Note: this was written immediately after Hurricane Katrina wrecked so many lives and destroyed so much main land. Its impact was stratospheric. In the time since then, some things are back to normal, some have faded away. Forests have disappeared in some places, along with the wild life and industry that were there. Demographics have changed, cities have changed, crime and punishment changed. In short, our world evaporated from the times before Katrina to something different after it. This story is meant to encompass the totality, not just New Orleans. For an idea about this title, search Frank Frazetta, Berserker, and Dark Kingdom.
Today, I flew back to work on my ship. The crew abandoned it three days ago to safe ourselves from Katrina. We set a course of 230 degrees at one knot in order to distance the vessel as much as we could from the storm, and also to move it away from all other vessels. We expected her to sink, as the winds coming at us exceeded 150 knots with seas at 60 feet and more.
We abandoned about 8:20 am on Sunday morning. The ocean was greatly disturbed, long swell coming every fifteen seconds. Winds were northeast at 35 knots, gusting to 45. Every hour or so, rain bands came through and dumped on us. The sun lost its white-golden glow and filtered through more gray-white, reflecting sea spray and clouds, long columns of watery atmosphere going heavenward, helter-skelter. When we crossed the barrier islands ringing Grand Isle, Fourchon, and Leeville, they were already mostly inundated, throwing up white sea wash and breakers. Those little communities were already taking heavy seas, as they battened down and prepared to evacuate. Roads out were pretty empty, until they got to Houma, where traffic became horrible, all moving west. Ten hours were required for the 120-mile trip to Lafayette. Today, as we came back out, there are no barrier islands. They’ve washed away. The little towns are so much flotsam and jetsam. They, too, are gone.
The morning that we abandoned, the sea was chameleon—at one moment blue, at another green, and at another gull-gray. Deep shadows lay between swells, and the ocean appeared to pulse, throbbing a long heart-beat, saying “I am coming: hear my messenger and flee.” The sky changed: where it was blue, it was the cleanest, most magnificently pure blue, but it favored gray with dapples and sprays of rainbows and silver, and over there came the freak, hidden behind a curtain of haze and distant rain and banded clouds.
Today, there was no horizon; only haze, clouds, and squalls. The sea was injured, looking like green dumplings. It was milky, ugly, bad complexioned. A river of oil, perhaps 75 feet wide, ran from west to east, complete with oxbows and pools, and it continued as far as I could see. A production platform was bent over akimbo, and it was leaking oil which meandered into the larger stream. We crossed a vessel of some sort whose derrick was gone, and whose body twisted into something entirely objectionable. A jackup rig belonging to Diamond washed ashore on Dauphin Island. Between eight and eleven oil rigs are derelict, floating around the gulf, or on the bottom. Our own rig was found listing over five degrees, dead in the water, 30,000 tons ready to smash something. Between Morgan City and Pensacola, there are no longer piers, docks, or depots to support the massive oil and gas industry in the Gulf. That infrastructure is gone. There is no fuel, nor water, nor food, nor barite, nor transportation. Those companies are gone, for now, their workers only so much human detritus and their plants only so much rubbish. Out here on our rig, the sea is blue-eyed and smooth, like a lovely lady, but just over there are islands of trash floating by—roofs, plastic, lumber, siding, logs, trees, trash…hundreds of square miles of what once was housing or forest. There are cats and dogs and horses and birds, probably people floating or going to the bottom in those islands of trash.
Flying from Patterson to Galliano, every mile became wetter or more submerged in that tortured land. Great cypress swamps were filled with stark, naked, and broken trees, many of which were broken, sharp sticks. Small islands broke the surface of black, turgid water. Houses sat abandoned, their walls disappearing down in water. Boards, roofing, and flotsam floated in islands, things that once were houses. Cars are windows deep. I looked down into the rooms of a school, its roof gone, each messy little room filled with water, where just last Friday, it was filled with kids. Rainbow sheens of oil flashed colors from floating pools. Trees lay over sideways, all lying in the same direction, telling us which way the wind blew when they were killed. Sugar cane lies on the ground, again all pointing the same direction. A piece of highway came up out of the murk, made a gentle arc for about a mile, then disappeared in the murk. Dikes and levies were underwater, except for the occasional tower or object. Oak trees seven feet in diameter lay parallel, their muddy boots all pointing north.
Sunday, when we flew in from the ship to Galliano, a farmer whose acreage joined to the heliport property, was busily cutting hay on a new green tractor. He was trying to beat the hurricane. Today, the rolled hay was lying in two feet of water—ruined-- and there were no signs of farm, house, barn, farmer, or tractor. There were dead cattle lying about, and some live ones. I wish they could tell their stories. The drainage ditches were filled with black water, and thousands of the trees along their banks lay toppled along the banks, all pointing the same direction. It was a sodden, howling, berserk north wind that tore through here and killed them.
We flew over the place where barrier islands were, but no more. A beaten down Port Fourchon was to the west with her destroyed roofs, houses in various states of destruction, exploded trailers, flattened signs and utilities, and boats beached or sunk. Directly below, Leeville was smashed, a junk yard. Off to the left, I could only discern one structure in Grand Isle, some kind of tank, something shiny. All this was near the eye of the Bitch, whose tears and breath have destroyed much of the Gulf Coast and inland states, as well. Thousands of square miles of eastern Louisiana, all of Mississippi, and most of Alabama have been reduced, and that is a military term, meaning “thoroughly whipped and unable to further defend.”
Throughout the area, banking has ceased. Credit and debit cards can not be used, nor checks, nor gas cards, nor traveler’s checks, nor ATM cards: this world is now cash only. Traveling has stopped, and no one can go to work, nor hospital, nor airport. There is no gasoline, but also, no road is cleared of trees and power lines. Phones are down and most cell towers are, so half the country is unaccounted for. Wives don’t know where husbands are, or if they live, and vice versa. Mail is undeliverable, medical services nigh impossible, there is no electricity, nor clean water. Drowned dogs and cats lie in wetted pools around their beaten little bodies. Birds? I have seen none, not even buzzards. There is no provision for living: no sanitation, no toilets, no staples. Lawlessness is rampant, with people being killed for a jug of water, or a pair of shoes. Hospitals are being ransacked for drugs, and looters are stealing entire inventories, especially in New Orleans. What the storm did not carry away, looters are. They should be shot on sight.
