With the gun switch off and the gunfire circuit breaker out, I fly formation holding the grip naturally, right index finger resting lightly on the red trigger at the front of the contoured plastic. Now, with guns ready to fire, the finger points straight ahead toward the instrument panel in an awkward but necessary position that keeps glove from touching trigger. The glove will stay off the trigger until I swing my airplane in a diving turn that brings the white dot on the sight reflector glass over the black dot painted on the strafing panel.
It is time to put the finishing touches on my attitude. I tell the audience behind my eyes that today I am going to shoot better than anyone else in this flight, that I will put at least 70 percent of my bullets into the black of the target, with the other 30 percent left to be scattered in the white cloth. I run through a picture of a good strafing attack in my mind; I see the black dot growing larger under the white dot of the gunsight, I see the sight-dot stay smoothly in the black, I feel the right index finger beginning to squeeze on the red trigger, I see the white now fully inside the black, I hear the muffled harmless sound of the guns firing their 50-caliber copperclad, and I see the powdered dust billow from behind the square of the target. A good pass.
But caution. Careful during the last seconds of the firing run; don’t become too concerned with putting a long burst into the cloth, I remember for a moment, as I always do before the first gunnery run of the day, the roommate of cadet days who let his enthusiasm fly his airplane a second too long, until his airplane and its target came sharply together on the ground. That is not a good way to die.
Power to 96 percent on the base leg, airspeed up to 300 knots, watch Three go in on his target.
“Ricochet Three’s in, white and hot.” And down he goes, a twisting silhouette of an ’84F.
It is interesting to watch a firing pass from the air. There is no sound from the attacking airplane as it glides swiftly toward its target. Then, abruptly, grey smoke breaks noiselessly from the gunports at the nose of his airplane, streaming back to trace the angle of his dive in a thin smoky line. The dust of the ground begins to spray the air as the airplane breaks away, and a thick brown cloud of it billows at the base of the target when he is gone and climbing.
Now the only untouched target is target number four.
The warning panel on the ground by the spotting tower is turned red side down, white side up; the range is clear and safe for my pass. I note this, and fly along the base leg of the pattern, at right angle to my target. It is a mile away on the ground to my right. It drifts slowly back. It is at one o’clock low. It is at one-thirty low. I recheck the gun switch to
White and hot. The target is clear and the guns are ready to fire. Airspeed is up to 360 knots in the dive, and my wings roll level again. In the windscreen is a tiny square of white cloth with the speck of a black dot painted. I wait. The white dot called the pipper, the dot that shows on the windscreen where my bullets will converge, bounces in lazy slow bounces as it recovers from the sharp turn that began the pass. It settles down, and I touch the control stick back very gently in the dive so the pipper ambles up to cover the square of the target. And the target changes swiftly, as I wait, to become all things. It is an enemy tank waiting in ambush for the infantry; it is an antiaircraft gun that has let its camouflage slip; it is a black and puffing locomotive moving enemy supplies along a narrow-gage track. It is an ammunition dump a fortified bunker a truck towing a cannon a barge in the river an armored car and it is a white square of cloth with a black spot painted. It waits, I wait, and all of a sudden it grows. The spot becomes a disc, and the white pipper has been waiting for that. My finger squeezes slowly down on the red trigger. A gun camera starts as the trigger is half closed. Guns fire when the trigger is all the way down.
Like a rivet gun finishing a last-minute sheet metal job on the nose of the airplane, the guns sound; there is no ear-splitting roar and thunder and confusion in the cockpit. Just a little detached tututut while beneath my boots hot brass shell casings shower down into steel containers. I smell powder smoke in my oxgyen mask and idly wonder how it can find its way into a cabin that is supposed to be sealed and pressurized.