Solo Page 6

  During the spin training in the T-37, it was not unusual for a student pilot or two to throw in the towel—wash out—and head for navigator training.

  • • •

  EJECTION, AS MENTIONED, would send you, in your seat, through the canopy. The seat would break the canopy. Then you’d automatically be separated from your seat, and your parachute would open. If your sitting height was above so many inches, then your head would hit the canopy first and you’d possibly break your neck. So early on, everybody’s sitting height was measured. Some guys, shorter than I standing, never made it into pilot training because their sitting height was above the upper limit.

  At one point early in our training, before flying in the T-37, we were taken outside to a real ejection seat that had been placed on what looked like a vertical railroad track that ran up to about twelve or thirteen feet in the air. We’d strap in, and a sergeant, standing by, explained the importance of sitting straight up with head back. When one of us got positioned and pulled the handle between his legs, rockets in the seat shot him to the top of the track. We each took a turn. The purpose of the training was to show that there was nothing to be afraid of.

  As part of this training we were taught to use a canopy-breaking tool, a device like a hunting knife with a very short blade that, when struck against the top middle of the canopy from the inside, would break the canopy open so that the pilot could climb out of a burning aircraft on the ground. The tool was always in the cockpit. A sergeant demonstrated with a canopy that had been detached from an aircraft. The canopy was propped up and held by one of us so that the sergeant could hit the canopy in the inside middle and it would shatter—he thought. He tried once, twice, three times, and couldn’t get the canopy to break. He gave the tool to one of us, then another, then another. Nobody could break the canopy.

  We were told that in some early jet aircraft, you needed to be airborne before ejecting or else your parachute would not open before you hit the ground. In others, you could eject while the aircraft was on the ground, but you needed fifty knots of forward speed. If you ejected before your ground speed was fifty knots, then your parachute would not open before you hit the ground. That was called fifty/zero capability. You needed fifty knots and zero altitude to survive ejection. The T-37 and T-38 had zero/zero capability, we were told.

  Somebody raised his hand. “Did the people who designed the seat also design that canopy-breaking tool?”

  TO PREPARE FOR FLYING with supplemental oxygen through the oxygen mask that we wore in the T-37, we trained in an altitude chamber, a pressurized room large enough for a group of us, in which very high altitudes could be simulated. Let’s say I’m flying at thirty thousand feet and I lose my oxygen, but I’m unaware of the loss. The TUC (time of useful consciousness) without oxygen is, as I recall, about a minute. After a minute or so I’ll become very confused and then I’ll pass out.

  Each pilot needed to know his personal signs of low oxygen: tingly feet, tingly hands, numb lips—or something else. The only way to find out was to climb into the chamber and “fly” to thirty thousand feet, lose oxygen, and see what happened.

  In the chamber, each of us had an oxygen mask available, but we ascended without it. At thirty thousand feet we were told to pay attention to our symptoms, and when we knew them, to put on our oxygen masks. My lips and fingers tingled. This was my coal miner’s bird in the cage.

  Then, with oxygen masks on, we were asked for a volunteer—someone to demonstrate what happens when a pilot tries to perform duties without adequate oxygen. I volunteered. I was given a board with square holes and round holes, and, yes, pegs that were round and square. I was asked to remove my mask. I did, and in about thirty seconds I was asked to put the pegs where they belonged, one every second. No problem at first, but then for some reason the people sitting there with masks on were laughing at me. What could possibly be so funny? The peg I held was just dandy for the hole I was staring at, wasn’t it?

  I was asked to put my mask back on, and I did.

  IT WAS NOT UNUSUAL for a student to walk out to an airplane without his helmet or without his parachute, do a preflight, look over the aircraft logs, start to climb into the aircraft, and then suddenly realize his mistake. The instructor never said a word. As long as a student wasn’t dangerous, he ate his mistake.

  About halfway through my T-37 training, Captain Dunning was assigned to a new student and I was assigned back to Captain Coleman—Mr. Big, my original T-37 instructor, who’d turned me over to Captain Dunning.

  Captain Coleman, I’d heard, was a screamer.

