by Julie Tizard
The bar was packed with a cloud of thick, blue cigarette smoke and the pounding disco beat of the Village People. She scanned the crowd looking for a potential lover for the night. No women really caught her eye until she saw a cute, sporty-looking woman walk in by herself. Casey observed her as she walked up to the bar to order a Coors. She was shorter than Casey, with shoulder-length straight brown hair and a nice smile. Casey struck up a conversation with her, then asked her to dance. The woman seemed interested in Casey as she pressed her hips into her on the dance floor.
“Would you like to come over to my place where we could have a drink in private?” she asked Casey.
Here it was, Casey’s objective, right in front of her, but a strange nagging in the back of her mind kept her from closing the deal. “Thanks, but I can’t tonight. I have to get up real early tomorrow. Maybe some other time.”
The woman walked off with a shrug.
Casey drove back to the base frustrated with herself. She looked at the clock—eleven thirty. She hoped Rhonda and Trish would still be up.
“Hi, Rhonda, I was wondering if I could invite myself over. It’s been a rough week.”
“Sure, come on over. Why don’t you spend the night? We’re having a pool party tomorrow.”
A weight lifted from her as she drove to her friends’ home. They didn’t ask her any questions, they just got her a beer and some snacks. After a while, Casey told them about Mike’s death, her own near crash on her solo ride, and finding Kathryn Hardesty in her room thinking she’d been killed. They listened without comment, but both gave her a big hug.
When she went to their guest room, she wondered again why she couldn’t complete her hookup plans with the cute girl at the bar. Then it struck her—that girl resembled Kathryn Hardesty. She turned over and tried to dismiss the disturbing thought. Instead, she let herself sink into the sheets, feeling surrounded by the sanctuary of her friends.
*****
Kathryn closed the thick folder of the accident investigation report. She was almost finished with the formal written part and was just waiting for a few more evidence analysis reports to come in. They were just formalities since she had her causes and conclusions already written. The cause of this accident was difficult for her to accept. A young student was dead, and he shouldn’t be. She’d put in long hours for weeks working on this investigation, and the heavy stress was getting to her. She knew what she needed and went to where she could get it.
Kathryn spotted Barb hard at work on the big schedule board as she entered the flight room.
“Captain Arnau, I have a favor to ask.”
“Captain Hardesty, where have you been? Done with your investigation, I hope.”
“Almost, Barb, but I really need to fly. I’m going stir-crazy from this paperwork. Do you have any jets available today? Pleeease?”
“Sorry, Kath, I don’t. Let me call the squadron scheduler and see if I can rustle up a plane for you. I don’t have any other IPs available to fly with you. Can you do a student sortie?”
“I’ll fly with anyone. I just need to get up in the air.”
After a quick call, Barb motioned Kathryn over. “I got a Warlock jet for you that was on a mechanical delay but is fixed now, and you can fly with Tompkins. She’s up for an advanced contact ride.”
“You’re a gem, Barb, thanks.” Kathryn had a little twinge of apprehension because this would be the first time she would see Casey after she’d hugged her in her quarters. She had to put her awkwardness aside and treat Casey like any other student. She needed to fly, and Casey needed her to be a good IP.
“Lieutenant Tompkins, are you ready to fly?”
Casey jumped when she heard her name called. “Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“Let’s brief this up and go fly.”
*****
Captain Hardesty had Casey complete the preflight inspection, take off, and climb out to the practice area.
“Casey, I need to update my spin currency, so I’ll fly the first spin recovery, then I’ll have you do one.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My airplane. I’m climbing to twenty-five thousand feet. Confirm your loose items are stowed.”
“Your jet, loose items stowed.”
Kathryn talked as she set up the spin maneuver, like she couldn’t fly if she wasn’t instructing.
“Nose up twenty degrees, throttles idle, hold this pitch attitude as the speed drops off. At the first stall indication, smoothly feed in full right rudder and hold it.”
Casey felt the aircraft shudder as it ran out of airspeed and started to stall. She looked out the big canopy as the plane rolled to the right, almost upside down, then started rotating into a spin. The ground looked like a record on a turntable as the rotation increased and the nose was pointed almost straight down.
Captain Hardesty called out the emergency recovery steps as she executed them. “Throttles—idle. Rudder and ailerons—neutral. Stick—abruptly full aft and hold. Spinning right, turn needle right—left rudder.”
She kicked the left rudder hard to the full stop, held it for one turn, then slammed the stick full forward to break the stall. The jet accelerated like a spinning ice skater, then suddenly popped out of the spin with the nose pointed straight at the ground. “Recover from dive. Tighten up, Casey.” She smoothly pulled back on the stick to return to level flight with G-forces pulling them hard into their seats. “Okay, Casey, your turn.”
