Solo (6 page)

My academic record was good throughout the beginning of pilot training; the multiple-choice tests didn’t seem very difficult and my flying grades were high. As we finished our T-41 training, my academic and flying grades put me at the top of my squadron, and it was decided that I and Kevin Boyd, who’d finished at the top of the other squadron, would be on an accelerated program in the T-37. He and I would be flying every weekday in the T-37. Everyone else would be flying every second or third day.

Before we were assigned to a T-37 instructor (an Air Force pilot rather than a civilian pilot) on base, we were each required to enter, of all things, a model-airplane contest.
Required.
The winner would be decided by the T-37 instructors. We were also required to write an essay about why we wanted to be a pilot. These essays, our academic and flight records, and our expertise on the models would help each T-37 instructor decide which student pilot he wanted in his group of four.

My friends started constructing contemporary and classic model fighter aircraft. I went to a toy store. I found a model of a Batplane made famous by the
Batman
TV show. It had four parts, rather than hundreds. It was made for kids. I put it together and entered it in the contest.

I wrote an essay about my dream of flying, about seeing the F-104 on television when I was a boy and hearing the poem “High Flight” in the background. Then I tried to make it funny. I didn’t want to be a serious warrior.

Up against the many camouflaged and gunmetal gray model fighters and bombers, the Batplane didn’t win, but
it provided an opportunity for laughs and conversation, and perhaps caused some resentment here and there. (Our yearbook has a photo of the model aircraft sitting on a table. Someone had removed the Batplane before the snapshot.) The Batplane was—I think, looking back—an outward manifestation of my inner discomfort in the role of warrior. But I would live to learn that a funny warrior is no less responsible for his choice to become a warrior—and is perhaps even more susceptible to dread and regret.

M
OVING FROM A LITTLE
propeller airplane to a small jet trainer was a big jump. So rather than going from one straight to the other, we spent time in a T-37 simulator—a mock cockpit with working instruments. The simulators were all housed in a large room, each one encased in a large box so that once you were seated inside, all you could see were the instruments and flight controls. Our instructors, young airmen or noncommissioned officers (enlisted personnel, not fliers), sat outside the box, at a table with a control panel, while we flew inside in the dark, the glow from the instrument panel against our faces. While one of us flew a simulated mission, an instructor could cause engines to die, fire indicators to light, hydraulic systems to fail. Surely some were happy to watch these young Air Force pilots-to-be sweat and do things like shut down the wrong engine when an engine-fire light came on.

The T-37 instrument panel was significantly more
complicated than the T-41 instrument panel. The T-37 had dual engines; each monitoring instrument had a twin, one reason the panel looked busy.

We attended classroom lectures on the T-37 systems—electrical, hydraulic, air-conditioning and defrosting—on the principles of turbojet propulsion, and on weather, navigation, and other topics. Normally a sergeant lectured using slides of graphs, tables, and charts. Occasionally a lecturer stomped his foot. That meant that what he’d just said would be on the test. Some instructors were just instructors; others were “foot stompers.” This was true throughout pilot training.

On the day we were to first fly the real T-37, we were seated around tables, four student pilots per table, in a room with maps on the wall. Our instructors came in; we stood at attention, saluted as our instructor approached. My instructor was a beefy captain who seemed relaxed and carefree (though I was to learn otherwise): Captain Coleman. When he sat in a chair, he leaned it back on two legs. His presence was big. He’d look at you, say something, smile slightly, and raise an eyebrow.

He informed us that each student would normally fly every other day, sometimes every third day, but that I’d be flying every day for several weeks—with another instructor, a Captain Dunning. My initial flying would be accelerated; then I’d be sent back to Captain Coleman. No one mentioned that this was because I’d finished T-41s at the top of my section. (I thought about Kevin Boyd, who’d finished at the top of the other squadron. Before pilot training
he’d been a crop duster. His flying abilities were already legendary. He’d had hours of crop dusting and I’d had Mr. Vaughn. Would I be able to keep up with him—to stay at the top?)

We soon learned that the classic Air Force instructor pilot, or IP, expected us to know our stuff, to be overprepared, and he would
not
patiently guide us through procedures. He wanted to scare us with his strict demeanor. This was serious business. That’s how he had learned. That’s how he would teach.

But not so with my new instructor, Captain Dunning, the one who’d have only me as his student. First, he was a bit older that the others. He’d quit the Air Force for ten years—I never knew why—and then reenlisted. At his age he should have been a major or a lieutenant colonel. He was a faithful churchgoer, a Southern Baptist, soft spoken, a bit droopy eyed, and almost constantly smiling. He was an excellent instructor, very patient. He was a Mr. Rogers among Rockys.

Before our first flight, as just the two of us sat facing each other across a table, he explained that we’d be flying together every day, and then he gave a flight briefing, an overview of our first flight. He called the T-37 the Tweet, short for its affectionate name, Tweety Bird, a consequence of its small size and the high-pitched sound of its engines.

Before leaving for the equipment room, where we’d pick up our helmets and parachutes, he asked me to recite several emergency procedures that we all had to
memorize: the correct procedures for responding to an engine failure on takeoff or an engine fire in flight, for example.

And then he did an odd thing. He invited me to his home for supper that evening. I said yes, of course, and then we walked out to the flight line and around our aircraft.

I was wearing boots. Finally.

Captain Dunning talked me through my first preflight inspection, encouraging me to ask questions. I looked down into a cockpit wide enough to seat two pilots comfortably side by side. The wings, large and
not
swept back, would make the airplane easier to fly, more stable than many jets.

