I cut it a little close once, on a beautiful afternoon over Louisiana. A lone thunderstorm sat dead center on our flight path. It was a beautiful thing, towering upward thousands of feet above us, with almost vertical walls. The air around it was smooth and clear. Far below we could see the base of the storm flaring out near the ground in a sinister blackness. We set the twenty-mile cursor on the radar scope and turned so that the storm would just graze the edge of the yellow cursor. As we passed abeam it, exchanging small talk about how majestic it appeared, it reached for us.
A wicked, gnarled arm of white heat appeared with the suddenness of light speed. It seemed against all logic to be reaching horizontally from the cloud, trying to grab us. It was only there for a millisecond, but its image burned into my retina. I can still see it now, seeming to stretch and strain like a kid on a tree not quite able to reach the rope swing. Maybe, like the kid, it was at playjust wanted to scare us; to give us a playful warning to stay away. It succeeded. The wings of a C-141 never rolled as quickly as they did that day out east of Shreveport.
But the McGuire forecaster was right. It appears we will pass over the squall line, but we are beginning to enter some upper cloud layers. Suddenly the ride turns rough as we encounter some light chop. Lynn remarks that I must have turned off on a dirt road. I reach up and turn on the continuous ignition system, which provides constant electrical spark to the engines' combustion chambers. This will help keep the fires lit if turbulence threatens a flameout. As I reach for the switch, I see that another act has opened in the night's light and energy drama.
A yellow glow is developing on the lower portion of the windscreen. I've seen this phenomenon, called Saint Elmo's fire, several times before. When atmospheric particles, ionized by storm activity, contact an aircraft, something like minilightning develops on or near the plane's surfaces. It's pretty rare; conditions have to be just right for it. Saint Elmo is harmless enough, but the first sight of one of the more intensive displays can be heart stopping.
One night out east of Las Vegas in a Boeing 727, we were descending through a stormy area, weaving this way and that to avoid the intense centers of the cluster of storms. Sheets of rain assaulted us, and lightning flashed left and right, but the air was relatively smooth. Then the glow of Saint Elmo attached itself to our nose. We could clearly see it widening and flaring back as it crept over our windscreens, as if being washed back by the rain and wind. The color seemed to change from green to yellow. Then the strobes came.
Long, bony, stringy, gnarling, fingers of miniature bluish white lightning crept up over our windscreens, disappearing and returning, quivering and jumping as if searching for a handhold but finding the windscreen too smooth, too hot. They wanted inwanted to find a crack, an opening through which to slither in and sting us; to grab us by the throat; to warn us that we're not supposed to be here; that we'd best leave these parts before the Big Guy finds out. Then the knock came on the flight deck door.
It was a flight attendant wanting to gather our dinner trays so as to stow them before landing. I unlatched the door, and the cockpit was flooded with soft cabin light as she entered. As she reached for the trays I asked her to close the door and look toward the windscreens. In a moment, after her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her face became flushed with fear at the sight of the wicked fingers. But then she judged the sight to be nonthreatening, relaxed, and asked it if that was Saint Elmo's fire. After she left the cockpit the Big Guy came.
A pulsating ball of electricity, or so it appeared, formed in front of our nose, stood there a second and then seemed to rush in like a photon torpedo coming at us from a Klingon cruiser. As it hit, the explosion was sharp and deafening, like an unexpected thunderclap. The jet shuddered and lights flickered, but the generators held on. Stunned, I began to scan the panel for evidence of missing engines and gaping holes, but all was normal. Then the second one hit, but again no damage was done except to our frayed and quivering nerves. As was expected of me, I steadied my voice, swallowed hard, keyed the public address, and explained the static discharges to the passengers, a paragon of confidence and reassurance.
We emerge from the clouds to find a feeble glow of sun ahead. I tilt the radar antenna down and see on the scope the green outline of the Irish coast 100 miles ahead. The sun's brilliance is about to tear into our very souls and torture what little is left of our consciousness. At this point Lindbergh still had eight hours left on his epic journey, yet already we feel the nearness of a bed and a blissful sleep. But the challenge of the crowded European airspace lies ahead, with its attendant rotten weather to boot.
Steve Clark, my copilot, gets a weather update and hands it across. His handwriting has all the characteristics one would expect of a man who has totally lost hope that someone would ever read his scribbling. I look hard, trying to make out the note. It saysno, not so. There's some mistake. If one could make out this chicken-scratching gibberish, it would appear that the weather at the destination is: EDAF 0956 X M 1OVC 1/4R-F 46/46 0000 29.86 R25LRVR1200. I ask him for a clarification and, with an anticipatory smirk, he confirms the vile news. I hand the note back to Findley and Lynn so that they can begin their landing performance calculations.
It appears that we will earn our pay in the final few minutes of this trip. The weather at Frankfurt's Rhein Main airport is well below the normal minimums of 200-feet ceiling and half-mile visibility. The ceiling at Frankfurt this spring morning is obscured by fog. The runway visibility is only 1,200 feet. We will have to fly a rare Category II approach.
We immediately initiate a test of the All Weather Landing System. The AWLS uses the same basic instrumentation we normally use for a precision instrument approach, but it increases the sensitivity of the receivers so as to allow us to go lower while still blinded by cloud. But there is not much room for error. If we don't see the runway when we reach 100 feet above the ground, or if we see it and are not aligned sufficiently to land, we will have to execute a missed approach. Thus the chances are increased that we will not be able to land and will have to divert to an alternate.
Steve's notes also reveal that the weather at Mildenhall Air Base in England is a bit better, confirming that we will have a place to which we can escape. We planned for this eventuality before leaving the statesas we always dobut still, we decide to run through some quick calculations. We all agree that we should have enough fuel to make one approach at Frankfurt and then hightail it to England. But when we get there we will not have much left.
We set our airspeed and altitude markers at the appropriate values, buckle our shoulder harnesses, and run the descent checklist. Passing over Dover we are ordered to begin our descent. On the way down, we review the special procedures of the CAT II approach. Though we practice this a lot, I've only done it once. The others have never seen it. We ensure, that we are all up to speed on what each is to do and say during the critical final minutes and on what our actions will be if certain malfunctions occur.
As we pass through 21,000 feet, the sun suddenly succumbs to the gloom and we plunge into a cheerless abyss of gray. The radio becomes busier as we approach Frankfurt. Our senses heighten as we listen intently to the German controllers for our call sign. The weather has caused an aerial traffic jam. The controllers are barking impatient instructions to a myriad civil and military aircraft. Upon hearing one particular transmission, Steve and I look abruptly at each other.