Casey climbed the airplane back up to twenty-five thousand feet and tried not to be intimidated by the perfect spin recovery Captain Hardesty had just demonstrated. Her spin wasn’t bad, just not perfect.
“Let’s descend into the low area and practice some acro. Tighten up, Casey.”
Captain Hardesty rolled the jet upside down, pulled the throttles to idle, pulled back on the stick with five Gs, and did a split S maneuver, losing ten thousand feet of altitude in a matter of seconds. Then she rolled upside down again, doing another split S, and had the jet in the exact center of the low practice area.
Slick. I’ll have to remember that.
“Casey, why don’t you show me your Cuban eight? Your jet.”
Casey set up the maneuver to fly it as precisely as she could. She was tilted off-center after the first half of the maneuver and didn’t do a very good job of fixing it on the second half.
“My jet, Casey. What are you looking at when you do the reverse turn?”
“Um, I think I’m checking my heading.”
“That’s what I thought. These are fighter pilot maneuvers, and you have to look outside the jet, as if a bad guy is on your tail trying to kill you as you are flying them. You only glance inside at the instruments to check your airspeed and heading. I want you to feel the jet, Casey, not just mechanically go through the steps. Let’s try something. Pretend there is a giant tube of red lipstick at the tip of the pitot probe on the nose. I’m going to do a barrel roll around that puffy cloud in the distance, and I want you to visualize drawing a big red circle around it. Follow along with me on the controls.”
Captain Hardesty lowered the nose to get the entry airspeed with the cloud right in front of her. She smoothly rolled and pulled the airplane around, up, and over the cloud in a complete circle. Casey could truly see the pitot tube on the aircraft nose draw a perfect circle in the sky around the cloud. She had been struggling with her acrobatics, but this was so simple. She finally understood.
Casey tried a barrel roll around the same cloud, and instead of ending up in a dive like she usually did, her maneuver was almost perfect. It was a revelation. They went through the rest of the acro maneuvers with Captain Hardesty providing only minor critiques.
“I think you’ve got the picture. My turn,” Captain Hardesty said as she took the controls and descended toward the bottom of the practice area where there was a layer of scattered cumulus clouds. The white puffy clouds looked like giant pieces of popcorn.
As she was descending, Captain Hardesty started quizzing
Casey on some of the flight rules. “What are the VFR cloud clearance and visibility minimums in the practice areas?”
“Three miles in flight visibility and clear of clouds.”
“Correct. But what does that mean?”
“I don’t understand the question, ma’am.”
“It means we can get as close to the clouds as we want, as long as we don’t fly through them. Like this.” She abruptly rolled the plane upside down, yanked back on the stick, flew around and under a puffball cloud while just skimming below the base of the cloud. The cloud was so close it looked like Casey could reach her hand out and touch it. She maneuvered the jet like it was her own private playground as she wheeled, dove, and rolled around the puffy clouds. She started doing figure eight rolls with just the wing tip of the plane touching the clouds. Captain Hardesty wasn’t instructing now—she was just flying.
Casey didn’t say a word as she watched this demonstration of precision and skill. She knew these clouds were just condensed water vapor, but they were so beautiful in shades of dazzling white and pale gray within a blazing blue sky. Captain Hardesty was chasing the clouds like she was one of them. Casey put her hand on the stick to feel Captain Hardesty’s movements. She sensed a lightheartedness she’d never felt from her before. She wasn’t instructing or grading Casey; she was just flying with joy. It was beautiful and just plain fun.
“Okay, Casey, your turn.”
“My jet, ma’am. Um, what should I do?”
“Anything you like. Just don’t over-G or overspeed the jet and don’t fly into the clouds.”
Casey tentatively maneuvered banking left and right around the clouds.
“Get closer, Casey. Do an aileron roll right over the top of that big cloud. It’s okay to yank and bank the jet.”
Casey aimed the jet toward the top of the cloud. It looked like she was going to hit it, but she pulled up a little just as she rolled upside down right over the top of it.
“Good one, Casey. Now fly right between those two cloud columns.”
She flew toward the two clouds and rolled to ninety degrees of bank as she approached the small space between them. The nose went down and she went right into the clouds with white momentarily filling the windscreen, then she popped back out into blue skies.
Captain Hardesty laughed. “With ninety degrees of bank you lose all your lift. You have to step on the top rudder to keep the nose up. Think of it as if you are a knife edge.” They continued this game for several thrilling minutes before Captain Hardesty said they had to head back to the base. Casey had never felt such freedom in her entire life as when they were chasing those puffy clouds. She’d just shared something magical in the air with Kathryn Hardesty.
