Stranger to the Ground

Lead dips his wing sharply to the right, blurring the green navigation light in a signal for Two to cross over and take the position that I now fly on Lead’s right wing. With Four floating slowly up and down in the darkness off my own right wing, I inch back my throttle and slide gently out to leave an ’84-size space for Two. His navigation lights change from bright flash to dim steady before he begins his crossover, for it is easier for me to fly on a steady light than a flashing one. Although this procedure came out of the death of pilots flying night formation on flashing lights, and is a required step before Two slides into position, I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind the action and the wisdom behind the rule.

Two moves slowly back eight feet, begins to move across behind the lead airplane. Half way to his new position, his airplane stops. Occasionally in a crossover an airplane will catch in the leader’s jetwash and require a little nudge on stick and rudder to break again into smooth air, but Two is deliberately pausing. He is looking straight ahead into the tailpipe of Lead’s engine.

It glows.

From a dark apple-red at the tip of it to a light luminous pink brighter than cockpit lights at their brightest, the tailpipe is alive and vibrant with light and heat. Tucked deep in the engine is the cherry-red turbine wheel, and Two is watching it spin.

Like the spokes of a quick-turning wagon wheel it spins, and every few seconds it strobes as he watches and appears to spin backwards. Two is saying to himself, again, “So that is how it works.” He is not thinking of flying his airplane or of crossing over or of the seven miles of cold black air between his airplane and the hills. He is watching a beautiful machine at work, and he pauses in Lead’s jet-wash. I can see the red of the glow reflected in his windscreen, and on his white helmet.

Lead’s voice comes softly in the tremendous quiet of the night. “Let’s move it across, Two.”

Two’s helmet turns suddenly and I see his face clearly for a moment in the red glow of the tailpipe. Then his airplane slides quickly across into the space that I have been holding for him. The glow disappears from his windscreen.

In all the night formation missions, it is only when I fly as Two that I have the chance to see an engine soaked in its mystical light. The only other time that I can see a fire in the fire-driven turbine engines is at the moment of engine start, when I happen to be in one airplane parked behind another as the pilot presses his start switch upward. Then it is a weak twisting yellow flame that strains between the turbine blades for ten or fifteen seconds before it is gone and the tailpipe is dark again.

Newer airplanes, with afterburners, vaunt their flame on every takeoff, trailing a row of diamond shock waves in their blast that can be seen even in a noon sun. But the secret spinning furnace of a Thunderstreak engine at night is a sight that not many people have a chance to see, almost a holy sight. I keep it in my memory and think of it on other nights, on the ground, when there is not so much beauty in the sky.

The time always comes to go back down to the runway that we left waiting in the dark, and in the work of a night formation descent there is little chance for thoughts of the grace and the humble beauty of my airplane. I fly the steady light and try to make it smooth for Four on my wing and concentrate on keeping my airplane where it belongs. But even then, in the harder and more intense business of flying 20,000 pounds of fighter a few feet from another precisely the same, one part of my thought goes on thinking the most unrelated things and eagerly presenting for my consideration the most unlikely subjects.