My position is probably why I didn’t see my coolant levels drop. Or the engine temperature rise. Or the thick, dark smoke pouring out of the back of my plane to mix with the red.
I thought I had escaped the bird strike unharmed until my propellers sputtered and failed. A bird must have been sucked into the radiator and cut a coolant line. Not that it mattered in that moment what had caused it. I had no engine.
My plane was pointed straight up. No engine. No lift from the wings.
The ground rolled overhead as the first turn of the incipient spin. There was a moment of zero G as the plane stalled out, and everything seemed to float.
Then the spin started in earnest.
The urge to pull back on the stick was so strong, but that would have killed me. The plane flipped over again, showing sky, and then earth, and then nothing but the fairgrounds spinning like a toy below me. Red and black smoke whipped past my windshield, blending with the blood of birds.
G-forces pressed me against the right side of the plane and squeezed the breath out of my chest. Right-side spin. I kept my hands lightly on the stick and pushed the throttle all the way forward. My vision started to go dark from the outside from the G-forces as I fought to stop the roll. Stick, hard left, full opposite the spin.
The muscles in my arm burned, trying to fight the pull, and I just braced myself harder, pushing. Goddamn it. I knew how to get out of a spin—I just had to get control again. My altitude ticked away. The rudder fought me every inch, but I got it to the left.
With that, the spin slowed, but I was still aimed at the ground in a dive. My canopy was smeared with blood and feathers. All I had were instruments.
According to the instruments, I still had enough height to pull the canopy and bail out, but, by God, I wasn’t going to crash a borrowed plane while I still had space to maneuver. Dragging in a breath against the G-forces, I yanked back on the stick to pull the plane out of her dive. The tunnel vision got worse as I pulled at least three Gs, but it was that or ditch the plane. I. Was. Not. Going. To. Do. That.
I tightened my legs and abdominal muscles, trying to force blood back to my brain as the G-force increased. Blacking out was not an option. I kept my eyes on the instrument panel, relying on it to tell me when I was finally, finally back to straight and level.
My vision started to clear and I took a full, deep breath before looking for the runway. I still had to land, but that was the easy part, even with obscured vision. The Mustang was a darn good glider, and I had enough height to bank and come around to the runway. I passed over it once to get a sense of range, then pulled a 360 to make another approach, so I could come in to land. And to try to kill some speed. My flaps were useless from the bird damage, so it was going to be a really fast approach. I peered right and left, using the spots of clear windshield to gauge my position relative to the ground.
It rose up to meet me and I slapped the wheels down, bouncing harder than I liked from the speed. Braking the plane, I brought her to a rolling halt at the end of the runway. I’d need someone to tow her to the side until we could look at the engine.
Birds. God, I hated birds. Well. When flying, I hated them—although, to be fair, the bloody birds had come out of this a lot worse than I did.
A giggle came on me out of nowhere. Bloody birds.
I was a terrible person. But I was alive.
Sliding back the canopy, I hauled myself up as the remaining pilots flashed past overhead, back in formation. They’d given me clearance to get under control, but should be heading in to land now. I was clear of the runway, wasn’t I?
I turned to look over my shoulder.
The runway was clogged with people. Cameramen and reporters and audience members and everyone was running toward my plane. Everyone. I waved from the cockpit so they’d see I was okay. I didn’t need help.
They didn’t need to come running out here. Not all of them.
The flight helmet was pinching around my throat. I could barely draw breath. Fumbling with the strap, I couldn’t get my fingers to unbuckle the thing. My gloves—too bulky. I couldn’t even get them off.
“Mrs. York! Mrs. York! Are you all right? What happened up there? Was that part of the show? Or did you lose control of the plane? Over here! Mrs. York! Over here!”
Who was talking? There were so many people. If I hadn’t still been in the cockpit, they would have crushed me in their midst. All of them crowded around the plane, and I couldn’t tell where the voices were coming from. Just a mass of people, shouting my name over and over again.
A man climbed up onto the wing, talking into a microphone. “I’m standing on the wing of a Mustang flown by Mrs. Nathaniel York, who just survived a near fatal midair accident. Mrs. York, can you tell us what happened?”
On the other side of the plane, a man with a camera had set it on a tripod on the ground. Another man stood in front of him, gesturing back at me.
They hadn’t even let me get out of the cockpit. I ripped at my gloves, trying to yank them off my hands. “Let me down, please.”
“Poor thing! She’s shaking.” Around us, more people called my name.
The man on the wing shoved the microphone at me. “Can you tell us how you feel?”
I turned and scrambled over the opposite side of the cockpit, hopped down, and slid off the wing. Like an idiot, I landed next to the television reporter.
“Oh! And here she is now. Mrs. York, it must be quite a fright to have something like that happen. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky?” He thought I was frightened because of the tailspin. They all thought I was shaking because of it. I pressed my hand against the wing and tried to steady myself. “I lived because of training that I received as one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during the war.”
“Of course, but it still must be frightening.”
“Not really. The birds in the air startled me, of course, but surprises like that are why we were put through such rigorous training as WASPs.” I gestured to the air, where the other women in our group were still circling. If I could only turn the attention away from me as easily as they circled. “Any of the other women in our group could have overcome that spin the same way I did. In fact, we have it easier than men in those circumstances, because our bodies are not subject to the same degree of strain from the G-forces in a spin.”
“And how did it feel, to be in that spiral of death?”
“Well … the death spiral is a different type of spin.” I tried to do the society smile that Nicole used to such good effect. “But when you’re in the middle of a tailspin, if you’ve been trained, you only think about what to do next. I save the panicking for when I’m talking to reporters.”
That got a chuckle from the crowd. I kept my hand pressed against the warm wing of my plane. It had kept me alive, even after those damn birds. “One good thing about the moon and Mars missions: those pilots won’t have to worry about hitting birds.”
Another laugh. “I do hope that people will enjoy the rest of the air show, and think about what our lady pilots can do for the space missions. If we want colonies … we’ll need women in space.”
“That’s interesting that you say that. Can you tell me why?”
“Oh dear … I’m not sure if I should explain where babies come from on television.” Through the crowd, I saw Nathaniel. Or, I didn’t even really “see him,” because he was still fighting his way through; I felt him, his terror and the way he drove through the crowd to try to reach me. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go reassure my husband.”