Flight Part 1

 

 I may be flying a complicated airplane, rushing through space, but in this cabin I'm surrounded by simplicity and thoughts set free of time. How detached the intimate things around me seem from the great world down below. How strange is this combination of proximity and separation. That ground ― seconds away ― thousands of feet away. This air in the cockpit stirring mildly around me. That air rushing by with the speed of a tornado an inch beyond. These minute details of controls and instruments in my cockpit. The grandeur of the world outside. The nearness of death. The longness of life.
 ― Charles Lindbergh  

My mom got sick not long ago and I had to fly her to the Minnesota clinic since, based on previous experience, I wasn't satisfied with the local hospital's ability to properly diagnose and treat her. The trip involved some logistics: I had to arrange for my aunt to help us and fly down and pick her up, fly back, fueling up at the local field on the way home. Then, since Mom's appointment in Rochester was for 8am, I planned to fly her out the day prior, but bad weather forecasts ― AIRMETs, SIGMETs, Convective SIGMETs ― changed my plans and we ended up departing the ranch strip after midnight the day of her appointment ― my first use of the runway lights el jefe had installed, among other improvements. We arrived at RST around 7am.  

El jefe stayed behind looking after our two yard apes and handling ranch business and my aunt came along with me and my mom to take care of her and my baby. My mini-me came along to take care of me -- that's what she said! I hesitated about bringing my baby with us, but I couldn't see any other way of handling the situation. I expressed milk beforehand for my aunt to bottle feed the little one and I expressed more during the flight, putting the Beech on autopilot while I did so. Otherwise, I hand flew the plane as I usually do ― I like to feel what the airplane is doing, sense any changes in behavior, so I don't get surprised by anything.  It's not a big deal since the 18 is so stable once she's trimmed up.  I also flew fairly low for both my baby and my mom's sake.  That was one reason I didn't want to fly with any hint of adverse weather -- I wasn't in a situation where I could climb over it or make long diversions. 

Now you guys might believe that with all females on board the trip would have been a yak fest but it wasn't.  No one spoke unless something needed to be said, and then only in a low voice. My mini-me was co-pilot most of the way. She only left her station to make sure her great aunt was properly caring for the baby and to use the little girl's room. She's sharp and understood what I was doing and what the instruments were telling us.  She even called out the numbers for me when we were landing.  She did it accurately and once we were on the ground I let her know how well she did and how much that had helped me.  She said when she grew up she would be a pilot just like me.  Last fall she wanted to be a ballerina. I told her that when I was her age when I grew up I wanted to be a scientist and that I became one in exactly the field I was interested in, and I became a pilot due to circumstances, so to speak.  I would explain those circumstances to her when she got older.  She frowned and looked serious at this.  So the circumstances were not good, she asked.  I said yes and no, but now was not the time to explain. She accepted that and asked no more questions.

The flight itself was uneventful and we got my mom to her doctor and settled in at the hospital in plenty of time. But then something happened that required me to urgently return to the ranch so I left my aunt, mini-me and baby as I flew back regardless of weather.  I climbed to FL20 to clear some building cumulus congestus clouds that were expected to go nimbus and, getting on the step, poured on the coal, eating well into my fuel reserve before touching down at the ranch at sunset. But I had calculated my fuel burn to the gallon and I anticipated that. It was not something I would normally do, but I knew if I had miscalculated I could always refuel at our local field before going on to the ranch.

“The towns were lighting up, constellations that greeted each other across the dusk. And, at the touch of his finger, his flying-lights flashed back a greeting to them. The earth grew spangled with light signals as each house lit its star, searching the vastness of the night as a lighthouse sweeps the sea. Now every place that sheltered human life was sparkling. It rejoiced him to enter into this night.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Situation dealt with, I refueled with enough gas from our ranch supply to get me to MSO, which offered fuel service 24 hours, and took off again.  El jefe urged me to get some sleep but I popped a couple of No Dozes and leaped into the night sky.  Refueling at MSO, I flew on to RST, arriving a couple of hours after sunrise.  I don't think I've ever flown so much in such a short time ever before and I hope I never have to do it again. But I actually enjoyed the solo flights. A day in the clouds, then cruising through the long still night, sometimes using the big trim wheel as an arm rest and nothing moving but the slow forward creep of the trim wheel keeping her level as the fuel tanks drew down. Silence but for the drone of the engines that I didn't really hear.  Some traffic on the radio now and again.  Somebody else is out there in the night.  When my eyelids grew heavy I thought of Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit, crossing the Atlantic on his 33.5-hour flight, falling asleep with his eyes open, then snapping awake, only to have it happen again. I took a long drink of coffee and thought how it was a miracle he didn't disappear without a trace over the wide North Atlantic.  I was also acutely aware that tiredness makes one careless and reckless similarly to the way alcohol does.  So I made sure to force myself to think through every action that I took. 

