14: Ceiling Zero and No Gas Left
“Were you ever “over the top” looking for a landfall, and with a gas tank leaking like nobody’s business?”
Tex Rankin, one of the best-known pilots in the country and especially familiar to the West Coast where he has centered his flying of recent years, was about to spin a yarn. I admitted that the situation he outlined sounded about as bad as anything I might imagine, particularly when Tex amplified his original question with the statement that there was supposed to be about 500 feet ceiling at Portland, his destination, but he was going to have a tough time proving it.
So, like a good listener, I settled down to hear the story. Here it is ... with Tex Rankin telling it:
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IT WAS BACK IN 1929, when I’d just finished winning second place in the
