Tail of the Storm

by Alan Cockrell

  The HF is filled with more static than usual tonight, and I think I see why. I dim the instrument lights just a little more and look to the north. At first I see only a long faint brightness stretching along the horizon. But as my eyes adjust I can pick out the subtle colors and geometric patterns of the aurora borealis, the northern lights. The lights seem to hang from the starry heavens in swirling, cascading curtains with bluish green and purple tints.

  I look away and then back in a minute, and the patterns have changed shape and tint. I revere the lights. I know that the physicists explain that they are generated by solar energy reacting with atmospheric particles, as it is funneled into the polar magnetic convergence. But they are a majestic display of divine power to me, much too choreographed and beautiful to be simply a freak of nature.

  This same northern horizon, so gracefully adorned with aurora in winter, is the domain of the sun in summer. When the north pole is tilted toward the sun, we watch a different production on this grand stage.

  In the summer months as we fly east across the north Atlantic, the sun will set behind our left wing. But it doesn't fall vertically; it angles toward the north and disappears like a brilliant submarine diving as it plows ahead. It submerges to a shallow depth, voyaging beyond the North Pole only slightly below the horizon, its cosmic glow hovering above it, holding back the night. And because we fly in the same direction as the turning earth, the sun hurries its journey as if to beat us to Europe and flaunt its victory by casting searing rays into our night-weary eyes. In a few hours it emerges to our left in a dazzling rebirth and climbs across our nose toward its commanding perch.

  But this is a spring night, here in the polar latitudes. The sun is deeply buried in the Southern Hemisphere, opposite the planet. Yet our night sky is alive with vitality. The aurora is being upstaged by a newcomer.

  A spike of orange light pierces the darkness ahead. With a suddenness far greater than you'd expect of any celestial event, the slender, sharply pointed spire, rises boldly out of the sea and dominates the night. My young copilot, searching his mind desperately for an explanation but becoming impatient with himself, begins to fidget. He turns to me and asks haltingly, "Wha?" He pauses, looks back, and gestures at it and continues, "What is it?"

  In another minute the answer to the question asked with a childlike innocence would become apparent. But I've seen it before and remember that I had the same inadequate feeling.

  "It's a moonrise, Steve. Looks to be about a quarter moon. Really pops up there, doesn't it?"

  It rises swiftly and hangs in front of us, sheds its orange glow and grows white hot as it climbs from the distorted atmosphere. We are flying directly toward it; it's centered in the windscreen as if it were our target. I've never outgrown my childhood imagination and make no apologies for it. For a minute I forget about the earth and the atmosphere. I'm voyaging through the cosmos in a great starship, and the lunar destination looms aheadmore evidence for George's allegation that I'm an oblivious dreamer. If so, I'm in good company; Lindbergh too felt it: "At times you renounce experience and the mind's heavy logic, it seems that the world has rushed along on its orbit, leaving you alone, flying above a forgotten cloud bank, somewhere in the solitude of interstellar space."

  Soon the moon's brilliance drives away the aurora and the dimmer stars and commands our absolute attention. I can see details beginning to break out of the side shadowed from the sunmountains and clusters of craters. The dark side of the moon is being bathed in the soft light reflected from Antarctica.

  The moon is a trusted companion to the night flier. It gives substance to the unseen world beyond the windscreens. It draws his mind out of the confines of his metal cocoon and nourishes his awareness. Without it, blackness encroaches on the windows and isolates the mind. One night long ago when I needed the moon, it wasn't there.

  I had taken off in my Yankee from a dark country airport, John Bell Williams Field down near Raymond, with my two-year-old son aboard. There was nothing but forest and pasture around the airfield.

  It was a "black hole," as fliers like to say. Shortly after we broke ground, a violent, flapping noise of metal beating against metal erupted near the engine, and the little plane began to vibrate. Shaken, I grabbed the flashlight, shined it forward, and saw that the engine cowling had broken loose and was flapping in the slipstream. But I was reassured by the arc of the propeller in the beam of the flashlight and by the steady rpms on the tachometer. I held the light on the cowling for a few seconds, as the Yankee bored through the night, and pondered whether to turn back to the field or continue to the larger Hawkins Field, a few miles away, which was my destination.