Swamp creatures—snakes, gators, coons, nutria, mosquitoes—slither or buzz into the rubble and feasts of what was recently towns. Zoos have lost their quaint fauna to drowning. Pastures are dotted with dead cows and horses. There are no schools and no school kids, and I wonder if these hundred thousand children will lose a school year. LSU medical school is closed. A million houses have been demolished. No roads are open. Millions of cars are ruined or damaged to flooding. No one yet knows how many humans have been killed, how many displaced, how many jobs lost, how many families hurt, how many churches destroyed, how many dreams shattered. The saddest things are those people being found drowned in their attics from rising water from which there was no escape….and their pets found drowned on top of the book cases or cabinets, the highest places they could climb.
We are in trouble here in the southeast, and we need help. If you are prayerful, we need your prayers. If you are benevolent, we need your gift. If you are wealthy, we need your coin. If you are strong, we need your shoulder. If you have means, we need your support. Even with help, we bid adieu to stately old homes, lush oak forests, many centers of profit and fun, and many people who once lived here. As a nation, nature has hurt us, and we have been injured and must minister to ourselves. It is enough to break my heart, and to make strong men weep.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Thunderstorm
Norquist and I were flying over southern Indiana, west bound, climbing out of flight level 350. It was early afternoon in a wonderfully clear, bright day. Our old t-bird responded well, but she was aged and tired. Even in her younger and best days, her engine was limited and her power inconsequential. Now she flew as if her heart were no longer in it, like an old mare losing her sight and being relegated to the pasture…except when a child wanted a gentle ride. Our geriatric lady felt it an insult to be working so hard for novice newcomers, fresh from high-performance airplanes. It was as if we had cheated on her. Why, she had flown the best of three generations and had virtually ushered in the jet age. She had flown the weather of 35 winters, circumnavigated the globe, saw a hundred things that existed no more, and flew in wars with pilots now aged or dead. However, she carried her load with innate dignity. She seemed not to mind that ahead of us—to the west—was a thick, high wall of thunderstorms and swirling gray clouds. But I minded.
That is why we were climbing, already at an altitude that the old gal could only give us a few hundred feet-per-minute rate of climb. I hoped that we could get her above 40,000 feet before we collided with the storms. Of course—pride forbid---we could turn around and land at Grissom, or go south to St. Louis, or any of several places. We would be happy and safe, having a cold beer with comrades, watching it rain like the dickens outside. Pretty girls would be there, and finger foods, and a company of pleasant flyers would share their tales with us. We could do that, but we would not. We would fly through this thing, ride the tiger, take our lumps and come out the other side. Thunderstorms, ice, tornadoes, hail, extreme rain, and turbulence sometimes destroyed airplanes, but not mine, not ever. Still, if one swims among sharks, a bite can be had. Actually, Norquist and I, and the Center, all concluded that we would top the storm by 1500 or 2000 feet.
I tightened and locked the shoulder harnesses and seat belt, lowered the seat so I would be eye-level with the instrument panel, and checked the airplane configuration for turbulence and lightning flashes and extreme weather. We talked infrequently, but genially. He rode in the front seat because he was shorter than I. With the over-water packs and parachutes, I was forced forward in the seat, enough that the front canopy bow would sever my legs at he knees if I bailed out. Our over-water packs were worn because we had been flying over the Atlantic. It was my segment—my turn—to fly, so I had the airplane in my hands.
The first tendrils of the storm occurred in clear air, invisible and quite gentle, but an event that never occurred at this altitude without some unstable force driving it. The old girl lurched up, gained three-hundred feet, then pitched down and lost it. We flew for a time in absolute calm, re-establishing a slow climb. Lightning now flashed visibly in the bolus of the storm, both air to air and air to ground. Great palls of towering clouds showed creased limbs and wrinkled faces. Aah! This one was a mature storm, a bully, pushing and smashing his way across the earth and high into her atmosphere, a male, doubtlessly. The bottom of the cloud line was thick blue-gray, dense, with bolts and strings of lightning. Rain was extremely heavy below it, where entire cities appeared as postage stamps from here. How on earth could those tiny burgs expect to stand against some monster of nature like this? Hard driven with rain, hail, tornadoes…how could those silly people expect to survive? How their little gardens and so-tiny houses? And if I thought they were small, what of us, hanging onto a pinnacle of air, thirty some-odd feet of airplane, eight and a half miles high? Some engineer saw this and provided a small engine with which we might battle this big, ugly shmuck. Our puny little jet exhaust pushed as hard as it could, leaving a skinny contrail behind us. Somebody in the clear down there saw that gossamer white trail aimed at that monstrous storm and thought to himself, “those poor, stupid fools! “ And he would be correct. Still, we gamely climbed at a very modest rate in faith that we could get above this bully.
