Stranger to the Ground

There are procedures, of course. Tighten the safety belt and shoulder harness, pitot heat and defrosters on, cockpit lights to full bright, airspeed down to 275 knots, and try to hold the airplane level. In the vertical air currents of a thunderstorm, altimeters and vertical speed indicators and even airspeed indicators are practically useless. They lag and they lead and they flutter helplessly. Though the ’84F tends to yaw and roll a bit in turbulence, I must try to fly by the little airplane on a two-inch gyrostabilized horizon set ahead of me on the instrument panel: the attitude indicator. I fly to hold my attitude straight and level through the storm. So I am prepared. I always have been.

In the darkness of the French night, my airplane flies easily along the continuous stream of miles between Laon and Spangdahelm, through air as smooth as polished obsidian. I tilt my white helmet back against the red ejection seat headrest and look up from the thick dark layer of cloud to the deeper, bright layer of stars overhead, that have so long guided men across the earth. The constant, eternal stars. The reassuring stars. The useless stars. In an airplane like mine, built to work at its best through a pilot’s eyes and a pilot’s direction, the stars have become only interesting spots of light to look out upon when all is going well. The important stars are the ones that draw the luminous needles of the radiocompass and the TACAN. Stars are nice, but I navigate by the S and the P and the A.

Tactical fighter pilots have traditionally been on marginal terms with the thought of weather flying, and only by superhuman efforts has the Air Force brought them to accept the thought that nowadays even fighter airplanes must fly in weather. The official emphasis takes the form of motion pictures and ground schools and instrument schools and required minimum hours of instrument and hooded flight every six months. Each successive fighter airplane becomes more capable of operating in all-weather conditions, and today interceptor pilots in their big delta-wings can fly a complete interception and attack on an enemy airplane without ever seeing it except as a smoky dot of light on their attack radar screen.

Even the fighter-bomber, long at the mercy of the low cloud, is today capable of flying a low-level attack through the weather, using sophisticated radar systems in order to avoid the hard mountains and identify the target. Beyond the official emphasis and the pressure of regulations, tactical fighter pilots of the newest airplanes must learn all there is to know about weather flying simply to keep up with their airplane, to be able to use it as it was meant to be used. But weather is still an enemy. The cloud robs me of the horizon and I cannot see outside the cockpit. I am forced to depend completely on seven expressionless faces in glass that are my flight instruments. There is, in weather, no absolute up or down. There is only a row of instruments that say, this is up, this is down, this is the horizon. When so much of my flying is done in the clear world of air-to-ground gunnery, it is not easy to stake my life on the word of a two-inch circle of glass and radium paint, yet that is the only way to stay alive after my airplane sinks into cloud. The feel and the senses that hold the pipper steady on the tank are easily confused when the world outside is a faceless flow of grey.

After a turn, or after the harmless movement of tilting my head to look at the radio set as I change frequencies, those senses can become shocked and panic-stricken, can shout you’re diving to the left! although the gyro horizon is a calm and steady guide on the instrument panel. Caught in the contradiction, I have a choice: follow one voice or follow the other. Follow the sense that marks me expert in strafe and rocket and high-angle dive-bomb, or follow the little bit of tin and glass which someone has told me is the thing to trust.

I follow the tin, and a war is on. Vertigo has become so strong that I have had to lean my helmet almost to my shoulder in accord with its version of up and down. But still I fly the instruments. Keep the little tin airplane level in its glass you’re banking hard to the right keep the altimeter and vertical speed needles steady look out, you’re starting to dive . . . keep the turn needle straight up and the ball in the center of its curved glass tube you’re rolling! you’re upside down and you’re rolling! Keep crosschecking the instruments. One to the next to the next to the next.