  Then I glanced at the vertical velocity indicator. The needle was indicating a 500-feet-per-minute rate of descent. Another quick glance at the altimeter showed our altitude was 500 feet. I remembered that the airfield elevation was 330 feet, and the trees must be 50 to 100 feet high. Instead of being a pilot, I had become a passenger. I had violated the cardinal rule: fly the plane first, thenand only thenwork on the problem.

  Instinctively, I pulled the yoke back and reversed the terminal dive into a redeeming climb. Scott and I would have become statistics in another few seconds. I learned a valuable lesson that night. But I wish my old companion the moon had been there. If the countryside had been awash with its soft light, maybe I would have been more aware.

  My fixation on the moon is suddenly broken by a familiar voice coming through on the HF. Buster Swinney, one of our squadron's aircraft commanders, is giving a position report. Checking the chart, I determine that Buster is within UHF radio range of us. I switch my transmit selector to UHF radio number one, which is tuned to Channel 10, and transmit into the vast oceanic sky.

  "Buster, you up on button ten?"

  "You bet. Who's this?"

  We exchange the usual questions. Where are they headed? From where did we depart? How long have we been out? Who's on your crew? The last question reveals that one of his loadmasters is Duane Hall, a senior master sergeant with about thirty-five years' service. He had a good job in the business world and was thinking of retiring. But then the balloon went up, and now it was too late. He could have retired years ago, but something kept him clinging to the Guard.

  Duane's offspring is sitting back in my cargo bay. The Guard is like that, often literally family and not just figuratively. Mike is a clone of his dad. Both are red-skinned, thin-haired, and sometimes boisterous but always jovial and good company. They love to work hard and play hard and are always eager to rap about the things and ideas that keep them going. They're the epitome of southern friendliness.

  Mike can't hear the radio transmissions from his station in the cargo bay, but he is hooked into the plane's interphone system with his headset. Hearing those of us on the flight deck banter about the contact with Buster, he shouts into the interphone. "Hey, that's my daddy's crew!"

  In an instant Mike is on the flight deck, plugging his headset into a communications station. Within a couple of minutes he is talking with his dad. The conversation is low key and clipped, about family news and such. Mrs. Hall, Mike's mom, isn't taking this wellhusband and son both flying under wartime conditions day and night. Too much is at stake for her.

  "How's momma?" Mike asks into the radio.

  "She's OK," comes the answer. But Mike knows better.

  Then, by the moon's brilliance, we spot their jet below and to the left, at the point of a great silver contrail, racing opposite our direction. They are flying a "random route," beneath the NATS. Mike is glued to the side window behind my seat. There is a long pause in the radio conversation while father and son watch one another's craft pass. Then the oceanic night seems lonelier. Being short on words was never a problem with this family, but in the silence I can sense the lump in Mike's throat. I feel it with him.

  Maybe it's how Lindbergh felt when St. Johns fell away behind him.

  A flicker catches my eye. It originated almost straight ahead, maybe a few degre
es left. Straining my eyes, I can make out the silhouette of billowing cloud formations far ahead, their edges painted a soft blue by delicate strokes of moonbeam. There it is again. They light up with a momentary orange glow. The cloud must be home to some colossal giant who just struck a match to light his cigar. Early spring thunderstorms are rare out here, but they can have teeth in them, just as the forecaster back at McGuire cautioned. I tweak the gain knob on the radar and the churning, fiery cells begin to break out on the scope 125 miles ahead, a line of them lying across our course. I recall the forecaster assuring me that the tops would be below our flight level. So maybe we'll be lucky and fly over the chorus line of fire-breathing monstersthumbing our radome at them as we sail over.

  If we have to, we can use the radar to weave our way through gaps between the stronger cells, but if we get any closer than about twenty miles, we could suffer severe turbulence and lightning strikes. Such a development could play the devil with our cracked wings. The result might easily be five wives veiled in black, flanked by sobbing children, which is the most effective vision when it comes to deterring me from doing stupid things.

