Bombs Away

by John Steinbeck

  It was that quick. Wilmer got into the forward seat and he showed Joe how to cinch his safety belt. “Now take the stick lightly in your hand and never jerk it. Work it around and get the feel of it. It will feel different in the air with an air flow against it.” Joe moved the stick forward and back and sideways. The elevators moved up and down when he pushed it up and back and the ailerons moved one up and one down when he waggled the stick sideways. Wilmer said, “Now put your feet on the rudder. Don’t kick it around, it is a gentle movement and it all works together. Ever ride a horse?” “Sure,” said Joe. “Ever ride a polo pony?” “In school.” “Well,” said Wilmer, “I’ll tell you. Your feet on the rudder and your hand on the stick is almost exactly the same as reins and stirrups on a horse. Pull back on the reins or the stick and her head will come up. Push forward and she will take her head and bolt. When you make a turn you’ll use both reins and stirrups. But don’t do anything jerky any more than you would to a horse. Okay, let’s go,” Wilmer said. “You just hold on lightly and feel what I do.”

  He climbed in, speeded the motor, and moved out for the take-off. “Watch the tower,” he said. “Get into the habit of watching the tower.” He waggled his ailerons. Joe, watching the tower, saw a green light come on—the permission to take off.

  The little motor roared. Joe’s hand was on the throttle and the throttle went full ahead. Never again in his life could Joe, or anyone for that matter, know the breathless excitement of the first take-off with the controls in his hands and feet. True, Wilmer was doing it actively with his controls, but Joe’s hands felt every impulse in the dual control.

  The little ship took off at fifty miles an hour, but it seemed to bolt over the ground. Joe felt the stick go gently forward, felt the tail rise, then the stick came evenly back a little and the weight on the wheels lightened. The plane bumped twice and took the air. Then the stick moved a little forward to level off for speed and then gently back again for altitude. A puff of wind wobbled them and Joe felt in the rudder and stick how Wilmer corrected for it. Then stick and rudder moved softly to the left and the ship turned and the controls came back to neutral and the turn continued. A little stick and rudder to the right and the ship straightened out and the stick came back a little and they climbed. There is nothing like the first flight. It can never be repeated and the feeling of it can never be duplicated. It is a new dimension discovered, but discovered in the nerve ends and in the exploring ganglia of the brain, and no amount of flying in passenger ships can do it. The little plane balanced on air, tippy as a canoe and as dependable in the hands of a flyer, and the whole floating like a leaf and responsive to the lightest touch, and the feeling is flight and pride and a strange sense of power and freedom.

  After a dual flight period the instructor explains various maneuvers to the cadet

  The great law has been broken. Probably men have wanted to revolt against the law of gravity since they first noticed that birds and some insects are given a dispensation against it. The great envy that children have of birds, the dreams of flying if one only knew a trick with the hands or could press a magic button under the arm, the complete hunger for flight that is in all of us—all these are answered in the first take-off. Later the preoccupation will be with methods and techniques and instruments, but the first pure joy in release, there is nothing like it. These things, these thoughts and words, have been trite until it happens to you and then the feeling is ringed with fire.

  The noise was loud in the plane. Wilmer pointed a finger at the altimeter dial. The needle was at 3,700 feet and rising. When it came to 4,000 the stick went a little forward and Wilmer’s voice came to Joe through the rubber ear pieces. “Straight and level flight. Pull back the throttle. Now, look at the horizon, hold it there.” And Joe saw that the plane was in his hands, the instructor was not touching the controls. He felt something like a bubble swell in his chest. “We’re going to make a left turn,” Wilmer said. “Now, stick and rudder together.” The left wing rode gently down and from his left window Joe could see the earth beneath. “That’s enough—stick and rudder back to neutral.”

