The Cannibal Queen

by Stephen Coonts

  To get to the cotton-candy stand we pass three farmers in identical bib overalls sitting on a bench smoking corncob pipes, not a one of them under the age of seventy. They sit without smiles, the smoke wisping from their pipes, their eyes focused on the airplanes from the past.

  And we meet the people who belong to the biplanes. After we have the Queen fueled and tied down out in the grass between two of her sisters, a fellow named Kirk and his wife offer to drive us the three blocks to the motel in the twenty-year-old Cadillac courtesy car the motel provided. We agree, then wait for half an hour while Kirk does something or other at the other end of the flight line.

  We sit in the grass in the shade under the wing and watch a white-and-blue Stearman arcing above us in the blue sky. Two Stearman pilots near us are giving rides—$30 for 15 minutes—so there are the usual squeals and trepidation as the neophytes are strapped into the front cockpits. One of the planes lacks an electrical system, so we watch the aviator hand-prop the engine. It starts easily on the first mighty swing of the big polished-metal prop. Another planeload of skydivers leaps into the arms of Jesus and floats earthward as the throb of radial engines surrounds and engulfs us.

  At last Kirk is ready, and we climb into the ancient Cad for the three-block jaunt to the motel where we have a room reserved.

  An hour later David and I walk the six blocks to the St. Francis City Park. The residential streets are lined with modest homes with huge trees in the yards. This is the Madison Avenue version of America, the stable, middle-class dream America of contented married couples with two kids and a friendly mongrel dog and a Chevy in the driveway. This myth pulls on our heartstrings even though we well know that small-town America is already an anachronism, even though we know that these farming communities on the prairie are dying as the families leave one by one for better jobs and better schools in the big cities, even though we know life here is as hard as it is anyplace else, or even a little harder.

  The houses have porches and people sitting on them visiting with their neighbors on this gorgeous early-summer evening. When was the last time a developer in California or Colorado built a house with a porch on it?

  So we walk along, this fourteen-year-old boy and I, looking at the houses and talking of what these people do to earn a living. David is curious about what kids his age do in a town this size “for fun” on a Saturday night.

  I tell him they get in the family car or pickup and drag Main Street, like they did in Longmont, Colorado, in the summer of 1977 when I was on the police force there. And as they still do in every town in Colorado, including Denver. The kids drive up and down the street all evening, seeing who is in the other cars, occasionally stopping in a parking lot and sitting on the hood as the parade goes by. And they throw beer and pop cans. The whole scene infuriates the merchants, who still complain to the police as vigorously now as they did in 1977, and 1967, and 1957. Why the merchants get no wiser I don’t know.

  In the park a wheat farmer who barbecues commercially is cleaning up. He is finished cooking—all the meat is in large pots ready for serving. As he cleans his grill—a large boilerlike contraption that he tows behind a pickup—he tells a story about a woman in a bikini (from out of town, probably wicked Denver) who attended the fly-in two years ago. Right before his very eyes there on the sidewalk in the heart of St. Francis she skinned out of the bikini she had worn all day and quickly donned shorts and tank top. “That recharged my batteries,” he tells his listeners as he stones the grill clean of grease.

  At last we line up to heap disposable plates full of barbecued beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and home-style green beans. It is a feast. The evening sun is still above the horizon when the master of ceremonies thanks everyone for coming to the ninth fly-in and promises a bigger whing-ding for the tenth fly-in next year.

  Then we are entertained by a barbershop quartet from Sterling, Colorado, a town on the high plains very similar to this one. The baritone is the Stearman owner who organized the first St. Francis fly-in, so he gets a round of applause. And when the singing is over we applaud the couple who got engaged today when a Stearman flew by towing a banner with the proposal LUELLEN MARRY ME JOHN. After we applaud the couple who were married at last year’s fly-in, David and I walk the perfect streets back to our motel.

  It has been a great day. We are on our way. The whole country is out there, the Cannibal Queen is ready and willing.

