She was never really far from my thoughts, but they were such as to well-wish for her and to wonder about her children. I felt sympathy and concern for them, but time dilutes such things, so I didn’t remember to think of her very often any more. I was out of wives and stayed pretty much away from women. “Never again!” quoth I. I so determinedly quoted it that I came to believe it. Maybe I could get a liaison job overseas somewhere and find a grateful peasant lady. Nah. My career was going well, and I had just been promoted into field grade ranks. Over all, I was reasonably happy, if very cynical. The ex ux had been gone for more than three years, and I was over her. In fact it was like she fell into the well at the world’s end: I hoped that’s what happened. I never heard of, or from her again, but even that was too much. She was certainly not worth the pain, and I don’t know why I didn’t see it at the time. It was nice to drive my hypersonic blue Porsche to the flight line and fly away in a jet: it made no difference to anybody, but it felt good.
In the spring, some of my group and I decided to fly a gaggle of four airplanes around the West, practicing navigation, flying formation, shooting instrument approaches, flight planning, and doing strange-field landings. At last, we landed at Buckley ANG Base near Denver. Somebody’s cousin met us and hauled us to a hotel in the city. I never liked Denver: too much smog and too many weird folks. I liked Colorado Springs, Big Spring, Sand Springs, Hot Springs, Cold Spring, and Alice Springs…but not Denver.
Even dressed in civilian clothing, it was clear from our haircuts and demeanor that we were military. We made reservations at a nice restaurant that was walking distance from the hotel, and so our little knot of flyers marched down the sidewalk, shooting the bull and laughing, making silly banter, like “when I was in fighter pilot trade school, we learned that when you pull the stick back, the houses get smaller.” ha ha ha. Then another piped up, “well, when I was at fighter pilot GRADUATE school--from which I graduated--we learned that if you keep pulling the stick back, the houses get bigger” heh, heh, heh, in reference to a deep stall. Another: “I found out that if you kick the rudder when the stick is all the way back like that, the airplane goes round and round, and you have to jump out. I had to jump from my airplane, and they didn’t have another one, so I didn’t finish fighter pilot graduate school.” Ha, ha, ha, this in reference to spinning an airplane and not recovering.
We met some women coming from the opposite direction. I paid them no mind, but one of my guys pulled up short and asked one of them, “I know you! Aren’t you Claire Oberdorff from Laughlin? I’m Reagan Hammond.” There was a squeal of delight; they knew each other from pilot training at Laughlin. It had not yet seized my attention as to who this pretty girl was. She was rather well dwarfed and hidden by Hammond, and they were hugging one another and patting backs. She stepped back and turned her eyes toward me, and recognition, for each of us, was instantaneous. Her eyes widened, and she gulped a breath. I’ve no idea how stupid I must have looked, but my heart was beating hard and loud. A bolt of energy—something—zapped between us. Hammond began an introduction as we started walking toward each other. “Claire, this is my boss,“ he said, as she interrupted: “I already know Captain Griffith.” I extended my hand, but she walked past it and into my embrace. Hammond managed, “that’s Major Griffith now. Where….How…” A trickle of tears appeared from the corners of her eyes. Her expression was a mixture of pain and delight, sudden confusion, and my innards were worse. I almost couldn’t breathe, and I grinned so big that my teeth got dry and stuck to my stupid lips.
“He came to JC’s crash and figured out what happened. He was good to the kids and me, and we shared some difficult times together. He proved it wasn’t JC.s fault.” She paused and looked at me: “I’ve often wondered what happened to you.” Lady, if you only knew.
Here she was, as I had never seen her—on her feet, mended, happy. She had gained a few pounds and looked… well…beautiful. The grimace lines of grief were mostly gone, and her eyes were alive and bright. She looked really good. Her figure was perfect, and she was well-dressed, and not in black. She was back, a true thoroughbred, the brightest flower in the vase. My spirits soared to see her, and to see her thus. This little crystal soldier had not broken!
We all went to dinner, where Claire and I sat together. No one else needed to be there: in fact, it seemed as if we were there alone. I swear I couldn’t see nor hear any person, but her. Any reserve, finesse, or savoir faire I might have had seemed to vanish into utter toadism. I sat making conversation with the loveliest woman I ever saw, and she was happy with that! For a little while, perhaps one minute, I thought of keeping the professional reserve that came from the manner in which we met. Not. She was too much woman, and the searing, horrible events we had shared provided a tough glue. I had given her some measure of comfort by vindicating her husband, and by explaining what had happened to him some years ago. Later, I made a trip to her home in Pennsylvania to give her the final and official findings of the accident board. I called her one time a year after that, maintaining the air of condolence and with scholarships from the unit for her children, Then, I lost touch, but I thought of her…a lot, and then less and less. It still grieved me to think of the terrible times she had endured. Apparently, I was one of the good guys in her book, and I was ecstatic. I really liked Denver, the city of infinitely valuable gifts. In fact, I liked everything.
The night flew by, it seemed, and we spent it talking, catching up, coming to know one another. It was glorious. And then it was over. I had to find an airplane and my buddies, and she had her things to do, but insisted that she drive me to the air base about noon. I wasn’t sleepy. I wasn’t tired. I was awfully shaken up, talking to myself, grinning for no reason. I was too old and mature for this crap, but I couldn’t wait for noon to come.
She came as appointed, wearing dark glasses and a scarf, and a fresh change of clothes. She looked like a movie star, only better. I wore my stink bag, that is, my flying suit. I had been living in it off and on for three days and feared it might be a bit ripe, but she took a long look at me, up and down, and I knew that she was remembering another stud in a stink bag. Then she walked up to me and we embraced. She smiled and said, “Boy! That looks familiar.” We kissed, very lightly, very quickly and broke the intimacy and started talking. It was as if nothing happened, but it did. It exposed my bachelorhood as the sham it was, and it scared hell out of me. She seemed to back off from me in some manner. I acknowledged it, but paid it no mind: too many things were coming at me too fast.
We went into base operations, where the other guys had already flight-planned. One of them handed me a Form 70, and we were ready to go. “Can I watch you fly away from me?” she asked, and added, “and will you fly back to me?”
“I’ll be back in a few days,” I promised, meaning it, and “I’ll call you tonight.”
For propriety’s sake, we declined an affectionate farewell, but there was a hunger in her eyes. As for myself, coherent thought proved difficult, and so an awkward shaking of hands and formal utterances of good-bye, so-nice-to-see-you-again had to do, but a little later, when I taxied the airplane by her, she stood as a Madonna. She blew me a kiss, with a delicate wave of her hand She positively radiated sunshine with her smile, intelligence with her eyes, and she was lovely. Dare I wish any more than this?
I called her that night, and we spoke for an hour, excited and happy, filling in blank spaces, and making plans. I called her every night, and she called me. We often spoke two or three times a day. I returned to her twice a month, and more on a good month. She came to see me, too. In fact, I moved into a new and more spacious condo in order to provide a more comfortable place for her. One of us was never far from the thoughts of the other. Everything meshed. Everything was perfect.
Now and then, though, she brought up the subject of my career and how she feared it. She had lost one key man in her life, and she could not suffer another such loss. I understood her feelings and allowed as to how I was immune. Further, my primary job was no longer in the cockpit. I was a staff weenie. The tension usually went away, but sometimes it lingered. I never seriously considered quitting my job, but I gave it some thought, like: what would I do? Farm? I didn’t know a rudibegger (that’s misspelled) from an onion (that’s not). Bank? Airlines? Cowboy? Nah: nothing I could think of fit. In short, I was fat, dumb, and happy making my living in a stink bag. Her father would hire me, she said. He owned hardware stores, but that had no appeal to me: for one thing, I didn’t understand equipment that had no “ON” switch, like shovels and hammers and paving stones.
I got along fine with her kids. It did not require much time to get them over-excited, noisy, show-offish. It began at the pond, where the kids were shy with me. I went to the water and threw little bread crumbs to the minnows and soon had a cloud of minnows at my feet. Then a duck came…and another, and finally about 20. No kid can withstand such temptation. Then came sparrows and other kids. I was a pied piper.
Each child would claim as much of me as he or she could hang onto, sit on, or jump from. We had a few minor calamities. I was more a playground oaf than a father-figure. We had candy, cokes, and French fries, and jumped off rocks into the river, swung round and round, and bandaged lots of scrapes. We swung, hop-scotched, and hid from one another. I told one bed-time story that scared the daylights out of them, and both ended up in bed with us. Dang! In the middle of the night, one kid lay perpendicular to me with her feet kicking on my belly. I rearranged her so I could sleep, and from the other side of the bed came a sleepy sounding Claire: “you asked for it, Dummy.”
The relationship became serious. We were accelerating into space, orbiting behind the moon, where we could not see ahead clearly, so we stumbled some. Those were yellow days, though, the best I had ever lived. No one else mattered, no one else was involved. Her parents were glad to see her happy. My own injuries and past hurts disappeared, and nothing lay ahead but blue sky, or so we thought. There was a hurdle between us and that blue sky, and it would not go away. As orbits do, however, we flew from behind the dark side of the moon into glorious sun and an infinite universe, and so it went.