  On our third or fourth flight, I was flying an instrument approach. I became preoccupied with my altitude and got off my heading. Captain Coleman suddenly screamed, “What the hell are you doing, Edgerton?” He grabbed the hose to my oxygen mask and squeezed it shut. I couldn’t breathe. He let up, I breathed in, he squeezed it, I couldn’t breathe, and he screamed again, “Can’t you hold a goddamn heading and altitude? Good God, Edgerton, where’d you learn to fly? The heading is one eight niner, not one eight six, and you’re supposed to be at twenty-one hundred feet. You’re two hundred feet low, Edgerton. Are you trying to get my ass killed?”

  My “No, sir” was a “Humph-humph.”

  I’m glad Coleman wasn’t my instructor for spin recoveries.

  I asked my friend Cal Starnes, also one of Coleman’s students, “Has he got you yet?”

  “No way. You got to screw up, and I ain’t going to screw up.”

  A static wire ran from the bottom of the T-37 to the ground while the aircraft sat on the flight line. It reduced the chances of a fire during fueling. The pilot always manually released the wire before he got into the aircraft. One day, Cal overlooked the item on his preflight checklist. He and Coleman got into the plane and Cal started the engines. It was a big, strong wire, clamped to a reinforced grommet in the asphalt, and without its being released, the aircraft would not taxi. Far. Captain Coleman knew, of course, that Cal hadn’t released the grounding wire and had motioned for the crew chief, standing by, not to release it—to pretend nothing was wrong.

  Cal finished his preflight check, climbed into the aircraft, finished his pre-engine-start checklist and started the engines. He finished his before-taxi checklist and added power to taxi. The airplane moved a foot or so and stopped. Cal increased power. The airplane did not move. He increased power. The airplane did not move.

  Coleman reached over and clamped his hand around Cal’s oxygen hose. “What the hell is wrong with you, Starnes? My God, man. Can’t you see the airplane is not moving? Can you possibly cut the damn power? What the hell is wrong with you? The airplane is tied to the ground wire, you dummy. Can’t you read a simple checklist? Shut down the engine, get out, and release the goddamn ground wire. What the hell’s wrong with you, Starnes? Look at your checklist and read how to shut down the damn engines. Now.” Then he released the hose. Starnes gasped, got his vision back.

  A COLONEL NASH, from headquarters, was coming to my squadron to fly with a T-37 student pilot: me. The colonel arrived and we briefed for the mission. This was the highest-ranking officer I’d flown with, and I hoped to impress him.

  The preflight—like the preflight of the Cherokee 140—started at the cockpit on the left side and continued to the rear of the aircraft, along the right side, around the front, and back to the starting point. Colonel Nash followed me, watching. Items to check were not unlike those for the little Cherokee 140.

  Sheets of aluminum cover the T-37 and are held down with lines of Zeus fasteners (little screwlike devices). On the right side of the fuselage a Zeus fastener was loose. I told the crew chief so that with a little screwdriver-like device he could tighten it.

  After I’d completed the preflight and had climbed aboard to sit in the cockpit beside Colonel Nash, I remembered that I hadn’t checked to be sure the crew chief had tightened the Zeus fastener. No doubt he had, but I couldn’t see it from where I sat. I decided that a visual check—by
me—would impress the colonel. As I unbuckled my seat belt, I told Colonel Nash I’d forgotten to check the loose Zeus fastener. He seemed a little impatient but didn’t object to my getting out of the aircraft to check. I walked around the front and on around to his side of the airplane. The fastener was tight. I needed to hurry to make the scheduled takeoff time. The crew chief was standing out in front of the aircraft, waiting for engine start. As I hurried around the front of the aircraft—almost in a run—I felt a dull blow to my left leg, just below waist level. What was that? I glanced at the crew chief. His mouth was hanging open. I looked down. The pitot tube, a long pencil-like needle, normally straight out from the nose of the T-37, was pointed off to the left at a sick angle. I couldn’t believe it. Now we couldn’t fly—not this aircraft, anyway. I looked at Colonel Nash, who was taking off his helmet and rising up in his seat. “What happened?” he asked.

  “I walked into the, uh, pitot tube, sir.”

  “You what?”

  He was getting out. I’m sure he saw the crew chief’s jaw hanging.

