Tail of the Storm

by Alan Cockrell

  The marshaler stands in front of us and holds one of his orange paddles down while waving the other fore and aft over his head. He is commanding me to turn the Starlifter very tightly to bring our nose around to the west. Off to the left I notice several small planes tied down in a grassy area and take special care not to use too much power in the turn. Our jet blast could easily send them rolling like aluminum tumbleweeds.

  I complete the turn very slowly, a bit too slowly for the marshaler. He now vigorously waves the paddles overhead, motioning me to taxi farther forward. I gently nudge the throttles about a knob width forward and hear the four big Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines dutifully spool up in a muffled whine. It's uncanny how you can tell from just listening that there's more than one engine back there. They seem to harmonize, as if in song. One of the little pleasures in flying this great creature is taxiing her. I marvel in the awesome feeling of more raw power literally at my fingertips than most people could ever imagine.

  The marshaler stands his ground as our radome nose approaches to within a few feet of him. Then he crosses his paddles, indicating that he is finally satisfied with our position and we are to stop. Looking down on him through the windscreen, I'm reminded of that little cartoon mouse, the one who presents the finger of contempt in a final act of defiance as a fierce eagle is about to consume him. I set the parking brake and flip the four ridiculously small switches on the overhead panel that choke the big engines into silence.

  The crew entrance door is opened down below, and the shrill of the engines as they spool down mixes with the metallic clinks of seat belts and shoulder harnesses being unfastened. I take the flight-planning kit and descend first the flight deck ladder, then the crew door ladder to the tarmac, and stretch in Birmingham's cool breeze. The diesel throb of an external power cart bursts into life, as a number of people swarm about the jet, preparing to service it. The loadmasters are already busy far to tailward, where I hear the high-pitched scream of the hydraulic pumps waver slightly as they labor to power open the enormous clamshell cargo doors. The copilot remains on the flight deck, programming the navigation computer for the transoceanic journey ahead, while I start for the operations building.

  The small planes in the grass naturally catch my eye as I pass. Suddenly, I stop, transfixed, mouth agape, eyes bulging with wonder, like a man spotting a long-lost, almost forgotten lover. Sitting there in the grass is a Cessna 150 bearing the seal of the Alabama Wing, Civil Air Patrol, and the number N7195F. I'm stunned motionless. I want to grab someone and point to it, to proclaim loudly that that's the plane I first soloed. But no one's nearby.

  How many years has it been? Twenty? Twenty-five? I was a junior in high school when I first flew alone. No, not at all alone. I was with 95 Foxtrot. She belonged to a flight school down in Tuscaloosa then. And she's still alive. And here. Talk about a chance meeting. Unbelievable. I haven't thought of her in years.

  I walk over and gently touch her, like a boy cautiously but delightedly caressing his new dog. Her skin is rough and weathered. She needs a paint job; the interior is well worn. She has doubtless given birth to hundreds, maybe thousands, of fliers since I was with her last.

  That summer day of my youth, with four hours and fifteen minutes of flying time in my log book, 95 Fox and I flew together, just us. And on that day I glimpsed God's chart table and saw the course of my life plotted on it.

  Cessna 150

  Some people dazzle the air show crowds; others make megabucks hauling hundreds of trusting souls; a few have the red stars of MiG kills painted below their canopy rails. But it makes no difference who they are or how glorious the job. They owe it all to a clattering crate of a puddle jumper sometime in their past. Somewhere there was a start. Something, someonea friend or relative, a book or a modelplanted the seed. A flight instructor cultivated it. But an airplane provided the baptism, in a river of sky.

  The first brick in the formation of any great flying career was laid by beings such as Aeronica Champs, Cessna 150s, or Piper Cherokees. But all too often, amid the excitement and challenge of the big iron, the roots are forgotten. "Slow and simple" is eclipsed by the excitement of an F-15 or a Boeing 757.

  How often have I heard them? The disdainful comments. The condescending questions from the "it's not worth it" crowd:

  "Why do you do that? Don't you know that little plane can ruin your career? What if you screw up and bust a Federal Air Regulation? Why, the FAA would pull your license in a second."

