Stranger to the Ground

He didn’t even see the flash of the airplane that hit him. After he had landed and told what had happened, the base settled down to wait for the other airplane. In a little more than an hour, one airplane of all the airplanes on mobile control’s list of takeoffs failed to have an hour written in the column marked “Return.” Search airplanes went up arrowing through the dust like swift efficient robots seeking a fallen member of the clan. The darkness fell, and the robots found nothing.

The base was quiet and held its breath. Cadet dining halls were still, during the evening meal. Not everyone is home tonight. Pass the salt please, Johnny. The clink of stamped steel forks on mass-fired pottery. I hear it was an upperclassman in the other squadron. Muted clinks, voices low. Across the room, a smile. He should be calling in any minute now. Anybody want some more milk? You can’t kill an upperclassman.

The next day, around the square olive-drab briefing tables in the flight shack, we got the official word. You can kill an upperclassman. Let’s look around, gentlemen; remember that there are sixty airplanes from this base alone in the sky during the day. You’re not bomber pilots here, keep that head on a swivel and never stop looking around.

And we briefed and flew our next mission.

Then, suddenly, we had made it. A long early morning, a crisp formation of the lower class in review as we stand at parade rest, a sixteen-ship flyby, a speech by a general and by the base commander.

They return my salute, shake my hand, present me a cold set of small wings that flash a tiny beam of silver. I made it all the way through. Alive. Then there are orders to advanced flying training and the glory-soaked number that goes F-84F. I am a pilot. A rated Air Force pilot. A fighter pilot.

The German night is full around me, and in my soft earphones is solid hard static from the blue fire that sluices across the windscreen and across the low-frequency antenna in the belly of my airplane. The slim needle of the radiocompass is becoming more and more excited, jerking to the right, always to the right of course; trembling for a second there, swinging back toward Spangdahlem behind me, jerking again toward my right wingtip. I am glad again for the TACAN.

The air is still and smooth as velvet glass, but I tighten again my safety belt and shoulder harness and turn up the cockpit lights. Bright light, they like to say in the ground schools, destroys night vision. Tonight it does not make any difference, for there is nothing to see outside the plexiglass, and the bright light makes it easier to read the instruments. And in the brightness I will not be blinded by lightning. I am strapped in, my gloves are on, my helmet chin strap is fastened, my flight jacket is zipped, my boots are firm and comfortable. I am ready for whatever the weather has to offer me. For a moment I feel as if I should push the gun switch to guns, but it is an irrational fleeting thought. I check again the defroster on, pitot heat on, engine screens retracted. Come and get me, storm. But the air is still and smooth; I have minute after minute of valuable weather time ticking away, adding to the requirement for an advanced instrument rating.

I am foolish. Here I am as nervous as a cat, thinking of a storm that has probably already died away off course. And above 30,000 feet even the worst storms are not so violent as they are at lower altitudes. As I remember, it is rare to find much hail at high altitudes in storms, and lightning has never been shown to be the direct cause of any airplane crash. These elaborate precautions are going to look childish after I land in half an hour at Chaumont and walk up the creaky wooden stairway to my room and take off my boots and finish my letter home. In two hours I will be sound asleep.

Still, it will be good to get this flight over with. I would never make a good all-weather interceptor pilot. Perhaps with training I could become accustomed to hours and hours of weather and storms, but at this moment I am quite happy with my fighter-bomber and the job of shooting at things that I can see.

I have heard that interceptor pilots are not even allowed to roll their airplanes: hard on the electronic gear. What a dismal way to make a living, straight and level and solid instruments all the time. Poor guys.

I might, just a little, envy the F-106 pilot his big delta-wing interceptor. And he might, just a little, envy me my mission. He has the latest airplane and an engine filled with sheer speed. His great grey delta would make a good air combat plane, but he flies day on day of hooded attacks toward dots of smoky green light on his radar screen. My ’84F is older and slower and soon to be changed from sculptured aluminum to a seamless swept memory, but my mission is one of the best missions that a fighter pilot can fly.