Читать книгу H. G. Hawker, airman: his life and work онлайн

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“‘Painfully slowly the minutes rolled away, but at last I realised that I was the holder of the British Duration Record. When I was quite sure of this I opened up the throttle again, as I had not much to fear now, but I was still determined to keep up in order to give anyone else a good run in order to beat it. When it was getting nearly dark I pulled open the last notch of the throttle and climbed up to 1,400 feet on the meter, and I did this very rapidly. Darkness came on, and I could see very little but the red-hot exhaust pipe and the reflection from the burnt gases. The dim lights of the Blue Bird served as a little guide to the position of the ground, and when I felt sure it must be quite 5.50 I decided to come down immediately and make a guess at where the ground was, as I felt sure they had forgotten all about the fires, and I did not want to get lost and smash the machine up. Just as I was landing the fires flared up, and I came to rest and found everyone as pleased as I was.’”