The apogee of our time together came that winter, at Snow Mass. I leased a small condo on the edge of the bunny slope, quite near the lifts. We skied and explored, shopped, and sampled fine wines. We went to the saunas and snow-mobiled up long, lonesome trails amid pines and rocks. I rented an airplane and we flew the canyons and summits, explored frozen lakes, followed the canyons of the Colorado. We were head over heels in love. The picture I conjure of her in my mind’s eye is sweet. She looks up at me with shining bright eyes and perfect teeth, her complexion rosy from cold and wind, with snow flakes in her so-black lashes and hair. She is filled with mirth, and it shows. Her little red boots are doll-like, and her ski pants cover a perfect figure. Her expression says, “I am happy, and I never want this moment to end, and I am completely in love with somebody: guess who?” I must have appeared like old Huckleberry alongside her. We wore matching sweaters, very red against the snow. I have seen perfection, and it was she.
We spent Thanksgiving with her parents, her sister, her husband and two kids, along with Claire, with her two kids, and me. It was superlative, because it was family—great food, friendly associations, excited kids—cousins—and the trappings of fall, complete with snow and football. I was reminded of a life style that I last enjoyed as a college kid, and now I could have it again. I wanted it. Claire and I were crazy about one another and we did not hide it, but did manage to maintain decorum. Her dad told me how glad he was to see her so happy and radiant again. Then he said that she surprised him by bringing home another soldier. That took me aback, somewhat, and he must have known it and tried to make a recovery: he did not mean it the way it came out, and so on…
Our Christmas was going to be special. We would announce our engagement at that time, ski, and spend. What could be finer? She arrived at my place the Wednesday before Christmas on Tuesday. I was going to start leave on the day before Christmas and be off thirty days. I had the most beautiful ring for her and a whole room full of hydroponic roses. My hubris told me that all was safe, the race all but won, and little could happen to dump my wonderful life, but something did happen. The ONE thing that I could not afford—and she could not abide—happened. The phone rang, and it brought the tidings of death and loss: there had been a crash near Nellis, and I was to be the investigating officer. I was to proceed ASAP to the Command Post for orders and to report to base operations for transportation at 1600 hours…, etc. ad infinitum. There seemed to be an anvil hanging from my aorta.
I told her, and she wilted. She slumped and hid her eyes with her hands. Then she said: “Well, you’re not going, are you?” I delivered the death sentence to our affair: “Honey, those are orders. I HAVE to go.”
She sobbed silently and looked up at me with an expression that nigh killed me: “Then you have made your choice. I uttered some bullshit about duty and responsibility and we could take up right where…. She cut me off. “You are responsible to ME. I have placed my life and happiness—as well as that of my babies—in your hands. You know how I feel about the military. My children and myself—and YOU—are my principle concerns. If you go…I don’t know what I’ll do, but I won’t be here when you come back. Call me when you have time for us, and we’ll go from there, or not.”
My idiocy continued. “Here, take the Porsche. I’ll rent a car when I get back and come up to your place.”
“Thank you, Major Griffith, but no. I must be adept at caring for myself. Oh, and you’d best call before you come.” Now she was angry, as well as hurt.
There was more to this scene than I report. Most of it is jumbled up in my mind. Still, I hated the fates that interfered so, that so surely splashed my heart and innards against a cold cement wall. I hated the idea of my having made a victim of her at the hands of the Air Force, again. I was the bearer of that grief. But so was I a victim. I had been chosen for this assignment because I was not married, and so Christmas would mean nothing to me, an unattached junior major, but, as it had turned out, they were wrong. Even so, soldiers and such must leave the wife and kiddos behind at the service’s pleasure, a service that—at some level—disapproved of wives, anyway.
The ideal soldier/airman/marine would be one of singular dedication, unmarried, very intelligent, extremely savvy in his art, and fearless. There could be no room made for emotional stress problems, no PTSD, no room for faltering in the ugly face unconscionable death or the destruction of a civilization. A robot. They would think that humanity was the weak link in soldiering. It was not. Humanity was its strength, especially of the citizen soldiers who produced results, all the while holding the feet of their commanders to the fire. Technocrats building and operating out of the range of the human soul are dangerous. Warriors operating remote from the scene of the fight are dangerous. The ideal soldier is the draftee, well-trained, who wants to get the job done soonest and get out of the service and go home. My own humanity at this time was almost beyond my ability to cope. I knew I was losing her, but…
I did my duty: I left my love standing broken-hearted and disappointed, and went to fill the service’s needs. For two weeks we froze and worked in the mountains north of Las Vegas, eating pork and beans and coffee. My performance was not up to my own standards. I could not give the two dead young captains the attention they deserved, but we found the problem.
The outboard wing section of the F-4 is designed to fold upward to save space on an aircraft carrier. The Air Force version had the same airframe, but never used it. In this case, while the airplane was being maneuvered at low altitude, high g, and high airspeed, the corroded pin that locked the outboard wing down failed. That part of the wing flew up, broke off, and smashed through the horizontal tail slab. The airplane immediately rolled in the opposite direction, due to asymmetrical wing loading. The nose also pitched down (relative to the airplane). In two or three seconds, the stricken aircraft smashed into the rocks and exploded. The backseater almost made it out. His seat had cleared the cockpit, but he was too low, and he smashed—face first—into the rocks at four hundred knots. No wonder Claire hated this business. I did, too.
My thoughts never left her. Where was she? How was she? Would she take me back? What was I going to do? I did not find out until after the New Year.
I stopped at the first phone I found and called her. She was not at her place, so I called her parents. When she came to the phone, it was without animation, without the excitement or joy to which I was accustomed. Small talk soon led into to large talk.
“I might wait for you a little while,” she said, “but not long. My life is still in tatters and I am going to piece it together for myself and for my kids. I don’t know why you feel such loyalty to those people: they have so many people that they RIF (Reduction in Force) them out. The nation certainly doesn’t care. They don’t even like military men. You could make two or three times the money, even here with me. I think I am a good woman and a good mother. Once upon a time, I was a good wife. Now, I am forced to do something I hate: to give up the man I love for personal, selfish reasons, but I have to move on. That means dating, which I hate. It means hurting myself and you, which kills me, but I have to have an anchor, and you can’t seem to find the bottom. I must have what you can’t give, but I am not what I have to be to you—top priority—every day, always, no exceptions, and that is exactly what you would also get from me.”
Between the lines, my brain knew that this was the end of us. There could be no return, because irreparable damage had been done. It no longer had to do with the original difficulties. She was right; I had made a choice, and she was the type of woman who would not accept such a negation from her significant other.
I knew something of broken dreams and shattered happiness. The fickle nature of living has taught me any number of lessons. I knew that what was to come was a unique brand of misery, insoluble and cruel. It was cruel, but time dilutes those things, and they become bearable. The loss of such love is synergistic: not only does one lose the lover, but a significant part of self. So I determined to give it a year or two, and I would be back to near normal, but I would never forget her.
Her name was………….CLAIRE……..and she was a crystal angel, and I wrote a poem for her. The idea for this poem came from Robin Hobb in the last book of her Tawny Man trilogy. It is the second of two trilogies, six of the best books I have read. This poem was named WHEN WE, and it is good.
When we’ve taken all our chances
And our common threads unwind—
When we’ve danced out all our dances,
Then I hope we’ll keep in mind
That when we’re not together,
And I share with you no more,
It will likely be forever—
Not as it was before.
When we have separated,
And I know you’ll not be mine,
And our sweet times have faded
O’er a wrenching stretch of time:
When we’ve danced out our last dances,
And I partner you no more—
And I watch another lead you
As you exit from the floor,
I hope he treats you kindly,
And your heart can mend with him,
And that our time together
Was not a foolish whim.
When we’ve lowered our last fences,
And I bid our life good bye,
I shall let you go with longing,
But I’ll love you ‘til I die.
We didn’t just cut it off there. We came together a few more times, but slowly drifted out of each other’s principal orbits. We remain fairly close, send Christmas cards, check up on each other by phone. She married a dentist, an older fellow, and recently ended up a widow again, but he was home every night. That is ironic, since I am still hanging around. We talked about that. The kids grew up and did fine. Maybe we’ll visit again, but the glitter that I once owned has died. The perfection I knew has withered, my own life skewed off in strange places, but I did manage to have that baby I wanted—a daughter— and she is perfect, despite the imperfections of her mother. We grew old and found that all life is finite. Life is a day dream—a fantasy—except one awakens in fits and starts and disappointments, and finally dies. It really is a fickle, pointless son of a bitch, and I can but wonder if its ending makes any difference at all, even to me. Peggy Lee sang it: “Is That All There Is?” Listen to it. The times of passion and health, fun and learning, all pass. Even memories mildew. Then it is time to die, not looking back, because all is gone, tone and tint.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Australia
Monday at 9:00 pm, 11 May, in Western Australia; 8:00 am in San Antonio. We are finishing a gas well for Exxon at 19° 51 S and 114 ° 31’ E. Water depth is 4000 feet, and the weather is dry and warm. In almost three weeks here, I have seen no clouds. I have seen no great white sharks, either, but they are here. So is Orca. We have a procedure that—if a whale is seen—we must cease all sonic operations in the water.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
After Berserker
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Final Days
Friday, February 13, 2009
Sunday looks good for departure. This is the 47th day of the voyage and the 56th day aboard ship. I shall try to conjure up something to write tonight, but I must warn: my mind is elsewhere. Still, Carpenter needs his story told, and we need to revisit Raul, Dennis, Cooper, Claire, and the others. We can’t just leave them in limbo, or should we?
