Richard Bach - Nothing by Chance

We came down in slow motion, facing the wind, into the tall grass. Not a single obstacle to clear. The earth came leisurely up to meet us and at last it brushed us lightly with its green. In that moment the engine was of no further use, and I flicked the magneto switch off. We slid slowly through the weeds, less than 20 miles per hour, and with nothing else to do, I moved the mixture lever to Idle-Cutoff and the fuel selector to Off. There was no shock of touchdown, no lurching forward in the seat. All in very slow motion.

I was impatient to get out and see what had happened, and had my safety belt off and was standing up in the cockpit before we had slid to a stop.

The biplane tilted wildly down, right wing low, grass and dust settling through the air. My beautiful darn airplane.

It did not look good. The right lower wing was a mass of wrinkles, which could only mean a broken spar beneath the fabric. How sad, I thought, standing there in the cockpit, to end this barnstorming all so quickly after it had started.

I watched myself very carefully, to see when I would begin to be afraid. After this sort of thing happens, one is supposed to be afraid. The fear was taking its time, though, and more than anything, I was disappointed. There would be work ahead, and I would much rather fly than work.

I stepped out of the airplane, all alone in the field before the crowd arrived, pushed my goggles up and looked at the machine. It was not easy to be optimistic.

Besides the spar, the propeller was bent. Both blades, bent hard back from the tips. The right landing gear had broken loose, but not off, and had smashed back into the wing when we landed. That was the extent of the damage. It was not nearly so bad as it had felt.

Off across the field, the men walking, the boys running, the crowd came to see what was left of the old airplane. Well, I thought, I guess it had to be, guess I’d want to come over and look, if I were in their place. But what had happened was now old news to me, and the thought of saying it over and over again was not one that I relished. Since my fear still hadn’t arrived, I would spend the time thinking of some good understatements to fit the occasion.

A big official truck rolled out across the grass. GO NAVY, it said in big white letters, and on top of it was mounted a pair of loudspeakers to reinforce the words. At this point going Navy was a much sounder bet than going Air Force.

Paul Hansen had been first to arrive, cameras around his neck, out of breath.

“Man… I thought… you… had bought it…”

“What do you mean?” I said. “We just touched down a little hard there. Felt like we ran into something.”

“You don’t… know. You hit the ground, and then… went way over… on your nose. I thought you… going to nose over for sure… on your back. It was a bad… scene. I really thought… you had it.”

He should have had his breath back by now. Was the sight of the crash so bad that it could affect him so? If anybody had a right to be concerned, it was me, because it was my airplane all bent up there in the grass.

“Oh, no, Paul. Not a chance of going over. Did it really look that way?”

“Yeah. I thought… my God… Dick’s bought it!”

I didn’t believe him. It couldn’t have been that bad. But thinking back, I remembered that the first impact had been very hard, though, and the sound of that explosion. And we did nose forward then, too. But nothing like we were going over.

“Well,” I said, after a minute, “You got to admit that’s a pretty hard act to follow.” I felt springs loosening inside me, springs that had been tight in the air, to let me feel every tiny motion of the airplane. Now they were loosening, and I felt relaxed, except that I didn’t know how long it would take to fix the airplane. That was the only tense thought. I wanted to fix the plane as soon as possible.

Thirty hours later, the biplane had been repaired, tested and was flying passengers again.

It is kind of a miracle, I thought, and I wondered at it.

When we left Prairie du Chien, Rio was the Unknown. And now, with Rio become Known, we felt the tug of security, and were uneasy.

The wind came up that afternoon and it changed Stu MacPherson at once from parachute jumper to a groundling ticket-seller.

“It’s about fifteen miles an hour now,” he said, worried. “That’s a bit too much for me to feel good about jumping.”

“Aw, c’mon,” I said, wondering how powerful a wind could be on the big silken dome. “Fifteen crummy miles an hour? That can’t hurt you.” It would be fun to know, too, whether Stu could be bullied out of his better judgment.

“That’s getting pretty windy. I’d rather not jump.”

“We got all these people coming out to see you. Crowd’s gonna be unhappy. Somebody said yesterday that your jump was the first ever made on this field. Now everybody’s all set to see the second. You better jump.” If he gave in, I had a lecture all prepared on how only weaklings give in to what they know isn’t right.

“Fifteen miles is a lot of wind, Dick,” Paul said from the hangar. “Tell you what. We have to test the canopy out, make sure that the inversion’s gone. Why don’t you strap on the harness for us and we’ll throw the canopy up into the wind and see that it opens out all right.”

“I’ll strap on your parachute,” I said. “I’m not afraid of your parachute.”

Paul brought the harness over and helped me strap into it, and as he did, I remembered the stories I had heard in the Air Force of pilots dragged about helplessly by parachutes in the wind. I began, in short, to have second thoughts.

But by that time I was strapped in, my back to the wind, which seemed to be blowing much harder now, and Paul and Stu were down by the canopy laid on the grass, ready to throw it up into the quick-moving air.

“Ready to go?” Paul shouted.

“Just a minute!” I didn’t like his word about “going,” for I meant to stay right where I was. I dug my heels into the ground, unsnapped the safety catch on the quick release that would spill the canopy if anything went wrong.

“Don’t punch the Capewell,” Paul said. “It will get the canopy all tangled up again. If you want to spill the chute, pull on the bottom risers. You ready?”

Directly downwind was a low fence of timbers and steel cables. If I dragged, I’d drag right into it. But then again I’m 200 pounds all dug in here, and no little breeze could drag that much all the way to the fence. “Ready!”

I braced against the wind and Paul and Stu tossed the skirt of the canopy into the air, with what seemed like altogether too much enthusiasm. The wind caught the chute at once, it popped out like a racingboat spinnaker, and every ounce of that force snapped down the risers and into my shoulders. It was like a tractor lurching into gear, and all hooked to me.

“HEY!” I flew out of my special braced place, and out of the second place I dug my boots into, and out of the third. I thought of losing my balance behind this big thing, and being whipped across that fence. The monster jellyfish pulled me in jerks, wham-wham-wham across the ground while Paul and Stu just stood and laughed. It was the first time I had heard Stu laugh.

“Hold on there, boy!”

“This is just a little breeze! This is nothing! Hey, hang on!”

I got the idea about wind and parachutes and grabbed for the lower risers to collapse the thing while I skidded for the fence. I pulled, but nothing happened. If anything, I skidded faster, and nearly lost my balance.

At that point I ceased to care about the delicacy of Stu’s canopy, and pulled hard on all the bottom lines I could get hold of. Very suddenly the chute collapsed and I was standing in the mild wind of afternoon.