Stranger to the Ground

In this formation there are probably some airplanes that are not operating just as they should, but unless the difficulties are serious ones, the pilots keep their troubles to themselves and call the cockpit check OK. Today it would be too embarrassing to return to the field and shoot a forced landing pattern on the high stage before an audience so large.

“Baker Blue Lead is good.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

I press the button. “Four.”

Normally the check would have been a longer one, with each pilot calling his oxygen condition and quantity and whether or not his drop tanks were feeding properly, but with so many airplanes aloft the check alone would take minutes. It was agreed in the briefing room to make the check as usual, but to reply only with flight call sign.

Six lead airplanes rock their wings after my call and the six diamonds close again to show formation. I do not often have the chance to fly as slot man in diamond, and I tuck my airplane in close under Lead’s tailpipe to make it look from the ground as if I had flown there all my life. The way to tell if a slot man has been flying his position well is to look at his vertical stabilizer as he lands. The blacker his stabilizer and rudder with Lead’s exhaust, the better the formation he has been flying.

I move up for a moment into the position that I will hold during our passes across the base. When I feel that it is correct, the black gaping hole of Lead’s tailpipe is a shimmering inky disc six feet forward of my windscreen and a foot above the level of my canopy. My vertical stabilizer is solid in his jetwash, and I ease the weight of my boots from the rudder pedals to avoid the uncomfortable vibration in them. If it were possible to move my boots completely off the pedals, I would, but the slanting tunnels that lead down to them offer no resting-place, and I must live with the vibration that means that the stabilizer is blackening in burnt JP-4. I can hear it, a dull heavy constant rumble of twisted forced air beating against the rudder. The airplane does not fly easily in this, and it is not enjoyable to fly with the tail, like a great dorsal fin, forced into the stream of heat from Baker Blue Lead’s turbine. But that is the position that I must fly to make Baker Blue flight a close and perfect diamond, and the people who will watch are not interested in my problems. I move the throttle back an inch and ahead again, touch the control stick forward, sliding away and down into a looser, easier formation.

Two and Three are using the time that Falcon formation spends in its wide turn to check their own positions. The air is rough, and their airplanes shudder and jolt as they move in to overlap their wings behind Lead’s. To fly a tight formation, they must close on the leader until their wings are fitted in the violent wake of Lead’s wing. Although that air is not so rough as the heat that blasts my rudder, it is more difficult to fly, for it is an unbalanced force, and a changing one. At 350 knots the air is as solid as sheet steel, and I can see the ailerons near their wingtips move quickly up and down as they fight to hold smoothly in formation. During normal formation flying, their wings would be just outside the river of air washing back from their leader’s wing, and they could fly that position for a long time with the normal working and coaxing and correcting. But this is a show, and for a show we work.

Two and Three are apparently satisfied that they will be able to hold a good position for the passes across the base, for they slide out into normal formation almost simultaneously. Still they watch nothing but Baker Blue Lead, and still they bounce and jar in the rough air. Every few seconds the flight slams across an invisible whirlwind twisting up from a plowed field, and the impact of it is a solid thing that blurs my vision for an instant and makes me grateful for my shoulder harness.

This is summer on an air base: not blazing sun and crowded pool and melting ice cream, but the jarring slam of rough air when I want to tuck my airplane into close formation.

The wide circle is completed, and Falcon formation begins to descend to its 500-foot flyby altitude.

“Close it up, Falcon,” comes the voice of the man who is Able Red Leader. We close it up, and I lift my airplane to push the rudder again into Lead’s tumbling jetwash. I glance at my altimeter when the formation is level and three miles from the crowd by the runway. One quick glance: 400 feet above the ground. The leading vee of diamonds is at 500 feet and we are stacked 100 feet beneath it. As a slot man, altitude is none of my business, but I am curious.

Now, in these last three miles to the base, we are being watched by the American people. They are interested in knowing just how well the part-time Air Force can fly its airplanes.