 “I have to be by myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.”
~ Amelia Earhart 

I hadn't had any time alone for quite some time, so many things happening, so many demands on my time. People always need something from me, if only it is to just pay attention to them. Adults you can put off, but children you really can't.  And shouldn't.  You brought them into this world so you have an obligation to help them navigate it.  Unfortunately for me I am far too empathic ― all three types: cognitive, emotional and compassionate, but especially the latter two ― for my own good.  I become mentally exhausted, suffer from compassion fatigue and drift into melancholia.  To stop this spiral, I need to get away by myself for a while and these flights provided that.  What did I think about alone in the cockpit.  Not much really, but then maybe a great deal.  It's hard to say.  I didn't ruminate.  I just attended to flying the airplane and looked at the sky, the earth below, the sun, the clouds, the stars, the moon.

 “The stars seemed near enough to touch and never before have i seen so many. I always believed the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, but I was sure of it that night.”
― Amelia Earhart

A dejected Saint-Exupéry.

I thought about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's (he's one of my favorite authors) 1935 crash in the Libyan desert while trying to set a new speed record in a Paris to Saigon air race.  Earlier during the attempt he was scud running (flying below low clouds close to the earth) only 20 meters above the Mediterranean, his Caudron C.630 Simoun speeding along at 300kph (166mph). He didn't have the American standard six-pack of instruments allowing for instrument flying, especially no gyro compass or attitude indicator.  It was not yet available on European aircraft; Jimmy Doolittle had only demonstrated the possibility of instrument flying in 1929.  It was called blind flying in those days.  So Saint-Exupéry needed to stay out of the clouds.  When he crossed the shoreline into Africa the sea clouds dissipated, but he soon encountered a storm front and a wall of clouds and rain ahead.  He climbed to 2,500 meters trying to get over the front but was unable to, so he descended, trying to get below them and scud run again but he never broke into the clear before hitting the ground, fortunately for him at a shallow angle into soft sand.  He skidded across the ground coming to rest in one piece.  What followed he chronicled in his wonderful book, Wind, Sand and Stars. 
I don't really understand the circumstances of the crash.  If he didn't have the instrumentation to fly blind, how did he manage to keep control while descending in cloud from 2,500 meters to ground level, yet obviously he did, as can be seen by the condition of his crashed plane: it slid across the desert perfectly level, as shown in photos of the wreck.  He must have been a terrific pilot.  That's all I can figure. But from what I've read, St.-Ex was said to be considered a poor pilot by his contemporaries.  I'm skeptical of that because it reminds me of the same thing being said of Amelia Earhart ― but only after she became famous.  Any crashes she had were blamed on her incompetence by those who envied or resented her fame. And, granted, there were many other accomplished, even record-breaking, female pilots in those days, some doubtless better than Earhart.  But the press made her their darling.
Anyway, I've even read that St. Ex's crash in Guatemala was his fault, even though it happened on a short, high altitude field on a very hot day -- extreme high-density conditions.  He had specified a reduced fuel load in US gallons but the ramp apes used Imperial gallons, thus overloading the plane.  Was that his fault?  Eh, maybe, in that he should have verified what type of gallons they were using, but he may not have realized there was a difference in gallon sizes or that a Spanish-heritage country in the Americas would use British measurements, plus he was used to measuring fuel in liters.  In any event, he was unaware his plane weighed more than he calculated and he crashed trying to get airborne and was badly injured. 

Looks like a flying Winnebago to me -- formerly flying!