  I cut it a little close once, on a beautiful afternoon over Louisiana. A lone thunderstorm sat dead center on our flight path. It was a beautiful thing, towering upward thousands of feet above us, with almost vertical walls. The air around it was smooth and clear. Far below we could see the base of the storm flaring out near the ground in a sinister blackness. We set the twenty-mile cursor on the radar scope and turned so that the storm would just graze the edge of the yellow cursor. As we passed abeam it, exchanging small talk about how majestic it appeared, it reached for us.

  A wicked, gnarled arm of white heat appeared with the suddenness of light speed. It seemed against all logic to be reaching horizontally from the cloud, trying to grab us. It was only there for a millisecond, but its image burned into my retina. I can still see it now, seeming to stretch and strain like a kid on a tree not quite able to reach the rope swing. Maybe, like the kid, it was at playjust wanted to scare us; to give us a playful warning to stay away. It succeeded. The wings of a C-141 never rolled as quickly as they did that day out east of Shreveport.

  But the McGuire forecaster was right. It appears we will pass over the squall line, but we are beginning to enter some upper cloud layers. Suddenly the ride turns rough as we encounter some light chop. Lynn remarks that I must have turned off on a dirt road. I reach up and turn on the continuous ignition system, which provides constant electrical spark to the engines' combustion chambers. This will help keep the fires lit if turbulence threatens a flameout. As I reach for the switch, I see that another act has opened in the night's light and energy drama.

  A yellow glow is developing on the lower portion of the windscreen. I've seen this phenomenon, called Saint Elmo's fire, several times before. When atmospheric particles, ionized by storm activity, contact an aircraft, something like minilightning develops on or near the plane's surfaces. It's pretty rare; conditions have to be just right for it. Saint Elmo is harmless enough, but the first sight of one of the more intensive displays can be heart stopping.

  One night out east of Las Vegas in a Boeing 727, we were descending through a stormy area, weaving this way and that to avoid the intense centers of the cluster of storms. Sheets of rain assaulted us, and lightning flashed left and right, but the air was relatively smooth. Then the glow of Saint Elmo attached itself to our nose. We could clearly see it widening and flaring back as it crept over our windscreens, as if being washed back by the rain and wind. The color seemed to change from green to yellow. Then the strobes came.

  Long, bony, stringy, gnarling, fingers of miniature bluish white lightning crept up over our windscreens, disappearing and returning, quivering and jumping as if searching for a handhold but finding the windscreen too smooth, too hot. They wanted inwanted to find a crack, an opening through which to slither in and sting us; to grab us by the throat; to warn us that we're not supposed to be here; that we'd best leave these parts before the Big Guy finds out. Then the knock came on the flight deck door.

  It was a flight attendant wanting to gather our dinner trays so as to stow them before landing. I unlatched the door, and the cockpit was flooded with soft cabin light as she entered. As she reached for the trays I asked her to close the door and look toward the windscreens. In a moment, after her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her face became flushed with fear at the sight of the wicked fingers. But then she judged the sight to be nonthreatening, relaxed, and asked it if that was Saint Elmo's fire. After she left the cockpit the Big Guy came.

  A pulsating ball of electricity, or so it appeared, formed in front of our nose, stood there a second and then seemed to rush in like a photon torpedo coming at us from a Klingon cruiser. As it hit, the explosion was sharp and deafening, like an unexpected thunderclap. The jet shuddered and lights flickered, but the generators held on. Stunned, I began to scan the panel for evidence of missing engines and gaping holes, but all was normal. Then the second one hit, but again no damage was done except to our frayed and quivering nerves. As was expected of me, I steadied my voice, swallowed hard, keyed the public address, and explained the static discharges to the passengers, a paragon of confidence and reassurance.