We made occasional small talk, sometimes pointing at landmarks or weird pieces of storm. Norquist meanwhile executed his job as observer and planner while I flew. Like I, he was an experienced military aviator with his own adventures and stories of fight and flight, war, and love. I have met his wife and baby daughter. Mrs. Norquist was young—maybe 25--and she had the most startling gray eyes, lined with thick black lashes. She was very pretty. The shape of curve was pronounced and attractive, and she was gentle with her handsome husband. I wondered what words, what actions were Norquist’s to intrigue such a woman: what gentle touch with those hands—which have slain strong men—has he mastered to please and satisfy her? I observed the back of his helmet, his parachute, saw his head swivel in search of threats or better routing. I heard his even breathing coming through his oxygen mask. As I had the soul of this airplane in my hands, so did I feel that I held his heart, too, beating along with my own. What power! The fate of men and families in my grasp! It was well to respect that and to deliver this husband and father home safely, and me to my future. Even so, my hands now gently and assuredly controlled yaw, pitch, and roll on the aircraft and directed a steady climb. What awaited him at his home, now only two hours from here? What trinkets did he bring his baby? Their dinner will have been carefully thought over and prepared with candle light and interesting conversation, while they caught up on the things of which lives are made. I thought, too, of the dreary emptiness of my own abode, with its dark corners and musty smells. There would be dust on the tables and yellowed newspapers at the front door. The mailbox would be full of meaningless trash. It was an apartment, a temporary stowage for my few belongings, with the ambience of a vacuum cleaner. She was gone, having taken the bulk of our belongings with her when I was away on assignment. Yet I was the coward, having hidden from the truth, inhabiting a make-believe world, but it mattered not, at the moment. I had a dragon demanding hand-to-hand combat, and I must do battle here and now in order to earn the right to live unto nightfall. Norquist had a date with the gray-eyed Athene, and I to hard memories and a search for a future.
Outside, the temperature was minus 50 degrees Celsius. Inside the cockpit, it was about 15 degrees Celsius—comfortable, but for my hands and feet; cold. A sudden whip reminded us of our challenge, which I had already accepted. The ride became bumpy, the airplane bumping and jumping about, as we approached the blown- off tops of the first cells, cirrus. We were flying in milk. Flashes of sunlight glinted off ice crystals. There were even rainbows (or would it be icebows?). Shards of silvered, sun-splashed ice whistled past. A crust of ice adhered to the canopy rails, and the wing leading edges and tip tank noses covered over in light rime ice. We were ready for combat. My pre-combat nerves caused a mild jumpiness and butterflies that would go away—or at least become unnoticed—when the fight was joined. For the thousandth time, I reviewed the instrument arrangement, heaters on, lights on bright, pitot tube hot, artificial horizon set, rudder pedals up close, oxygen 100%, engine instruments, exhaust gase temperature, trim, boost pump pressure, oil temp and pressure, fuel arrangements, seats and safety harnesses, and altitiude: 41,394 feet and climbing at about 250 fpm. Another call to Indianapolis Center confirmed that there were no soft spots ahead of us, that the storm was intense and heavy, and extreme turbulence had been reported. They couldn’t read the tops of he storm, so we had no idea if we would clear it, but they had a report of tops at 40,000feet, so maybe--just maybe--we could clear it. I had done this a number of times and was fairly comfortable with it when my primary job was flying. They say ignorance is bliss, though. I didn’t really fear this thing, as I knew how to do it, but there are considerations of equipment and nature that go beyond the pilot’s control, and those can be killers.
My unease suddenly disappeared when deep blue sky shown overhead, and the only thing to be seen ahead was a veil of white, thin cirrus. It appeared that we had it made. We entered the veil, which was whisper-slim, and we were out of it immediately, and the aspect was spectacular, as if we had suddenly leaped over the side of a deep canyon. It was perfectly clear, and four miles below were the ragged and boiling edges of the first cell. Dead ahead was a moving, growing wall of granite cauliflower—boiling, sprouting shoots of nature’s ugly visage. Now we had our answer: eight and a half miles was not high enough. We were about to receive a butt-kicking, but I would start the fight by poking a hole in the thing. Maybe it would spit us out the top and leave alone,but not very damned likely. So here we went. I leveled the airplane and accelerated a bit to build more buffer between stall speed and overstress speed, that is, maneuvering speed. I listened to myself breathe, to assure that I sounded unconcerned with these droll events to Norquist. Liar! I heard a definite lack of concern in Norquist’s breathing. Liar! Cross-checking gages again, I assured myself that we were as ready as we could be. These instruments were old round dials, ancient things, unlike newer ADIs and HSIs and vertical tapes to which we were accustomed. They required a more complex cross-check, because less information was displayed on an instrument group, and the display was certainly unimaginative: they were round dials.
The cell ahead of us was visibly moving and growing, now higher than we would ever be. Norquist called Indianapolis Center and reported cloud condition and tops and said that we would see them on the other side. We had no weather radar, no auto-pilot, no de-icing boots, no hydraulic flight controls, no afterburners, and very little available thrust to ease our passing. I punched off the g-meter so we could see how many gravities we would experience. The Center reported that radar contact with us was lost, but a very active cell appeared coincident with our location. WHACK! The man was dead on.
We ran into a solid wall of water and ice inflicting six degrees of motion on us at once, but principally in pitch. We were IFR immediately in immensely heavy rain. It grabbed us and ducked us like in a swimming pool, but there was ice in there, too, and we were cold-soaked, and our airplane covered over in rime ice. Noise was extreme and constant, and the ride was rough, like riding a bull from which we dared not be thrown. Down we went, bucking, gyrating, rolling and bouncing. One wing fell, then the other, but our direction was down, despite my holding the miniature airplane wings level on the artificial horizon. Grievous sounds of hail, rain, ice, and the pop and zither of lightning were constant. I lost a thousand feet in a few seconds. We took a lightning strike on the right side with a loud pop and a very bright flash. We both checked for damage or holes, but found nothing. Neither did we get any warning lights, or you-are-gonna-die-soon alarms. The altimeter read a bit over 38,000 feet, and we were plunging down in occasional zero-g.
Suddenly, we loaded up on 4g’s and shot upward, pegging the vertical velocity indicator, all the way to 44,000 feet. We cruised for a moment in lighter conditions, and then got ducked again. The airplane took on ice, which greatly concerned me, for its ability to fly was being degraded by fouling the shape of lifting devices and by adding weight. I also worried about the intakes closing off with ice, as the engine temp was rising and wavering. I retarded the throttle a bit to lessen the low pressure vacuum in the inlet and, perhaps, stop the ice build up.
