Stranger to the Ground

Click around with the radio channel selector under my right glove; perhaps I can talk to Barber Radar. “Barber Radar, Air Force Jet Two Niner Four Zero Five, over.” Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing.

A flash in the clouds ahead. The air is still smooth, paving the way. Hold the heading. Hold the altitude.

A decision in my mind. If I were flying this crosscountry just to get myself home tonight, I would turn back now. I still have enough fuel to return to the clear air over Wethersfield. With my transmitter out, I cannot ask for a radar vector through the storms ahead. If it was not for the sack above the machine guns, I would turn back. But it is there, and at Chaumont there is a wing commander who is trusting me to complete my mission. I will continue.

I can use the radiocompass needle to point out the storms, if worst comes to worst I can dodge them by flying between the flashes. But still it is much more comfortable to be a spot of light on someone’s radar screen, listening for sure direction about the white blurs that are the most severe cells of a thunderstorm. One more try, although I am certain now that my UHF radio is completely dead. Click click click to 317.5 megacycles. “Moselle Control, Moselle Control, Jet Zero Five.” I have no hope. The feeling is justified, for there is no answer from the many-screened room that is Moselle Radar.

Turn back. Forget the wing commander. You will be killed in the storms.

Fear again, and it is exaggerating, as usual. I will not be killed in any storm. Someone else, perhaps, but not me. I have too much flying experience and I fly too strong an airplane to be killed by the weather.

Flash to the right, small flash to the left. A tiny tongue of turbulence licks at my airplane, making the wings rock slightly. No problem. Forty minutes from now I shall be walking across the ramp through the rain to Squadron Operations, Chaumont Air Base. The TACAN is working well, Phalsbourg is 80 miles ahead.

Friends have been killed. Five years ago, Jason Williams, roommate, when he flew into his strafing target.

I was briefing for an afternoon gunnery training mission, sitting on a chair turned backwards with my G-suit legs unzipped and dangling their own way to the wooden floor of the flight shack. I was there, and around the table were three other pilots who would soon be changing into airplanes. Across the room was another flight briefing for an air combat mission.

I was taking a sip of hot chocolate from a paper cup when the training squadron commander walked into the room, G-suit tossed carelessly over one shoulder.

“Anybody briefing for air-to-ground gunnery?”

I nodded over my cup and pointed to my table.

“I’m going to tell you to take it easy and don’t get target fixation and don’t fly into the ground.” He held a narrow strip of paper in his hand. “Student flew into a target on Range Two this morning. Watch your minimum altitude. Take it easy today, OK?”

I nodded again. “Who was it?”

The squadron commander looked at the paper. “Second Lieutenant Jason Williams.”

Like a ton of bricks. Second Lieutenant Jason Williams. Willy. My roommate. Willy of the broad smile and the open mind and the many women. Willy who graduated number four in a class of 60 cadets. Willy the only Negro fighter pilot I had ever known. It is funny. And I smiled and set down my cup.

I was amazed at myself. What is so funny about one of my best friends flying into a target on the desert? I should be sad. Dying is a horrible and terrible thing. I must be sad. I must wince, grit my teeth, say, “Oh, no!”

But I cannot keep from smiling. What is so funny? That is one way to hit the target? The ’84 always was reluctant to change direction in a dive? The odds against the only Negro fighter pilot in all the USAF gunnery school at this moment flying into the ground? Willy’s dead. Look sad. Look shocked. Look astounded. But I cannot keep from smiling because it is all so very funny.

The briefing is done and I walk outside and strap my airplane around me and push the throttle forward and go out to strafe the rocks and lizards on Range Number Three. Range Number Two is closed.

It happened again, a few months later. “Did you hear about Billy Yardley?” I had not heard from Bill since we graduated from cadets. “He flew into the side of a mountain on a weather approach to Aviano.” A ringing in my ears. Billy Yardley is dead. And I smile. Again the wicked unreasoning uncontrollable smile. A smile of pride? ‘I am a better pilot than Jason Williams and Billy Yardley because I am still alive’? Kenneth Sullivan crashed in a helicopter in Greenland. Sully. A fine man, a quiet man, and he died in a spinning cloud of snow and rotor blades. And I smile.