Stranger to the Ground

As I sometimes have long moments for thought on the ground, so every once in a while there is a long cross-country flight that allows a moment to think and be alone with the sky and my airplane. And I smile. Alone with the airplane that has been called “the unforgiving F-84.”

I have been waiting to fly the airplane that is unforgiving. There must be such an airplane somewhere that is so very critical that it must be flown exactly by the book or crash, for the word “unforgiving” appears often in the magazines racked in the pilots’ lounges. But just when I think that the next type of airplane I am to fly has such high performance that it will be unforgiving, I learn to fly it. I learn its ways and its personality, and suddenly it is a forgiving airplane like all the others. It might be a little more critical on its airspeeds as I fly it down final approach to land, but as our acquaintance grows I discover that it has tolerances to either side of the best airspeed and that it will not spin into the ground if I am one knot too slow turning to the runway.

There is always a warning of danger, and only if a pilot fails to heed his airplane’s warning will it go ahead and kill him.

The red fire-warning light comes on after takeoff. It could mean many things: a short circuit in the fire-warning system; too steep a climb at too low an airspeed; a hole in a combustion chamber wall; an engine on fire. Some airplanes have so much difficulty with false fire warnings that their pilots practically disregard them, assuming that the warning circuit has gone bad again. But the F-84F is not one of these; when the light comes on, the airplane is usually on fire. But still I have time to check it—to pull the throttle back, to climb to minimum ejection altitude, to drop the external stores, to check the tailpipe temperature and tachometer and fuel flow, to ask my wingman if he wouldn’t mind taking a little look for smoke from my fuselage. If I am on fire, I have a few seconds to point the airplane away from the houses and bail out. I have never heard of an airplane that exploded without warning.

Jet airplanes are unforgiving in one common respect: they burn great quantities of fuel, and when the fuel is gone the engine stops running. Full tanks in a four-engine propeller-driven transport airplane can keep it in the air for 18 hours nonstop. Twin-engine cargo airplanes often have enough fuel aboard for eight hours of flying when they take off on a two-hour flight. But when I take off on an hour-forty-minute mission, I have enough fuel in the tanks of my ’84F to last through two hours of flying. I do not have to concern myself with long minutes of circling in the air after the mission while other airplanes take off and land.

Occasionally I fly into the landing pattern with 300 pounds of JP-4 in the tanks, or enough for six minutes of flying at high power. If I was seven minutes from the runway with 300 pounds of fuel, I would not make it home with the engine running. If I was ten minutes from the runway, my wheels would never roll on that concrete again. If an airplane is disabled on the runway after I enter the landing pattern with six minutes of fuel, there had better be a fast tow truck waiting to pull it out of the way, or a second runway ready to be used. I will be coming to earth, in an airplane or in a parachute, within the next few minutes.

With the engine stopped, my airplane does not sink like a streamlined brick or a rock or a block of lead. It glides smoothly down, quietly down, as an airplane is designed to glide. I plan a deadstick pattern so that my wheels should touch half way down the runway, and I hold the landing gear retracted until I am certain that I am within gliding range of the field. Then, on final approach, with the runway long and white in the windscreen, it is gear down and flap down and speed brakes out and emergency hydraulic pump on.

Though it is a hidden point of pride to have shut down the engine after a flight with 200 pounds of fuel remaining, tactical fighter pilots rarely give the required minimum fuel notice to the tower when they have less than 800 pounds remaining. The red low-level warning light may be blazing on the instrument panel near a fuel gage needle swinging down through 400 pounds, but unless it looks as if he will be delayed in his landing, the pilot does not call minimum fuel. He has pride in his ability to fly his airplane, and an unimportant thing like eight minutes of fuel remaining is not worthy of his concern.