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"WHY IT IS GREAT TO BE A PILOT "
Flying close finger tip formation in a flight of four. Losing an engine in an F-84F while taxing back to the ramp after a mission. Terminating afterburner at 1.85 Mach in an F-101 and experiencing deceleration so hard that I flew off of the seat and into the harness so hard that I had strap bruises on my body, and needed a change of underwear. Full afterburner take off in a clean F-104 in 20 below zero weather at night. Somehow, all the jet-lag and other problems had some compensating balance! Doing formation join-ups in the F104 and F5 around big beautiful columns of Cumulus out of every fighter base. Sunrises seen from the high flight levels that make the heart soar. The patchwork quilt of the great plains of Kansas from 37,000' on a day when you can see forever. Cruising mere feet above a billiard-table-flat cloud deck at Mach .9 Knowing you have got to land a fighter on a five thousand foot runway, that is covered with hard packed snow, and no drag chute. Punching out the top of a low overcast while climbing 30,000 feet per minute in Afterburner. The majesty and grandeur of towering cumulus. Rotating at VR and feeling your airplane come alive as she lifts off. The delicate threads of St. Elmo's Fire dancing on the windshield at night. Cloud formations that are beautiful beyond description. 'Ice fog' in Anchorage on a cold winter morning. Seeing the approach strobes appear through the fog on a 'Must do' zero, zero approach when there is no other place to go. Seeing geologic formations that no ground-pounder will ever see. The chaotic, non-stop babble of radio transmissions at O'Hare during the afternoon rush. The quietness of center frequency at night during a "Transcontinental flight". Watching St. Elmo's fire all over your windscreen in the winter night skies over Alaska. The welcome view of approach lights appearing out of the mist just as you reach minimums. Finding yourself in a thunderstorm with 750# bombs still hanging on your wings. Lightning storms at night over the Midwest. Picking your way through a line of huge Thunderstorms that seemed to go all the way from Chicago to New Orleans The soft, glow of the instrument panel in a dark cockpit. The dancing curtains of colored light of the "Aurora Borealis" on a winter-night "North Atlantic" crossing. Passing 30 west . . . The majestic panorama of an entire mountain range stretched out beneath you from horizon to horizon. Lenticular clouds over the Sierras. The brief, yet tempting, glimpse of runway lights after you've already committed to the missed approach. The Alps in winter. Watching a fellow pilot do an engine out flameout approach and making it in an "F-100". Seeing a "dumb" bomb you drop hit a target and knowing you had all the parameters right. The lights of London or Paris at night from FL 350. Squall lines that run as far as you can see. Seeing Paris lights at night from thirty five thousand feet stretching from horizon to horizon. Maneuvering the airplane through day lit canyons between towering Cumulus Clouds. The deep blue-gray of the sky at FL 490. The softness of a touchdown on a snow-covered runway. Hearing the nose wheel spin down against the snubber in the wheel well after takeoff. A delightful sound signaling that you were on your way! Dodging colored splotches of red and yellow light on the radar screen at night. The sound of foreign accents on the radio. Luxury hotels. To paraphrase the eloquent aviation writer, Ernie Gann, "The allure of the slit in a China girl's skirt." Sunsets of every color imaginable. The tantalizing glow of the flashing strobe lights just before you break out of the clouds on the approach. Yosemite Valley from above. The almost blindingly-brilliant-white of a towering cumulus cloud. A cold San Miguel in Angeles City after a long day's flying. Ocean crossings and in-flight refueling. Hearing every sound a single engine fighter makes at night over the open ocean. Seventy-thousand-foot-high thunderstorm clouds in the tropics. Sipping Pina Coladas in a luxury hotel bar, while a Typhoon rages outside. Watching the latitude count down to zero on the INS, and seeing it switch from "N" to "S" as you cross the equator. Oslo Harbor at dusk. Icebergs in the North Atlantic. Contrails. The camaraderie of a good crew. Experiencing all the lines from the old Jo Stafford tune: "See the pyramids along the Nile . See the sunrise on a tropic isle. Trade winds. White sandy beaches lined with swaying palms. Double-decker buses in London The endless expanse of white on a Polar Crossing. Mono Lake and the steep wall of the Sierra Nevada range when approached from the east. Heavy takeoffs from the runways in the Canadian arctic -and landings too! Landings when the only way you knew you had touched down was the movement sound of the wheels rolling on the pavement. The deafening sound of tropical raindrops slamming angrily against the windshield, accompanied by the hurried slap, slap, slap of the windshield wipers while landing in a torrential downpour in Manila . German beer. Oktoberfest. The white cliffs of Dover Oom-pa-pa music at Meyer Gustels in 'Frankfurt'! Fjords in Norway The aimless compass, not knowing where to point as you near the top of the world on a polar crossing. The whiskey compass on a steep tilt. Brain bags crammed with charts to exotic places. Breaking out of the clouds on the IGS approach to runway 13 at Kai Tak, and seeing a windshield full of checkerboard. Sliding in over Crystal Springs reservoir for a visual approach and landing on 1R in SFO. The rush of a full-speed-brakes descent at barber pole in a Falcon 20 The Canarsie approach into JFK. The Eiffel Tower Max Gross Weight Takeoffs. Cross-wind landings at 29 Kts/90 degrees Good Co-pilots. Man-sized rudder pedals as big as pie plates. Leak-checking your eyelids on a long night flight. And, as one friend so perceptively pointed out, "Payday" ! Making an aural null range approach......... Then there was Venus coming up before the sun in the Eastern sky, giving the horizon a light show like no other! Walking out to any fighter any morning and knowing that you are going to fly it -maybe twice or three times that day! The smell of the jet fuel and the tension as you hook up to the catapult. That sinking drop as you go off the end of the carrier, you lose that Mach-1 energy of the catapult, and all gets very quiet and you wonder if the engines are still working. The pretty "light-show" over Hanoi at night as the radar-controlled gun fire comes up tp meet you, and the SAM launches look like telephone poles with fire coming out of their asses coming up at you. The frantic radio calls as pilot's aircraft are hit, and they scramble to save their aircraft and head back out to sea hoping for rescue The evasive manuvers that challenges your airframe and skills, when you realize you have a MIG-21 on your six. The sheer wonder as you go out night after night to hit "worthless" targets that are "suspected" truck parks. Trying to land on a carrier in the dead of night in the middle of a tropical-storm in the Gulf of Tonkin ,
with 40-knot cross-winds, almost zero visability due to gail-force driven rain, and you are "bingo" on fuel!
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