Instantly, an astonished little voice. Tired? Tired of flying? Oho, so all it takes is a few hours of the wind and you’re tired, ready to quit. We see at last there is a difference between the pilots of then and of now. Not even halfway across and you’re breaking under the tiny strain of a few hours’ flying.
All right, that’s enough of that. You’ve not much evidence to prove that the early pilots didn’t get tired, and you’ll note that I had no thoughts of quitting, or even of slowing down. Not words, but action will decide whether I can stand with them. Only by living it can I discover flight.
So it is that many people travel by airplane, but few know what it is to fly. A passenger waiting in an airline terminal sees the airplanes through a twenty-foot sheet of glass, from an air-conditioned cube in which soft music plays. The sound of an engine is a muffled murmur outside, a momentary purring background for the music. In some terminals the reality is almost served to them on a silver tray, for their clothes can be whipped by the same propellerblast, that same sacred propellerblast, that whipped the coats of the great men of flight. And the airplane is right there, towering over them, that has flown many hours and will fly many more before it is replaced by one more modern. So often, though, the propellerblast is only a force that tugs at one’s lapels, an annoyance; and the big airplanes are barely noticed by passengers who are concerned only with finding the entry steps as quickly as possible, to escape the wind. And the airplane, with so much to offer those who will only take the time to see, does it go unseen? The curve of its wing, that has changed the history and the highway of mankind, is it unnoticed?
Well, what do you know. Not unnoticed. There in the wind, hands in pockets, hunched against the sunny cold, the first officer, three gold stripes on his sleeves, paying no attention to the passengers, pays full attention to his airplane. He sees that there are no leaks in the hydraulic lines, that everything is neat and in order inside the giant wheel wells of the wing. The wheels themselves, and the tires, all look good. On around the airplane he walks, looking at it, checking it, enjoying it without a trace of a smile.
The picture is complete. The passengers find their cushioned seats, and will soon be on their way in a machine that so many neither understand nor care to understand. The first officer and the captain do understand, and care for their airplane, and pay her every attention. So no one is forgotten; the airplane is happy, and the flight crew, and the passengers are ready to go their way.
Still, one airplane is two very separate places. In the passenger cabin, the fear that this may be the Last Flight, the awareness of air crashes in newspaper headlines, a certain tension in the narrow air when the throttles come forward, and a hoping that there will be one more flight safely completed before the next set of headlines are splashed across the newsstands. Step forward, through the door and onto the flight deck, and tension disappears as though there were no such thing. The captain in the left seat, the first officer in the right, the flight engineer at his board of solid instruments behind the first officer. All is smooth routine, for it has been lived many times over and again. Throttles come forward all under one hand, checks and crosschecks of engine instruments and of airspeed slowly increasing, a hand on the nosewheel steering shifts to the control column when the flight controls become effective before the airplane is off the ground. The voice of the first officer, as he reads the airspeed indicator: “V-one.” A little code that means, “Captain, we are committed to fly; there is not enough room left to stop the airplane without rolling off the end of the runway.”
“V-R.” And in the captain’s hand the control wheel comes back slightly, and the nosewheel lifts from the ground. A tiny pause, and mainwheels come free and the airplane is flying. A hand, the first officer’s, on the switch marked Landing Gear—Up, and a rumbling sheathing sound from the depths of the airplane as the gigantic heavy wheels, still spinning, move ponderously up into the wheel wells.
“V-two.” Or, “At this airspeed, we can lose an engine and still be able to climb.” The takeoff is marked by checkpoints saying, this is what we can do if we lose an engine now. Takeoff is the beginning, for the flight crew, of an interesting time with many little problems to solve. They are real problems, but they are not difficult, and they are the kind of problems that flight crews solve every hour, every flight. What is the estimated time of arrival over Ambrose intersection? Get a position report ready for Phoenix Center as we cross Winslow, give them a call on the number two radio, on frequency 126.7 megacycles. Transmit a report to the weather stations, telling the actual winds along our course and the turbulence and cloud tops and any icing along the way. Steer 236 degrees for a while, then add three degrees, settle on 239 degrees to correct for the winds.
Little problems, familiar ones, and friendly. Once in a while a bigger problem will come along, but that is part of the fun and keeps flying a fresh and a good way to make a living. If only the door to the passenger cabin from the flight deck weren’t such an effective door, the confidence and the interest that come from thousands of flying hours might filter back and destroy the tension and the fear that there exists.
As it is, even airline pilots are often uneasy when they must fly as passengers. Each pilot would feel a little more comfortable if he were at the controls and not sitting to look at a faceless door that doesn’t admit that there is anyone at all on the flight deck. Gone for pilots is the fun of flying as passenger, unknowing and fearful, unknowing and enjoying flight. There is always the creature within that is criticizing the way an airplane is being flown. Even sitting at the rear of a 110-passenger jetliner there is one lonely soul, during landing, that is saying wordlessly to the pilot, “Not now, you fool! We’re rounding out too soon! East it forward, ease it on in. that’s the way. too much, too much! Pull it back now! Flare out or you’ll. ” and with a thump the wheels are rolling on the concrete. “Well, all right,” from the back of the passenger cabin, “but I could have had her down much more smoothly.”
* * *
The biplane hums loudly along with the sun now low ahead, a round circle of distorted oily brightness in the forward windscreen. Not much daylight left to fly. The baseball sun, thrown high, having paused at its noon top, comes whistling down through the horizon. Though the sky goes on being happily light, the ground is not taken in. The ground is a solemn keeper of very precise time, and when the sun is down it dutifully smothers its dwellers in darkness.
Vicksburg below, and there, with shadows half across its opaque brown waves, the Mississippi. A river barge, a bridge that is probably a toll bridge, and on it automobiles, and among the automobiles a sparkling of headlights coming on. Time to land, and a few miles south is the airport for Vicksburg. But the map says that there are two airports close ahead westward; if I can land at one of these I can be that much farther along my course when the sun begins its launch tomorrow.
Press on, the voice says. If you don’t find the airports you can land in a field, and find fuel farther on in the morning. The voice that speaks is the one within that always seeks adventure, and, living only for adventure, doesn’t care what happens to aircraft or pilot. Tonight, once again, it wins its case. We leave the Mississippi and Vicksburg behind, and press on. Louisiana rolls onto the map.
The land is all cut into dark squares, in which are probably growing green peppers and peas that have black eyes. And on one square grows a cluster of Wooden buildings. A town. There should be an airport here, but I can see no sign of one. It is there, of course, somewhere, but little airports can be impossible to find even in broad daylight. “Airport” is often just a word applied to a pasture, to the side of which a farmer keeps a camouflaged fuel pump. It is a recognized game and point of competition in some parts of the country: Find the Airport. Pick one of the thin blue circles on an aeronautical map, one that no player has ever seen before. Take off at five-minute intervals to find it. The winners, those that find the airport, share a week of superiority over those who may be directly overhead, yet unseeing. “That can never happen to me,” I remember saying, when first a friend suggested we play Find the Airport. “What a silly game.” But in gracious tolerance I condescended to race him to the airport.