Sunday looks good for departure. This is the 47th day of the voyage and the 56th day aboard ship. I shall try to conjure up something to write tonight, but I must warn: my mind is elsewhere. Still, Carpenter needs his story told, and we need to revisit Raul, Dennis, Cooper, Claire, and the others. We can’t just leave them in limbo, or should we?
Sunday Morning, February 15, 2009
49th Day. These are rough seas, with a low pressure storm coming off Africa. We are located 33° 35.3’ South and 16° 37.9 East. Our stopping point is seven miles east of Cape Town at 33° 52’ South and 19° 14’ East, which is only 84 NM. We’ll be there in a few hours, and my departure flight is 23 hours from now. I’ll be home Monday, but wishing I could have remained another week or two on this and the European Continents. Maybe, if we bring the 8501 around the Cape of Good Hope, then I’ll be here again, and continue on. However, it is a long time since I was home, and I’ll be glad to be there and hope to see as many of you as I can. Next up for me is Singapore (unless the company changes its mind again). This is the last journal entry for awhile, but I intend to continue writing, and if you wish, continue to mail it to you. So, a saying (anon. as far as I know) and the final verse of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
Home is the hunter,
Home from the hill,
And the sailor
Home from the sea.
“He went like one who hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
A Dog Barking in the Night
An aircraft accident is a complex event, but by adhering to procedure and dogged searching, and by doing some thinking with other experts, the mysteries about the crash might be revealed. Disciplines to solve these riddles were engineering, structures, laboratories, flight dynamics, technical data, propulsion, fuel, weapons, ejection seats, and so on: hard facts, like: there is no soot when fire temperatures are more than 700 degrees. Propeller/ turbine/compressor blades bend forward when they crash while running at high rpm and backward if at low rpm. Bulb filaments stretch if hot (on) and burst if cold (off). The needles on dials mark their operating points by scoring dial faces upon impact; mark and map the wreckage and plot it in order to determine the direction of flight and angle of impact, which pieces broke off and in what sequence, attitude at impact, whether the aircraft were rolling and in which direction. Much could be learned from the smoking hole that marked the crash site. We could learn a lot putting together the thousands of pieces of crash flotsam and by close observation. Fuels specialists would chemically examine fuel and determine its quality and whether or not it was contaminated and by what. Instrument specialists could determine the reliability and position of each instrument and gauge in the airplane. Pathologists would thoroughly analyze tissue, blood, hair, and all human remains for the physical and physiological condition of the pilot/crew. Airframe people, engine people, ordnance people, and any expert required would thoroughly examine his area of interest. It must be stressed that the reason for such complete examination of a crash serves a noble purpose: to find what caused it and to implement procedures or equipment that will preclude its ever happening again. It is not to find blame or to appoint legal culpability. I became an investigating officer for airplane mishaps.
There are relatively few things that all crashes have in common, but one is that they leave mourners behind: fatherless children, desperate widows, bereaved parents, stricken siblings, and grieving friends. Another thing that is common for all airplane crashes is that they are spectacular and utterly chaotic. The degree of violence and destruction is uncommon, and an untrained observer at a bad crash might think that nothing at all could be gleaned from the devastation. The third thing is that most airplane wrecks are avoidable. There is usually a chain of events that cumulatively lead to a mishap, and that is why an expert for every system on the aircraft is present during an investigation. If that chain of events can be broken, an accident will not occur, but a tired mechanic might inadvertently leave a bolt untorqued, or an overzealous boss might put undue stress upon a pilot or refueler. An engineering error may have occurred, or a miscalculation. There is potential for breakage in virtually every part on the airplane and for every person who has or had anything to do with that part. There is a fourth common point in aircraft accidents: no one ever thinks that he will be involved in one and certainly never be the cause of one. Another seeming commonality among aircraft mishaps is that they often occur in remote, rough country in extremely inclement weather. I have worked crash sites high in the Rocky Mountains, deep in gorges and river channels, down sheer, vertical cliffs, and awash in the dunes of deserts. My first investigation was in the mountains where it was wet, cold, windy, and remote.
Jets generate a lot more thrust when intake temperatures are cold, and so my takeoff had been quick, utilizing only a couple thousand feet of runway. Acceleration and climb were crisp and active, the airplane feeling spirited and young. This was an airplane in which I had a lot of experience and had learned to know her sounds and feel. She was also lovely and fast, pleasing to the eye, responsive, and had so much energy, especially in cold weather. I was having an affair with her, enjoyed everything about her: I loved to fly this bird and knew exactly how far she would let me go. In that, she was perfectly predictable: all one had to do was to know her intimately and give her the respect that she deserved. We debriefed the mission, had a cup of coffee, and were doing the administrative details when the squadron commander called me to come to his office immediately. He told me that there had been an airplane crash, and I had been appointed investigative duties in Idaho. I was to go home and get my investigation kit and suit case, while he cut TDY orders and arranged an airplane to get me up there. “Don’t forget a heavy coat and a rain slicker,” he said. “It’s up in the mountains."
We loaded our gear on and crawled aboard a UH-1H helicopter and flew off to the east. Past Cour d’Alene. There was a lot of snow in the mountains. Everything was covered with either snow or water. It was a cold, lifeless day, gray as a felt fedora. It was a fitting memorial to the end of a young man’s life, and a welcoming ceremony to his family, whispering haughtily that they can have him no more. They may not see him nor hear him, nor touch nor love him, for his athletic young body—except for hideous bits and pieces—was scattered among the elements of an indifferent earth far away in remote Idaho mountains.
It was a bad accident, evidence of extreme violence scattered over a spray of about hundred-fifty feet wide and about four hundred-fifty feet long. Pieces were found twelve hundred feet from the crater, but the angle of impact had been quite steep, somewhat confining the scatter of wreckage. Tops of trees down to mid-trunk were sheared, marking the approach of the airplane. There was wreckage of indescribable numbers and shapes, all torn and scorched. There was scorching on the trees and the perimeter area of the crater, which was half full of water with the sheen of jet fuel floating on top. The crater was gouged out of dirt and rock in a relatively clear area on a rocky slope of about eight or ten degrees. It was a jagged hole, some fifty-five feet wide and thirty feet long and appeared to be about twelve or fifteen feet deep, but I knew that the engine would be deeper. I smelled JP-4 and scorched pine, and some unpleasant rubbery something. There was a faint hint of the sweetened stench of burnt human flesh. About twenty other men were in various poses of observation, marking evidence, measuring the field of wreckage, and searching the perimeter. There was a large military tent about a hundred yards uphill of the crater and off to one side, and I smelled coffee. I gathered up my tools, camera, and wits and went to work.
Captain Juan Caesar Oberdorff, deceased, had been an excellent pilot. He was in prime physical condition, alert, proficient, and a regular officer that marked him as a career professional. All his papers were in order, flight physical current, evaluation rides all up to speed and well-flown. The airplane had apparently been in good working order. After two weeks’ inspection of the crash site, we had all the parts that we were ever going to get. All the pieces were there, engine at cruise speed, no lost or separated parts prior to impact. Neither oxygen nor fuel had been contaminated. There was little left of the ejection seat, but there was enough to tell us that it had not been used, although it was in working order. Little flesh remained, but again, enough to confirm the absence of drugs, alcohol, or self-medication. Engine specialists reconstructed their junk and were able to ascertain engine speed, IGV position, nozzle position, and mechanical functions. The engine, before it crunched into the mountain, had been perfect, running at 92% rpm, stable, and this was verified by the nozzle, which was precisely coincident with that setting. Hydraulics, life support, ordnance: all were declared safe and functioning as advertised. The weather had been night, clear and ten, half-moon, starlight conditions. Two miles to the north was a taller mountain with a microwave tower and bright lights, designed to help with navigation as well as to warn of the towering obstruction. There should have been no vertigo or confusion. Captain Oberdorff should not have been lost: his TACAN was properly tuned, radio frequencies were proper, and the conditions were such that he could look outside and see where he was.