  The plane flew in a great circle. “Now straighten her out. Don’t strangle the stick.” Joe moved stick and rudder to the right. The plane straightened and he neutralized his controls and suddenly he knew he had done it all himself, without help. “Watch your ailerons,” Wilmer said. “See they’re lined up with the wings. Now, right turn. That’s enough. Straighten out. You were jerky on that one. Try a left turn. That was better. Urge it, don’t push it.” So they went, right, left, straight and level, climbing turns, descending turns, no time to waste. You can only learn to fly by flying. Gentle and medium turns, and finally Wilmer said, “All right, let’s go back. There is the tower, cut your throttle. Now, hold her nose up. She wants to put it down.” Joe felt the weight of the nose on the stick and he held back against it. He followed Wilmer’s hands while they landed that first day, felt him come in and then pull back to drop the tail, and they taxied to the line. Joe loosened his belt and climbed stiffly out. He was wet with perspiration. Wilmer grinned at him, “You’ll be all right. You’ll have to relax, but that’ll come.” Another cadet walked up and Wilmer said, “All right, get in the rear seat and fasten your safety belt.”

  Joe watched the take-off. It was a slow plane. There was nothing so wonderful about it. And then he remembered what it had been like, the most wonderful thing in the world, sensitive and gentle, every wind and every air current it touched, moved it. It moved like a canoe. He shivered, something had happened to him that would never go away. A new element was opened and he had stepped into it and he would never be a groundling again.

  It is a strange, almost mystical thing that happens to flying men. It is as though the experience had cut them off so that they can only communicate with their own kind, can only be understood by other flying men. When they meet they go away together and perhaps they don’t talk about flying, although that isn’t likely. But at least they know and understand each other. They have been through something that has the impact of religion, and while most of them are never able to say it, never want to say it, they all understand it. And in his first day Joe had his first glimpse into the inside of this brotherhood. There is another thing that flyers have in common with good sailors—they never lose respect for the ship. They never take it lightly, never know it well enough to hold it in contempt. A man cannot fly without a ship and a ship cannot fly without a man. Perhaps it is his participation which gives him his strong feeling about airplanes, and once a man has entered the brotherhood it is a rare thing for him to leave it. A flying man remains a flying man until some force outside himself drags him down from the sky. Age or failing eyes or bad nerves may bring him down, but a man is never grounded by himself. His association with the new dimension is permanent.

  With a model plane the instructor demonstrates maneuvers to his students

  Ground school class in engines and airplanes

  Joe started in the air right away, but he started ground school too. As everywhere in the Air Force there was so much to learn, so quickly. In class they studied chemical warfare, the principal gases and why each was used, and they learned to recognize each kind and the protection against each kind. They learned to use gas masks and how to give first aid to a man overcome with gas. Next the class studied the planes of our Allies and our enemies. It is very necessary to recognize a ship quickly and at a distance. And so with models and silhouettes they learned to recognize British and American and German and Japanese aircraft. With the models they learned to recognize the principal types at all angles. After instruction they had range estimation. A model was held up quickly and then concealed while the class wrote down nationality and type. They learned the capacities of different ships, how fast they could fly, how they maneuvered, what the fire power was, where they were well armored, and what were their weak and blind places. They learned to recognize a ship instantly. Next the class studied navigation. For in a singl
e-place ship, in interceptors and fighters, the pilot can carry no navigators. They studied the air-speed meter and the altimeter, the magnetic compass with its errors, variations, and deviations. They studied maps in different projection, learned to read maps, to measure courses and distances; vector problems were introduced and triangle of velocity problems. Dead-reckoning navigation was introduced, time, speed, and distance relations and the keeping of the simple log.

  Meanwhile, every day they were in the air. With his instructor in the forward seat, Joe practiced “S” turns across roads. The instructor stalled the motor and taught him how to pull out of spins and stalls. Joe practiced take-offs and landings and now the instructor did not touch the controls. Joe did it all, but the voice of Wilmer was in his ears all the time, correcting him and informing, “You were jerky there, take it slowly. A little more rudder and a little less stick. You overstick some. Bring her in now. I think you’re a little high, you’ll overshoot. Let her go up and come in again.” And hour by hour Joe’s hand grew lighter on the stick and his feel for the rudder more delicate. The ship was getting into his system and he had confidence in his hands.