  I am still glowing when David attacks me in the motel for our usual evening roughhouse. It’s a congenital defect; he has to be tickled before he can sleep. I conk before he does. Later I wake up and find he has turned out the lights and is in bed asleep.

  It’s going to be a good summer.

  2

  WE LIFT OFF THE GRASS RUNWAY AT ST. FRANCIS ON SUNDAY morning with more roar and vigor than I thought the Lycoming R-680 engine capable of. I glance at the gauges. Glory hallelujah, the manifold pressure reads 26 inches. Aha, St. Francis is 3,000 feet above sea level, and I have been flying out of Boulder, Colorado, which is at 5,300 feet. So this is what happens when you get a little closer to sea level.

  A 70-mile-per-hour climb speed works out to about 12 degrees nose up. We soar skyward. Yee-haaa!

  After we level out I turn the stick over to David. He ignores the rudders, as he has done on flights in the past when he tried this piloting gig. I keep him generally headed in the right direction, southeast toward Colby.

  We are on our way again, probably the first Stearman to leave the fly-in. We had breakfast with an interesting group of flyers from Colorado and the pilot who had flown his plane the longest distance to reach the fly-in—from Florida. He flies to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, every year for the biplane fly-in, then comes to St. Francis the following weekend. After breakfast David and I walked the three blocks to the airport carrying our bags. After an hour or so of loafing and watching other Stearmans give rides, David was ready to go. He was bored. Then two skydivers in full regalia mounted their trusty Cessna 182 to be transported aloft. David wanted to wait to see them come down.

  We sat on the grass in front of the plane leaning back against the main wheels, me on the left, David on the right. The weather is fantastic here again today—severe clear—although it is supposed to be foggy toward the east. The FAA Flight Service Station briefer assured me the fog would burn off by the time we managed to arrive. I ran my fingers through the grass and looked at the Queen’s wings arranged like pieces of sculpture above me against the blue.

  Now we are a part of that sky. After a while the interstate highway that runs from Denver to Kansas City, 1-70, becomes distinctive. We motor on and cross it just west of Colby, Kansas. We keep heading southeast to cross the highway again when it zigs south to Oakley, Kansas, then intercept it for the third time east of Oakley. I tell David to follow it.

  This he can do well. Following a highway is much easier than flying a compass course and more fun since you get to look outside most of the time. Finally David gets tired and I take over.

  We are not talking much today, just sitting silently watching the Kansas wheat fields and pastures roll by below. I break the silence occasionally to tell him the name of a town or village. My knowledge comes from the sectional chart that I use for navigation. The Queen’s only navigation instrument is a wet compass: she has no VOR, no ADF, no Loran, no nothing. The gadget masters who spend thousands on the latest gizmo for their aerial pride and joy would have a stroke if they saw the Queen.

  We will cross the country the same way the barnstormers flew their Jennys—with a map and a compass. We will follow highways, railroad lines, rivers, use the compass to go from one prominent landmark to another. This is the most basic navigation skill and goes by the name of pilotage. Add a watch and the method becomes dead reckoning. Amazingly enough, with nothing but a compass, watch and chart Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris.

  Yet pilotage has its limits. You must be able to see the ground and you must correctly identify what you see. At night
the level of difficulty increases dramatically since all landmarks except towns and cities are hidden by darkness.

  And since the Queen also lacks a turn-and-bank indicator, I cannot fly her into a cloud. Anything that obscures the ground or the horizon deprives you of your sense of when the aircraft is level. In the Stearman you are like a bird—your inner ear is your primary attitude reference and your brain is your navigation aid.

  At St. Francis we saw a few Stearmans outfitted with all the gadgets and certified for instrument flight. At night. In my opinion a Stearman so equipped is just another airplane, although a funny-looking one. The only thing left to do is add a canopy and voilà! you’ll have the world’s most inefficient airliner.

  But to each his own. If VOR and DME and ILS and Loran instruments make them happy, why not? Airplanes are like women—pick what you like and try to get it away from the guy who has it, then dress it out to the limit of your wallet and taste.