So, what happened? Pilot error? Nothing mechanical could be found. Pilot mental breakdown? emotional breakdown? suicide? There was no evidence for any of it, but a clear cause could not be uncovered. We spent weeks trying to ferret it out from among a hundred thousand pieces. We interviewed everyone concerned, including his wife. We even read his diary. He had not been drinking and he was not a smoker. He had not violated crew rest. He had just…crashed. The board finally chalked it up to “unknown” causes with definite implications on “operator factor.” Obviously, if the machinery were working correctly, then the flesh must have failed, right?” No one could justify the “just…crashed.” There had to be reasons. One of them might have been the inconclusive status of the oxygen mask. There was a bit of a tooth with mask rubber impregnated upon it, which indicated that the mask was on or near his face, but the bayonet clips and receivers could not be found, or identified. It was possible that the mask was disconnected on the left side of the face, but we found precious little of the mask…or the face, either. Most of the body had been obliterated. I had to hand it to the board, though. We learned a lot and eliminated a lot of causes. Some guy even calculated the impact dynamics as a symmetrical triangular pulse that resulted in a stopping distance of seventy-two feet in a couple of thousandths of a second. He was moving about 600 feet per second in a 40,000 pound airplane, so that those many millions of foot-pounds of energy came to a stop in 72 feet. That was an instantaneous 104 g’s, or there about.
I could not help but think of the last crushing microseconds of Captain Oberdorff’s brief life, how pieces of airplane began to crumple and tear, presenting sharp, jagged edges to him as he was thrown hard forward into the restraints. At about 30 g, his eye balls popped out, and by 40 g his aorta had ruptured. The nylon belts began to slice into each shoulder and the muscles in his abdomen separated, allowing intestine to extrude and rupture. By 50 g, his body was flying apart and being butchered by metal debris, rocks, and glass, and a gross fire was engulfing the entire airplane, now about nine feet into the earth. The engine mounts had shattered, and the heavy engine—still spinning about 8,000 rpm—flew forward into the upper cockpit. Flesh, fire, and elements entangled into the earth. Plastic from the control stick was found fused to a thumb bone. Metal from the rudder pedals had imbedded in them the bones of his feet and the rubber of his boot soles. His head had flown forward into the restraints and kept going, separating at the atlas bone, the heart had been ruptured, and there was an instantaneous spray of most of the soft tissue and all the fluid in his body, virtually vaporizing him. Those fluids flew into the intense fire and steamed, and then became elemental: they existed no more. There had been extreme violence, immeasurable violence, for a thousandth of a second, a hot fire, and then nothing. For him, absolutely nothing, not even a “him” anymore. The only good thing is that his death was instant: surely he felt nothing at all as he passed from we who live to whatever it is out there for those who die. He made that trip in a hell of a hurry.
This whole crash thing bothered me. We had not found cause. We really knew no more than we did when we started: we had a good airplane and an excellent pilot doing routine interceptor exercises in clear, night conditions. Neither was I happy with the pathology report: Multiple severe injuries of entire body caused by deceleration and ground crushing forces with cockpit and ground impact. For crying out loud, I knew that much when I received orders to go up there.
The autopsy report was clinical, cold, and dehumanizing, as it must be for accuracy’s sake. It read, in part:
“Remains totaled 13 kg of fragmented and distorted human tissue…hair-covered skin, striated muscle tissue, tendon, connective tissue, bone fragments, pieces of small bowel, stomach, and lung. Part of the right hand, less thumb and small finger and dorsal skin, were recovered and included fragments identified as pieces of control stick. The largest section of human tissue was 0.8 kg of striated muscle and bone fragments welded to rubber and nylon material identified as the left calf restraints of the anti-g suit. The specimens were grossly contaminated with fuel, mud, plastic, metal, and glass fragments.”
Further dehumanizing the macabre sack of dead pilot, it stated: “numerous putrefaction peaks occurred in all soft tissue sections. Lactic acid was not obtainable due to lack of identifiable brain tissue…Multiple extreme injuries, dismemberment, burned, ground impact. Final anatomical diagnosis: Aircraft accident, clinical with (1) extreme fragmentation of body, and (2) extreme charring of remains.”
What a dismal, hideous set of circumstances! A perfect example of waste: all the miracle of life and perfection of engineering terminated in a putrefying gob in a scattered pile of junk. To exacerbate this awful event, we could not find the cause of all this grief and waste.
We were almost completed with our work when winter drove us out. The last days in the field were filled with cold and blowing snow. There was no warmth, nor comfort to be had. The base helicoptered a fresh, hot meal in everyday at noon, and that was the high point of the day. They allowed us to alternately rotate back to the BOQ every other day for showers, mail, phone calls, and sanity. Finally, we assembled at a conference room and completed the investigation by finishing the casualty report and electronically sending it to all pertinent addressees:
“Casualty Report: final supplemental death report, non-battle.” It was dated and supplemented. All addressees were listed. “Name of casualty: Oberdorff repeat Oberdorff, Juan Caesar. Grade: Captain.” It covered location, unit, date and hour of death, cause of death (jet plane crash per certificate of death), insurance, and status of disposition of remains (ready). This was the culmination to a lot of preceding preparatory work. Some unfortunate chaplain and commander had been tasked to personally deliver the grim tidings to the wife. It was done an hour and a half after the accident, about the post-midnight time that her husband would have been expected home. How does one do that? How would you carry such a burden to a pretty, young woman, that her husband and lover and father of her children has just been made dead forever (so many kilograms of mutilated flesh)?
In the initial casualty report, we had done some background investigation to assure that Captain Oberdorff was all that he had seemed to be, and that message—in part—said: Condolence letter of information: all sources of information have been investigated and no unfavorable information has been discovered that would make it inadvisable to send a condolence letter. Thus, a commander had written a condolence letter to Mrs. Oberdorff and to the dead captain’s parents.
A large document of some three-inch thickness was collated from its various sources: my own, physical and physiological findings, psychological findings, background, experience level, proficiency, type of mission and background, operating conditions, and so on. To these were added the findings of pathologists, engine manufacturers, POL experts, instrument technicians, meteorologists, ordnance men, and airframe engineers. In all, there were twenty-two sections, with color photographs underscoring the gore and violence. At last it was broken down into costs: several million dollars for airframe and weapons, so much for property damage, and $260,000 for the pilot, whose remains I could but see over and over again at night, in the haunted places of memory that only awaken when the eye lids are closed—bits and pieces of charred human flesh consigned to vials, jars, and a body bag. Twenty some-odd pounds of grotesque stuff remained of a 220-pound athlete. We now had the completed mishap investigation and peripheral documents and all addressees notified, but we still did not have a cause. Then, we went our separate ways for the winter.
I felt the lethargy of spirit and the disquiet of an unsettled soul, and it never really goes away. I was home with Her for Christmas, but it was difficult. Captain Oberdorff did not ruin the holiday and festive season, but he dampened it. I wondered what manner of Christmas Mrs. Oberdorff and her children were having, and I grieved for them. She had been an attractive woman, petite, and dark-complexioned. Her short black hair had just been stylishly cut. On the day of her husband’s death, she was busy doing the things that pretty women do for their men. Two days later, I interviewed her in her living room in base housing, semi-permanent stuff where Uncle Sam stuffed his soldier families.. There had been the furniture and rugs of his tours in Southeast Asia and Europe. It seemed to mock us. The beat of the French wall clock reminded us of a heart beat that was no more, of the temporary nature of human time. She never really cried, but her eyes were overflowing, soft tears coursing down her smooth cheeks. Several times she halted her speech and sobbed, and apologized. She reminded me of a small girl, a child that needed protection, who was too vulnerable to the hurt of death. I wanted to take her to my breast and assure her that everything would be okay, but it would not be okay, and nothing I could do—nor anyone else—could remove the anvil of pain weighting down her fluttering heart. The questions that must be asked of her…God, how I hated this job! Each question was about him or the two of them, personal details about his last meal at home, how they had been getting along, illnesses, drinking…such personal, intimate, prying stuff. If her husband had been as tough and thoughtful as she was, then our loss was great indeed. While she was not alone, the burden of company and well-wishers was not useful nor desired. There were other pilots’ wives attempting to aid and to help do things, but she would have a thousand things to do, all unpleasant: what to do about the in-laws, what to tell the kids, when and how to evacuate the government’s house, where to move, what of his belongings to keep and what to dispose of, how to provide for herself and her babies… She had the nagging notion that these women were wondering what had been wrong with her husband to make him crash. That’s weird, somebody crashing an airplane. The church ladies would come bearing their good will and food, and she would scream at them in her mind: “LEAVE ME ALONE. GO AWAY. CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I AM TRYING TO PUT THE PIECES OF ME BACK TOGETHER? LET ME CRY AND TRY TO TELL HIM GOODBYE. YOU CAN’ T HELP ME. PLEASE, GO AWAY, AND TAKE YOUR FOOD AND YOUR HUGS AND YOUR HAPPY LIVES AND HUSBANDS WITH YOU…” At the same time she would be reaching out for something, someone to help her make it through all this horror.