Once we were in the cockpit—I in the left seat, he in the right—he said, “Okay now, I’m going to talk you through the starting procedure.” I glanced at him. This man was like neither Mr. Vaughn nor Mr. Washburn: he smiled.

The simulator training had been helpful. Though the instrument panel seemed very complex, I’d learned it well.

The crew chief stood in front of us, off to my left. Our glass-bubble canopy was open. We’d lower it while taxiing out to the runway. I could see outside so much better than in the T-41. I was sitting high in the airplane, and the instrument panel was low, rather than almost in my face. When I’d gone through all my checklist items and was ready to start the left engine (the left engine is always started first), I gave a little whirling motion with my left
index finger, and the crew chief let me know with the same signal that all was clear. I moved the throttle into idle, pressed the starter button, and checked all gauges—rpm, temperature, oil pressure, and so forth—as the engine came to life. I started the right engine. Even though green lines on the gauges indicated normal parameters, and red lines, danger areas, we were required to memorize and recite normal limits for each instrument.

For the first time, I was about to fly with a fighter-pilot stick grip in my right hand.

Among several buttons and a trigger on the grip was a button that engaged the nose-wheel steering.

The two throttles were side by side on the left console and could be operated simultaneously under my left hand or independently. The instructor had the same setup—stick and throttles.

“Let’s taxi,” said Captain Dunning.

Through my gloved hands I felt the stick and the throttles that were controlling this machine. I moved the throttles forward. No movement. A little farther. We were moving.

We bounced along the taxiway with the whole world out there. I steered with my feet by pressing on either the left or the right rudder pedal.

Inside my helmet were earphones, and in the oxygen mask covering my nose and mouth was a microphone. My mic and Captain Dunning’s were “hot,” so that whatever one of us said, the other heard. In order to be heard by someone in the tower, I had to press a button on the throttle grip with my left thumb.

I could look in our rearview mirror and see myself with my new helmet, sun visor lowered, wearing the oxygen mask now necessary in the T-37.

What was I feeling? A strange pride and power. I saw myself as I thought I’d look to an observer, as I’d viewed fighter pilots all my life—as a hero, with all the attendant awards, recognitions, and love.

While waiting on the taxiway to be cleared onto the runway for takeoff, Captain Dunning said, “Now, when you’re cleared on, taxi out and turn around at the end of the runway—as close as you can get to the back edge there, with your nose wheel on the runway centerline. You always want as much runway in front of you as possible.”

Cleared for takeoff, I taxied out and stopped the aircraft facing down the runway. I knew what to do, but Captain Dunning would talk me through every move.

“Get on the brakes,” he said. “Stand on them if you have to. Now push the throttles to one hundred percent and check all your instruments.”

The toes of the rudder pedals operated the brakes. I almost stood on my toes to hold the aircraft still. I brought the twin throttles in my left hand forward and watched the needles on the rpm gauges rise to 100 percent.

“They’re all in the green,” I said.

“Let’s go.”

I released the brakes and we were rolling, slowly at first, and then there was a significant pickup of speed. I watched the runway centerline. I was drifting left. I touched the right rudder, too far right, then the left, and was back
centered. The airspeed indicator showed 40 knots, 50, 60. At 65 I pulled back the stick, the nose lifted, we rolled along on the main gear, and then the aircraft smoothly lifted into the air. We climbed out at 180 knots, almost twice as fast as I’d ever gone while piloting.

Captain Dunning talked me through climb-out. He made all the radio calls himself so that I would not be distracted. We leveled out at 12,500 feet, higher than I’d ever been as a pilot. I was in a dream.

Before Captain Dunning explained a maneuver, he would take control of the aircraft so I could relax and listen carefully. And when I was taking over the aircraft, I learned to respond to his “You have the aircraft” by taking the stick in my right hand and the throttles in my left and saying, “I have the aircraft,” while giving the stick a slight wiggle. The procedure was reversed when he took control. This would be a rule from then on during my time in the Air Force. Side by side we could see each other, but it’s easy to imagine the pilot in the front seat of a tandem-seat aircraft saying to the pilot in back, “You have the aircraft,” and then turning loose the stick and throttle (without a response) to someone who hadn’t heard.

The maneuvers we practiced over the next weeks included stalls, slow flight, steep-banked turns, and aerobatics. We practiced bad-weather instrument approaches to landing, the good-weather traffic pattern, and landing.

After a few weeks of flying it was time for my first check ride. My instructor for that ride was Captain Gillison, from our sister squadron. I felt confident. We flew to our practice area and I performed all maneuvers requested:
descending turns, aerobatics, stall recoveries. On the way home he told me to descend. I accomplished my before-descent checklist and started down, looking below me and all around for other aircraft. I’d always been instructed to look out of the cockpit constantly. After I’d descended a thousand feet or so, Captain Gillison abruptly took the aircraft from me. “Edgerton, you didn’t do your descending turns.” I didn’t know what he meant.

Captain Dunning, while instructing me to always be looking outside the aircraft, had not taught me to lower the right wing and then the left as I descended, making gentle turns. This allowed for better vision below the aircraft. Captain Gillison gave me the first of the two Fairs I’d get during pilot training, and it marked my departure from the top of my class. My intense flight training in the T-37, flying every day and preparing for those flights, left less time for academic study, and my academic average would slip, not far; but my stint at or near the top of the class was over.

One day, halfway through a lesson of touch-and-gos, Captain Dunning asked me to land, full stop. It was my day to solo. I taxied to the flight line. He got out of the aircraft and I taxied out, took off by myself, and flew in the traffic pattern for several touch-and-go landings. A traffic pattern flown in good weather (when visual flight rules, or VFR, are in effect) is shaped, looking down from above, like a rectangular racetrack. All turns are normally to the left.