Down we went again, jetting down in negative g in a vortex of storm moving maybe a hundred knots The cacophony of noise and barely controllable ride, combined with extreme fluctuations in instrumentation kept me too busy to acknowledge my discomfort. Norquist called the Center to report the turbulence and our rough ride, his voice drumming, as if he were taking a pounding in his stomach. I reduced the throttle some more, since I could not hold altitude, anyway.
Pilots ordinarily fly by trimming the airplane to neutral conditions, such that they can fly it with their fingertips, immediately feeling the tugs and small nudges transmitted to the control stick. Not I, not today. I had a basic death grip on the stick, controlling the large excursions coming to it with arm and muscle, utterly without finesse. That is hard work, especially when combined with cerebral over-tax. My arms were tired, my eyes stung, my throat was dry, and my mask was sloppy and slippery with sweat, but I gazed at the instruments continuously and counteracted a million forces trying to steal our airplane and our lives. Outside, bullets of ice and water flew around. If one ejected, he would be riddled with machine gun fire of droplets and crystals. One B-58 traveled at high mach during that bomber’s short life span, penetrating a thunderstorm. All engines (J-79s) ran at high thrust, when an outboard engine compressor-stalled and failed. The aircraft yawed violently into the dead engine, suddenly deprived of 17,000 pounds of thrust. The aircraft slewed hard, pulling the nose up, rolling, then,down in a sudden over-g that started bending the airplane. The crew of two had no choice but to bail out. They did, and it killed them. As a result of this tragedy, the Air Force fixed the problem by causing the corresponding engine on the other wing to switch off instantly if an engine failed. This alleviated such assymetrical thrust excursions.
I saw photos of their bodies. The AF Institute of Pathology had these photos and showed them to a class of accident investigators, of which I was a member. The two dead men appeared to have had severe cases of measles, red welts and bumps all over their bodies. These welts had been caused by rain drops flying into them at many hundreds of miles per hour. Water, which is incompressible, struck them and penetrated their flesh, some drops going all the way through the body. They died as quickly as machine gun fire or high explosives would have claimed them. They would have died before completely clearing the aircraft structure and were corpses when their parachutes opened at 14,000 feet.
I kind of prayed, I think, and it came out as “look here, God; I know you are busy, and so am I. I’d appreciate it if you would get involved in this thing and help us out a bit. Send me a bill.” If icing continued, we would finally just quit flying and fall out of the sky like a bucket of manure. Other options seemed to be closing: the canopy may have been iced shut, the engine may be starving of air, the control surfaces may freeze in position. If a seat didn’t fire, how would one get out of the airplane. If it did fire, what about the ultra-extreme cold and all those ice bullets flying around out there? If the engine flamed out, could we get it started again? What if it stalled and spun? What if the thing tossed us up to 60,000 feet, where blood boils at body temperature? And worst of all, what if this thing were a hundred miles thick?
Still, I was impressed that we were fighting successfully with this old gal. With slide rule, and pencil, and paper, an engineer designed and calculated this airplane, one of the very first of American jets. Little was known of supersonic airflow, or engine design, or strakes, or shock waves, and a thousand things that are now passé. He very carefully designed a shape that had a critical mach number of .82, and its tech order climb regime would decline at two knots per thousand feet, and maximum indicated airspeed was 385 knots, 60 knots below Vne or max Q. There were exact numbers for its limit load factor in positive and negative g, no-flap glide ratio, maximum sink rate at landing, high key, and on and on. Every pilot that flies knows his airplane’s numbers cold: what is maneuvering speed in a storm? How many transverse g at this configuration? How far, precisely, can I go on this amount of fuel? With these particular winds? Also, it was impressive that these old round dial gages were exact, giving air speed exactly, mach number exactly, engine exhaust temp exactly, altitude exactly, fuel flow, hydraulic pressure, boost pumps, and so on.
They were catching hell down there on the ground, their farms and villages. For all we knew, there’d been tornadoes and hail, flooding, hard winds…Still, it is amazing how tough and resilient people and their interests are. There would be folk gathered around the television, watching the weather or “Green Acres.” Some were in their storm cellars and some in their cups. Those on the highway slowed down or stopped in deference to poor visibility and hail. For certain, Sunday dinner was being served and enjoyed, and the Lord had definitely been appointed His place in the affairs of men..
They send out beacons—those people of the earth—that they don’t even know about. We use the outlay of their geography, patterns or roads, and parks, and bridges. We home on their broadcasts, identify our location by any peculiar appearance, follow their roads, identify their towns. Just last night, we flew out over the Atlantic in an air defense exercise. It was two hours past midnight, and the universe was uniformly black. High cirrus blocked the stars: there was no moon. The ocean was depthless, beyond black. There was no outside reference and no horizon, so the flight was made on instruments. From three hundred miles at sea, we turned around and headed back toward land at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Very soon we spotted a haze of light way out there, and then it became a definite little beacon almost an hour away from us. It was directly off the nose. We flew for forty minutes before we could ascertain the source of this welcome and lonely light. It was an outdoor light next to a highway or road, and it was in somebody’s yard. Nearby was a now-darkened house, but whose interior was moments ago a place of living and conversation and blessed life. It radiated its comfort in all directions, providing a reading lamp for a family and a lighted sign for we pilots in the sea of air above them and for pilots of ships in the sea of water near them. With their beacon, we could mark our charts, identify our place, enjoy the solace and comfort of knowing exactly where we were in space, even though the rest of the world is darker than the inside of a cow. That lovely family had no knowledge that we used their beacon so, and we would have gladly paid for it, a signal that said “here is the sea and here is the land, exactly.” I hoped the noise of our passing would not disturb someone’s slumber.
