Gods of Tin

by James Salter

feet. Took up a patrol just below the Yalu. Sky absolutely clear, a deeper blue, like blue ocean. We’d made our first turn when we saw them and dropped tanks. They were coming across the

  river in flight after flight of from four to six MIGs, above us, at about 45,000. The contrails were heavy and sharp. You could

  see airplanes fifteen miles away. We turned beneath the MIG

  trains slowly. Felt acutely that I was in a cockpit deep in enemy territory. Throat dry, burning as I inhaled. Very busy staying with Malone and looking around. Don’t recall the sequence

  but we were in a kind of head-on pass with four of them. They went right over us, close, shiny silver, no red markings, speed fences on the wings, stubby, hostile. We were at 39,000. Two others turned in on us. We turned into them, and as they

  broke off I called Malone to reverse our turn, but they were too far out.

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  Don’t know how many MIGs there were, perhaps a hun-

  dred. We were among them for about fifteen minutes.

  m

  Suddenly they were close, and there was no longer any doubt.

  Cleve felt an awesome disbelief as they passed above him, and he saw the detached-looking tails, like those on the celluloid birds that twirled at circuses.

  m

  Soon after leaving the ground, they were crossing patches of stratus that lay in the valleys as heavy and white as glaciers.

  Soviet MIG-15 taking off

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  North for the fifth time. It was still all adventure, as exciting as love, as frightening. Cleve rejoiced in it.

  They climbed higher and higher, along the coast. It became

  difficult to distinguish earth from water where they met. The frozen river mouths blended into white land areas. The rice

  paddies south of Pyongyang looked like cracked icing on pale French pastry. He saw the knotted string of smoke go back as Desmond test-fired his guns. He checked his own. The sound of them was reassuring.

  They climbed into the contrail level. Long, solid wakes of

  white began flowing behind them. Formations left multiple

  ribbons of this, streaming sky pennants. Frost formed on the rear of Cleve’s canopy. He was chilly, but not uncomfortable.

  They were north, and he was busy, looking hard, clearing himself, Desmond, and the two other ships in his flight. The sky seemed calm but hostile, like an empty arena. There was little talking.

  In half an hour they had reached the Yalu, an unreal

  boundary winding far below. The sun was higher now. The sky

  was absolutely clear. His sunglasses made it a deeper blue, like deep ocean. He could see a hundred miles into a China that

  ended only with a vast horizon, beyond the lives of ten million rooted people. At forty thousand feet they patrolled north and south, turning each time in great, shallow sweeps.

  m

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  Smooth fields of snow mottled everything, and the rivers were as pronounced as veins, but he did not think of an ancient

  mother of men. His eye was the flyer’s. He saw the hostile

  mountains, the absence of good landmarks, and the few places flat enough to land in an emergency.

  m

  There is the reservoir, the ice of its wide surface crazed with dark lines. It looks like death invading the tissue—all is disorder, all has failed. You can gaze at it for only a few seconds—

  the sky seems dead, too, abandoned, but can come alive at any moment with fateful glints.

  m

  Fighters don’t fight, as St.-Exupéry said, they murder. He did not fly one himself—he spoke as their possible victim, which in the end he became.

  m

  War is so many things. It is an opportunity to see the upper world, great houses that have become hospitals or barracks,

  precious objects sold for nothing, families with ancient names at the mercy of quartermaster sergeants. In the familiar

  footage the guns jump backwards as they fire, the tanks roll past and forgotten men wave. It is all this and also the furnace

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  of the individual in a way that a life of labor is not. Its

  demands are unending, its pleasures cruel. Goya knew them,

  and Thucydides, and Isaac Babel. One morning there is the

  wonderful smell of breakfast, and on the next the sudden

  arrest and hasty sentencing. The fate that seemed impossible, the justice Lorca knew. He could not cry out. I am a poet!

  They know he is an intellectual, or worse. They put him in a truck and he rides, with others and without a shred of hope, to an outlying district, where he is handed a shovel and told to dig. It is his grave he is digging, and in silence, the silence he will soon be part of, he begins, who was raised in his country, who became its very voice. Death laid eggs in the wound, he once wrote , at five in the afternoon. His wounds were burning like suns, at five in the afternoon, and the crowd was breaking the windows. . . . In his grip is the smooth wooden handle, and the first shovelful of earth is one of the most precious moments of his life, if only it could last. But in war nothing lasts and the poets are killed together with the farm boys, the flies feast on their faces.

  For us it was simple and always the same: Who was sched-

  uled, what was the weather, what had the earlier missions seen?

  m

  10 March 1952. Cool, spring morning. On mobile control. To the south the jagged hills fading in the early mist. A trail of dust behind every vehicle and as ships come over the end of the

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  runway to land, tail-low, the dust puffs up behind them.

  Thoughts of women. Stretches of idleness, then two dead-

  stick landings come in, both hot, the first one too high and side-slipping on final.