  Then there's the "tired of it all" bunch:

  "Are you kidding me? When I get out of this cockpit I don't even want to see another airplane, big or little, until I have to come back here."

  Finally, from the most nauseating group, the space cadets:

  "If I can't yank, bank, and roll, fly fast and feel the awesome power of that afterburner, man, I'd rather not fly at all."

  Then so be it.

  But there's a propeller over there in the grass for me.

  I bought my first plane, a thirty-year-old 1947 Cessna 140 for $2,900, while assigned to a fighter squadron flying state-of-the-art A-7D Corsair II jet fighters. The '140 flew at 100 mph up to a maximum altitude of 6,000 or 7,000 feet. The A-7 flew 600 mph up to 40,000 feet. The '140 was not stressed for aerobatics; it couldn't do much of anything exciting except land in remote places. The tough, combat-engineered Corsair could loop, roll, drop bombs, fire missiles, shoot cannon, and withstand up to seven Gs. Most people wouldn't consider the two as the same species of creatures, nor would they think it justifiable even to compare them.

  Some of my buddies in the squadron couldn't understand the attraction. Why would I waste the time and money? A few of them did get interested when they realized that the little craft could expediently get them down to Rocky Point, Mexico, for a fishing trip. But I was unenthusiastic about lending it to them for that purpose. To be fair, some of them thought the plane was a novel idea, but no one ever asked to go flying in it. And when I offered, there was always grass to be mowed or a tennis date to be kept.

  Yet heroes and comrades we were, ready to sacrifice it all tomorrow. We were the passionate envy of almost every eye that looked up at our neat four-ship formations thundering across Tucson. Here I was, a member of that elite club with the right stuff and the right hardware, living amid the exclusive, closed society of fighter pilot brethren. And yet my best friend was a civilian with a simple private pilot's license. But friendship is something that ought to transcend boundaries of status and ego.

  He certainly had a name any fighter pilot would envy: Vroom. Dave Vroom. He was employed as a mining engineer but had an aeronautical engineering degree. He had first soloed at an early age, but less than perfect eyesight had blown his opportunity to fly the fast jets that he had admired while growing up around Tucson.

  Coming to know Dave, I began to realize that the yearning for flight, the passion for it, the joy it brings, is not limited to professional flying or to the fast, powerful machines. More often than not the true fulfillment of the wing is found on the grass strips and the dirt runways where birdsongs echo through aged hangars and fabric wings tug gently at carefully tied ropes.

  Yet I met him not on an airfield but in the small church Ellie and I attended. As I came to know him, I could tell Big Dave admired me because, I suppose, I was what he had dreamed of becoming. And I was always amazed at his genius with things of a mechanical nature. There seemed to be nothing he didn't know about engines, metallurgy, and fabrication. He was highly skilled at both grease monkey mechanics and drafting table designing.

  Unlike the top guns in the squadron, Dave was delighted to take a spin in the Cessna 140, and he immediately caught the fever. He had been flying for years, but not until then did he become consumed with the idea of having his own flying machine. A couple of weeks later he called and asked me to fly over to the small strip on his side of town. We landed, shut down, and looked around for him. Suddenly a Cessna 120, an aircraft almost exactly like mine, emerged from
behind a hangar with Big Dave's grinning face behind the controls, his petite wife in the right seat. She saw us and shrugged her shoulders in a resigned smile. Their savings for his planned consulting business had taken a hit. At that moment I knew I had cultivated a true friend, had found a brother. What the top guns couldn't understand about me Big Dave did.

  We made the most of the freedom our little taildraggers offered. We explored the desert Southwest, chasing coyotes and landing on dirt roads or sometimes just open areas. We flew about without knowledge of a destination. In what we began to refer to as "treks," we pointed the noses of our tiny Cessnas in whatever direction moved us and flew until we crossed something interesting or until night encroached. We camped in the desert and on riverbanks, caught fish for supper, slept under our wingsDave beneath the wing of his plane, me under mine, as if they were sacred spouses to whom we had pledged fidelity. We experienced what flying used to be, what it was meant to be. Through the marvel of those simple wings and that wide open country, we were delivered to the frontier of unbridled freedom.