  That is, he had confidence until his first solo. That was a lonely thing. He felt it before he got the green light from the tower. Wilmer was standing beside the runway watching him. Joe perspired a little. The light showed and he pushed the throttle forward. There was no voice in his ear now. He pushed his stick forward a little soon and that made him nervous and then he pulled it back and he rose too sharply, knew he was doing it. He had the stage fright of a young dancer, making little errors before an expert. And he could feel the instructor’s eyes on him.

  When he got altitude he calmed down a little and went through the turns and climbs and “S’s” prescribed. He seemed jerky to himself. His faults glared in his own mind, too much stick there and on the next turn, too much rudder, overcompensating. He looked out and saw his ailerons off center and blushed and corrected them. Now his time was up and he made his approach for a landing. Too high, he usually was, well this time he wouldn’t be. He came in too low and too fast, slowed and dropped in too fast. His hand was shaking now, not with fright, but because he knew the instructor was seeing everything. He dropped in, bounced and ballooned a little, and finally came to a stop. It was the worst landing he had ever made, even the first time he had brought it in.

  Joe was hot all over. He wondered whether he would be washed out on the strength of a performance like that. He hated to turn and taxi back to face the man who had instructed him, but he did. Wilmer stood beside the ship, his face inscrutable. “That was awful,” Joe said weakly. “Pretty bad,” said Wilmer. “That balloon.” “You’re nervous,” Wilmer told him. “That wasn’t a good performance but it wasn’t a terribly bad first solo. Did the balloon scare you?” “It made me mad,” said Joe. “Look,” Wilmer said, “it isn’t good to sleep on a thing like that. Go up again, make one circle and come in.”

  The green light showed again. This time the tail came up evenly. Joe pulled off the ground and leveled for speed and climbed. At 700 feet he turned and came around and made his approach again and his hand didn’t shake this time. The instructor had recognized pure stage fright. Joe came down and leveled off. Perhaps it was luck this time. His wheels grazed the ground and settled gently and his hand soothed the tail down. Joe felt wonderful. He loved Wilmer and he loved the ship. It was a perfect landing. He came about and taxied back to the line. Wilmer looked in at him. “That was a little bit better,” Wilmer said. “I think you were a little high on that approach.” Joe walked humbly off the field. There is something very hum-bling about an airplane. Now and then an H P, a hot pilot, one who is cocky, develops, but not very often. The ships keep pilots humble, the best pilots that is.

  First solo flight

  Joe sat down on a bench for a moment. He held up his right hand and looked at it. The fingers were still shivering a little. He looked back at the line. Another cadet was in the ship. Joe watched the take-off. The tail came up too late and the take-off was too steep. Joe felt critical. “Too steep,” he said to himself and then he laughed at himself. The second supervised solo and the third did not cause the emotional tumult of the first day. Joe’s confidence was high now.

  The instructors are curious men, for while they work with mechanics and flight they work also with very malleable human material. They must be excellent practicing psychologists, knowing when a word of praise makes the difference of a week in training and when a good bawling out will prevent a future accident.

  A man’s soul is pretty much in his instructor’s hand during the first days. The instructor learns instinctively when a man is frightened and how to overcome that. He can feel nervousness in his dual stick. He can feel it in the wobble of the ship and by his knowledge of men he can make the student relax, can give him confidence without cockiness. Good instructors wash out fewer men than bad ones. They are almost uniformly stern men with acid tongues when they want to use them. They know their students at a glance, and they are as important to the student pilot’s whole future as the first teacher in school is to a boy’s whole education. And although they are well paid and their work is vital, nearly all the instructors would much rather be flying bombers into action. They complain constantly. “If I were only ten years younger, I’d have a B-17E right over Burma now.”

