Like an Eagle
Irv Pliskin
There was an exuberance I felt about flying that nothing else in my life had ever matched.
Sitting in the little airplane, wearing a leather helmet and goggles with my hands and feet on the controls was unlike any other experience I had ever had. Since I was a New York City boy, I had not had the car driving experience most of the other kids had had. I drove a car, of course, but not legally.
In New York City, you had to be eighteen, at least, to go for a driver’s permit and a driver’s test. Since the war was on, gas and tires rationed, I never did go for a driver’s license until after the war. As a result, I was not as skilled with hand and eye coordination as the rest of the guys.
By the time we got to flying school, many of the kids were gifted automobile and farm mechanics. I had had some experience: When I was 17, I dropped the oil pan on the family 1936 Oldsmobile, and then found it impossible to put back on. I sweated and strained under that damn car for a day or two, until my dad--who had hands of gold--rolled under and repaired the damage I had done. I don’t recall what he said; Dad was generally kind and tolerant of his son’s foibles. Even this son. So, I may have been at a slight mechanical disadvantage when I started flying training in earnest.
In those days we drove cars that required shifting. Drivers depressed the clutch while they moved the gear shift on the floor into the correct position. It was much like the 4-on-the-floor aficionados today. But then, we had no choice. The automatic transmission was around, I guess, but it was not in the family automobile. If you had learned to drive a Ford ‘Model T’, you were even more familiar with the coordination of hand and foot. But I never recognized my lack of car driving skills as a hardship. I was certain I could learn to fly along with everyone else.
I remember my first take off in that little airplane. We all wore parachutes, strapped onto a special harness. We climbed into the seat, and pulled the seat belt strap across our waist. Checked it to make sure it was secure: it was essential that the seat belt was tightly fastened. Cadets who might have been casual about that had been known, we were told, to fall out of the airplane. Once we were strapped in, and our gosports were plugged into our earphones we were ready.
We moved down the grass, and suddenly, abruptly, we were up, over the trees and the cotton fields. We were soaring up over the Mississippi. It was different from flying in the Piper Cub. There we were enclosed. Here we were in the open air, and we could feel the windstream racing by. In front of us, I saw the propeller spinning. a blue blur in the morning sky. The airplane engine noise was visceral. It is a sound as beautiful as a soft breeze, as emotional as a girl’s hesitant kiss in the back of the movie theater. The sound is full of promise, redolent of adventure. The airplane is a living thing: a power, an emotion that can’t be ignored that you dare not pass off.
It was the fulfillment of a dream, exuberantly wonderful. I do not believe I could have articulated then, what I know to be the case now. Aviation was still an infant in l943: It was only forty years since the Wright Brothers had made history. Flying was a very new experience and people who flew or tried to fly were unique and few among the total population. Once we were airborne, Guy said to put my right hand on the stick, my left hand on the throttle control which was on the left against the left fuselage of the airplane, and my feet on the rudder pedals which were on
the floor, like the clutch and brake pedal on a car.
“Follow me through” he said. I felt the stick and rudder move and we were in a slight turn to the right. Then to the left. “If you want to go up,” he said into the gosport, “Pull back on the stick. Give it a little more power.” He demonstrated. The stick between my legs moved back a little, the throttle moved slightly,the nose moved up and the horizon disappeared for a few seconds.
“Put the stick back in the center if you want to level off,” he says. And we did. And the line of the horizon, miles out there,was back in view. Since he hadn’t retarded the throttle, we were going faster now. “Look at your airspeed,” he said.
“Retard the throttle just a bit to be back where we were.” He did, we were.
“Okay, you try it, Give me a right turn about 90 degrees.”
I started to make the turn putting to use the training I had had in New England.
“No, no!” he says. “You don’t turn until you look and make sure it is clear behind you. What if some guy was flying right behind you, and he ran into you? Always look and keep your head moving all the time so you can see what’s around you.”
“Yes sir.” I mouthed. He couldn’t hear me, but he could see my words in his mirror and acknowledged them.
“Now you try it again.”
So, I craned my neck to the right, and to the left, and then put the plane into a right turn. We lost 200 feet.
“No no,” he said. “Keep the nose level. Keep it on the horizon and then try it.”
I looked, I checked and then did it again. Eventually, I got to the point where I could do it easily, perfectly almost. We practiced it over and over again, that first day up. Then, when our 45 minutes or so was over, he turned and had me follow him through on the landing. My flight training for the day was over.
