by Richard Bach
The French fly F-84F’s, but they are transitioning now into Mirages and Vautours built for modern sky. The Luftwaffe is flying F-84F’s, but they are well into the task of converting to Maltese-crossed F-104G’s. The Canadians are flying Mark VI Sabres, contemporary with the ’84F, and they are changing now to their own CF-104G.
We fly our ’84F’s and the never-ending rumors of airplanes to come. We will get F-100D’s soon. We will get F-104’s soon. We will get the Navy’s F4H’s soon. We will be in F-105’s before the year is up.
There is, somewhere, a later airplane scheduled and waiting for us. But it has not yet shown its face and we do not talk about our shortcomings. We make do with what we have, as the P-39 pilots and the P-40 plots did at the beginning of the Second War.
The pilots in my squadron today are as varied a group of men as could be netted at a random stroke into the waters of civilian life. There is a young second lieutenant, a house-wares salesman, just accumulating the first fine scratches on his golden bars. There is a major who flew Mustangs and Jugs on long-ago fighter sweeps into Germany. There is a lawyer, practice established; a computer engineer; three airline pilots; two bachelors whose only income came from Guard flying. There are the successful and the unsuccessful. The unruffled and the volatile. The readers of books and the seekers of adventure.
If you looked closely you would find constants that many share: most are within five years of 30, most are family men, most have served their years of active duty with the regular Air Force. But one constant, without exception, they are all men of action. The most introspective pilot in the squadron leaves his book, carefully marked, in his BOQ room, and straps himself each day to 25,000 pounds of fighter airplane. He leads a flight of four airplanes through patterns of bombing and strafing and rocket firing and nuclear weapon delivery. He makes wing takeoffs into 500-foot weather ceilings and doesn’t see the ground again until he breaks out of the ragged cloud and freezing rain two hours and 900 miles from his takeoff runway. He alternates his letters to his family with an occasional review of airborne emergency procedures, and, occasionally, puts them to use when a red warning light flares in his cockpit, or his nosewheel fails to extend when it is time to land. There are those who speak loudly, and perhaps with too little humility, but those same back their words with action every time they step into an airplane. There are nights in the officers’ club when whiskey glasses splinter against the rough stone walls, there are colored smoke bombs thrown into the closed rooms of sleeping comrades, there is a song, not altogether complimentary, sung of the wing commander.
But you can count on the coming of the dawn, and with it the concussion of engine start in the cold wind. Take First Lieutenant Roger Smith, for instance, who last night deftly introduced four lighted firecrackers into the wing materiel officer’s room. Grounds, really, for court-martial. But in the confusion he was not identified, and this morning he flies number Two in a ground support mission against the Aggressor Force at Hohenfels. You cannot tell him, under oxygen mask and lowered visor, from Captain Jim Davidson, flight leader, calling now for radar vector to the target area. Davidson spent the night writing to his wife, and telling her, among other things, that he did not have any real reason to believe that the squadron would be released from active duty before the assigned year of duty was finished. In close formation the two swept fighters drop from altitude, indicating the same 450 knots on identical airspeed indicators. “Tank column at ten o’clock low,” Davidson calls. And they turn together to the attack.
Men of action, and every day, new action. In the gloved right hand, the possibility of life and death.
The loud slurred drawl harassing the multiengine pilot at the bar belongs to a man named Roudabush, who, a year ago, against all regulations, landed a flamed-out fighter at night, without electrical power and therefore without lights, at an airport in Virginia. He refused to bail out of his airplane or even to jettison his external fuel tanks over the city of Norfolk, and was reprimanded.
“You tell yourself that you’ll bail out if the thing quits at night,” he said once, “but when you look down and see all the lights of the city . . . kinda changes your mind.” A man like that, you don’t care how he talks. You fly with him, and it makes you proud.