Reading about Saint-Exupéry's adventures made me aware of how backward European aviation was in those days compared to American.  St-Ex himself was astounded on a visit to the States to discover that LF/MF four-course radio ranges were established across the country, broadcasting continuously to define air routes, allowing reliable navigation day or night, fair weather or foul. He rode as a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Dallas to New York City, the DC-3 carrying out the trip from take-off to touch-down in IFR conditions, something impossible to do in Europe. Saint-Exupéry was amazed that the other passengers considered the flight routine. He

American Airlines DC-3. Photo by Charles Cushman.

had been almost killed accomplishing heroic feats of flying in French airplanes, that, had he been flying American planes over terrain set up with American radio-navigation systems, would have been nothing more than routine flights. The plane I was flying went into production a little more than a year after Saint-Exupéry crashed in the desert. Lots of them are still in normal operation today, hauling passengers and freight.  There are no Caudron C.630 Simouns flying today and no one in his right mind would use one for anything.  That St-Ex did all his flying in really crappy airplanes with minimal instrumentation and

A Beech 18 at Baguio, Philippines, in 1941.*

navigation aids across terrain like the Sahara desert, Patagonia and the Andes mountains reinforces my belief that he was a pretty good pilot, no matter what may be said about him.  The fact that while on a reconnaissance flight during World War II he may well have been shot down by a Luftwaffe pilot who was a big fan of his books adds a certain glum piquancy to his career as an aviator.  I wonder what he would have written about it.

“What are you, airplane? What is it about you that has made so many leave all they know and come to you? Why do they waste good human love and concern on you who are nothing but so many pounds of steel and aluminum and gasoline and hydraulic fluid?”
― Richard Bach 

I like our old BE-18 not so much for what it is as an airplane, a piece of equipment, as for what it reminds me of, for what it represents, for who has flown it.  My grandfather bought it when he retired from the Navy back in the Sixties, fresh from flying combat missions over North Viet Nam, his third war.  It had already been in our family for decades when I got my first ride in it as a child, and it was years later that I earned my multi-engine, instrument and commercial ratings in it, gramps  and my father being my main instructors. 
Erik Shilling taught me basic aerobatics -- not in the Twin Beech! -- which my father insisted I learn so that I would not be baffled by what an airplane was doing should I get into an unusual situation.  If I could do wingovers, dives and rapid pull-ups into zoom climbs, chandelles, high-speed turns with quick changes of direction while maintaining my altitude, stall turns, loops and Cuban eights and hammerhead stalls, spins and tumbles, aileron and barrel rolls, I should be able to handle -- or, better, anticipate -- abnormal flight events.  About all I remember from that training was the satisfaction I got when I did my first perfect loop and knew it was perfect because I ran into my own wake turbulence as I completed the loop, so I knew I hadn't slid off to one side as I usually did, to the frustration of Mr. Shilling.  "Try it again, this time...."

Hurricane Mk IIb.

Shilling was one of the original AVG Flying Tigers under Claire Chennault.  He told us (he taught my brothers, too) some stories about those days, most I've long-since forgotten, but one that I remember because I couldn't understand why such a thing could have happened, it was so outrageous, was when he was fighting the Japanese invasion of Malaya and the Tigers flew with a squadron of the RAF equipped with Hurricane IIB fighters armed with 12 .303 caliber machineguns.  The AVG flew export-model P-40Cs equipped with four .30 caliber and two .50 caliber machineguns.  They faced Nakajima Ki-27 fighters equipped with two 7.7mm machineguns. 

Nakajima KI-27

Although the Nakajima was obsolescent compared to the American and British fighters, being a slow, poorly armed, fixed-gear airplane, it was wickedly maneuverable and its pilots were superbly trained in using that maneuverability in combat.  These Japanese fighters had already trounced RAF fighters in air combat on several occasions because the Brits, trained to fly in a close vee-of-three formation and fight in the horizontal -- turn and burn, as Americans called that method -- played to the strength of the Nakajima.  The little plane could easily out-turn the Hurricane, get on its tail and shoot out its liquid-cooled engine's radiator, finishing it. Should you get on the tail of a Nakajima, it could do a Split-S losing less than 500 feet of altitude, use the speed of its dive to swing back up while doing an aileron roll and be on your tail just like that. Or it could do a rapid pull-up into an equally tight loop and come down on your tail from above. Or it could snap into a turn so tight it would gray you out trying to turn with it, which you couldn't do anyway, and be on your tail. Neither the Hurricane or the P-40 had a hope of following it in such maneuvers.

Restored P-40C in AVG colors.