If Norquist were to offer to fly for awhile, would I accept it? Sorely tempted, I must decline. It was not pride, but an unspoken courtesy. For one thing, one knows his own limits, but not the other fellows. He naturally supposes himself better equipped for the flying at hand, but this is not conceit: it is a generous form of protecting all concerned. He dislikes giving over to another person a broken machine or a set of inclement conditions. Since he has his hand in it, it is better to finish the job than to hand it over to one who must then learn the degrees of such a disturbance. If Norquist were to offer to fly, he would have no idea the personality of the storm, the nuance and the outright slugging match that I have been conducting. It is better that I fly for now. Since I have been doing it, it is my tiger to tame. Perhaps, in truth, I misnamed Mrs N. Perhaps this storm is the gray-eyed Athene, complete with thunderbolts and the infinite resources of heaven.
but at one point we came into warmer water, and ice melted from the airplane. In seconds the cold atmosphere wrung out the moisture from that warmer source, creating more ice and rain, and accelerating the air, thus regenerating the cell. These cycles were being repeated in updraft, downdraft, wrenching moisture and freezing it, feeding on warm air, catching it in the cycle up, and so on. The mechanics became clearer and my reaction was better, acting now from knowledge.
Norquist was a good observer, staying attuned to contingencies, calculating particulars for diversions, keeping radio frequencies current, taking care of the IFF SIF He kept his mouth shut, too, except for occasional tidbits of information. He monitored fuel status, flight dynamics, location, and altitude. Altitude was the most uncertain of our flight: we were swept up or down with whichever draft we happened to be in, and aircraft attitude had little to do with it. The best we could accomplish was to hold the proper attitude, hold heading as nearly as possible, and keep the wings level. When the Center asked about our ride, Norquist told them it was bad and recommended that others not try it. That word doubtlessly went to many other aviators.
We had been in the crap for about seven minutes, almost fifty miles, when the outside brightened considerably, the ride smoothed out, and we broke out in the clear. As suddenly as we had entered the beast, we exited. Peering over my shoulder, I saw a terrible-looking, moving wall of the storm’s western faces. Our altitude was now 29,000 feet: we had lost almost 15,000 feet—three miles. We had considerable ice on the canopy, wings, and tip tanks, but it was sublimating. With a “thunk” a piece of ice apparently went through the plenum chamber and through the engine, which cooled and settled down. We began an easy climb back to altitude. I advised Indianapolis Center of our whereabouts and actions. He “rogered” us and confirmed radar contact and gave us a frequency change for a new sector. Norquist asked if I minded if he flew it for awhile. He knew that I could use the break, but those things are never mentioned. Tomorrow, when somebody asked how the mission went, the answer would be one of self-denigration: “Oh, you know, the usual. We finally found the Atlantic Ocean and flew back to my usual night landing. I hit hard enough to bounce my chin off the stick, but we didn’t blow a tire. Only got lost once, but managed to find Chicago—I THINK it was Chicago…you know, the usual stuff.” He took control of the airplane, and I removed my oxygen mask and mopped out the sweat. He turned the cabin and canopy heat down, and we climbed to max range altitude. Soon our chatter and banter increased a bit, and the anchor of peril disappeared as completely as if it had fallen into the fathomless deeps of memory. Behind us, from horizon to horizon, the storm pillaged, plundered, destroyed, flooded, killed…a useless SOB. I did not like this kind of work anymore, because one can only take so many sips from the cup.
I was a very enthusiastic lieutenant and relished such challenges, thinking that mastery of such things related to mastery of the aircraft. One who dodged a challenge was one afraid. I had not yet learned of prudence. On a particularly nasty night at Reese AFB, we had some solo students doing a night round-robin navigation sortie when a sudden front kicked up high winds, dust, and clouds. My boss, Marshall Vorhies found it necessary to go retrieve his brood of six pilot trainees. For this, he needed help, and I was first to raise my hand, ready to stand on my 600-hours’ experience To my chagrin and amazement, he went to our sister unit and recruited a balding captain who had been passed over for major, another captain who had just come to work, and several other men of vastly more experience than my own. If desire had been experience, I would have been first chosen. Vorhies thus taught me that 600-hour lieutenants are yet amateur, still learning, still limited, and bombastic without cause. He reiterated that age old saw for all airplane drivers: experience cannot be taught: it must be flown. Only time and experience can validate the “good” in “good pilot”, or even “good person”. He’s dead now, but his lessons remained with me always. When I became a true pro was when I realized my own limits and admitted my unease to myself and exercised prudence automatically. Good judgment married to valor produces a superior pilot: both require aging and patience, practice and study, prudence and audacity.
That is why we were climbing, already at an altitude that the old gal could only give us a few hundred feet-per-minute rate of climb. I hoped that we could get her above 40,000 feet before we collided with the storms. Of course—pride forbid---we could turn around and land at Grissom, or go south to St. Louis, or any of several places. We would be happy and safe, having a cold beer with comrades, watching it rain like the dickens outside. Pretty girls would be there, and finger foods, and a company of pleasant flyers would share their tales with us. We could do that, but we would not. We would fly through this thing, ride the tiger, take our lumps and come out the other side. Thunderstorms, ice, tornadoes, hail, extreme rain, and turbulence sometimes destroyed airplanes, but not mine, not ever. Still, if one swims among sharks, a bite can be had. Actually, Norquist and I, and the Center, all concluded that we would top the storm by 1500 or 2000 feet.
I tightened and locked the shoulder harnesses and seat belt, lowered the seat so I would be eye-level with the instrument panel, and checked the airplane configuration for turbulence and lightning flashes and extreme weather. We talked infrequently, but genially. He rode in the front seat because he was shorter than I. With the over-water packs and parachutes, I was forced forward in the seat, enough that the front canopy bow would sever my legs at he knees if I bailed out. Our over-water packs were worn because we had been flying over the Atlantic. It was my segment—my turn—to fly, so I had the airplane in my hands.