  But Dave got us into trouble once, and our salvation came from an unexpected source. He was leading while I flew tightly on his wing. We crossed a plateau and dropped down, following the contour of the land until we crossed over Lake Meade. It happened too quickly.

  Suddenly I noticed a marina below us. The bobbing masts of a nest of sailboats shot beneath our wheels, not dangerously close, but far closer than the rules allow. I cautioned Big Dave on the radio, but he happily continued out over the water and I stuck to his wing, hoping that the boat people were airplane fans also. I was certain that the numbers on the sides of our planes were readable at this altitude. We pressed on across the lake to the dirt strip on the east side that we had spotted earlier in the day, which would be our campsite for the night.

  Two weeks later the dreaded call came. It was an FAA investigator in Las Vegas. Was N3117N my plane? Was I flying it that day?

  "Yessir."

  "Were you aware of the boats and marina?"

  Silence.

  "Yessir." Mistake, I thought. Shouldn't have admitted that.

  "Have you ever heard of FAR Part 91 concerning minimum altitudes?"

  I swallowed hard.

  "Yessir."

  "Do you have an explanation?"

  "Well. ."

  "Is there an airport there? Maybe you were in the process of taking off or landing?"

  Silence.

  "Yes. Yes, there was an airport and. . and we were on final approach for it."

  "Hm, hold on a minute."

  I heard the sound of a chart being unfolded. I was sweating bullets, 20 mike mikes.

  "OK, I think I see it here. Is it Cottonwood Landing?"

  "Yes, yessir, that's it, all right."

  "That's quite a final approach you had therefive or six miles!"

  "Yessir, ha ha."

  I cleared my throat.

  "OK, well, I'm satisfied. I think I can close this one out."

  Dave got the same call.

  Whoever that FAA guy was, he was one of us: a brother. We owed him one, Big Dave and I did. And we raised our mugs to him and planned the next trek.

  It was twenty years after I first soloed 95 Foxtrot that I experienced the greatest satisfaction of flight. It was not the result of fast, powerful maneuvering, or flying to exotic new lands, or exploring as the spirit led. It came when I passed the gift along to someone else.

  A flier who builds a trophy aviation career but never passes on the light is losing out. True, not everyone is cut out to instruct, and some who do it shouldn't. Moreover, as a vocation, it's a slow way to starve. But I decided to do it as a sideline. I wanted to feel what it was like to teach someone to fly, not just to check him out in a new military plane or merely to administer proficiency training, like the instructors in our Guard unit. To start from scratch with a studentthat's what I had wanted for years. When I did so, I discovered a whole new way of relating to another human being and the revelation of seeing that person discover a new life and a new world. And I found the culmination of that experience when I passed the torch to a longtime, trusted friend.

  "OK, Schneeflock. How does a wing lift your butt off the ground?"

  "The Bernoulli Principle. When the velocity of a fluid increases, its static pressure decreases and, since air is a fluid, the resultant low-pressure area over the top of the wing sucks the wing up to fill the void. The fuselage is attached to the wing, and my ass is attached to the fuselage, therefore I fly. Now, if you're finally satisfied with my aerodynamic wisdom, can we go work on prowess?"

  It was near dusk and a high overcast was developing. The winds had begun to die down. The conditions were right, but was the Schnee ready? The first few landings that day had been inconsistent; a pretty good one, then a not-so-hot one, and so on. But my coaching hadn't been needed, and that was the important thing. A couple of lessons earlier he had progressed to being able to land without my physical assistance on the controls, but I needed to wean him of verbal dependency.

  "All right, I'm not gonna took this time. I mean it. I'm covering my eyes! You're on your own, buddy. We live or die togetherI'm depending on YOU this time!"

  BLAM! Bounce. Bounce.

  I looked up and removed my hands from my eyes. I pinched myself, then him. I grabbed his arm and shouted in mock jubilation.

  "We're alive. WE'RE ALIVE, Schnee! Thank God!"

