Every so often this needs to be reposted......we all have the dream, I guess, but some can express it so much better than the rest of us.
Flying Tigers
Message 154 Tue Jun 14, 1994
T.NAUGHTON [Scavenger] at 01:58 EDT
Being five years old in 1943 meant being a W.W.II child. Having a brother go off to be a bomber pilot fixed my childhood fantasies forever. While other peoples children may have dreamed of cowboys and Indians my fantasy world was filled with fighter planes and bombers, my cowboys were aces, my Indians the Japanese and Germans.
One night when I was about five or six (1943 or 44) We all walked up to the High Point Theater a few blocks from our house. John Wayne was staring in a movie called FLYING TIGERS. I was deeply impressed with the glory of anyone who put on a helmet and goggles and took off into the wild blue yonder. The scene that just stuck in my mind forever was John Wayne sitting in a Flying Tiger P-40 Warhawk fighter as he put on his leather flight helmet and started his engine. His canopy was open and when he was ready to take off he looked to his John Carroll (who played his wingman) in the next plane and gave him a thumbs up. His wingman returned the thumbs up vigorously and John and his squadron rolled out onto the grass field and took off side by side over the heads of the happy coolies working in the rice fields of China. John and his friends where on their way to save China from the Japanese.
That moment of thumbs up seemed to me, as a boy, to symbolize those few men, smart and heroic enough to have earned the right to fly the finest of machines, the fighter plane. For the rest of my childhood the heroes of the world were John Wayne and my brother and anyone else with wings on a leather jacket. That became the only thing that I ever wanted to do. I couldn't wait to graduate from high school and join the elite cadets who were one day going to have wings on their chest.
Mom and Dad, who had already worried through one son flying airplanes were not at all supportive of having another son in the Air Corps. By the time that battle was fought to its conclusion the Air Force was no longer accepting applications for cadet training and the window of opportunity closed. The Atlas Missile program and then the Mercury Space Program came along and I had enough satisfaction from being part of that to gradually see my dream of a flying career slip away first to the back burner and then off the stove completely. Soon I had a wife and then children. The dream of flying became some lessons in a Mooney Air Coupe at Spirit of St. Louis Airfield right across from Kratz field where Bill got his start in '43. Lessons were expensive for a guy with two kids and flying an Aircoupe with the canopy back was not fulfilling the fantasy. Years went by, many years. John Wayne and the Flying Tigers became just an unfulfilled childhood dream remembered vaguely at air shows and flying movies with the kids.
Then in 1981 I read about a new kind of flying. New technology had made what started as a motorized hangglider in to a real flying machine. The aircraft looked much like the Curtis Pusher of 1910-1920 era. Light but extremely strong fabrics and aluminum tubing had created an aircraft that weighed less than 300 lb. powered by an engine that could create a rate of climb of 1500 ft. per minute. Full controls had been developed giving three axis flight. Rudder, aileron, elevator. The pilot sat in the open like the early Curtis.
I decided to go for it. While I was taking my lessons I met a man who flew dive bombers in W.W.II and had spent most of his life as a test pilot for Douglas Aircraft and a commercial pilot. He told me one day, "don't regret the adventure you think you missed. Flying stopped being flying a long time ago. Flying became the act of managing an aircraft" which to him was not flying. He said "Have you ever noticed those tiny windows in modern aircraft"? That's because flying has become something done inside the aircraft with instruments and communications. The modern pilot is not looking out his windows experiencing the joy of flying. He said that was I was learning to do now was more flying than many get in a lifetime. Sitting on a seat, under a wing, with full controls acting and reacting to the elements is the essence of flight.
He had a beautiful new ultralight with a ballistic rocket parachute which could be deployed in an emergency to bring pilot and plane down safely. So I practiced and learned and finally soloed. The next day I was back out at the field to build up my solo time. My friend was also at the field getting used to his new plane. He came over as I was pre-flightiness my aircraft and suggested that we take a little flight together.
Our aircraft were parked side by side on the field. We both climbed aboard. Merl started his engine as did I. We both pulled on our helmets and goggles. A quick control check stick back and forth, right and left, full rudder right and left, engine advance and then back to idle. Merl pulled his goggles down and into place and then looked over to me. He reached out with a gloved hand and then extended his right hand thumb extended indicating his readiness to taxi. I extended my hand and returned a thumbs up to indicate that my dream was, after 50 years, about to become reality. We brought up the throttles and taxied side by side out onto the grass field. As one we advanced our throttles and side by side we moved down the field rapidly picking up speed. Our planes became light, with a slight bounce of wheels we were airborne. We cleared the edge of the field rising toward the setting sun. I looked down to the fields richly bathed in the early evening light. For just a fleeting moment I was sure I could see the coolies waving from the rice fields as we climbed wing to wing for one last battle with the Empire of the Sun.