  The colonel stood beside me.

  “I walked into the . . . the, uh—”

  “Into the goddamn pitot tube.”

  “Yes, sir. Uh, pitot tube, sir. Yes, sir.”

  The crew chief ambled up, jaw still hanging.

  “We’ll have to abort the flight and get another aircraft,” said Colonel Nash, looking up to God.

  I followed him inside to sign up for another aircraft, and over his shoulder I watched him fill out a form. To understand the significance of what he wrote, you need to know that we’d been warned repeatedly about “bird strikes”: while we were flying, a bird might come through the Plexiglas canopy like a cannonball. Pilots had been killed. We were ordered to fly with our helmet sun visors lowered in order to reduce the chance of injury in case of a bird strike.

  In the space on his form beside “Reason for Abort,” Colonel Nash wrote: “Student strike.”

  The T-38

  EARLY IN THE SPRING of 1967, just as we were getting confident in the T-37, able to “grease on” a landing consistently, it was time to fly the T-38, the aircraft I’d been drooling over since October. And I’d been admiring the scarves worn by student pilots who’d soloed the T-38. White with red polka dots, they weren’t scarves in the traditional sense. They were like miniature aprons. A little cloth belt snapped around your neck, and the scarf looped once back underneath and then over in front. Smoothed out, it looked quite natural, very much like a full scarf folded properly. I could hardly wait to have one.

  A T-38 instructor worked with four students and would typically fly with a couple of students a day, while the other two students stayed on the ground, studying the T-38 flight manual and academic subjects. We were still spending half a day in the classroom and half a day on the flight line. The academics now covered all the specifics of the T-38: the fuel, electrical, and hydraulic systems, and all the particulars of flying an aircraft far more powerful than the T-37.

  Cal, Andy Buckley, Phil Ferguson, and I were assigned to Lieutenant Jackson, a thin, dark, Italian-looking fellow who would fall somewhere between Captain Dunning and Captain Coleman on the “scream scale.” He was knowledgeable and precise in the aircraft, as were all our instructors, but instead of screaming, Lieutenant Jackson lectured intensely, either in the air or on the ground. His verbal tone fell between Captain Dunning’s sympathy and Coleman’s sadism. And he had a sense of humor.

  The first ride in the T-38 was called a dollar ride, a tradition, and when it was over, you handed your instructor a dollar.

  After a preflight guided by Lieutenant Jackson, I climbed up a ladder into the front seat. A ground crew member followed, helped strap me in, and handed me my helmet. In the T-37 my seat had seemed almost on the ground. Now I was sitting very high in the air, as if I were almost out on the end of a long pole, with no outside reference points. The wings were so far back I couldn’t see them without looking over my shoulder.

  Lieutenant Jackson climbed into the backseat. He’d be piloting from back there on this ride. I was along only to see what this bird could do. As we taxied out, I thought about how I’d watched pilot after pilot taxi out in the T-38, dreaming of my chance.

  Lieutenant Jackson was talking as he taxied us into position for takeoff. “You’re going to feel a little more power here than in the Tweety Bird. Follow through on the controls if you like.”

  I placed my right hand lightly on the stick grip, my left on the throttles, and my feet on the rudder pedals.

  We taxied out and into position on the runway. The throttles moved forward. I felt him on the brakes—as in the T-37, the brakes were under the toes of the rudder pedals. The aircraft, so much newer than the old T-37s, felt clean, tight, and very powerful.

  The engines roared as the aircraft, throttles at 100 percent power, held stationary while Lieutenant Jackson checked the instrument readings. This was not a gentle, high-pitched roar; it was a deep, constant thunder. This airplane was almost four times as powerful as the T-37, yet not much heavier.

  Lieutenant Jackson released the brakes, and after an initial few feet of slow roll, we began to pick up speed. I felt pressed back in my seat. The throttles went on beyond 100 percent, and the engines roared louder: we were in afterburner (raw fuel is dumped into the burning exhaust for added thrust). Almost before I could think about what was happening, we were airborne, gear up, flaps up. Rather than pulling the throttles out of afterburner and into 100 percent power as usual, Lieutenant Jackson left them in afterburner for a “burner climb.” We climbed at a very steep angle.

