Evan Hunter - Sons

“Remember that you’ve got to keep the attitude of the airplane constant when you’re climbing out of the field, never mind the position of your stick, you’re going to have to fight that stick in order to keep your nose down. Until I decide to zero the trim-tabs and trim up the ship, you’ll be working your right rudder to correct the torque, and you’ll be keeping that heavy forward pressure on the stick to compensate for the stabilizer being in the wrong position. Any questions?”

“Yes, sir,” Cadet Bollinger, a fuzzy-cheeked boy from Pennsylvania said in his high, almost girlish voice, blue eyes opened wide as if in expectation of a religious miracle. “What happens if we let go of the stick, sir?”

“Bollinger,” Lieutenant Di Angelo said, “if you’re by yourself, you’re dead. I’ll be back there today, so presumably nothing will happen. Seriously,” he went on, though I hadn’t honestly caught any joke, “the nose’ll rise, you’ll do a snap roll at fifty feet, and you’ll end up in the ground. Any other questions?”

Nobody had any other questions.

“Okay,” Di Angelo said, “after we’ve each had a chance at trying to kill ourselves, we’re going over to Taylor and shoot some more landings. Murphy, I want them at the ground today, and not three feet in the air. Jacobs, I want your head moving all the time. There are a couple of hundred airplanes in the air around here, and I want you to keep track of all of them whenever you’re up there. Okay, Tyler, let’s go.”

It was a bleak, gray day, penetratingly cold and damp. I was wearing a zippered jump suit over my underwear, fleece-lined leather flying pants and jacket, fleece-lined gloves and boots, but I was still chilly. My parachute tucked up into the small of my back so it wouldn’t bang against my ass with each step I took, I followed Di Angelo out to his plane, silvery against the gray day, the blue cowling indicating our squadron, the ramp crowded with planes from all the other squadrons as well, yellow cowlings, red ones, white ones. The Eighth Circle, very funny, I thought, and Di Angelo said, “’Morning, Harris,” to the T-3 who was his crew chief, and who was standing near the propeller. “All right, Tyler,” he said to me, “get the log book, and check the red-line entry,” the red line being a diagonal mark across a small box, to the right of which were listed all the Army tech orders not yet complied with. If a red cross was marked in the box instead of that diagonal red line, it meant the airplane was unsafe to fly and was not to be taken up under any circumstances.

Sitting on my parachute in the front cockpit, with Di Angelo behind me, I fastened my seat belt, and then took off the control lock and verified the freedom of the stick and rudder. I turned on the master electrical switch then, put on my earphones, and tuned in the tower. The radio-interphone switch was on radio. I kept watching it from the corner of my eye because I knew that whenever Di Angelo snapped it to inter from his controls in the rear cockpit, I’d be getting an interphone bleat about something or other I was doing wrong. Nor was a cadet supposed to say anything to his instructor from the moment they got into the airplane to the moment they got out; all the radio squawks would be one-way, from the rear cockpit to the front. I verified that my propeller control was in full-low pitch, set my mixture control full-rich, cracked the throttle, and then hit the primer three or four times.

The switch clicked over to inter.

“Let’s go, Tyler, we haven’t got all day here, there’s a war waiting.”

I pulled the stick back against my belly, and then put my toes on the brakes to make sure they were locked. With my right hand on the magneto switch and my left on the throttle, I stuck my head out of the cockpit and yelled, “Clear?” to Harris.

“Clear!” Harris shouted back.

I moved the magneto switch through 1 and 2, click, click, and heard the third click as I moved it to BOTH, and hit the starter. The propeller spun and caught. I yanked the stick against my belly again, added throttle, and then pulled back to idle. Picking up the mike in my left hand, I said, “Gunter Tower, this is 0934, over.”

“0934, this is your instructor in the rear cockpit,” Di Angelo said. “How about switching back to radio before trying to contact the tower?”

I immediately turned the switch to radio, and said again, “Gunter Tower, this is 0934, over.”

“0934, this is Gunter Tower, go ahead.”

“0934 on the line, ready to taxi.”

“Roger, 0934. You’re clear to taxi to runway 27.”

“0934, Roger and out.”

I signaled to Harris to pull the chocks, my toes on the brakes, the engine ticking over. He yanked them and gave me the thumbs-up signal. I began adding throttle, and the stick suddenly came banging back hard into my belly, jerked by Di Angelo in the back seat, who immediately cut the throttle and snapped the switch to INTER and shouted, “You forgot to keep your stick back, Tyler! You were adding too much throttle! Keep that damn stick back!”

Rattled, I released the brakes and managed to roll the plane out correctly, turning left past the parked planes on the ramp, and moving straight out onto the taxi strip. Di Angelo’s voice erupted into my earphones again.

“Zigzag her down the line, Tyler, how else can you see anything over that big humping engine? Do you want to get us killed before we’re off the ground? Keep your head moving!”

Trembling now, hating that goddamn RADIO-INTER switch and wishing it would break off in his left hand, I waited for the other planes to clear, zigzagging down the line past the maintenance hangars and the squadron building, and finally moving into the number-two position for take-off, parked at a ninety-degree angle to the runway.

“All right, Tyler, I’ve rolled the stabilizer control three-quarters of the way back,” Di Angelo said, “and it’s going to stay there until I roll it to Neutral when we get up in the air.”

I nodded and wet my lips.

“You’re about ready for take-off, aren’t you?” he said, and I looked ahead to see that the number-one plane had already left. “Is your head up and locked?” he shouted. “Let’s keep it moving at all times, Tyler, on the ground as well as in the air, let’s see what the hell’s happening around us, shall we?”

I checked the two mags, my eyes on the tachometer, and moved the prop control all the way to the rear, the engine straining, the sound changing as the prop blades cut the air at a greater angle, and then I put it back into low pitch and returned the throttle to idle. I switched to radio, picked up the microphone in my left hand and said, “0934, ready to take off.”

“Roger, 0934,” the tower said, “clear to take off.”

I could not get used to the feel of the stick. I was adding throttle, and the plane was roaring down the runway, but I couldn’t get the tail off the ground, and the pressure on the stick was completely strange to me. The huge engine pounded and pulled, the whole plane seemed to be vibrating with the need to break free of gravity, but the tail would not rise, I could not get her to lift. I remembered what Di Angelo had said about the attitude of the plane, concentrate on the altitude and never mind what the controls are telling you, so I pushed harder on the stick and felt the tail come up only slightly, still refusing to rise completely off the runway, pushed even harder, my arm trembling, the muscles straining, my hand wrapped tight around the resisting shaft of metal that controlled the elevator, pushing, pushing, What happens if you let go, sir? The tail was beginning to rise slowly, I could feel her coming up, I kept both feet working the rudders to keep the plane straight, “You’re doing well, Tyler,” Di Angelo said, “keep the pressure on that stick, keep your nose down, you’re getting her off the ground now, there you go, hold her hard, Tyler, don’t let go of that stick, keep the pressure on it!” We were making eighty or ninety miles an hour now, the plane was leaving the runway, rising steadily, fifty feet, climbing smoothly into the air, a hundred feet, still climbing, we had not done a snap roll, we had not flipped over and hit the ground. From the tail of my eye, I saw the trim-tab control move forward as Di Angelo shoved it into the Neutral position.