The first tendrils of the storm occurred in clear air, invisible and quite gentle, but an event that never occurred at this altitude without some unstable force driving it. The old girl lurched up, gained three-hundred feet, then pitched down and lost it. We flew for a time in absolute calm, re-establishing a slow climb. Lightning now flashed visibly in the bolus of the storm, both air to air and air to ground. Great palls of towering clouds showed creased limbs and wrinkled faces. Aah! This one was a mature storm, a bully, pushing and smashing his way across the earth and high into her atmosphere, a male, doubtlessly. The bottom of the cloud line was thick blue-gray, dense, with bolts and strings of lightning. Rain was extremely heavy below it, where entire cities appeared as postage stamps from here. How on earth could those tiny burgs expect to stand against some monster of nature like this? Hard driven with rain, hail, tornadoes…how could those silly people expect to survive? How their little gardens and so-tiny houses? And if I thought they were small, what of us, hanging onto a pinnacle of air, thirty some-odd feet of airplane, eight and a half miles high? Some engineer saw this and provided a small engine with which we might battle this big, ugly shmuck. Our puny little jet exhaust pushed as hard as it could, leaving a skinny contrail behind us. Somebody in the clear down there saw that gossamer white trail aimed at that monstrous storm and thought to himself, “those poor, stupid fools! “ And he would be correct. Still, we gamely climbed at a very modest rate in faith that we could get above this bully.
We made occasional small talk, sometimes pointing at landmarks or weird pieces of storm. Norquist meanwhile executed his job as observer and planner while I flew. Like I, he was an experienced military aviator with his own adventures and stories of fight and flight, war, and love. I have met his wife and baby daughter. Mrs. Norquist was young—maybe 25--and she had the most startling gray eyes, lined with thick black lashes. She was very pretty. The shape of curve was pronounced and attractive, and she was gentle with her handsome husband. I wondered what words, what actions were Norquist’s to intrigue such a woman: what gentle touch with those hands—which have slain strong men—has he mastered to please and satisfy her? I observed the back of his helmet, his parachute, saw his head swivel in search of threats or better routing. I heard his even breathing coming through his oxygen mask. As I had the soul of this airplane in my hands, so did I feel that I held his heart, too, beating along with my own. What power! The fate of men and families in my grasp! It was well to respect that and to deliver this husband and father home safely, and me to my future. Even so, my hands now gently and assuredly controlled yaw, pitch, and roll on the aircraft and directed a steady climb. What awaited him at his home, now only two hours from here? What trinkets did he bring his baby? Their dinner will have been carefully thought over and prepared with candle light and interesting conversation, while they caught up on the things of which lives are made. I thought, too, of the dreary emptiness of my own abode, with its dark corners and musty smells. There would be dust on the tables and yellowed newspapers at the front door. The mailbox would be full of meaningless trash. It was an apartment, a temporary stowage for my few belongings, with the ambience of a vacuum cleaner. She was gone, having taken the bulk of our belongings with her when I was away on assignment. Yet I was the coward, having hidden from the truth, inhabiting a make-believe world, but it mattered not, at the moment. I had a dragon demanding hand-to-hand combat, and I must do battle here and now in order to earn the right to live unto nightfall. Norquist had a date with the gray-eyed Athene, and I to hard memories and a search for a future.
Outside, the temperature was minus 50 degrees Celsius. Inside the cockpit, it was about 15 degrees Celsius—comfortable, but for my hands and feet; cold. A sudden whip reminded us of our challenge, which I had already accepted. The ride became bumpy, the airplane bumping and jumping about, as we approached the blown- off tops of the first cells, cirrus. We were flying in milk. Flashes of sunlight glinted off ice crystals. There were even rainbows (or would it be icebows?). Shards of silvered, sun-splashed ice whistled past. A crust of ice adhered to the canopy rails, and the wing leading edges and tip tank noses covered over in light rime ice. We were ready for combat. My pre-combat nerves caused a mild jumpiness and butterflies that would go away—or at least become unnoticed—when the fight was joined. For the thousandth time, I reviewed the instrument arrangement, heaters on, lights on bright, pitot tube hot, artificial horizon set, rudder pedals up close, oxygen 100%, engine instruments, exhaust gase temperature, trim, boost pump pressure, oil temp and pressure, fuel arrangements, seats and safety harnesses, and altitiude: 41,394 feet and climbing at about 250 fpm. Another call to Indianapolis Center confirmed that there were no soft spots ahead of us, that the storm was intense and heavy, and extreme turbulence had been reported. They couldn’t read the tops of he storm, so we had no idea if we would clear it, but they had a report of tops at 40,000feet, so maybe--just maybe--we could clear it. I had done this a number of times and was fairly comfortable with it when my primary job was flying. They say ignorance is bliss, though. I didn’t really fear this thing, as I knew how to do it, but there are considerations of equipment and nature that go beyond the pilot’s control, and those can be killers.
My unease suddenly disappeared when deep blue sky shown overhead, and the only thing to be seen ahead was a veil of white, thin cirrus. It appeared that we had it made. We entered the veil, which was whisper-slim, and we were out of it immediately, and the aspect was spectacular, as if we had suddenly leaped over the side of a deep canyon. It was perfectly clear, and four miles below were the ragged and boiling edges of the first cell. Dead ahead was a moving, growing wall of granite cauliflower—boiling, sprouting shoots of nature’s ugly visage. Now we had our answer: eight and a half miles was not high enough. We were about to receive a butt-kicking, but I would start the fight by poking a hole in the thing. Maybe it would spit us out the top and leave alone,but not very damned likely. So here we went. I leveled the airplane and accelerated a bit to build more buffer between stall speed and overstress speed, that is, maneuvering speed. I listened to myself breathe, to assure that I sounded unconcerned with these droll events to Norquist. Liar! I heard a definite lack of concern in Norquist’s breathing. Liar! Cross-checking gages again, I assured myself that we were as ready as we could be. These instruments were old round dials, ancient things, unlike newer ADIs and HSIs and vertical tapes to which we were accustomed. They required a more complex cross-check, because less information was displayed on an instrument group, and the display was certainly unimaginative: they were round dials.
The cell ahead of us was visibly moving and growing, now higher than we would ever be. Norquist called Indianapolis Center and reported cloud condition and tops and said that we would see them on the other side. We had no weather radar, no auto-pilot, no de-icing boots, no hydraulic flight controls, no afterburners, and very little available thrust to ease our passing. I punched off the g-meter so we could see how many gravities we would experience. The Center reported that radar contact with us was lost, but a very active cell appeared coincident with our location. WHACK! The man was dead on.