  It turns out that one of them had flamed out over Haeju.

  He and his wingman had been run down to the deck by a lone

  MIG, a tiger who fired out on the wingman even while the

  leader was hitting him! The wingman, out of fuel, tried to put his ship down on the beach at Cho-do, saw he couldn’t make it over some rocks and tried to turn and go the other way but hit and burned.

  m

  In the cockpit, Korea

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  Airplanes had their own personalities. They were not mere

  mechanical objects but possessed temperaments and traits.

  Some were good in gunnery, others hopeless. Some were

  always ready to fly, others rarely. Some planes, if not creaking like ships, nevertheless made strange noises. Without minds or hearts, they were somehow not wholly inanimate. An airplane

  did not belong to one pilot, like a horse, but to all communally.

  There were no secrets—pilots talked freely about the behavior of planes and in time flew most of them.

  m

  14 March 1952. Honaker was killed today. Crashed about twenty miles to the east. He was testing a troublesome plane, called out something like “I can’t stay with it.”

  Almost got killed myself. Colman and I were coming back

  from an uneventful mission. Turning final at about 150 knots and 600 feet, the stick froze. Used both hands and couldn’t

  move it. I was in a descending bank towards the ground. I

  turned off the boost. Nothing. Stick still rigid. I knew I was going to die. I thought of trying the trim. Awful seconds until I realized it wasn’t on the stick in this old model but on the side panel. Fumbled for it, still going down, at no more than 300 feet. No effect. I punched off my drop tanks, pulled up

  the landing gear, flaps, speed brakes. Suddenly the stick gave,

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  began to move. Still in a bank I cl
imbed, curved up into the sky. At 2,000 feet turned on the boost again. Controls were

  fine. Only with the other hydraulic units in use did the stick freeze.

  I declared an emergency and made a long, straight-in,

  landed with gear down, flaps, and stick absolutely frozen.

  When I parked my hands were still shaking.

  m

  You lived and died alone, especially in fighters. Fighters. Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged your-F-86 in flight—Jabara’s airplane

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  self into the machine. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. Your oxygen, your very breath, you carried with you into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle. If you wanted to speak, you used the radio. You were as isolated as a deep-sea diver, only you went up, into nothing, instead of down. You were accompanied. They flew with you in heraldic patterns and fought

  alongside you, sometimes skillfully, always at least two ships together, but they were really of no help. You were alone. At the end, there was no one you could touch. You could call out to them, as he had heard someone call out one day going down, a pitiful, pleading “Oh, Jesus!” but they could touch you not.

  m

  16 March 1952. Mission number 13, an escort. We were at 22,000

  covering an RF-80. Bandit trains already reported up. As we

  crossed the coast near Sinanju there were cons coming south

  from around Antung.

  We turned north and dropped tanks. Suddenly we were in

  it. Smith turned in on four MIGs. He closed on the last one

  and began firing.

  —You’re short! You’re short! I called.

  Gunsmoke flew back with his exhaust. I was clearing him

  desperately. The MIG climbed away, smoke or fuel trailing

  from its right wing.

  We turned in behind two other elements. Don’t know

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  where they came from. Sky was full of them. We were closer

  this time, behind the leader of the trailing element. Smith was firing. There were hits all over the MIG. The wingman was

  pulling up and away. There was a stream of smoke and we

  sailed past the MIG; his engine seemed out. Maj. Hnatio later confirmed him crashing. We were past and out of sight.

  Smith had fired out. I took the lead. We were low on fuel,

  less than Bingo (1500 lbs.).

  —Just one more time through the area, I said.

  —Roger.

  But somehow the MIGs had vanished. We were in a gentle

  left turn and Smith suddenly called,

  —Follow me down.

  He rolled over, went down, rolled out. There were four

  MIGs crossing in front of us! Excited, I picked the last one.

  Was closing too rapidly, reached for the speed brakes, some-

  how—I don’t know how—hit the flap lever unintentionally.

  Just as I was about to fire, he began pulling away. I fired as he went, discovered my flaps were down. Terrible, stupid feeling.

  Missed a big chance. Knew there would be others but not like this. I could have had a kill, everything.

  m

  He looked over the maps on the walls again, the row of charts, the claims board. The last he stood before for some time. On

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  it was listed the name of every pilot in the group who had ever had a confirmed claim in Korea. Small red stars marked them.

  There were separate columns for aircraft destroyed, probably destroyed, and damaged, but it was only the first column that really counted. His eye moved down the trail of names. Many

  of them he did not recognize. They had left the group long

  before. Some belonged to dead men. There was Robey’s, with

  five stars after it. Nolan had three. Bengert, seven. Imil, six.

  Tonneson had thirteen, two full lines on the board. And there was his own name with one, and Pell’s. Cleve had seen men

  come in every day to glance at this board and admire their

  names on it. It was the roll of honor. Hunter had once told

  him that he would rather have his there than anything else in the world. It was absurd, and yet impressive. Anything that

  men would willingly die for had to be considered seriously.

