Bombs Away (17 page)

Joe watched the take-off. It was a slow plane. There was nothing so wonderful about it. And then he remembered what it had been like, the most wonderful thing in the world, sensitive and gentle, every wind and every air current it touched, moved it. It moved like a canoe. He shivered, something had happened to him that would never go away. A new element was opened and he had stepped into it and he would never be a groundling again.

It is a strange, almost mystical thing that happens to flying men. It is as though the experience had cut them off so that they can only communicate with their own kind, can only be understood by other flying men. When they meet they go away together and perhaps they don’t talk about flying, although that isn’t likely. But at least they know and understand each other. They have been through something that has the impact of religion, and while most of them are never able to say it, never want to say it, they all understand it. And in his first day Joe had his first glimpse into the inside of this brotherhood. There is another thing that flyers have in common with good sailors—they never lose respect for the ship. They never take it lightly, never know it well enough to hold it in contempt. A man cannot fly without a ship and a ship cannot fly without a man. Perhaps it is his participation which gives him his strong feeling about airplanes, and once a man has entered the brotherhood it is a rare thing for him to leave it. A flying man remains a flying man until some force outside himself drags him down from the sky. Age or failing eyes or bad nerves may bring him down, but a man is never grounded by himself. His association with the new dimension is permanent.

Joe started in the air right away, but he started ground school too. As everywhere in the Air Force there was so much to learn, so quickly. In class they studied chemical warfare, the principal gases and why each was used, and they learned to recognize each kind and the protection against each kind. They learned to use gas masks and how to give first aid to a man overcome with gas. Next the class studied the planes of our Allies and our enemies. It is very necessary to recognize a ship quickly and at a distance. And so with models and silhouettes they learned to recognize British and American and German and Japanese aircraft. With the models they learned to recognize the principal types at all angles. After instruction they had range estimation. A model was held up quickly and then concealed while the class wrote down nationality and type. They learned the capacities of different ships, how fast they could fly, how they maneuvered, what the fire power was, where they were well armored, and what were their weak and blind places. They learned to recognize a ship instantly. Next the class studied navigation. For in a single-place ship, in interceptors and fighters, the pilot can carry no navigators. They studied the air-speed meter and the altimeter, the magnetic compass with its errors, variations, and deviations. They studied maps in different projection, learned to read maps, to measure courses and distances; vector problems were introduced and triangle of velocity problems. Dead-reckoning navigation was introduced, time, speed, and distance relations and the keeping of the simple log.

Meanwhile, every day they were in the air. With his instructor in the forward seat, Joe practiced “S” turns across roads. The instructor stalled the motor and taught him how to pull out of spins and stalls. Joe practiced take-offs and landings and now the instructor did not touch the controls. Joe did it all, but the voice of Wilmer was in his ears all the time, correcting him and informing, “You were jerky there, take it slowly. A little more rudder and a little less stick. You overstick some. Bring her in now. I think you’re a little high, you’ll overshoot. Let her go up and come in again.” And hour by hour Joe’s hand grew lighter on the stick and his feel for the rudder more delicate. The ship was getting into his system and he had confidence in his hands.

That is, he had confidence until his first solo. That was a lonely thing. He felt it before he got the green light from the tower. Wilmer was standing beside the runway watching him. Joe perspired a little. The light showed and he pushed the throttle forward. There was no voice in his ear now. He pushed his stick forward a little soon and that made him nervous and then he pulled it back and he rose too sharply, knew he was doing it. He had the stage fright of a young dancer, making little errors before an expert. And he could feel the instructor’s eyes on him.

When he got altitude he calmed down a little and went through the turns and climbs and “S’s” prescribed. He seemed jerky to himself. His faults glared in his own mind, too much stick there and on the next turn, too much rudder, overcompensating. He looked out and saw his ailerons off center and blushed and corrected them. Now his time was up and he made his approach for a landing. Too high, he usually was, well this time he wouldn’t be. He came in too low and too fast, slowed and dropped in too fast. His hand was shaking now, not with fright, but because he knew the instructor was seeing everything. He dropped in, bounced and ballooned a little, and finally came to a stop. It was the worst landing he had ever made, even the first time he had brought it in.