We ran into a solid wall of water and ice inflicting six degrees of motion on us at once, but principally in pitch. We were IFR immediately in immensely heavy rain. It grabbed us and ducked us like in a swimming pool, but there was ice in there, too, and we were cold-soaked, and our airplane covered over in rime ice. Noise was extreme and constant, and the ride was rough, like riding a bull from which we dared not be thrown. Down we went, bucking, gyrating, rolling and bouncing. One wing fell, then the other, but our direction was down, despite my holding the miniature airplane wings level on the artificial horizon. Grievous sounds of hail, rain, ice, and the pop and zither of lightning were constant. I lost a thousand feet in a few seconds. We took a lightning strike on the right side with a loud pop and a very bright flash. We both checked for damage or holes, but found nothing. Neither did we get any warning lights, or you-are-gonna-die-soon alarms. The altimeter read a bit over 38,000 feet, and we were plunging down in occasional zero-g.
Suddenly, we loaded up on 4g’s and shot upward, pegging the vertical velocity indicator, all the way to 44,000 feet. We cruised for a moment in lighter conditions, and then got ducked again. The airplane took on ice, which greatly concerned me, for its ability to fly was being degraded by fouling the shape of lifting devices and by adding weight. I also worried about the intakes closing off with ice, as the engine temp was rising and wavering. I retarded the throttle a bit to lessen the low pressure vacuum in the inlet and, perhaps, stop the ice build up.
Down we went again, jetting down in negative g in a vortex of storm moving maybe a hundred knots The cacophony of noise and barely controllable ride, combined with extreme fluctuations in instrumentation kept me too busy to acknowledge my discomfort. Norquist called the Center to report the turbulence and our rough ride, his voice drumming, as if he were taking a pounding in his stomach. I reduced the throttle some more, since I could not hold altitude, anyway.
Pilots ordinarily fly by trimming the airplane to neutral conditions, such that they can fly it with their fingertips, immediately feeling the tugs and small nudges transmitted to the control stick. Not I, not today. I had a basic death grip on the stick, controlling the large excursions coming to it with arm and muscle, utterly without finesse. That is hard work, especially when combined with cerebral over-tax. My arms were tired, my eyes stung, my throat was dry, and my mask was sloppy and slippery with sweat, but I gazed at the instruments continuously and counteracted a million forces trying to steal our airplane and our lives. Outside, bullets of ice and water flew around. If one ejected, he would be riddled with machine gun fire of droplets and crystals. One B-58 traveled at high mach during that bomber’s short life span, penetrating a thunderstorm. All engines (J-79s) ran at high thrust, when an outboard engine compressor-stalled and failed. The aircraft yawed violently into the dead engine, suddenly deprived of 17,000 pounds of thrust. The aircraft slewed hard, pulling the nose up, rolling, then,down in a sudden over-g that started bending the airplane. The crew of two had no choice but to bail out. They did, and it killed them. As a result of this tragedy, the Air Force fixed the problem by causing the corresponding engine on the other wing to switch off instantly if an engine failed. This alleviated such assymetrical thrust excursions.
I saw photos of their bodies. The AF Institute of Pathology had these photos and showed them to a class of accident investigators, of which I was a member. The two dead men appeared to have had severe cases of measles, red welts and bumps all over their bodies. These welts had been caused by rain drops flying into them at many hundreds of miles per hour. Water, which is incompressible, struck them and penetrated their flesh, some drops going all the way through the body. They died as quickly as machine gun fire or high explosives would have claimed them. They would have died before completely clearing the aircraft structure and were corpses when their parachutes opened at 14,000 feet.
I kind of prayed, I think, and it came out as “look here, God; I know you are busy, and so am I. I’d appreciate it if you would get involved in this thing and help us out a bit. Send me a bill.” If icing continued, we would finally just quit flying and fall out of the sky like a bucket of manure. Other options seemed to be closing: the canopy may have been iced shut, the engine may be starving of air, the control surfaces may freeze in position. If a seat didn’t fire, how would one get out of the airplane. If it did fire, what about the ultra-extreme cold and all those ice bullets flying around out there? If the engine flamed out, could we get it started again? What if it stalled and spun? What if the thing tossed us up to 60,000 feet, where blood boils at body temperature? And worst of all, what if this thing were a hundred miles thick?
Still, I was impressed that we were fighting successfully with this old gal. With slide rule, and pencil, and paper, an engineer designed and calculated this airplane, one of the very first of American jets. Little was known of supersonic airflow, or engine design, or strakes, or shock waves, and a thousand things that are now passé. He very carefully designed a shape that had a critical mach number of .82, and its tech order climb regime would decline at two knots per thousand feet, and maximum indicated airspeed was 385 knots, 60 knots below Vne or max Q. There were exact numbers for its limit load factor in positive and negative g, no-flap glide ratio, maximum sink rate at landing, high key, and on and on. Every pilot that flies knows his airplane’s numbers cold: what is maneuvering speed in a storm? How many transverse g at this configuration? How far, precisely, can I go on this amount of fuel? With these particular winds? Also, it was impressive that these old round dial gages were exact, giving air speed exactly, mach number exactly, engine exhaust temp exactly, altitude exactly, fuel flow, hydraulic pressure, boost pumps, and so on.
They were catching hell down there on the ground, their farms and villages. For all we knew, there’d been tornadoes and hail, flooding, hard winds…Still, it is amazing how tough and resilient people and their interests are. There would be folk gathered around the television, watching the weather or “Green Acres.” Some were in their storm cellars and some in their cups. Those on the highway slowed down or stopped in deference to poor visibility and hail. For certain, Sunday dinner was being served and enjoyed, and the Lord had definitely been appointed His place in the affairs of men..