  As David follows the interstate eastward, I sit back in the rear cockpit and luxuriate in the warmth and glow of a brilliant summer sky. An open cockpit makes you a part of that sky. You can reach out and grab a handful, sit up straight and let the wind play with the top of your helmet, or put your elbows on the padded edges of the cockpit and ride along in your winged chariot like a modern-day Caesar.

  Here above the farms and ranches of the Great Plains aviation lives up to the promise that inspired dreamers through the ages. Here you are truly separate from the earth, at least for a little while, removed from the cares and concerns that occupy you on the ground. This separation from the earth is more than symbolic, more than a physical removal—it has an emotional dimension as tangible as the wood, fabric and steel that has transported you aloft.

  We humans need to belong, to be a part of a family, to have a circle of friends and work that occupies our hands and brains. Yet we also need some means to place our daily concerns and our lives in proper perspective. Flying provides that. Cockpits are our mountaintops, our seats above the clouds where we can see into forever. The machines lift us into a pristine wilderness on journeys that strengthen, refresh and renew.

  Hays, Kansas, becomes visible about 15 miles away. We circle the lone runway and land to the north. Taxiing in, the little terminal-FBO office looks different somehow. “We tore the old one down and built a new one,” the line boy tells me.

  Oh. “Well, I haven’t been here in three or four years.” Not since the last time I took a Cessna 172 from Denver to Topeka.

  This is our first real fuel stop on our aerial odyssey and David wants to pump the gas in. Standing on the back of the seat in the front cockpit, he fills the tank in the center of the upper wing. Like stock Stearmans, the Queen holds 46 gallons of gas and 6.6 gallons of oil. She burns about 12 gallons of gasoline and 1 quart of oil per hour, so her maximum range with a reserve is three hours. Watching David handle the fuel nozzle, I resolve to attempt no leg longer than two and a half hours. Gasoline to an airplane is like air to a diver—when you’re out, you’ve got a major problem.

  Two and a half hours at about 80 knots works out to 200 nautical miles in calm air, a great deal less if you are flying directly into a strong prairie wind. But I have no fixed schedule and the entire summer to fly in.

  Since I first learned to fly I have wanted to make a long flight, to fly as far and as long as I could stand it, then to eat and sleep and fly again. Just fly, watching the world roll beneath, listening to the engine, watching the clouds drift past and the sun arc westward in the blue sky above.

  This is the summer of my long flight. This will be my Stearman summer.

  I climb back into the cockpit eager to fly on. We will take off to the south and then turn east to follow the four-lane interstate. At the hold-short line I ease the Queen to a halt and run the engine up to 1,600 RPM. Cycle the prop twice to get hot oil into the prop hub, then check the mags. As usual I get a 125 RPM drop on the right mag and 50 on the left. She has done that since the day I acquired her and Steve Hall, the mechanic, can find nothing wrong. The Queen has an idiosyncrasy. I can live with that. I have several.

  Taxi onto the runway and line the Queen up with the center line by putting an equal amount of runway on both sides of the nose. On the ground the Queen sits on her tail wheel with her nose pointed toward heaven, so the pilot cannot see directly forward. In this regard she is exactly like so many of the World War II airplanes that she and her sisters trained tens of thousands of pilots to fly—the B-17, P-40, P-47, P-51, Hellcat, Corsair, Avenger, and so on. When Harold Zipp and Jack Clark of Stearman Aircraft designed this masterpiece in 1933 by modifying Lloyd Stearman’s C-l design, all military aircraft had tail wheels.

  I smoothly push the throttle and mixture knob forward with my left hand—the mixture knob goes about halfway and the throttle goes all the way to the stop. Today at Hays, 2,000 feet above sea level, the manifold pressure increases to 28 inches and the RPM goes to 2,250. As we go east toward the Mississippi we will come down off the high plains and each field will be lower than the last.