Chennault trained his American volunteer pilots to fight in the vertical -- boom and zoom -- and never turn with a Japanese fighter or try to follow it in any aerobatics.  You would have no chance against it if you tried.  Instead, should you be bounced, dive away, pick up speed, zoom climb above the enemy and then dive back down on him.  Altitude and speed were life in combat, he taught.  Whenever you turn, you bleed off energy, slow down, become vulnerable.  And the Brits turned, fighting as if they were facing high-wing-load Messerschmitts.
Complicating this was that the Japanese also fought in flights of three, but the three were a pair plus a trailing single. Usually the Brits failed to notice that trailer and attacked the leading pair, only to be hit by the lurker.  Chennault knew this Japanese tactic and taught his pilots to be aware of it.  He also trained the AVG to fight in flights of four divided into two elements that protected each other, the schwarm the Germans had perfected in the Spanish Civil War (The RAF at some point also adopted the schwarm, calling it the finger-four formation).

Erik Shilling in his AVG P-40 in China.

This is background to the story I remember Shilling telling us about, the time six AVG P-40s (a flight and a pair, all that were available) were flying with a squadron of RAF Hurricanes (18 planes) when they encountered a sentai (45 planes) of Ki-27s.  The RAF squadron immediately bolted, running away and leaving the six AVG pilots to face the Japanese.  The Americans didn't run away, they fought as best they could, shooting down nine of the Nakajimas while losing three of their own, including one pilot killed.  To me, hearing this story, it seemed as if it must have felt like being attacked by a pack of velociraptors to have been in that fight.
When the AVG pilots returned to their airfield, the same one where the Hurricane squadron was based, there were some hot words exchanged, and the British squadron leader got socked in the jaw as he was explaining that they had departed muy rapido because their armorers had failed to load ammunition for their guns.  He was clobbered by his own crew chief, who called him a bloody liar.  Even if that had been true, the Japanese wouldn't have known it and would have had to maneuver against the Hurricanes as if they were armed, evening the odds for the Flying Tigers.
When the British squadron fled south in the face of the advancing Japanese ground forces, the pilots flew off, abandoning their ground crewman, who were captured by the enemy; some of them survived their captivity.  The AVG flew their ground personnel back to China in a commandeered DC-3.

Shilling in a P-40 at Chino, Calif.  Photo by Tom Cleaver.

After leaving the AVG, Shilling flew C-46s over the Hump, a job he considered far more harrowing than fighting the Japanese Army Air Force.  When the war was over, he joined Civil Air Transport, a front airline of the CIA, and flew again in mainland China supporting Chiang's side in the civil war, flying C-46s and C-47s, then after the KMT lost, evacuating Nationalists to Taiwan and also supporting KMT holdouts in Burma. After that he flew missions in Laos and Viet Nam aiding the French, including dropping supplies into besieged Dien Bien Phu in a C-119.  During the American involvement in  the second Viet Nam War, he flew for CAT's successor, Air America, piloting everything from C-47s and Caribous to Do-28s, becoming the last of the original AVG pilots to fly in combat, his final mission being in 1967, after which he flew for Flying Tiger Line until his retirement. Then, getting bored, he taught aerobatics to happy morons like me. 
Shilling lived such an amazing life that it is hard to believe, but it was all true and both my father and grandfather thought he was the greatest man alive and my two brothers adored him.  I confess that I didn't really feel the magic, not knowing much about what he was talking about and at the time not so much interested in flying as in pleasing my dad, who wanted me to fly.  Left to my druthers I would have stuck with my interest in the brain and the mystery of consciousness.  As it turned out, I have been able to pursue both and have come to like flying. 

____________________________________

*I think this may  be the same plane that Paul "Pappy" Gunn escaped from the Philippines in as the Japanese closed in.  Gunn was a retired naval aviator flying for Philippine airlines when the Japanese invaded and his wife and children were captured.
"This is a beautifully told story of a family separated by war, and of an extraordinary father, driven to avenge his family, who by sheer force of character changed the nature of warfare. A superbly told tale of love, honor, courage and devotion."

Gunn was the man who packed the noses of Fifth Air Force B-25s with a dozen .50 cal. machineguns, making them wicked strafers, and taught the pilots skip-bombing tactics to attack Japanese shipping and airfields on the deck.
The Pacific War is so full of amazing, astonishing, awe-inspiring stories and they are all almost entirely forgotten now.  Why they are not celebrated and taught to our children I cannot understand.  Well, I teach them to my children!

 

To Be Continued (because I have a lot more to say)