Stranger to the Ground

If war is declared here in Europe, I will never know the truth of the man who mounts the cockpit of a red-starred airplane. If war is declared, we are unleashed against each other, like starved wolves, to fight. A friend of mine, a true proven friend, neither imagined nor conjured out of possibilities, will fall to the guns of a Russian pilot. Somewhere an American will die under his bombs. In that instant I will be swallowed up in one of the thousand evils of war; I will have lost the host of unmet friends who are the Russian pilots. I will rejoice in their death, take pride in the destruction of their beautiful airplanes under my own rockets and my own guns. If I succumb to hate, I will myself become certainly and unavoidably a lesser man. In my pride I will be less worthy of pride. I will kill the enemy, and in so doing will bring my own death upon me. And I am sad.

But this night no war has been declared. It seems, in the quiet days, almost as if our nations might learn to live with each other, and this night the eastern pilot of my imagining, more real than the specter he would become in wartime, is flying his own solitary airplane into his own capricious weather.

My gloves are at work again, leveling the airplane at 33,000 feet. Throttle comes back under the left glove until the engine tachometer shows 94 percent rpm. The thumb of the right glove touches the trim button on the control stick once and again, quickly, forward. The eyes flick from instrument to instrument, and all is in order. Fuel flow is 2,500 pounds per hour. Mach needle is resting over .8, which means that my true airspeed is settling at 465 knots. The thin luminous needle of the radiocompass, over its many-numbered dial, pivots suddenly as the Abbeville radiobeacon passes beneath my airplane, under the black cloud. Eyes make a quick check of transmitter frequency, voice is ready with a position report to air traffic control, left thumb is down on the microphone button at 2200 hours, and the audience behind the eyes sees the first faint flash of lightning in the high opaque darkness ahead.

CHAPTER TWO

“France Control, Air Force Jet Two Niner Four Zero Five, Abbeville.” Empty static for a moment in the soft earphones, and I see, very clearly, a man in a large square room cluttered with teletypes and speakers and frequency dials and round grey radar screens. At an upholstered swivel chair, the man leans forward to his microphone, setting aside a glass of red wine.

“Four Zero Five, France Control, go ahead.” The accent in his English is barely noticeable. That is rare. He reaches for a pencil, from a jar bristling with pencils.

The microphone button is down again under my left thumb, and I hear again the sidetone, just as the man on the ground is hearing it. The engine in the sidetone is a quiet and businesslike roar, a waterfall of purposeful sound that is a background for my message. My words are filtered through the tubed body of the transmitter to become impersonal and faraway, the voice of someone I know only as a casual acquaintance. “France Control, Zero Five is over Alpha Bravo on the hour, flight level three three zero assigned instrument flight rules, estimating Lima Charlie at zero niner, Spangdahlem.” Good old France. The only country in Europe where you never say the name of a reporting point, but only its initials, with a little air of mystery as you do. The familiar pattern of the position report is rhythmic and poetic; it is a pattern of pure efficiency that is beautiful to speak. There are thousands of position reports spoken and heard every hour across the earth; they are as basic a part of instrument flying as the calls for landing information are a basic part of fair-weather flight. Position reports are part of a way of life.

“Roger, Zero Five, on your position. Report Lima Charlie.” The pencil stops, the whine is lifted.

With his last word, the man at France Control has ceased to exist. I am left, alone again with the night and the stars and the sounds of my airplane.

In every other fighter airplane, cruise is a time of quiet and of smooth unvarying sound. The pilot hushes along on his tamed fall of sound and knows that all is well with his engine and his airplane. But not with this airplane, not with my F-84F. My airplane is a clown. Its engine sounds more like a poorly-tuned, poorly-muffled V-8 than a smoothly efficient dynamo spinning on pressure-oiled bearings. I was warned when I began to fly the Thunderstreak that if the engine ever stopped vibrating I would be in trouble. It is true. Strange sounds come from nowhere, linger for a while in the body of the airplane, then die away.