forgotten. But it took out of the air one of America’s most valuable fliers.
Marshal Headle is the quiet, human, serious type of airman who does his job with intense thoroughness. He has been with Lockheed for 13 years. He personally insisted on flying every new type of aircraft first, even though some of them are tough to handle, and even though Headle has capable younger pilots under him.
And he was always experimenting. The experiment that almost led to his death was brought about by the great heights at which planes are flying in this war.
We hear a lot about oxygen and so on, but the plain truth is that a pilot is no good, even with oxygen, when he gets above 35,000 feet. He just doesn’t do things right, that’s all.
So Headle, for months, had been experimenting. They have a pressure chamber at the Lockheed factory, and Headle spent much time in there, using himself as a guinea pig.
He turns valve wrong way
It came to its near-deadly climax last June. Without being too technical, here is what finally happened, as nearly as I can reconstruct it:
Headle was in the chamber alone, while observers stood outside watching through a thick glass window. The observers had duplicate controls, outside, on everything but the supply of oxygen. Headle controlled that himself, from the inside.
Well, they slowly worked the pressure down until they had Headle in the rarified atmosphere of 42,000 feet – eight miles above the earth. All the way “up,” he says now, he had given himself less oxygen than he really should have had, trying to make the experiment tough.
At 42,000 feet he felt himself getting very weak and hazy. He was sitting on a stool. He remembers reaching up toward the oxygen valve; he doesn’t remember ever touching it.
But those on the outside remember it well. For they saw him reach up, turn the valve the wrong way – shutting his oxygen completely off – and then saw him topple off the stool!
It is hard for a layman to realize the terrible consequences of that act. Nobody can live long without oxygen. But, you might ask, why didn’t they open the door and drag him out?
They didn’t, because that would have meant instant death. You see, his system had been gradually worked up to a thin pressure of 42,000 feet – it would have to be worked as gradually back down again, over a period of half an hour or more, not to affect him dangerously.
But he couldn’t live that long without oxygen. Fast and desperate thinking was in order for those at the controls outside. They had to compromise on the time element, and take a chance. They compromised on leaving him in there eight seconds.
No one could live – but he did
They stood there, frantic with anxiety while the eight seconds ticked off like eight hours. Then they opened the door and carried Headle out – and to the hospital.
Headle had “fallen” the equivalent of eight miles in eight seconds – almost 3000 miles an hour! No human ever before has gone through atmospheric changes that fast, that far. No human can live through such an experience.
But Headle did live through it. The accident happened nine months ago and he is still alive, although a semi-invalid. Eventually he will recover, in an abbreviated way.
He probably can never fly again, even as a passenger; his heart will never stand much physical exertion; he never can take any “altitude” – he can’t even cross to the East Coast again unless he goes by boat through Panama. He must always stay near sea level.
When the accident happened, it was written that Headle had the deadly “bends” that deep sea divers get from being brought up too fast. That wasn’t true. What he got was exactly the opposite of bends. As far as he knows there’s no name for it, for nobody ever “fell” that way before. The result is a dangerously delicate heart, and a shattered nervous system corresponding to World War “shell shock.”
For two months the doctors didn’t expect Headle to live, although he didn’t know that’s what they thought, and it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t live.
Then he began to get better, but his nerves were bad. Any loud noise would throw him into a panic. They moved him from the city to a hospital at Indio, out on the desert, seeking absolute quiet for him. But the passing trains drove him insane.
He started to go down again. By October he was in a bad relapse; in some ways worse than at first. He couldn’t stand it there any longer.
So he rented a new California-type house on the edge of this tiny village of Cathedral City, some six miles east of Palm Springs. The quiet of the desert is over this place and sudden noises are rare. Headle has improved rapidly.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you how this life-long airman, now sentenced to the ground, has readjusted his life.