  He glanced at me scornfully. But the tactic succeeded; it diffused some anxiety. He proceeded to make two additional independent landings. They were not pretty, but they were safe.

  Again we turned onto final approach, and I decided that if this one was safe, I would release him. I would have done so yesterday but he didn't have the consistency. I haven't mentioned the S-word to him. He knows we're in the zone for it, but flight students don't like to think about that until the time comes. And it always comes before they think they're ready.

  We ambled down final approach in the tiny Cessna 152 and made another bouncy but acceptable touchdown. As we rolled he moved the wing flap lever to the UP position and started to push in the throttle for another takeoff, but I put my hand over the throttle and closed it. The little engine idled back down and he shot a puzzled glance at me. I told him to turn off at the midfield intersection. I could sense his relaxation. He felt the ride was over. He could get back down to the office and wrap up a few loose ends before calling it a day. But as we cleared the runway I applied the brakes, stopped the Cessna and unlatched the door handle.

  Before soloing a student the instructor always has the lingering feeling that maybe his student is not ready. Maybe I'm being premature about this. The man's life is in my judgmental hands. Perhaps another few landings or even an additional flight lesson would relieve some of the subtle doubts. I knew this feeling was natural because I had soloed other students before, but Bob was an old friend, almost family. It was a little different this time. I know this feeling is normal, but I had to take care that he saw nothing but absolute confidence in my face.

  As I opened the door, I had to raise my voice to overcome the engine and prop wash.

  "Taxi slow. Give me a chance to get up to the tower. I'll wa"

  "WHERE'RE YOU GOIN'?" he interrupted, shouting, demanding.

  "Make two touch-'n-go's and a full stop. If you have a question I'll be in the control tower."

  Before leaving I Cautioned him that the Cessna would perform differently without my additional weight. The comment caused his expression to change from astonished disbelief to one of deep soulsearching. He looked at me but his eyes were focused about a thousand yards beyond me. I slapped him on the shoulder and slammed the door. The Schnee was alone with the Cessna. His birth was at hand.

  I guess my reaction when I first soloed was about the same as anyone's: a fast pulse; a giddy feeling; wanting to laugh, hold my breath, and grit my teeth all at once until it was done. That magnificent feeling of achievementit's something that never left me because
I always reached still higher: the instrument rating, the commercial license, the multiengine, the airline transport certificate, flight engineer, flight instructor, aircraft commander, bigger and faster airplane checkouts. There was always a challenge, always a test. And after each, there was that same feeling, although some tests were not without adversity.

  I sat on the bench outside the flight school and watched as he taxied the puddle jumper in and shut it down. I knew better than to go out and help him tie it down. I let him savor the few minutes alone with the plane. He finished and walked toward me, glancing back at it. He was wearing that characteristic grin of histhe one that suggests he knows something about you that you don't know he knows. But that time there was a gleam in his eye that exceeded the one from his best oil discovery.

  He stopped and just gazed at me for a moment. Bob and I went back a long way. We had been classmates together at the Capstone. Sometimes words were not necessary between us. From that day onward he called me "Dad," and those who overheard him thought it a private joke of some sort, since he's a couple years my senior. Schnee paid them no mind. They would never understand.

  Ten.

  Maiden Flight

  We are several weeks into the Desert Shield operation now and some measure of routine has settled in. For example, we can expect to be deployed for two to three weeks, with several days recuperation at home afterward. And we can anticipate about three trips downrange from the European staging bases before rotating back Stateside. On the other hand, one thing has become less certain: our company in the cockpit. My original crew has been broken up and scattered asunder. Each new cruise, now, presents new faces, some of them people with whom I've flown in earlier times. But loadmaster Mike Hall will fly on and off with me until the end.

  Mike is an exuberant, energetic young man with an overflowing personality. Sometimes he verges on cocky and brash, and occasionally he causes ill feeling among his peers as a result, but he is a great traveling companion. Life is never dull around Mike. And like most enlisted people in our unit, he has a casual relationship with the officers, which is unofficially acceptable in the Guard. But Mike is disciplined enough to respond well to good leadership.