If it flies, there will be adventure

Four crashes in a few days can make a pilot think about his chosen profession, a retired Air Force officer said recently.

The former officer, who will not be identified except as “FO,” said a pilot friend was in Afghanistan when the latest accidents happened, involving an F16, a KC135, an MC12 and a civilian 747.

“He said he spent three days thinking about the profession he chose,” FO said Monday night. “He did not witness any of the accidents, but he was there.”

She and I talked about flying and aircraft and the things that happen in the air. Her most tense flight occurred several years ago when her aircraft lost hydraulics and co-pilot brakes while returning from a mission over Afghanistan. The pilot of the big airplane put the aircraft on the runway as soon as could.

“We started drifting to the left, and I thought, ‘Well, I guess we’ll cartwheel.’”

In that jet, any kind of contact that did not involve landing gear would have meant a fireball and probable death of everybody on board.

As FO told a medical person who said she shouldn’t be on flight status because previous knee and leg injuries prevented her from running from the aircraft if it crashed: “If my airplane crashes, no one is running away. We will all be dead.”

The day of no hydraulics and only partial brakes, the pilot got the airplane recentered for a few seconds.

“It started drifting right, and I thought, ‘Well, I guess we’ll cartwheel on that side.”

Again the pilot centered the aircraft, but by now the airplane was using up runway. A lot of runway.

From her position behind the pilots, FO could see through the windscreen.

“I thought, ‘Well, I guess we’ll run into those trees.’”

The pilot was good and gifted, and the crew graced with pleasant fate. The airplane stopped with a little runway left. The pilot then managed to drive the airplane from the runway to a position for towing, thereby keeping the main runway clear and open for other flights.

I mentioned a day flying door gunner in a Huey gunship 12 years before she was born. The gunship was a Frog, with big rocket pods and a 40-millimeter grenade launcher in the nose. We had shot up some jungle and then flown to base camp to refuel and rearm. When those were done, the pilot hovered to the oil-covered dirt strip, picked up a bit and dropped the nose. The ship started forward. It picked up speed. It did not pick up altitude.

On intercom the pilot said, “Come on, Baby. Come on, Baby.”

I watched red dirt blur by as the ship continued to speed forward.

“Come on, Baby. You can do it, Baby.”

Get this thing off the ground!

“You can do it. Come on, Baby. You can do it.”

Lift! Pick it up! Get this &%$(&$$#$ off the ground!

“Come on, Baby. You can do it, you can do it”

Sometimes a Huey’s main rotor beats the air into submission, hammers the ground effect, beats the Earth into letting go. When that happens, the ship shudders into the air before shaking off restraints and taking up normal flight characteristics.

That is what that did that day. It shuddered free from the ground and lifted over the perimeter concertina, suddenly like a butterfly.

I said to myself, “I will never fly in this ship again.”

I would have, though. Had I the opportunity. It was flying, and flying is the second-best thing in the world.