That night I had attempted to sleep in the BOQ, but it was futile. My furies were noisy and sleepless, and the pictures on the screen of my memory were haunted and ugly. At last, I think that I dozed, but there was a dog barking in the night in disjointed, disturbing beats of racket, that ruined whatever rest there might have been in such night as this. Empty darkness—shorn of intimacy, devoid of familiarity, usher of cold and misery and the deaths of young captains—was filled with no substance beyond the eternal yapping of some dog. Mrs. Oberdorff would be fitfully tossing in her big, empty bed only a few hundred feet from here. She would be hearing this same dog barking at shadows and imagined creatures. She would be exhausted and terrified at her own imagination, trying to remember her husband without the gore and…and whatever remained of him. There would be serious theological and philosophical questions, and she would remember forever the last unkind word that she had said to him, and she would cry and cry, and there would be no relief, no respite, no way to ever be whole or happy again, nor even sleep, for sleep awakened her monsters and hideous, bloody images. We would each be woefully tired when the winter-dimmed yolk of sun emerged. Could this have been the beginning of the chain of events that triggered the captain’s fatality, a dog barking in the night?
Christmas cheer, bright colors, gifts, music, family. She and her two babies disturbed my thoughts. How was she coping? Where were they? Did they manage to have a Christmas? Was she trying to substitute some other man for him? Only time would sear over her wounds, but the event would be there in the middle of the night, or at the whiff of his cologne, or a certain mental picture. It may stop hurting some day, but it would never go away because we are hostage to our mortality, and no ransom is sufficient to purchase our escape. As for his parents: nothing on earth is as devastating as the loss of your child.
Snow had come in heavy doses before we finished the site investigation, but we
had no choice but to wrap it up when we did. It was agreed that certain among us would reconvene in the spring, as soon as the site was clear of snow, or clear enough to comb over the area again. All winter, I worried about evidence that may be lost forever because of the weather. No one was satisfied with our finding of “unknown causes.” Again, I thought of the widow Oberdorff: she should be relieved of the burden of not knowing what happened to him. Further, we needed to assure that the cause was not an incipient event that would kill another pilot.
In April, a number of us met at Fairchild, secured gear, and returned to the
crash site. Snow was gone from this mountain, and in its place small flowers were budding. Baby shoots of grass and green plants were making themselves known early in the year. There was the gash where the airplane impacted. It was filled with water. Melt water ran in small rivulets off the slope, gathering together into larger creeks, finally tumbling white and muddy into runoff that would fill the Snake River. The spray pattern of wreckage was still noticeable, but much diminished by the cleansing of snow and the runoff of pure water and new growth. We combed the site, fore and aft, side to side, and in ever-increasing circles. Most of us were on hands and knees, noses near the ground, attempting to see unnatural protruberences.
It should not have been found, so camouflaged with its surroundings it was. Beneath a spray of tiny blue flowers there was a chalky substance, half the size of my small finger. It was white and blue-gray. It was a piece of Captain Oberdorff’s skull that I found three hundred and twenty feet from the crater. Attached to the inside of it was a small bluish-gray feather, from the common mountain hawk. The pathologist confirmed that it appeared to be the left occipital bone, and that the feather was attached on the inside of the skull. The feather was not casually attached: It had been driven into the bone on the inside of the man’s head, its quill virtually fused. The feathers were bent and crooked with little strength, rather wilted from the winter snows, the water, and I can only imagine what other fluids. There was some charring, which had been leached somewhat by the elements: we would not have found this evidence last year. All of us felt the excitement of this find, but dared not reveal any of it until the laboratory confirmed what we knew.
What we knew was this. A hawk had also been flying that night, and his flight path and Captain Oberdorff’s coincided in that instant of time and under the physical laws that gave the bird the energy of half its mass times the square of the collision velocity divided by g . This impact to Captain Oberdorff’s face was equivalent to an anti-aircraft artillery round. The bird had at least penetrated the canopy, perhaps the instrument panel and aircraft body, and struck the pilot in the face. It obliterated the oxygen mask and face visor, and blew the captain’s head off, leaving only this one little feather on the inside of his skull at the back of his head. The exploded head and helmet flew out of the wreckage before the airplane had progressed into the ground. Later we found other corroborating evidence on a piece of mask and a piece of helmet. But that was enough. The laboratory proved it, and we sent amended findings to all addressees. I was very glad to prove for Captain Oberdorff that the fault of this tragedy had not been his, and I wanted to share this with his wife.
To me, this really did not qualify as an accident: it was an act of God, or an act of fate. What are the chances of flying at night and hitting a bird? About the same as being rattle snake-bitten in the winter? About the same as a brick coming out of the wall of a high rise building, falling 40 stories and hitting you on the head? It is ridiculous. How do we prevent it in the future? Ground all hawks? Stop flying? Put noise-makers on the airplane? It made me wish that some human error had occurred, something that we could address. It would be more digestible if there had been a broken part, or a dog having barked all night long. This…this was a total waste, in which nothing could be retrieved; a wonderful young man was splattered all over a mountain side, leaving more than a dozen other people victimized. The price of admission was high, the show a bust.
She had moved to Pennsylvania to enroll in school and finish her degree. Her apartment was midway between the university and her parents’ home. Most of her belongings were in storage, and her life was still in shambles, but she had begun her long recovery. Her dreams were awful, and her nerves were shot, but it had become necessary that she do something weighty to make a real start in the turning around of her life. Sleep came hard, and she was in counseling. She agreed to meet me in the lobby of the student union building. I saw her from afar approaching with an irresolute walk, as if her self-confidence had failed, but she was shapely and petite, and dressed in a black skirt. Mourning? I walked down the steps to her, and she offered her small hand. We made inconsequential talk for a few moments, and then sat on a concrete park bench beneath a large shade tree. I revealed our findings and assured her that Captain Oberdorff was entirely blameless, that the squadron shared with me their deepest regrets and the standing offer of any aid she required.
She was still very pretty, but her mouth was down-turned with spider web wrinkles forming at the corners. Her eyes lacked the luster that had surely been as bright as a beacon once. Purplish bags underscored them, but she was a survivor and a mother, and she still had two babies to rear, the last of the flesh of Captain Oberdorff. One day Mrs. Oberdorff would be whole and happy again. She would find a good man to comfort her and to help her raise her children. She thanked me for coming to her and telling her that her husband had been killed by a bird. She could scarcely understand how such a thing could be, but she accepted it. She had to know, she said, what he looked like when we found him. I could not tell her the truth, so I lied. I told her that his remains had been removed before I arrived, but I understood that he was remarkably preserved. I could see the wheels turning in her mind that wanted to know why she had not been allowed to view the remains, but it was an area that she decided to avoid. It was wise of her: she did not want to know what he looked like. I don’t think that she bought it, but she accepted it. A look of relief came to her visage, and she thanked me and turned away. I had managed to ease one of her nightmares. I watched her walk away from me and into her new life, consisting of memories and emptiness, an empty vessel that she must begin to fill with whatever she expected her future to bring. It was peculiar how the intimacy of death had caused me to see her in such detail, her even white teeth and intelligent eyes, the color of her shoes, a faux pearl necklace, a wedding ring… I wanted to intervene here and remove some of her pain and carry it for her, for there to be someone to help bear this burden. I wanted so desperately for something kind and good to come to her. Instead, I watched her walk with her hesitant little steps—as if she did not know for sure where she was—through the well-trimmed hedges and the mix of the campus. She would bear it alone, a pathetic beauty, a victim who was hurt and unsure, but whose dignity shown clear and bright. That made it even sadder: such a thoroughbred should not be so ill-used. She did not wish to ever have anything to do with the Air Force, or aviators, or military people again, and I could not blame her. I would not know for a long time how she had done with her decisions. Now I only knew that her life and dreams blew up in her face and many women never recover. I hoped she did. I believed she did, because it made the whole affair more bearable for me.
Subsequently, over the years, I was present at too many other crash sites, and each left its unnatural gash in the earth with a plume of chaotic debris and offal, its deep human wounds, its victimized women and families, and its irreparable damages. It is a moribund fact that we survivors have no choice but to accommodate: life goes on, as it must. These casualties, especially in wartime, are too common to us, and we can not build our fences taller than we are, nor allow tragedies to sear our souls and scar our spirits too badly, but they add weight. One can’t just leave them behind, so we carry them with us, and they come to be very heavy baggage that can never be put away. Finally, one looks back, and—perhaps not realizing how sad he has become—espies those sparkling pieces of his life, now long gone. Too late, he realizes that the essence of completeness and happiness are those things that glowed in his hand once, and shine no more. Those losses do not subtract weight: rather, they add until we bend, and our own sparkle fails.
There are relatively few things that all crashes have in common, but one is that they leave mourners behind: fatherless children, desperate widows, bereaved parents, stricken siblings, and grieving friends. Another thing that is common for all airplane crashes is that they are spectacular and utterly chaotic. The degree of violence and destruction is uncommon, and an untrained observer at a bad crash might think that nothing at all could be gleaned from the devastation. The third thing is that most airplane wrecks are avoidable. There is usually a chain of events that cumulatively lead to a mishap, and that is why an expert for every system on the aircraft is present during an investigation. If that chain of events can be broken, an accident will not occur, but a tired mechanic might inadvertently leave a bolt untorqued, or an overzealous boss might put undue stress upon a pilot or refueler. An engineering error may have occurred, or a miscalculation. There is potential for breakage in virtually every part on the airplane and for every person who has or had anything to do with that part. There is a fourth common point in aircraft accidents: no one ever thinks that he will be involved in one and certainly never be the cause of one. Another seeming commonality among aircraft mishaps is that they often occur in remote, rough country in extremely inclement weather. I have worked crash sites high in the Rocky Mountains, deep in gorges and river channels, down sheer, vertical cliffs, and awash in the dunes of deserts. My first investigation was in the mountains where it was wet, cold, windy, and remote.
