“It’s got an unpleasant reputation,” he had said, “but you’ll learn to develop a great deal of respect for it. I know it looks enormous to you, but that’s only because it is; the engine under that housing’s got four hundred and fifty horses in it. I realize you’re all aces already, but you’ve never flown anything with a controllable pitch propeller, or mixture controls, and this is also going to be the first time you’re flying without a helmet and goggles because there’s a canopy to close over your head, as you may have noticed. You’ll be wearing earphones instead because you’ll be in constant radio contact with the tower — that’s another first, you’ve never flown a plane with a radio in it before.
“Now you all heard what the squadron commander told you a little while ago, and I’m going to repeat it now because he was absolutely right, and you might as well understand it. Nobody’s going to coddle you here at Gunter. Both me and this airplane are going to be a lot less forgiving of your mistakes. In Primary, you learned how to take an airplane up and how to bring it down, but here in Basic we’re going to teach you to use it as a tactical weapon, and I can tell you the pressure’s going to be a lot tougher than it was in Primary, no matter where you went to Primary — we get them here from all over, believe me, and even the best of them have been known to bawl in their second week. The C.O. asked you to look at the man on your left and then at the one on your right because one of you was sure to wash out of here and end up in navigator or bombardier school. Okay. I’m telling you now that out of you five cadets, there’s a strong possibility only three of you will make it through Basic, and out of those three, only one of you might get through Advanced. So you’d better listen hard and keep your heads moving at all limes because you’re here to learn to fly and not to fool around. You’ll notice that there’s a little picture of a burning pitchfork painted behind the cowling of my plane there, and that the name of the plane is The Eighth Circle,’ and whereas I don’t want to frighten any of you aces, I also want it clear that I’m going to make life hell for you if you don’t learn to fly the way I want you to fly.
“Now I want one of you to get into that front cockpit and the rest of you on the wings there, and I’ll try to familiarize you with the instruments and controls, after which you can feel free to climb into any plane on the field and learn that cockpit inside out and backwards because you’ll be taking a blindfold test on it day after tomorrow. You, what’s your name, you get in the cockpit. It’s going to feel a little strange at first, but don’t let that bother you.”
That was our first-day introduction to Lieutenant Ralph Di Angelo, who seemed about as pleasant as Captain Burmann, the terror of Orangeburg. (I wondered, in fact, which obstacle course had been named after him.) Yesterday, my second day at Gunter, I had gone up for my orientation flight, and today Lieutenant Di Angelo gathered the five of us around him at one of the long tables in the squadron building and chewed on his cigar and said, “Cooper, you want to pay some attention here, or do you want to wash out on your third day?” to which Cooper replied, “No, sir, I’m listening, sir,” and Di Angelo said, “Yes, then keep your head moving,” and cleared his throat, and in his lovable gravelly Elmira, New York, voice said, “Today we’re going to have a demonstration of take-off with the stabilizer back. You’ll remember that yesterday I showed you how to fly with the power off, and the stabilizer trimmed for a glide, and you’ll remember how hard it was to hold your nose down in flying position when we turned the power on again and rolled the trim-tabs back. As a final check before we fly over to Taylor Field today, we’re going to deliberately take off with the stabilizer rolled back about three-quarters, that’s approximately the position for landing. I want you to remember that this is what might happen if you forget your cockpit procedure before take-off or are shooting follow-through landings and aren’t quick enough to neutralize your trim-tabs.
“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.