Bombs Away (16 page)

Air Force tactics have definitely become group tactics where men and machines work together toward an objective. And under this system the pilot has changed his status. He is only one part of the functioning unit, but far from making him less highly trained, he has become more so. It is more difficult to fly as one ship in a formation than as one ship in the sky.

The training of a bomber pilot is a long and difficult matter. He must know a great deal and he must be perfectly fitted for his job, but he is no longer the apex of the Air Force pyramid. After he has mastered his machines the pilot will be constantly trained in teamwork. He must have initiative, but it must be subordinated to and used for the group; and it is this ability of Americans, exemplified in their team sports of being both individuals and units in a group at the same time, which makes them both the finest team players and the finest flyers in the world. Each quality alone would be ineffective—together they are unbeatable. It might have been thought that the relaxing of the college requirement for pilot cadets would result in a lower standard among pilots. But this has not been true, either in effect, or in intention. It was realized that some of our brightest, best-informed boys have not gone to college. They have studied at home, have taken correspondence courses, or have read and tinkered extensively. It is not possible for all of our young people capable of college training to go to college. The removal of the college requirement by the Air Force, by removing an artificial hurdle, tapped a large group of Americans who were not able to go to college but who kept up anyway. The quality of mind and body is not changed. The examinations are not relaxed. They eliminate the college man as well as the non-college man if he is unfit for the Service, and we have too many eminent examples of noncollege men to overlook this rich pool of potential flyers. The alert, strong, the well-co-ordinated and interested young men of the country are the proper candidates for pilots. The work they do will test deeply every part of them. They will emerge from their wartime service with an honorable record and a profession. They will have seen action where there is any action. The wings they wear will make them for all time a part of the brotherhood of the air. They will have space and speed in the palms of their hands but they must deliver the goods if these things are to be theirs.

In the Air Force you must deliver the goods from the moment you enter. Step by step, you must deliver the goods and there is no second chance, a man is only washed out when he cannot perform. It would be ridiculous for him to have another chance for it is not a matter of chance. From the moment he enters his first primary training plane to the time when he graduates from four-motor school, the training pilot works like a dog. But he comes out a magnificent pilot. At any point he may have failed. If he finishes, he is as good a pilot as it is possible to produce. Muscles and nerves and discipline will be hard. He will know ships and men. He will be a flying officer in the Army Air Force and that’s as good a man as you can be in any army.

The ship will be in his finger tips and in his knowledge. As with the other members of a bomber crew, the Air Force has the pick of the country. It selects only the best in mind and body, and in spite of the growing need of our sky-rocketing Air Force the country can produce the material. The young man wishing to be a pilot makes his application just as bombardier and navigator have and if he is accepted, on his past record, he goes to the induction center just as they do. There he is put through the same tests. Perhaps he wanted to be a pilot and he is told that he will be a better bombardier, or perhaps the tests have shown that he has the qualifications for a pilot; but he will have been tested to his limit and the officers who recommend his branch will know all about him from the records they have made in the tests. If he has shown qualifications as a pilot he will become immediately an aviation cadet, and he will be assigned to a primary school to get his first training in flying an airplane.

Joe was a big, slow-talking boy from South Carolina. He was a farmer by birth and by tradition. He came out of the university knowing more about scientific farming than his father did and more than his father would admit. Joe’s two younger brothers were pretty confused because their father told them one thing and then Joe took them aside and told them another. Joe had his head full of phosphates and blooded cattle and things were shaping up for a fight on the farm, for Joe’s father was a strong-willed man. And then the war came along and solved everything. Joe decided to let fertilizers and Holsteins go until the war was over.

He applied for entrance into the Air Force, and when he was accepted he left a pile of text books for his father; and the old man read them and got pretty excited about them once it wasn’t a simple matter of disobedience on Joe’s part. Joe was hardly off the place before his father bought a fine Holstein heifer. One of the young brothers wrote to Joe about it and told him not to mention it.

Meanwhile, at the induction center, Joe went through his tests and his interviews and it was discovered that his big, unhurried hand and his slow speech were by no means indications of a slow mind. When his tests were finished he was ticketed a cadet pilot and sent to one of the many civilian schools which, under Army control, give pilots their primary training. Class and drill and life was all Army but the instructors were civilians and the field was a civilian field. Perhaps this may not always be—perhaps, for that matter, by the time this is printed it will not be; but in the time when the Air Force must expand with almost explosive speed, every facility for training must be used. Civilian instructors are available and they undertake the first flying training of the cadet.

Joe landed in the camp and was assigned to his barracks and he was assigned to his instructor, a moth-eaten flying man who had barnstormed crates and raced for small purses and learned to fly by flying for twenty years. The name of Joe’s instructor was Wilmer and he had a crooked leg and a broken nose. Wilmer didn’t waste any time. He took the students to the small primary trainers standing on the line and they walked around the little ship. Wilmer explained the rudder, the elevators, the ailerons, the principle of air foil. They leaned into the plane and he showed them the instruments, the controls, the throttle. He showed them how to start and stop the engine and then he turned to Joe and said, “Get in that rear seat and plug in the speaking tube.”