They send out beacons—those people of the earth—that they don’t even know about. We use the outlay of their geography, patterns or roads, and parks, and bridges. We home on their broadcasts, identify our location by any peculiar appearance, follow their roads, identify their towns. Just last night, we flew out over the Atlantic in an air defense exercise. It was two hours past midnight, and the universe was uniformly black. High cirrus blocked the stars: there was no moon. The ocean was depthless, beyond black. There was no outside reference and no horizon, so the flight was made on instruments. From three hundred miles at sea, we turned around and headed back toward land at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Very soon we spotted a haze of light way out there, and then it became a definite little beacon almost an hour away from us. It was directly off the nose. We flew for forty minutes before we could ascertain the source of this welcome and lonely light. It was an outdoor light next to a highway or road, and it was in somebody’s yard. Nearby was a now-darkened house, but whose interior was moments ago a place of living and conversation and blessed life. It radiated its comfort in all directions, providing a reading lamp for a family and a lighted sign for we pilots in the sea of air above them and for pilots of ships in the sea of water near them. With their beacon, we could mark our charts, identify our place, enjoy the solace and comfort of knowing exactly where we were in space, even though the rest of the world is darker than the inside of a cow. That lovely family had no knowledge that we used their beacon so, and we would have gladly paid for it, a signal that said “here is the sea and here is the land, exactly.” I hoped the noise of our passing would not disturb someone’s slumber.
If Norquist were to offer to fly for awhile, would I accept it? Sorely tempted, I must decline. It was not pride, but an unspoken courtesy. For one thing, one knows his own limits, but not the other fellows. He naturally supposes himself better equipped for the flying at hand, but this is not conceit: it is a generous form of protecting all concerned. He dislikes giving over to another person a broken machine or a set of inclement conditions. Since he has his hand in it, it is better to finish the job than to hand it over to one who must then learn the degrees of such a disturbance. If Norquist were to offer to fly, he would have no idea the personality of the storm, the nuance and the outright slugging match that I have been conducting. It is better that I fly for now. Since I have been doing it, it is my tiger to tame. Perhaps, in truth, I misnamed Mrs N. Perhaps this storm is the gray-eyed Athene, complete with thunderbolts and the infinite resources of heaven.
but at one point we came into warmer water, and ice melted from the airplane. In seconds the cold atmosphere wrung out the moisture from that warmer source, creating more ice and rain, and accelerating the air, thus regenerating the cell. These cycles were being repeated in updraft, downdraft, wrenching moisture and freezing it, feeding on warm air, catching it in the cycle up, and so on. The mechanics became clearer and my reaction was better, acting now from knowledge.
Norquist was a good observer, staying attuned to contingencies, calculating particulars for diversions, keeping radio frequencies current, taking care of the IFF SIF He kept his mouth shut, too, except for occasional tidbits of information. He monitored fuel status, flight dynamics, location, and altitude. Altitude was the most uncertain of our flight: we were swept up or down with whichever draft we happened to be in, and aircraft attitude had little to do with it. The best we could accomplish was to hold the proper attitude, hold heading as nearly as possible, and keep the wings level. When the Center asked about our ride, Norquist told them it was bad and recommended that others not try it. That word doubtlessly went to many other aviators.
We had been in the crap for about seven minutes, almost fifty miles, when the outside brightened considerably, the ride smoothed out, and we broke out in the clear. As suddenly as we had entered the beast, we exited. Peering over my shoulder, I saw a terrible-looking, moving wall of the storm’s western faces. Our altitude was now 29,000 feet: we had lost almost 15,000 feet—three miles. We had considerable ice on the canopy, wings, and tip tanks, but it was sublimating. With a “thunk” a piece of ice apparently went through the plenum chamber and through the engine, which cooled and settled down. We began an easy climb back to altitude. I advised Indianapolis Center of our whereabouts and actions. He “rogered” us and confirmed radar contact and gave us a frequency change for a new sector. Norquist asked if I minded if he flew it for awhile. He knew that I could use the break, but those things are never mentioned. Tomorrow, when somebody asked how the mission went, the answer would be one of self-denigration: “Oh, you know, the usual. We finally found the Atlantic Ocean and flew back to my usual night landing. I hit hard enough to bounce my chin off the stick, but we didn’t blow a tire. Only got lost once, but managed to find Chicago—I THINK it was Chicago…you know, the usual stuff.” He took control of the airplane, and I removed my oxygen mask and mopped out the sweat. He turned the cabin and canopy heat down, and we climbed to max range altitude. Soon our chatter and banter increased a bit, and the anchor of peril disappeared as completely as if it had fallen into the fathomless deeps of memory. Behind us, from horizon to horizon, the storm pillaged, plundered, destroyed, flooded, killed…a useless SOB. I did not like this kind of work anymore, because one can only take so many sips from the cup.
I was a very enthusiastic lieutenant and relished such challenges, thinking that mastery of such things related to mastery of the aircraft. One who dodged a challenge was one afraid. I had not yet learned of prudence. On a particularly nasty night at Reese AFB, we had some solo students doing a night round-robin navigation sortie when a sudden front kicked up high winds, dust, and clouds. My boss, Marshall Vorhies found it necessary to go retrieve his brood of six pilot trainees. For this, he needed help, and I was first to raise my hand, ready to stand on my 600-hours’ experience To my chagrin and amazement, he went to our sister unit and recruited a balding captain who had been passed over for major, another captain who had just come to work, and several other men of vastly more experience than my own. If desire had been experience, I would have been first chosen. Vorhies thus taught me that 600-hour lieutenants are yet amateur, still learning, still limited, and bombastic without cause. He reiterated that age old saw for all airplane drivers: experience cannot be taught: it must be flown. Only time and experience can validate the “good” in “good pilot”, or even “good person”. He’s dead now, but his lessons remained with me always. When I became a true pro was when I realized my own limits and admitted my unease to myself and exercised prudence automatically. Good judgment married to valor produces a superior pilot: both require aging and patience, practice and study, prudence and audacity.
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