  Simultaneously with the power increase, I tweak in some right rudder to counter the torque effect of the swirling air striking the rudder, and push the stick full forward. The tail must come off the ground as soon as possible so I can see where I am going and adjust our course down the runway with rudder.

  Today at Hays the tail comes up within 10 seconds. In Boulder it takes about 15. As the tail comes up another rudder adjustment is required to counter the P-factor of the prop arc moving downward. With the tail up the plane is in the proper attitude to fly, running along on just its two main wheels, and I move the stick slowly back toward neutral as the load on the control surfaces changes with increasing airspeed.

  Looking forward through the two little glass windshields, around the top of David’s head, I can see the entire runway and the center line. I jockey the rudder to hold us straight and today add some right stick into the prevailing crosswind to hold the right wing down.

  Airspeed increasing nicely, 40 MPH … 50 … a glance at the engine gauges while I jockey the rudder … 60 … 65 and stick back a little to let the elevators bite and the wings take the weight of people, gasoline and airplane, all 3,000 pounds of it, controls constantly moving as necessary to keep the wings level and the nose rising in the unstable air.

  She’s flying. Stop the nose coming up with forward stick and start giving her some forward trim.

  Up we go away from the earth.

  Once David asked, “When the tail comes up like that, what keeps the plane from going right on over on its nose?”

  “Aerodynamics. As the tail rises above a streamlined position it becomes an airfoil with a downward lift vector, which pulls the tail back down to where it should be.”

  “Oh,” he says, visualizing it and understanding. I think.

  The Wright brothers’ greatest contribution to heavier-than-air flight was the realization that the machine would be flying in an unstable medium, the atmosphere, so it had to be designed in such a way that the pilot could make the constant adjustments necessary to counter the vagaries of the moving air, adjustments that birds make by altering the position of feathers, thereby changing the curvature and shape of their wings. They grasped the fact that a successful flying machine would have to be an artificial bird. It would have to climb, turn, and descend in unstable air under the absolute control of the person who flew it. No fools these American-Gothic originals, they decided to emulate the birds and achieve control by changing the shape of the machine’s wings. We still do that today, although we use ailerons or flaperons instead of wing warping, the Wrights’ technique.

  The Wrights’ insight and solution solved the problem that had baffled and stymied all the experimenters before them, all those crazy dreamers through the ages who had tinkered and tried. It had stymied the Wrights’ contemporaries too, who immediately copied or tried to improve on the Wright technique once they grasped its implications.

  The technical solution
to the problem of controlled flight is more than a history lesson. It has profound implications. Flying an airplane is more complex than operating a boat: you merely steer a boat and occasionally push or pull on the throttle to go faster or slower. To fly an aircraft you must constantly alter the shape of the wings, you must use stick and rudder to climb or descend or turn to counter the swirls and vertical motion of the air; you must judge your height and speed and progress through the air and alter these factors as necessary to return to earth in a controlled manner. To fly an airplane you must truly fly as the birds do, an ironic truth that would have made the ancient dreamers smile.

  Thank you, Orville. Thank you, Wilbur, wherever you are.

  Flying is a skill, of course, like riding a bicycle, one that can be learned by anyone of modest intelligence and physical gifts who has the ability to take instruction. But when truly mastered and the aircraft becomes a part of you, an extension of your physical abilities, then flying is an art. And by happy coincidence, this mastery of the skill can occur with any airplane—indeed, with any craft that leaves the ground—if the pilot will only work at it long enough and hard enough.

  I don’t have anywhere near that skill level yet in the Cannibal Queen. Maybe by the end of the summer I’ll get a taste of it again. I had it once, back in my twenties when I flew A-6 Intruders for Uncle Sam. After a thousand hours or so I could really fly that machine, make it do precisely what I wanted it to do in any flight regime. I could hold altitude like the altimeter needle was glued to the dial, nail an airspeed, bring the plane right to the edge of the stall and hold her there with whatever power setting I chose. I could feather it onto the runway or plant it, as I chose, where I chose, with whatever sink rate I chose. I could fly that airplane.