Stranger to the Ground

Right glove presses the shiny fastener at the side of my mask as I glide between the rows of blue taxiway lights, pushed by the soft sigh of engine at 50 percent rpm. Cool rain on my face. We trundle together in a right turn, my airplane and I, up a gentle hill, and follow after the green letters of a Follow Me truck that appears suddenly out of the darkness.

Above this dark rain and above the clouds of its birth is a world that belongs only to pilots. Tonight it belonged, for a moment, only to me and to my airplane, and across the breadth of it to the east, to another pilot and another airplane. We shared the sky tonight, and perhaps even now he is tasting the cool raindrops as he taxies by a runway that is as much a target in my intelligence folders as Chaumont Air Base is a target in his.

And I understand, in the rain, that although tonight there has been only he and I in our airplanes, tomorrow it will be some other one of Us and some other one of Them. When my little scene is played and I am once again back in the United States and a pilot of the New Jersey Air National Guard, there will still be someone flying the European night in a white-starred airplane and one in a red-starred one. Only the faces in the cockpits change.

Share work, share dedication, share danger, share triumph, share fear, share joy, share love, and you forge a bond that is not subject to change. I’ll leave Europe for America, He’ll leave Europe for Russia. The faces change, the bond is always there.

Hard on the right brake, swing around into the concrete pad of a parking revetment, nose pointing out toward the taxiway and the runway beyond. Taxi light off, check that the ground crew from the Follow Me truck slide the chocks in front of the tall wheels.

May you have the sense and the guidance to stay out of thunderstorms, distant friend.

Throttle back swiftly to off. The faithful spinning buffoon in steel dies with a long fading airy sigh, pressing the last of its heat, a shimmering black wave, into the night. Sleep well.

A slap on the side of the fuselage. “Run-down!” the crew chief calls, and I check my watch. It took 61 seconds for the turbine and the compressor to stop their sigh. Important information, for a maintenance man, and I enter the time in the Form One.

Inverter off, fuel off, UHF radio off, and at last, battery off. There is one last heavy click in the night as the battery switch goes to off under my glove, and my airplane is utterly and completely still.

In the beam of my issue flashlight, I write in the form that the UHF radio transmitter and receiver operate erratically above 20,000 feet. There is no space in which to enter the fact that the Air Force is lucky to have this airplane back at all. I log 45 minutes of night weather, one hour of night, one TACAN penetration, one GCA, one drag chute landing. I sign the form, unsnap the safety belt and shoulder harness and survival kit and G-suit and oxygen hose and microphone cable and soft chinstrap.

A blue Air Force station wagon arrives, splashing light on my nosewheel, and the sack from above the guns is handed down.

I lay my white helmet on the canopy bow in front of me and climb stiffly down the yellow ladder from the lonely little world that I love. I sign a paper, the station wagon leaves me in the dark. Helmet in hand, scarf pressed again by the wind, I am back on the ground of my air base in France, with a thousand other civilians in uniform, and with 31 . . . no, with 30 . . . other pilots.

My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED IN THIS BOOK

Accelerometer—An instrument that measures the number of G units to which an aircraft is subjected, in multiples of normal gravity, or one G.

Ailerons—Surfaces near the wingtips which are actuated by the control stick to bank the aircraft left or right or to roll it completely about its longitudinal axis.

Airspeed indicator—An instrument that measures the airplane’s speed through the air in nautical miles per hour (knots).

Altimeter—A three-handed pressure instrument that reads aircraft height above sea level.

ATO—Assisted TakeOff. For short ground rolls during takeoff, up to four jettisonable rocket engines can be attached to the fuselage of the F-84F. Each engine fires for 14 seconds and each contributes 1,000 pounds of thrust

Attitude indicator—Also called “artificial horizon” or “gyro horizon.” An instrument containing a gyro-stabilized face that remains parallel to the true horizon and a miniature aircraft duplicating the motions and attitude of the true aircraft.

Base leg—In a landing or gunnery pattern, the path of flight followed just before turning to the final or firing approach. On base leg the runway or the target is at right angles to the aircraft heading.