Johnny Blair, leaning against the mahogany bartop swirling the icecubes in his glass and smiling faintly at Roudabush’s banter, has a little scar on his jaw. Shortly past noon on one day in his life he was beginning a LABS run, 500 knots toward the target, 100 feet in the air, when he heard a thud and the overheat and fire warning lights came on. He pulled up, heard another thud, and the cockpit filled with smoke. Without a word to his wingman, he shut down his engine, jettisoned the canopy, and squeezed the trigger on the right handgrip. For a few seconds in the afternoon he fought to release himself from the tumbling steel seat, 800 feet over a forest of pine. The automatic parachute release failed. That inward person immediately pulled the manual parachute release, with the world spinning green and blue about him. He swung one time in the harness before he dragged through the treetops and was slammed to the ground. He lost his helmet and mask in the bailout, and an anonymous tree-branch slashed his jaw. Then it was over, the inner man subsiding, the outward man spreading the parachute canopy as a signal to the helicopters, suffering slightly from shock, and telling the story very plainly and undramatically to whomever could benefit from it. Otherwise he does not talk of it, and except for the scar, he is the sort of person who would lead you to say, “Now there is a typical high-school geometry teacher.” Which, of course, is exactly what he is.
It takes a while to learn to know many of these men as friends, for many of them, in the fear of being thought braggart or self-styled supermen, do not tell of narrow escapes and brushes with disaster to anyone who inquires. Gradually, with much time, the newcomer to the squadron discovers that Blair had an interesting low-altitude bailout, that Roudabush “coulda kissed that bitch” when his airplane stretched its glide, in the dark, to the Virginia runway; that Travas ran into an air-to-air target in the days when they were made of plastic rag and steel bars, and dragged 70 pounds of steel and 30 feet of polyethylene home, imbedded in his wing.
And the squadron learns, gradually, that the newcomer has had his own share of experience in the world above the ground. A squadron is a swirling multicolored pool of experience, from which is painted the freewheeling sweep of life in the air, in individual brushstrokes. The brilliant shimmering brass of combat in the sun burns itself into the pilots in their cockpit; dark sky and dark sea soak their enormous blue into the man who guides his airplane between them; and, once in a very long while, the scarlet of a fireball against a mountainside glares to outshine all the other hues, in time breaking to tiny sharp sparkles of pain that never quite disappear.
I reach to my right in the red darkness and turn the volume of the radiocompass as low as it will go. It reports now only fragments of the Spangdahlem callsign behind me, and has become more of a thunderstorm indicator than a navigation radio. This is not bad, with the TACAN working well, and I am glad to have a thunderstorm indicator that is so reliable. There is a dim flash in the grey to my right, a momentary suggestion of light that is instantly gone again.
Tuning down the radiocompass was a short break, and the routine of the crosscheck continues. Straight and level. Attitude and airspeed. Needle and ball. No swerving from the target. As if I had a Shape under my wing.
There are Shapes and there are Bugs and there are Blue Boys, all names for the form that houses a few million tightly-controlled neutrons that make an atomic bomb. Or more properly, a Nuclear Device. It is always called a Device.
The first mission of many squadrons of tactical fighters is now a strategic one, and the numbers of many fighter wings are followed by the ominous letters SD.
SD stands for Special Delivery, and means that pilots spend hours studying targets of remote corners of the world and learning selected bits of nuclear physics and building their langu
age to include LABS and Shape and Nuke and the meaning of the T-Zero light. They fly a strange new bombing pattern in their practice, they fly it alone, and only the first bomb counts for score. A pilot away from a fighter cockpit since Korea would not recognize a full panel of switches and lights for the nuclear weapons delivery system. But it is an important panel, today.
Part of my job is to know how to deliver a Shape, and I practice it dutifully. The placing of Device on Target begins with a swirl of charts and dividers and angles and measurements. From that emerge a few highly-classified figures that are given for the nourishment of a pair of computers mounted in my airplane.
Normally, the missions are flown with only a small 25-pound practice bomb to record the effectiveness of the delivery, but once a year I am required to fly with a fullsize, full-weight Shape under my left wing. This is to remind me that when I carry a real atomic bomb, I will have to hold a bit of right stick-pressure to keep the wings level on takeoff.
A practice Shape is smooth and streamlined and not unpretty. The real Device, which looks exactly the same, is the ugliest mass of metal that I have ever seen. Blunt-nosed, olive-drab and heavy, it is like a greedy deformed remora attached to the smooth swept wing of my airplane.
With every other pilot in the squadron, I joined the Air National Guard because I like to fly airplanes. With strafing and rocketing and conventional bombing, of course, our mission passes the realm of mere airplane-flying and becomes one of destroying enemy machines and enemy troops. But the mounting of a Device on the airplane is, as far as the pilots are concerned, one step too many. I do not like it at all, yet the Shape is a part of my mission, and I learn to toss it and hit a target.