It was that quick. Wilmer got into the forward seat and he showed Joe how to cinch his safety belt. “Now take the stick lightly in your hand and never jerk it. Work it around and get the feel of it. It will feel different in the air with an air flow against it.” Joe moved the stick forward and back and sideways. The elevators moved up and down when he pushed it up and back and the ailerons moved one up and one down when he waggled the stick sideways. Wilmer said, “Now put your feet on the rudder. Don’t kick it around, it is a gentle movement and it all works together. Ever ride a horse?” “Sure,” said Joe. “Ever ride a polo pony?” “In school.” “Well,” said Wilmer, “I’ll tell you. Your feet on the rudder and your hand on the stick is almost exactly the same as reins and stirrups on a horse. Pull back on the reins or the stick and her head will come up. Push forward and she will take her head and bolt. When you make a turn you’ll use both reins and stirrups. But don’t do anything jerky any more than you would to a horse. Okay, let’s go,” Wilmer said. “You just hold on lightly and feel what I do.”

He climbed in, speeded the motor, and moved out for the take-off. “Watch the tower,” he said. “Get into the habit of watching the tower.” He waggled his ailerons. Joe, watching the tower, saw a green light come on—the permission to take off.

The little motor roared. Joe’s hand was on the throttle and the throttle went full ahead. Never again in his life could Joe, or anyone for that matter, know the breathless excitement of the first take-off with the controls in his hands and feet. True, Wilmer was doing it actively with his controls, but Joe’s hands felt every impulse in the dual control.

The little ship took off at fifty miles an hour, but it seemed to bolt over the ground. Joe felt the stick go gently forward, felt the tail rise, then the stick came evenly back a little and the weight on the wheels lightened. The plane bumped twice and took the air. Then the stick moved a little forward to level off for speed and then gently back again for altitude. A puff of wind wobbled them and Joe felt in the rudder and stick how Wilmer corrected for it. Then stick and rudder moved softly to the left and the ship turned and the controls came back to neutral and the turn continued. A little stick and rudder to the right and the ship straightened out and the stick came back a little and they climbed. There is nothing like the first flight. It can never be repeated and the feeling of it can never be duplicated. It is a new dimension discovered, but discovered in the nerve ends and in the exploring ganglia of the brain, and no amount of flying in passenger ships can do it. The little plane balanced on air, tippy as a canoe and as dependable in the hands of a flyer, and the whole floating like a leaf and responsive to the lightest touch, and the feeling is flight and pride and a strange sense of power and freedom.

The great law has been broken. Probably men have wanted to revolt against the law of gravity since they first noticed that birds and some insects are given a dispensation against it. The great envy that children have of birds, the dreams of flying if one only knew a trick with the hands or could press a magic button under the arm, the complete hunger for flight that is in all of us—all these are answered in the first take-off. Later the preoccupation will be with methods and techniques and instruments, but the first pure joy in release, there is nothing like it. These things, these thoughts and words, have been trite until it happens to you and then the feeling is ringed with fire.

The noise was loud in the plane. Wilmer pointed a finger at the altimeter dial. The needle was at 3,700 feet and rising. When it came to 4,000 the stick went a little forward and Wilmer’s voice came to Joe through the rubber ear pieces. “Straight and level flight. Pull back the throttle. Now, look at the horizon, hold it there.” And Joe saw that the plane was in his hands, the instructor was not touching the controls. He felt something like a bubble swell in his chest. “We’re going to make a left turn,” Wilmer said. “Now, stick and rudder together.” The left wing rode gently down and from his left window Joe could see the earth beneath. “That’s enough—stick and rudder back to neutral.”

The plane flew in a great circle. “Now straighten her out. Don’t strangle the stick.” Joe moved stick and rudder to the right. The plane straightened and he neutralized his controls and suddenly he knew he had done it all himself, without help. “Watch your ailerons,” Wilmer said. “See they’re lined up with the wings. Now, right turn. That’s enough. Straighten out. You were jerky on that one. Try a left turn. That was better. Urge it, don’t push it.” So they went, right, left, straight and level, climbing turns, descending turns, no time to waste. You can only learn to fly by flying. Gentle and medium turns, and finally Wilmer said, “All right, let’s go back. There is the tower, cut your throttle. Now, hold her nose up. She wants to put it down.” Joe felt the weight of the nose on the stick and he held back against it. He followed Wilmer’s hands while they landed that first day, felt him come in and then pull back to drop the tail, and they taxied to the line. Joe loosened his belt and climbed stiffly out. He was wet with perspiration. Wilmer grinned at him, “You’ll be all right. You’ll have to relax, but that’ll come.” Another cadet walked up and Wilmer said, “All right, get in the rear seat and fasten your safety belt.”