Jets generate a lot more thrust when intake temperatures are cold, and so my takeoff had been quick, utilizing only a couple thousand feet of runway. Acceleration and climb were crisp and active, the airplane feeling spirited and young. This was an airplane in which I had a lot of experience and had learned to know her sounds and feel. She was also lovely and fast, pleasing to the eye, responsive, and had so much energy, especially in cold weather. I was having an affair with her, enjoyed everything about her: I loved to fly this bird and knew exactly how far she would let me go. In that, she was perfectly predictable: all one had to do was to know her intimately and give her the respect that she deserved. We debriefed the mission, had a cup of coffee, and were doing the administrative details when the squadron commander called me to come to his office immediately. He told me that there had been an airplane crash, and I had been appointed investigative duties in Idaho. I was to go home and get my investigation kit and suit case, while he cut TDY orders and arranged an airplane to get me up there. “Don’t forget a heavy coat and a rain slicker,” he said. “It’s up in the mountains."
We loaded our gear on and crawled aboard a UH-1H helicopter and flew off to the east. Past Cour d’Alene. There was a lot of snow in the mountains. Everything was covered with either snow or water. It was a cold, lifeless day, gray as a felt fedora. It was a fitting memorial to the end of a young man’s life, and a welcoming ceremony to his family, whispering haughtily that they can have him no more. They may not see him nor hear him, nor touch nor love him, for his athletic young body—except for hideous bits and pieces—was scattered among the elements of an indifferent earth far away in remote Idaho mountains.
It was a bad accident, evidence of extreme violence scattered over a spray of about hundred-fifty feet wide and about four hundred-fifty feet long. Pieces were found twelve hundred feet from the crater, but the angle of impact had been quite steep, somewhat confining the scatter of wreckage. Tops of trees down to mid-trunk were sheared, marking the approach of the airplane. There was wreckage of indescribable numbers and shapes, all torn and scorched. There was scorching on the trees and the perimeter area of the crater, which was half full of water with the sheen of jet fuel floating on top. The crater was gouged out of dirt and rock in a relatively clear area on a rocky slope of about eight or ten degrees. It was a jagged hole, some fifty-five feet wide and thirty feet long and appeared to be about twelve or fifteen feet deep, but I knew that the engine would be deeper. I smelled JP-4 and scorched pine, and some unpleasant rubbery something. There was a faint hint of the sweetened stench of burnt human flesh. About twenty other men were in various poses of observation, marking evidence, measuring the field of wreckage, and searching the perimeter. There was a large military tent about a hundred yards uphill of the crater and off to one side, and I smelled coffee. I gathered up my tools, camera, and wits and went to work.
Captain Juan Caesar Oberdorff, deceased, had been an excellent pilot. He was in prime physical condition, alert, proficient, and a regular officer that marked him as a career professional. All his papers were in order, flight physical current, evaluation rides all up to speed and well-flown. The airplane had apparently been in good working order. After two weeks’ inspection of the crash site, we had all the parts that we were ever going to get. All the pieces were there, engine at cruise speed, no lost or separated parts prior to impact. Neither oxygen nor fuel had been contaminated. There was little left of the ejection seat, but there was enough to tell us that it had not been used, although it was in working order. Little flesh remained, but again, enough to confirm the absence of drugs, alcohol, or self-medication. Engine specialists reconstructed their junk and were able to ascertain engine speed, IGV position, nozzle position, and mechanical functions. The engine, before it crunched into the mountain, had been perfect, running at 92% rpm, stable, and this was verified by the nozzle, which was precisely coincident with that setting. Hydraulics, life support, ordnance: all were declared safe and functioning as advertised. The weather had been night, clear and ten, half-moon, starlight conditions. Two miles to the north was a taller mountain with a microwave tower and bright lights, designed to help with navigation as well as to warn of the towering obstruction. There should have been no vertigo or confusion. Captain Oberdorff should not have been lost: his TACAN was properly tuned, radio frequencies were proper, and the conditions were such that he could look outside and see where he was.
So, what happened? Pilot error? Nothing mechanical could be found. Pilot mental breakdown? emotional breakdown? suicide? There was no evidence for any of it, but a clear cause could not be uncovered. We spent weeks trying to ferret it out from among a hundred thousand pieces. We interviewed everyone concerned, including his wife. We even read his diary. He had not been drinking and he was not a smoker. He had not violated crew rest. He had just…crashed. The board finally chalked it up to “unknown” causes with definite implications on “operator factor.” Obviously, if the machinery were working correctly, then the flesh must have failed, right?” No one could justify the “just…crashed.” There had to be reasons. One of them might have been the inconclusive status of the oxygen mask. There was a bit of a tooth with mask rubber impregnated upon it, which indicated that the mask was on or near his face, but the bayonet clips and receivers could not be found, or identified. It was possible that the mask was disconnected on the left side of the face, but we found precious little of the mask…or the face, either. Most of the body had been obliterated. I had to hand it to the board, though. We learned a lot and eliminated a lot of causes. Some guy even calculated the impact dynamics as a symmetrical triangular pulse that resulted in a stopping distance of seventy-two feet in a couple of thousandths of a second. He was moving about 600 feet per second in a 40,000 pound airplane, so that those many millions of foot-pounds of energy came to a stop in 72 feet. That was an instantaneous 104 g’s, or there about.
I could not help but think of the last crushing microseconds of Captain Oberdorff’s brief life, how pieces of airplane began to crumple and tear, presenting sharp, jagged edges to him as he was thrown hard forward into the restraints. At about 30 g, his eye balls popped out, and by 40 g his aorta had ruptured. The nylon belts began to slice into each shoulder and the muscles in his abdomen separated, allowing intestine to extrude and rupture. By 50 g, his body was flying apart and being butchered by metal debris, rocks, and glass, and a gross fire was engulfing the entire airplane, now about nine feet into the earth. The engine mounts had shattered, and the heavy engine—still spinning about 8,000 rpm—flew forward into the upper cockpit. Flesh, fire, and elements entangled into the earth. Plastic from the control stick was found fused to a thumb bone. Metal from the rudder pedals had imbedded in them the bones of his feet and the rubber of his boot soles. His head had flown forward into the restraints and kept going, separating at the atlas bone, the heart had been ruptured, and there was an instantaneous spray of most of the soft tissue and all the fluid in his body, virtually vaporizing him. Those fluids flew into the intense fire and steamed, and then became elemental: they existed no more. There had been extreme violence, immeasurable violence, for a thousandth of a second, a hot fire, and then nothing. For him, absolutely nothing, not even a “him” anymore. The only good thing is that his death was instant: surely he felt nothing at all as he passed from we who live to whatever it is out there for those who die. He made that trip in a hell of a hurry.
This whole crash thing bothered me. We had not found cause. We really knew no more than we did when we started: we had a good airplane and an excellent pilot doing routine interceptor exercises in clear, night conditions. Neither was I happy with the pathology report: Multiple severe injuries of entire body caused by deceleration and ground crushing forces with cockpit and ground impact. For crying out loud, I knew that much when I received orders to go up there.
The autopsy report was clinical, cold, and dehumanizing, as it must be for accuracy’s sake. It read, in part:
“Remains totaled 13 kg of fragmented and distorted human tissue…hair-covered skin, striated muscle tissue, tendon, connective tissue, bone fragments, pieces of small bowel, stomach, and lung. Part of the right hand, less thumb and small finger and dorsal skin, were recovered and included fragments identified as pieces of control stick. The largest section of human tissue was 0.8 kg of striated muscle and bone fragments welded to rubber and nylon material identified as the left calf restraints of the anti-g suit. The specimens were grossly contaminated with fuel, mud, plastic, metal, and glass fragments.”
Further dehumanizing the macabre sack of dead pilot, it stated: “numerous putrefaction peaks occurred in all soft tissue sections. Lactic acid was not obtainable due to lack of identifiable brain tissue…Multiple extreme injuries, dismemberment, burned, ground impact. Final anatomical diagnosis: Aircraft accident, clinical with (1) extreme fragmentation of body, and (2) extreme charring of remains.”
What a dismal, hideous set of circumstances! A perfect example of waste: all the miracle of life and perfection of engineering terminated in a putrefying gob in a scattered pile of junk. To exacerbate this awful event, we could not find the cause of all this grief and waste.