Joe was hot all over. He wondered whether he would be washed out on the strength of a performance like that. He hated to turn and taxi back to face the man who had instructed him, but he did. Wilmer stood beside the ship, his face inscrutable. “That was awful,” Joe said weakly. “Pretty bad,” said Wilmer. “That balloon.” “You’re nervous,” Wilmer told him. “That wasn’t a good performance but it wasn’t a terribly bad first solo. Did the balloon scare you?” “It made me mad,” said Joe. “Look,” Wilmer said, “it isn’t good to sleep on a thing like that. Go up again, make one circle and come in.”

The green light showed again. This time the tail came up evenly. Joe pulled off the ground and leveled for speed and climbed. At 700 feet he turned and came around and made his approach again and his hand didn’t shake this time. The instructor had recognized pure stage fright. Joe came down and leveled off. Perhaps it was luck this time. His wheels grazed the ground and settled gently and his hand soothed the tail down. Joe felt wonderful. He loved Wilmer and he loved the ship. It was a perfect landing. He came about and taxied back to the line. Wilmer looked in at him. “That was a little bit better,” Wilmer said. “I think you were a little high on that approach.” Joe walked humbly off the field. There is something very hum-bling about an airplane. Now and then an H P, a hot pilot, one who is cocky, develops, but not very often. The ships keep pilots humble, the best pilots that is.

Joe sat down on a bench for a moment. He held up his right hand and looked at it. The fingers were still shivering a little. He looked back at the line. Another cadet was in the ship. Joe watched the take-off. The tail came up too late and the take-off was too steep. Joe felt critical. “Too steep,” he said to himself and then he laughed at himself. The second supervised solo and the third did not cause the emotional tumult of the first day. Joe’s confidence was high now.

The instructors are curious men, for while they work with mechanics and flight they work also with very malleable human material. They must be excellent practicing psychologists, knowing when a word of praise makes the difference of a week in training and when a good bawling out will prevent a future accident.

A man’s soul is pretty much in his instructor’s hand during the first days. The instructor learns instinctively when a man is frightened and how to overcome that. He can feel nervousness in his dual stick. He can feel it in the wobble of the ship and by his knowledge of men he can make the student relax, can give him confidence without cockiness. Good instructors wash out fewer men than bad ones. They are almost uniformly stern men with acid tongues when they want to use them. They know their students at a glance, and they are as important to the student pilot’s whole future as the first teacher in school is to a boy’s whole education. And although they are well paid and their work is vital, nearly all the instructors would much rather be flying bombers into action. They complain constantly. “If I were only ten years younger, I’d have a B-17E right over Burma now.”

Every day Joe went up and he was graded every day on his take-offs and landings and his action in the face of field traffic. In the fourth week he began his spot landing, which is rather like pitching pennies at a mark only harder. Judgment of speed and height and distance become more and more exact. The ships used a 90-degree approach from 500 feet and landed for a designated spot. And now Wilmer went up with him again and taught him elementary 8’s, curves, and the climbing turn which is called a chandelle and which is practiced so much that elementary schools are called chandelle colleges. And finally the spot landings were graded by the instructor.

The work on the Link trainer began in the fourth week. This is a small mechanical model of a ship, just large enough to hold a man. It has the instruments of a ship and the controls. It can make all the movements of a plane too, although it is only on a pivot. And apart from the Link trainer and yet controlled by it, an inked wheel describes on a chart exactly what the ship is doing. A trainer will spin and slip and it can be pulled out by its own controls. Furthermore, the instructor, sitting apart at his controls, can create nearly all the conditions that a ship may meet—heavy weather, rising and falling currents, head winds, side winds. With the cover down, a student can learn instrument flying on the Link trainer and the course he flies will be indicated by the inked line on the chart in front of the instructor. A great deal of flying experience can be had in a short time in a Link trainer and so successful has it proved itself that commissioned pilots are required to use it constantly to keep in practice. Beginning instrument flying is always taught in the trainer.