Solo by Clyde Edgerton Read Free Book Online

reason he got sick every time he flew in Laredo. I recall walking up behind him out at his airplane one day after we’d each finished a flight. He turned around to say something to me, and all down the front of his flight suit was vomit. Doug was our first “washout,” someone who flunked out or left for other reasons—in his case, because of constant air sickness. After him came other washouts, sprinkled throughout our one year of training. I don’t remember the exact number of washouts in our class, though we were told that the overall Air Force washout rate in those days was about 25 percent. Some student pilots were unable to do aerobatic maneuvers in the T-37 (loops, aileron rolls, barrel rolls, cloverleafs) and would thus get a string of Fail grades. Others left during spin-recovery training or formation flying. A washed-out pilot usually went to navigatortraining.
    My academic record was good throughout the beginning of pilot training; the multiple-choice tests didn’t seem very difficult and my flying grades were high. As we finished our T-41 training, my academic and flying grades put me at the top of my squadron, and it was decided that I and Kevin Boyd, who’d finished at the top of the other squadron, would be on an accelerated program in the T-37. He and I would be flying every weekday in the T-37. Everyone else would be flying every second or third day.
    Before we were assigned to a T-37 instructor (an Air Force pilot rather than a civilian pilot) on base, we were each required to enter, of all things, a model-airplane contest.
Required.
The winner would be decided by the T-37 instructors. We were also required to write an essay about why we wanted to be a pilot. These essays, our academic and flight records, and our expertise on the models would help each T-37 instructor decide which student pilot he wanted in his group of four.
    My friends started constructing contemporary and classic model fighter aircraft. I went to a toy store. I found a model of a Batplane made famous by the
Batman
TV show. It had four parts, rather than hundreds. It was made for kids. I put it together and entered it in the contest.
    I wrote an essay about my dream of flying, about seeing the F-104 on television when I was a boy and hearing the poem “High Flight” in the background. Then I tried to make it funny. I didn’t want to be a serious warrior.
    Up against the many camouflaged and gunmetal gray model fighters and bombers, the Batplane didn’t win, butit provided an opportunity for laughs and conversation, and perhaps caused some resentment here and there. (Our yearbook has a photo of the model aircraft sitting on a table. Someone had removed the Batplane before the snapshot.) The Batplane was—I think, looking back—an outward manifestation of my inner discomfort in the role of warrior. But I would live to learn that a funny warrior is no less responsible for his choice to become a warrior—and is perhaps even more susceptible to dread and regret.

The T-37
    M OVING FROM A LITTLE propeller airplane to a small jet trainer was a big jump. So rather than going from one straight to the other, we spent time in a T-37 simulator—a mock cockpit with working instruments. The simulators were all housed in a large room, each one encased in a large box so that once you were seated inside, all you could see were the instruments and flight controls. Our instructors, young airmen or noncommissioned officers (enlisted personnel, not fliers), sat outside the box, at a table with a control panel, while we flew inside in the dark, the glow from the instrument panel against our faces. While one of us flew a simulated mission, an instructor could cause engines to die, fire indicators to light, hydraulic systems to fail. Surely some were happy to watch these young Air Force pilots-to-be sweat and do things like shut down the wrong engine when an engine-fire light came on.
    The T-37 instrument panel was significantly morecomplicated than