  From this board, perhaps, or one like it, could come names a nation would seize in its appetite for heroes. For a truly singu-lar record there might be lasting fame.

  m

  18 March 1952. The most terrible moment must be when the great, empty maw of a MIG slips in behind you, staying there while you turn as hard as you can. You hear nothing, cannot

  think, your head is jammed down into your shoulders by the

  Gs and you strain to look behind you, pulling for your life.

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  21 March 1952. Late afternoon mission. Yellow flight, Smith leading.

  —Accumulate. All John flights, accumulate.

  It’s the weather recall word. I have 1,000 lbs. when Smith

  sees two MIGs going north and we follow them, Smith firing

  occasionally, almost to Antung. There he breaks off and we

  head home. Only then does he discover my transmitter is out.

  We discover something else. There are six MIGs behind us.

  We’re alone. Can’t tell if they’re closing on us. We climb slowly to 42,000 as we head south. They’re still there. Next time I look, they’re gone.

  We get a steer from Downing.

  —Rock your wings if you have over 800 lbs., Smith calls.

  Nothing.

  —600 lbs., he says.

  Nothing.

  —400 lbs.

  I rock my wings.

  —Roger, he says.

  I shut down at Haeju. I have 250 lbs. Smith goes on.

  I watch him drop further and further below me over the

  rough surface of the now-solid clouds. I glide from 42,000.

  It’s silent, completely quiet. At about 15,000 I try an air start.

  Fires right up.

  Glimpses of the ground through the overcast. I start down

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  through it and finally break out over Seoul. I hear the tower and other aircraft. They’re clearing the area, believing I’m dead-stick.

  I can’t call. I enter directly onto downwind, land, and taxi in. Less than 100 lbs. when I shut down.

  Close enough.

  m

  Fuel was measured in gallons in some models of the F-86 and in pounds in other, later ones. The distance from northernmost Korea—the Yalu River—to home was about two hundred

  miles and minimum safe fuel for the return was about 200 gallons or 1,500 pounds. Planes took off with five or six times this amount, some of it in external tanks that could be jettisoned in favor of speed and maneuverability, but a disproportionate quantity of fuel was used in take-off and climb to altitude.

  m

  The bar was crowded. Robey was there, sitting at a table with four or five others and rolling dice for drinks. They were still talking about his last kill, warming him with attention. He

  received it passively; but there was an aura surrounding him, a cloak of satisfaction. He had been transmuted. He was more

  than just himself, he was symbolic, as when the sleekness of his ship and the completeness of his equipment so enveloped him

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  that, to a person as near as a wingman or far as a mechanic

  watching him climb out of sight, he inherited the beauty of his machine.

  m

  Speed was everything. If you had speed you could climb or

  overtake them and, more important, not be easi
ly surprised.

  You could rid yourself of speed quickly in a number of ways, but to obtain it, especially in the instant it was needed, was impossible.

  By subsequent standards these were uncomplicated air-

  planes, but they could fly above forty-five thousand feet and, going straight down, flirt with the speed of sound. There was a second red needle on the airspeed indicator that moved to

  mark the limit beyond which you were not supposed to fly

  though we often did, the needles crossed by thirty or forty

  knots, usually at low altitude or in a dive, the ship bucking and trying to roll. “On the Mach”—the absolute limit and a

  favorite phrase.

  The difference between our planes and theirs was in most

  ways insignificant, but in one, crucial. They had cannon—the maw of a MIG seemed swollen and menacing. We had

  machine guns, which were almost feminine in comparison; the

  skin of the ship had faint gouges, like the imprint of a spoon, near the nose where the guns poked through. There were six

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  of them. The cannon shells were as big around as a drinking

  glass and the damage they could do was severe. Machine-gun

  bullets, on the other hand, were the size of a finger or wine cork. It was the sledgehammer versus the hose. The hose was

  more flexible and could be adjusted quickly. The slower-firing cannon could not; you could almost say, Oh, God, between the heavy, glowing shots. Once machine guns had their teeth in

  something, they chewed rapidly.

  m

  “Lead, they’re shooting at us!”

  “That’s OK, they’re allowed to do that.”

  m

  The wing commander looked like a fading jockey and had the

  uncommon name of Thyng. He had piercing blue eyes and

  wore eagles that because of his smallness seemed doubly large.

  I can hear his voice as his plane suddenly whips over on its back. “MIGs below us, fellows,” he cries. Down we go.

  Colman stood before him with a respectfulness untinged

  by the least subservience. He was, after all, only tossing the dice. He was that dauntless figure, a free man. Soldier, yes, but only occasional soldier; it was all somehow implicit in the

  crispness of his salute, his effort to be unsmiling, his stained flying suit. He was an experienced fighter pilot and had been

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