Hold the right stick-pressure, and gear up and flaps up and low-level to the target. The trees flick by below, the sky is the same French sky that I have flown for months, the cockpit is the same about me, and I cannot see the Device under my wing. But the lights on its control box glimmer dully in front of me, and I am acutely aware of its nearness. I feel as if I am standing near a lightly-chained gorilla as it awakens. I do not care for gorillas.
The lights tell me that the Device is awakening, and I respond by pushing up the proper switches at the proper moments. The Initial Point rushes in at me from the horizon, and I push my distaste for the monster to the back of my mind as I set another panel of switches in the last combination of steps that lead to its release. One hundred percent rpm.
The last red-roofed village flashes below me, and the target, a pyramid of white barrels, is just visible at the end of its run-in line. Five hundred knots. Switch down, button pressed. Timers begin their timing, circuits are alerted for the drop. Inch down to treetop altitude. I do not often fly at 500 knots on the deck, and it is apparent that I am moving quickly. The barrels inflate. I see that their white paint is flaking. And the pyramid streaks beneath me. Back on the stick smoothly firmly to read four G on the accelerometer and center the needles of the indicator that is only used in nuke weapon drops and center them and hold it there and I’ll bet those computers are grinding their little hearts out and all I can see is sky in the windscreen hold the G’s keep the needles centered there’s the sun going beneath me and WHAM.
My airplane rolls hard to the right and tucks more tightly into her loop and strains ahead even though we are upside down. The Shape has released me more than I have released it. The little white barrels are now six thousand feet directly beneath my canopy. I have no way to tell if it was a good drop or not. That was decided back with the charts and graphs and the dividers and the angles. I kept the needles centered, the computers did their task automatically, and the Device is on its way.
Now, while it is still in the air and climbing with the inertia that my airplane has given it, my job becomes one of escape. Hold the throttle at the firewall, pull the nose down until it is well below the horizon, roll back so that the sun is over my head, and run. If the Shape were packed with neutrons instead of concrete ballast, I would need every moment I could find for my escape, for every moment is another foot away from the sun-blast that would just as easily destroy a friendly F-84F as it would the hostile target. Visor down against the glare-that-would-be, turn the rear-view mirror away, crouch down in the seat and fly as fast as possible toward Our Side.
At the same moment, the Device has stopped in the air, at the very apex of its high trajectory. A long plumbline descended would pass through the center of the white pyramid. Then it falls. Subject only to the winds, impossible to halt, the bomb falls. If it were a real Device in a real war, it would be well at this time for the enemy to have his affairs in order. The hate of the enemy has been reflected in the hate of the friend, reflected through me and my airplane and the computers that it carries.
And it is too late. We may declare an armistice, we may suddenly realize that the people under the bomb suspended are truly, deeply, our friends and our brothers. We may suddenly, blindingly see the foolishness of our differences, and the means to their solution. But the Device has begun to fall.
Do I feel sorry? Do I feel a certain sadness? I have felt those from the moment I saw the first practice Shape lifted into position under my wing.
But I love my airplane more than I hate the Device. I am the lens through which the hatred of my country is focused into a bright molten ball over the home of the enemy.
Although it is my duty and my only desire in wartime to serve my country as best I can, I rationalize. We will never really use the Devices. My targets will be completely and solely military ones. Everyone who is consumed in the fire is purely evil and filled with hatred for freedom.
There is a point where even the most ardent rationalization is only a gesture. I hope, simply, that I will never have to throw one of the repellent things at living people.
The distance-measuring drum of the steady TACAN has turned down now to 006 and that is as far as it will go, for I am six miles into the deep night directly above the transmitter of the Wiesbaden TACAN station. I am a minute and a half behind schedule in a wind that came from nowhere. In 30 minutes my wheels will be touching the cold wet runway at Chaumont Air Base.
The thought would have been reassuring, but there are two quick flashes of lightning to the right, across my course.
Once again, ready the report, tilt the stick to the right, fly the instruments, fly the instruments, thumb down on microphone button.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Rhein Control, Air Force Jet Two Niner Four Zero Five, Wiesbaden.” The City That Was Not Bombed.
Silence. Here we go again. “Rhein Control, Rhein control; Air Force Jet. . .” I try once. Twice. Three times. There is no answer. I am alone with my instruments, and suddenly aware of my aloneness.
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?”