  We emerge from the clouds to find a feeble glow of sun ahead. I tilt the radar antenna down and see on the scope the green outline of the Irish coast 100 miles ahead. The sun's brilliance is about to tear into our very souls and torture what little is left of our consciousness. At this point Lindbergh still had eight hours left on his epic journey, yet already we feel the nearness of a bed and a blissful sleep. But the challenge of the crowded European airspace lies ahead, with its attendant rotten weather to boot.

  Steve Clark, my copilot, gets a weather update and hands it across. His handwriting has all the characteristics one would expect of a man who has totally lost hope that someone would ever read his scribbling. I look hard, trying to make out the note. It saysno, not so. There's some mistake. If one could make out this chicken-scratching gibberish, it would appear that the weather at the destination is: EDAF 0956 X M 1OVC 1/4R-F 46/46 0000 29.86 R25LRVR1200. I ask him for a clarification and, with an anticipatory smirk, he confirms the vile news. I hand the note back to Findley and Lynn so that they can begin their landing performance calculations.

  It appears that we will earn our pay in the final few minutes of this trip. The weather at Frankfurt's Rhein Main airport is well below the normal minimums of 200-feet ceiling and half-mile visibility. The ceiling at Frankfurt this spring morning is obscured by fog. The runway visibility is only 1,200 feet. We will have to fly a rare Category II approach.

  We immediately initiate a test of the All Weather Landing System. The AWLS uses the same basic instrumentation we normally use for a precision instrument approach, but it increases the sensitivity of the receivers so as to allow us to go lower while still blinded by cloud. But there is not much room for error. If we don't see the runway when we reach 100 feet above the ground, or if we see it and are not aligned sufficiently to land, we will have to execute a missed approach. Thus the chances are increased that we will not be able to land and will have to divert to an alternate.

  Steve's notes also reveal that the weather at Mildenhall Air Base in England is a bit better, confirming that we will have a place to which we can escape. We planned for this eventuality before leaving the statesas we always dobut still, we decide to run through some quick calculations. We all agree that we should have enough fuel to make one approach at Frankfurt and then hightail it to England. But when we get there we will not have much left.

  We set our airspeed and altitude markers at the appropriate values, buckle our shoulder harnesses, and run the descent checklist. Passing over Dover we are ordered to begin our descent. On the way down, we review the special procedures of the CAT II approach. Though we practice this a lot, I've only done it once. The others have never seen it. We ensure, that we are all up to speed on what each is to do and
say during the critical final minutes and on what our actions will be if certain malfunctions occur.

  As we pass through 21,000 feet, the sun suddenly succumbs to the gloom and we plunge into a cheerless abyss of gray. The radio becomes busier as we approach Frankfurt. Our senses heighten as we listen intently to the German controllers for our call sign. The weather has caused an aerial traffic jam. The controllers are barking impatient instructions to a myriad civil and military aircraft. Upon hearing one particular transmission, Steve and I look abruptly at each other.

  "What?"

  "They're holding at Rudesheim!"

  Normally, it was an abomination to get sent to the Rudesheim NDB to hold. The German controllers were strict and demanding. If you hesitated at their commands or gave them any kind of trouble, they sent you there to hold, as punishment. Rudesheim was a penalty box.

  Yes, Rudesheim, the quaint little village alongside the Rhine; Rudesheim, where we had sampled the wines and pastries; Rudesheim, where we had often boarded the boat for the scenic Rhine River tour. The name rolled off your lips and tongue as if you were a refined world travelera gentleman, a scholar, a master of the German language and culture. Rudesheim was a place of rest and regeneration, but now we would be ordered to hold high above the quiescent village, burning into our reserve, sweating, thinking not of the pleasures below but only nervously awaiting our turn to go "down the chute" to Frankfurt.

  Soon, the orders come as expected. We tune in the Rudesheim NDB and proceed direct. Again we calculate. Findley tells me we have a maximum of twenty-five minutes' holding fuel. That should be enough. But if we hold for that amount of time and then miss at Frankfurt, it will put us on the runway at Mildenhall with fumes in the tanks. I decide I will allow no more than fifteen minutes in the holding pattern. If they won't let us down after that, we will break out and head hell-bent to England. Findley appears relieved.