  I’d seen burner climbs from the ground. The aircraft climbs almost like a rocket. I looked outside, down at the earth, which seemed to be shrinking, and then I looked at the altimeter. The altimeter is like a clock (numbered one through ten in a circle) with an hour hand (1,000 feet between numbers) and a minute hand (100 feet between numbers), and the minute hand was making one revolution every two seconds! We’d be leveling off at 15,000 feet thirty seconds after takeoff. (That’s about 360 miles an hour, measured vertically.) Well, this was the most amazing . . . I was itching to fly it.

  Just before reaching 15,000 feet, Lieutenant Jackson pulled the throttles out of afterburner. We flew around a bit. He did an aileron roll and a loop. Then he pushed the throttles into afterburner again as he pointed the nose slightly down to pick up speed rapidly. I watched the airspeed indicator. Four hundred fifty . . . 480 . . . 520 . . . 570. I felt a slight bump as the aircraft went supersonic—faster than the speed of sound, a speed at which some experts once believed an airplane would fall apart.

  When I was fifteen, I’d counted down, day by day, for nine months until the day I got my driver’s license—I was mad to drive. Had I known about this, how long would I have counted? Lieutenant Jackson raised the nose of the aircraft and entered a rapid climb, still in afterburner. The altimeter showed 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 feet. The sky turned a darker and darker blue. At 52,000 feet the sky was a very deep blue, unlike any sky I’d ever seen. The airframe began to buffet a bit. We were as high as we could go and as high as I’d ever again be from Earth.

  A winding-down sound brought my eyes to the instrument panel. The left engine instruments were winding backward. Engine failure?!

  “Oh,” said Lieutenant Jackson. “I forgot to tell you this might happen. Lack of oxygen. Engine failure. No problem.”

  We descended to about 30,000 feet on one engine. Lieutenant Jackson told me from the back how to restart the engine up front. “Okay, the left throttle is in idle. Hit the start switch. There you go. Good. We’re up and running again.” The left engine instrument needles moved until they matched the needles on the right engine instruments.

  Then we were on our way home.

  “Do you want to fly for a few minutes?” he asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “You have the aircraft.”

  “I have the aircraft.”

  Oh, angels. Oh, angels who
have visited me. I tried a gentle right turn, then a left turn. “Okay if I roll it, sir?”

  “Sure.”

  I pulled the nose up slightly, snapped the stick to the left, and held it. The aircraft rolled 360 degrees, through inverted, and as it neared upright I centered the stick. I looked out and about and did a clearing turn to be sure no other aircraft was in sight. I rolled inverted, wings level, then pulled back on the stick and performed the second half of a loop. The maneuver is called a split S. Back straight and level, I pushed the throttles into afterburner. We jumped forward, accelerating. What a kick! I rolled it again as I pulled the throttles back out of afterburner. Those two trees on the way to New Orleans were fading into the second row of all-time exciting flying events. Lindy Land lingered.

  Lieutenant Jackson took control of the aircraft and we headed home. It was, overall, a relatively short flight because the afterburners consumed so much fuel. Back on the ground and safe inside the flight-planning room, I handed Lieutenant Jackson a dollar bill.

  My buddy Cal Starnes was about to fly. He asked how it was. I told him it was about the same as the T-37.

  “You lie.”

  “Naw, I swear. I was expecting something special, but you can tell on run-up that . . . I mean, I don’t know if it’s the insulation of the cockpit or what, but there is no feeling of power or anything, and then the burner climb-out actually felt slow.”

  Cal turned his head to the side a bit, tucked his chin, frowned. “Are you shitting me?”

  “I’m thinking about switching to helicopters.”

  A FEW MORNINGS LATER, at 0700, we all sat at tables in the main briefing room. At my table sat Starnes, Buckley, and Ferguson. Our instructors walked into the room. We stood at attention. Lieutenant Jackson approached us and said, “Be seated.” On the surface he was all business. Behind the facade was a twinkle in his eye. Looking back, I think the kindness and sentimentality he’d lost in instructor training had been replaced by a kind of nonabrasive, humorous sarcasm.