Once we have landed, and I got out of the airplane, another one of Guy’s cadets got in my place and the instructor went through the same procedure with him. No wonder some of them had very short tempers. Thinking of it, it must have been a terrible chore for them, the same steps over and over again with five young men all of whom had dreams for the future plus the conviction that they were totally and absolutely invulnerable.
Our training was basic flying. Takeoffs, landings and the other things we needed to know to fly well. We were taught how to follow the compass, read the instruments: turn and bank indicator, airspeed, and the others. We were taught to stall the airplane, since the stall was essential to landing properly. All airplanes go into a stall mode in order to land..and we had to get that right, too. And we even did tailspins. I learned to like them, when I knew they were coming. We did power landings and dead stick. (Landing without power, as if we had lost an engine). We even practiced some maneuvers as our training evolved.
If we flew in the mornings, and we sometimes did, immediately after breakfast, then we spent the afternoons in the classroom learning one or another aspect of aviation. We had to know and understand why planes flew, we had to have a rudimentary training in aviation engineering and the rest of the academics that related to flying: weather evaluation, crude basic navigation, pilotage, map reading, and things like that. Interspersed in it all, of course, were the courses for officer behavior. They impressed upon us the reality of that: it was not considered acceptable to whiz in a hotel lobby potted palm tree, no matter how drunk you may be.
Some men are more gifted than others at flying. Some men take to it quickly and do very well at it. Others have to struggle to do it at all well, or do it at all. In my group of men being trained by Guy, we had a typical situation. One of the boys from the Midwest was a natural. He took to flying, like I took to eating. In five hours, which was the minimum time required, he was ready to solo. And he did. When he landed from his first solo excursion,and his first three successful landings we gave him the standard treatment. He was dunked in water, his chest hair was shaved into a large and cursive ‘S’. This was a right of passage for flyers: it was like crossing the line (the equator) for sailors.
Guy kept working the rest of us to get us to the point where we, too, could solo. After each man soloed, his training continued in the niceties of flying and the other things he had to know.
I kept awaiting my turn. I was not as adept as most of the Cadets, but my time finally came.
One afternoon, Guy had me taxi the plane, that is move it along the ground to the edge of the field, and then he stood up and climbed out.
“Take it up Mister,” he said. “Take it up. You’re ready. Good luck.”
He turned and walked to the spot where the other instructors were standing watching their charges flying solo.
“Oh my Gawd! Oh my Gawd! What will happen if I screw this up?”
And the voice answered, “Screw it up, Irving and it will by your last screw up in this world. Count on it. So boychick, you better do it right.”
I relaxed, and started to taxi around the field to take off position. We took off in to the wind. As I taxied around to he proper position, I remember I raised my voice in song:
‘THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC HAS ME IN ITS SPELL..
THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC THAT I KNOW SO WELL...
IN A SPIN, LOVING THE SPIN I’M IN...’
As loudly and as forcibly as I could. Finally, I was at the end of the field, and I was ready.
Cleared myself, made sure no one was in the way, pushed the throttle forward and started to roll across the grass. Faster and faster, until I could feel the tail start to lift and then eased back gently on the stick and WOW! AIRBORNE. OFF THE GROUND! AIRBORNE! LIKE AN EAGLE!
Once I was off the ground, I stopped singing and concentrated on the chores ahead.
Climb to five hundred feet, and then make a left turn to fly around the field. On your first solo you were not to leave the airport area. You were to fly around the field a couple of times and then when one is able to, enter the landing pattern and put it down. Taking off and flying straight and level seemed easy. I was ecstatic, I was on an unbelievable high. The feeling was joy and exultation such as I had never before experienced.
I flew around the field a couple of times, and entered the landing pattern and started down. I was leveling out to land when I looked over at the instructors watching. They were on their feet, staring at me in horror, I thought.
I was much too high. I realized this, so I pushed the throttle forward and went around again.
Irv Pliskin is a retired advertising agency owner. He is a combat veteran of World War II and an Ex Prisoner of War of the Germans. Married, with three kids, and four grandchildren he devotes his time to writing flash fiction. He hopes, that someday, he may become the Grandma Moses of flash fiction. He lives with his wife of 57 years in Cherry Hill,NJ.