We were almost completed with our work when winter drove us out. The last days in the field were filled with cold and blowing snow. There was no warmth, nor comfort to be had. The base helicoptered a fresh, hot meal in everyday at noon, and that was the high point of the day. They allowed us to alternately rotate back to the BOQ every other day for showers, mail, phone calls, and sanity. Finally, we assembled at a conference room and completed the investigation by finishing the casualty report and electronically sending it to all pertinent addressees:
“Casualty Report: final supplemental death report, non-battle.” It was dated and supplemented. All addressees were listed. “Name of casualty: Oberdorff repeat Oberdorff, Juan Caesar. Grade: Captain.” It covered location, unit, date and hour of death, cause of death (jet plane crash per certificate of death), insurance, and status of disposition of remains (ready). This was the culmination to a lot of preceding preparatory work. Some unfortunate chaplain and commander had been tasked to personally deliver the grim tidings to the wife. It was done an hour and a half after the accident, about the post-midnight time that her husband would have been expected home. How does one do that? How would you carry such a burden to a pretty, young woman, that her husband and lover and father of her children has just been made dead forever (so many kilograms of mutilated flesh)?
In the initial casualty report, we had done some background investigation to assure that Captain Oberdorff was all that he had seemed to be, and that message—in part—said: Condolence letter of information: all sources of information have been investigated and no unfavorable information has been discovered that would make it inadvisable to send a condolence letter. Thus, a commander had written a condolence letter to Mrs. Oberdorff and to the dead captain’s parents.
A large document of some three-inch thickness was collated from its various sources: my own, physical and physiological findings, psychological findings, background, experience level, proficiency, type of mission and background, operating conditions, and so on. To these were added the findings of pathologists, engine manufacturers, POL experts, instrument technicians, meteorologists, ordnance men, and airframe engineers. In all, there were twenty-two sections, with color photographs underscoring the gore and violence. At last it was broken down into costs: several million dollars for airframe and weapons, so much for property damage, and $260,000 for the pilot, whose remains I could but see over and over again at night, in the haunted places of memory that only awaken when the eye lids are closed—bits and pieces of charred human flesh consigned to vials, jars, and a body bag. Twenty some-odd pounds of grotesque stuff remained of a 220-pound athlete. We now had the completed mishap investigation and peripheral documents and all addressees notified, but we still did not have a cause. Then, we went our separate ways for the winter.
I felt the lethargy of spirit and the disquiet of an unsettled soul, and it never really goes away. I was home with Her for Christmas, but it was difficult. Captain Oberdorff did not ruin the holiday and festive season, but he dampened it. I wondered what manner of Christmas Mrs. Oberdorff and her children were having, and I grieved for them. She had been an attractive woman, petite, and dark-complexioned. Her short black hair had just been stylishly cut. On the day of her husband’s death, she was busy doing the things that pretty women do for their men. Two days later, I interviewed her in her living room in base housing, semi-permanent stuff where Uncle Sam stuffed his soldier families.. There had been the furniture and rugs of his tours in Southeast Asia and Europe. It seemed to mock us. The beat of the French wall clock reminded us of a heart beat that was no more, of the temporary nature of human time. She never really cried, but her eyes were overflowing, soft tears coursing down her smooth cheeks. Several times she halted her speech and sobbed, and apologized. She reminded me of a small girl, a child that needed protection, who was too vulnerable to the hurt of death. I wanted to take her to my breast and assure her that everything would be okay, but it would not be okay, and nothing I could do—nor anyone else—could remove the anvil of pain weighting down her fluttering heart. The questions that must be asked of her…God, how I hated this job! Each question was about him or the two of them, personal details about his last meal at home, how they had been getting along, illnesses, drinking…such personal, intimate, prying stuff. If her husband had been as tough and thoughtful as she was, then our loss was great indeed. While she was not alone, the burden of company and well-wishers was not useful nor desired. There were other pilots’ wives attempting to aid and to help do things, but she would have a thousand things to do, all unpleasant: what to do about the in-laws, what to tell the kids, when and how to evacuate the government’s house, where to move, what of his belongings to keep and what to dispose of, how to provide for herself and her babies… She had the nagging notion that these women were wondering what had been wrong with her husband to make him crash. That’s weird, somebody crashing an airplane. The church ladies would come bearing their good will and food, and she would scream at them in her mind: “LEAVE ME ALONE. GO AWAY. CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I AM TRYING TO PUT THE PIECES OF ME BACK TOGETHER? LET ME CRY AND TRY TO TELL HIM GOODBYE. YOU CAN’ T HELP ME. PLEASE, GO AWAY, AND TAKE YOUR FOOD AND YOUR HUGS AND YOUR HAPPY LIVES AND HUSBANDS WITH YOU…” At the same time she would be reaching out for something, someone to help her make it through all this horror.
That night I had attempted to sleep in the BOQ, but it was futile. My furies were noisy and sleepless, and the pictures on the screen of my memory were haunted and ugly. At last, I think that I dozed, but there was a dog barking in the night in disjointed, disturbing beats of racket, that ruined whatever rest there might have been in such night as this. Empty darkness—shorn of intimacy, devoid of familiarity, usher of cold and misery and the deaths of young captains—was filled with no substance beyond the eternal yapping of some dog. Mrs. Oberdorff would be fitfully tossing in her big, empty bed only a few hundred feet from here. She would be hearing this same dog barking at shadows and imagined creatures. She would be exhausted and terrified at her own imagination, trying to remember her husband without the gore and…and whatever remained of him. There would be serious theological and philosophical questions, and she would remember forever the last unkind word that she had said to him, and she would cry and cry, and there would be no relief, no respite, no way to ever be whole or happy again, nor even sleep, for sleep awakened her monsters and hideous, bloody images. We would each be woefully tired when the winter-dimmed yolk of sun emerged. Could this have been the beginning of the chain of events that triggered the captain’s fatality, a dog barking in the night?
Christmas cheer, bright colors, gifts, music, family. She and her two babies disturbed my thoughts. How was she coping? Where were they? Did they manage to have a Christmas? Was she trying to substitute some other man for him? Only time would sear over her wounds, but the event would be there in the middle of the night, or at the whiff of his cologne, or a certain mental picture. It may stop hurting some day, but it would never go away because we are hostage to our mortality, and no ransom is sufficient to purchase our escape. As for his parents: nothing on earth is as devastating as the loss of your child.
Snow had come in heavy doses before we finished the site investigation, but we
had no choice but to wrap it up when we did. It was agreed that certain among us would reconvene in the spring, as soon as the site was clear of snow, or clear enough to comb over the area again. All winter, I worried about evidence that may be lost forever because of the weather. No one was satisfied with our finding of “unknown causes.” Again, I thought of the widow Oberdorff: she should be relieved of the burden of not knowing what happened to him. Further, we needed to assure that the cause was not an incipient event that would kill another pilot.
In April, a number of us met at Fairchild, secured gear, and returned to the
crash site. Snow was gone from this mountain, and in its place small flowers were budding. Baby shoots of grass and green plants were making themselves known early in the year. There was the gash where the airplane impacted. It was filled with water. Melt water ran in small rivulets off the slope, gathering together into larger creeks, finally tumbling white and muddy into runoff that would fill the Snake River. The spray pattern of wreckage was still noticeable, but much diminished by the cleansing of snow and the runoff of pure water and new growth. We combed the site, fore and aft, side to side, and in ever-increasing circles. Most of us were on hands and knees, noses near the ground, attempting to see unnatural protruberences.
It should not have been found, so camouflaged with its surroundings it was. Beneath a spray of tiny blue flowers there was a chalky substance, half the size of my small finger. It was white and blue-gray. It was a piece of Captain Oberdorff’s skull that I found three hundred and twenty feet from the crater. Attached to the inside of it was a small bluish-gray feather, from the common mountain hawk. The pathologist confirmed that it appeared to be the left occipital bone, and that the feather was attached on the inside of the skull. The feather was not casually attached: It had been driven into the bone on the inside of the man’s head, its quill virtually fused. The feathers were bent and crooked with little strength, rather wilted from the winter snows, the water, and I can only imagine what other fluids. There was some charring, which had been leached somewhat by the elements: we would not have found this evidence last year. All of us felt the excitement of this find, but dared not reveal any of it until the laboratory confirmed what we knew.
What we knew was this. A hawk had also been flying that night, and his flight path and Captain Oberdorff’s coincided in that instant of time and under the physical laws that gave the bird the energy of half its mass times the square of the collision velocity divided by g . This impact to Captain Oberdorff’s face was equivalent to an anti-aircraft artillery round. The bird had at least penetrated the canopy, perhaps the instrument panel and aircraft body, and struck the pilot in the face. It obliterated the oxygen mask and face visor, and blew the captain’s head off, leaving only this one little feather on the inside of his skull at the back of his head. The exploded head and helmet flew out of the wreckage before the airplane had progressed into the ground. Later we found other corroborating evidence on a piece of mask and a piece of helmet. But that was enough. The laboratory proved it, and we sent amended findings to all addressees. I was very glad to prove for Captain Oberdorff that the fault of this tragedy had not been his, and I wanted to share this with his wife.