  Every day Joe went up and he was graded every day on his take-offs and landings and his action in the face of field traffic. In the fourth week he began his spot landing, which is rather like pitching pennies at a mark only harder. Judgment of speed and height and distance become more and more exact. The ships used a 90-degree approach from 500 feet and landed for a designated spot. And now Wilmer went up with him again and taught him elementary 8’s, curves, and the climbing turn which is called a chandelle and which is practiced so much that elementary schools are called chandelle colleges. And finally the spot landings were graded by the instructor.

  The work on the Link trainer began in the fourth week. This is a small mechanical model of a ship, just large enough to hold a man. It has the instruments of a ship and the controls. It can make all the movements of a plane too, although it is only on a pivot. And apart from the Link trainer and yet controlled by it, an inked wheel describes on a chart exactly what the ship is doing. A trainer will spin and slip and it can be pulled out by its own controls. Furthermore, the instructor, sitting apart at his controls, can create nearly all the conditions that a ship may meet—heavy weather, rising and falling currents, head winds, side winds. With the cover down, a student can learn instrument flying on the Link trainer and the course he flies will be indicated by the inked line on the chart in front of the instructor. A great deal of flying experience can be had in a short time in a Link trainer and so successful has it proved itself that commissioned pilots are required to use it constantly to keep in practice. Beginning instrument flying is always taught in the trainer.

  The cadet learns instrument flying inside a Link Trainer

  In the sixth week, there was practice at forced landings. Wilmer went up with Joe and directed him to a place over power lines, fences, and orchards, and then suddenly cut the engine. Then it was Joe’s problem to pick out a place to land and by turning and gliding to approach it and to come down for a landing. But just before the wheels touched the instructor turned on the motor again and they went up and looked for another difficult place and did it all over. This training develops judgment of distance and surfaces and it also provides the basis for saving a pilot’s life if he is in trouble.

  In the seventh week there was dual and solo practice in 180-degree overhead approaches, lazy 8’s and pylon 8’s, and chan delles. There was advanced acrobatics, snap rolls, slow rolls, and Immelmann turns. In this week, Joe began his night flying.

  In the classroom the cadets studied weather, its importance to flying. They learned weather services and the organization of airplane teletype report. They studied ceiling, cloudiness, and visibility as
they apply to flying, rain, snow, sleet, and drizzle, fog, smoke, and haze, winds and wind shifts. They learned to read and make weather charts. This was the work with and about planes, but at the same time they were soldiers. Like all the other cadets they had their military drill daily and their athletics to keep them fit. Like all the other cadets during their training there was very little time to themselves. A letter written home now and then, a few moments in the post exchange to drink a Coca-Cola. In the barracks they talked flying, nothing but flying.

  Recently a survey was made to find out what the cadets read and the answer is very simple. They don’t read anything except their textbooks during their training. In the classrooms the study of airplanes themselves was undertaken, with models and parts; the study went on of parts, actions, and workings of planes. They studied air flow and pressure distribution on the wings, lift and induced drag and equilibrium in flight. With models and drawings the class learned what the invisible medium of the air does to ships in flight, where the pressures are and how they are utilized in flight, the aerodynamic effect of controls and flaps, the principles of the propeller of both fixed and variable pitch. They learned how a propeller can bite deep or shallowly into the air. Then again with models and parts they saw how a ship is built, how the wings are braced, and how strength and lightness are achieved. And when they had covered the ships they studied engines, four-stroke cycle engines and Diesel engines, and they learned the various engines used by the Air Force; air-cooled and liquid-cooled engines, the arrangement and functions of units; ignition systems and generators were torn down for explanation and there were working models to demonstrate mechanics. They studied fuels and lubricants and what kinds are used and why, fuel systems and carburetor systems, superchargers. They studied the instruments which check on engine action and signal any distress in any part. The class learned to operate various types of engines, to start and stop them, and finally they learned maintenance and repair and inspection and inspection symbols. From front to back they went over the ships until they knew the cable lines of the controls, the bracing structure, and the hydraulic pistons. It was a beginning study of how an airplane works, every part of it, why each part is built as it is and what its reaction to the air is.