To me, this really did not qualify as an accident: it was an act of God, or an act of fate. What are the chances of flying at night and hitting a bird? About the same as being rattle snake-bitten in the winter? About the same as a brick coming out of the wall of a high rise building, falling 40 stories and hitting you on the head? It is ridiculous. How do we prevent it in the future? Ground all hawks? Stop flying? Put noise-makers on the airplane? It made me wish that some human error had occurred, something that we could address. It would be more digestible if there had been a broken part, or a dog having barked all night long. This…this was a total waste, in which nothing could be retrieved; a wonderful young man was splattered all over a mountain side, leaving more than a dozen other people victimized. The price of admission was high, the show a bust.
She had moved to Pennsylvania to enroll in school and finish her degree. Her apartment was midway between the university and her parents’ home. Most of her belongings were in storage, and her life was still in shambles, but she had begun her long recovery. Her dreams were awful, and her nerves were shot, but it had become necessary that she do something weighty to make a real start in the turning around of her life. Sleep came hard, and she was in counseling. She agreed to meet me in the lobby of the student union building. I saw her from afar approaching with an irresolute walk, as if her self-confidence had failed, but she was shapely and petite, and dressed in a black skirt. Mourning? I walked down the steps to her, and she offered her small hand. We made inconsequential talk for a few moments, and then sat on a concrete park bench beneath a large shade tree. I revealed our findings and assured her that Captain Oberdorff was entirely blameless, that the squadron shared with me their deepest regrets and the standing offer of any aid she required.
She was still very pretty, but her mouth was down-turned with spider web wrinkles forming at the corners. Her eyes lacked the luster that had surely been as bright as a beacon once. Purplish bags underscored them, but she was a survivor and a mother, and she still had two babies to rear, the last of the flesh of Captain Oberdorff. One day Mrs. Oberdorff would be whole and happy again. She would find a good man to comfort her and to help her raise her children. She thanked me for coming to her and telling her that her husband had been killed by a bird. She could scarcely understand how such a thing could be, but she accepted it. She had to know, she said, what he looked like when we found him. I could not tell her the truth, so I lied. I told her that his remains had been removed before I arrived, but I understood that he was remarkably preserved. I could see the wheels turning in her mind that wanted to know why she had not been allowed to view the remains, but it was an area that she decided to avoid. It was wise of her: she did not want to know what he looked like. I don’t think that she bought it, but she accepted it. A look of relief came to her visage, and she thanked me and turned away. I had managed to ease one of her nightmares. I watched her walk away from me and into her new life, consisting of memories and emptiness, an empty vessel that she must begin to fill with whatever she expected her future to bring. It was peculiar how the intimacy of death had caused me to see her in such detail, her even white teeth and intelligent eyes, the color of her shoes, a faux pearl necklace, a wedding ring… I wanted to intervene here and remove some of her pain and carry it for her, for there to be someone to help bear this burden. I wanted so desperately for something kind and good to come to her. Instead, I watched her walk with her hesitant little steps—as if she did not know for sure where she was—through the well-trimmed hedges and the mix of the campus. She would bear it alone, a pathetic beauty, a victim who was hurt and unsure, but whose dignity shown clear and bright. That made it even sadder: such a thoroughbred should not be so ill-used. She did not wish to ever have anything to do with the Air Force, or aviators, or military people again, and I could not blame her. I would not know for a long time how she had done with her decisions. Now I only knew that her life and dreams blew up in her face and many women never recover. I hoped she did. I believed she did, because it made the whole affair more bearable for me.
Subsequently, over the years, I was present at too many other crash sites, and each left its unnatural gash in the earth with a plume of chaotic debris and offal, its deep human wounds, its victimized women and families, and its irreparable damages. It is a moribund fact that we survivors have no choice but to accommodate: life goes on, as it must. These casualties, especially in wartime, are too common to us, and we can not build our fences taller than we are, nor allow tragedies to sear our souls and scar our spirits too badly, but they add weight. One can’t just leave them behind, so we carry them with us, and they come to be very heavy baggage that can never be put away. Finally, one looks back, and—perhaps not realizing how sad he has become—espies those sparkling pieces of his life, now long gone. Too late, he realizes that the essence of completeness and happiness are those things that glowed in his hand once, and shine no more. Those losses do not subtract weight: rather, they add until we bend, and our own sparkle fails.
Her name was…….Claire…..and she was a crystal soldier.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monsters of the Meridian
Monday, February 09, 2009
43rd Day: Passed Way Point 12 at 30° 0.0’ S and 3.00° West. We are on the final leg to Cape Town, 1100 miles away. That should be about five days. The sea this morning is going through its daily exercise of changing color. At the moment, the sun is high, and it lights up the waters as gallium gray, with rose, white, and blue in it. I can not tell you its color, but it is pretty, and I’d like to have a car painted like that. Some days we see hues of blue: azure, blackish, aquamarine, baby, cobalt, gem stone, and dozens of in-betweens. Sometimes it is gold or orange, at times pink, and often, this ocean is as Homer described it: wine-dark. A wine-dark sea can be anywhere from maroon-rose to coal-purple. It is green only in the shallows. At night, it is black.
Think of its size, this Atlantic Ocean, which is neither largest nor deepest. We have averaged about 7.4 statute miles per hour throughout the 43-day (so far) voyage. Most of the water we have sailed would cover over the highest Rocky Mountains by a thousand or more feet and as much as 4300 feet. St. Helena came from the sea floor at 15,700 feet to the surface, and then another 2600 feet above that—an 18,300-foot rise. There is water in this ocean as deep as 27,000 feet, and as deep as 36,000 feet in the Pacific. We’ve had no company of any kind in more than two weeks, no ship, no airplanes (that we could see by Mark-1 Eye Balls, or radar), no island…only water, and that in a lesser sea, but friend, it is big enough. For two weeks, we had some kind of bird with us, a big fellow, but not an albatross. Some of the crew saw whales blowing yesterday, but not I. However, last night I DID see a young, wealthy mermaid…
I saw a lovely mermaid,
She paid me lots of mind,
She seemed to be so unafraid,
As if she knew my kind.
She asked if we could marry;
I’d take her far from here,
But that’s a load to carry—
Despite her looks so dear.
She was really very pretty;
I think I could be led,
But I really wasn’t ready,
This lovely lass to wed.
I told her of the men at sea,
and how she’d made her mark.
“The only male that chases me
Is any kind of shark.”
‘Twas tough, the way her hand was played,
And so I made a wish:
That none of that sweet mermaid
Was ever made of fish.
(can you guess the author? my modesty prevents me…)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
44th Day: 0026 hrs LT position is -30° 23.5 by 0°00.0’ E; we have crossed the Prime Meridian. Signs have now changed three times since Corpus, which was positive north and negative east. At the equator we went negative north and negative east, and now we are negative north and positive east. An even more important fact follows. In a test using three neutral and disinterested lavatories at 30 degrees south, water drained clockwise once, and counterclockwise twice. Due to pitching and rolling, I can not be sure that the reverse of lavatory physics is true down here, so I will offer this postulate: The Coriolis affect may be 2/3rd true
We have hit the tail end of a cold front, and it is windy; gusts up to thirty knots. It is cool to cold out there, and the ocean has whipped up to kick us around. It is a rough ride again, mostly in pitch, which means my bed will dump my pate into the head board, and then swat my feet at the foot board…bonk, thump, bonk, thump, bon
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
45th day: we are at -31° 9.4’ and + 3° 11.1’. I am in a wind-down mode, kind of let down…not a depression, but a funk. A long job is finished, and storms and seas for this long trip become a memory. Already, I have tickets to Singapore on March 2. So the work continues, and I am fortunate in the climate we have found ourselves in, but I would like more time off to do my own things.
A great sea monster lived at each end of the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy. One was Scylla, who had a large head on six long necks, and she feasted on sailors six at a time. She lived on a great rock that went out into the sea. The other was Charybdis, formerly the beautiful naiad daughter of Poseidon and who had been supportive of her father against Zeus. She had ridden the storm and became the surge that devoured beaches and cities, claiming much new land for Poseidon. Zeus became enraged and turned her into a sea monster, a giant bladder, on the other end of the strait from Scylla. This monster inhaled huge quantities of sea water three times a day and spewed it back out, thus creating immense whirlpools. Odysseus had to choose which monster (being, as he was, caught between a rock and a whirlpool) he would favor in passing his ship toward home. The distance between the two monsters was only a bow shot, so one of them would affect the ship. He chose Scylla, the many-headed monster, even though he was assured of losing at least six men. He reasoned that there was too much chance that Charybdis would devour the ship and its crew entirely. The Greeks proceeded through the strait nearer Scylla, and her six long necks reached down, and each great maw took a man and ate him. The crew, of course, second-guessed Odysseus.
Now, I need to go to the Straits of Messina to see which way that whirlpool turns, and then I must come back down here and find a whirlpool and see which way IT turns. Then we’ll know for sure: Coriolis is, or he ain’t. According to my calculations, he two thirds is. I performed the tie-breaker regarding direction of turn in the lavatory of my own state room, but that drain is such that it doesn’t pull enough water to make a whirlpool. However, in the event that the drain is not being influenced by a restriction, but rather the earth’s rotation, I am hedging my bet in favor of Coriolis to 75%. If you don’t agree with this, then do your own physics!
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