*****
Kathryn had Casey fly the plane back to the base. She was able to relax a little watching Casey confidently fly the arrival procedure and make the radio calls. Casey was growing into a pilot almost right before her eyes, and she let herself feel pleased. Flying a plane was the only thing that made sense in her life right now—pull back on the stick and you climb; push forward and you descend. It was logical and predictable and, unlike a human being, you could count on an airplane to not betray you or break your heart with a senseless death.
As they flew back to Willie, the sun, low on the horizon, reflected on the Gila River beneath them, making the water shine like a ribbon of liquid gold. The light slowly changed as the day gave away to the inevitable night. The bright blue sky transformed into pale turquoise, and the land changed to subdued, soft colors with a line of deep lavender separating the sky from the earth. This was Kathryn’s favorite time of day to be in the air as the daylight retreated into the beauty of the night sky. She had successfully exorcised the terrible images of a charred aircraft and a dead student pilot. She was, once again, at one with the twilight, the airplane, and the sky.
Chapter Fourteen
June 1992
Kathryn reviewed her briefing notes as the squadron auditorium filled with instructors and students. She would be presenting her findings from the investigation of the crash of Lieutenant Mike Harris. The flight yesterday with Casey had cleared her mind so she could focus on this important but difficult duty today. She scanned the audience. All the IPs, students, and both the T-37 and T-38 squadron commanders were present. She also saw Lieutenant Dave Carter scowl at her as he sat next to Captain Bailey Grant. They were often seen together at the O Club bar, usually leering at the local women. Now here they were whispering and laughing as a briefing about a dead student was about to start. The group jumped to attention as the wing commander walked in and took his seat in the front row center.
A hush fell across the room as she started with slides of the accident site and pictures of the burned plane. “This accident was not the result of anything mechanically wrong with the aircraft, the engines, the oxygen system, or the physical condition of the student pilot. The weather was not a factor, neither was air traffic control. The cause of this accident was G-induced loss of consciousness by the student pilot.” She paused to let her words sink in.
“This was the first solo flight after the introduction of advanced acrobatics. The GLOC was most likely caused by a poorly flown acrobatic maneuver where the student was unable to recover from a high-speed dive and consequently blacked himself out. The student had seen the advanced acrobatic maneuvers one time, with a grade of Unsatisfactory on all maneuvers, prior to this mishap. He had been briefed by his IP to practice all the acrobatic maneuvers on this flight.” A mumbling rippled through the audience.
Kathryn stopped and asked the student pilots to leave the room as she had additional information for the IPs only. She noticed Casey and Mike’s IP, Lieutenant Carter, looking around nervously.
“There are some other facts concerning this student pilot, Lieutenant Mike Harris. During the investigation, we discovered that Lieutenant Harris was extremely self-critical about his flying. He had notes in his room documenting and berating himself on every flight where he made mistakes. Now, we critique every student on every maneuver on every ride, but this student took this critique very personally. There were also letters from his father demanding that Mike excel in this program. We will never know what kind of internal, self-imposed pressure this student put on himself, but we can still try to learn from this mishap. We need to pay more attention to our student pilots and how they’re dealing with the stress of this program. We need to be mindful of the demands we impose on them, and the type of instruction we give them, especially when we send them out on solo missions.” She looked directly at Lieutenant Carter. He couldn’t look at her.
*****
Life went on in pilot training as they entered the instrument flying phase of training. There were a million things to remember when flying on instruments. Casey had to figure out where she was in the sky by looking only at the navigation instruments, think about where she wanted to go and how to get there. There were all kinds of new procedures to memorize for flying course intercepts, holding, precision and non-precision approaches, and all the instrument flying rules. Some of the guys who had been hotshots at the beginning were, all of a sudden, busting instrument sim rides and getting washed out.
Lieutenant Carter had been taken off the flying schedule for ten days after Mike Harris’s accident report came out. None of the IPs would talk about it, but the student rumor mill said he had to go through remedial instructor training with wing standardization and evaluation. Casey and Jeff got a break from his screaming and flew with other flight IPs. Casey liked flying with most of them, but she was mentally exhausted after an hour and a half in the simulator looking only at round dials.
Casey was excited, and a little bit scared, to see she was flying her next instrument sim with Captain Hardesty. She knew she had to study hard to learn all the procedures and chair fly the approaches because Captain Hard-Ass wouldn’t cut her any slack.
Casey felt claustrophobic in the instrument sim with no horizon picture out the windscreen
and just the reddish glow of the instruments illuminating the small space. Captain Hardesty had her fly simple climbs and descents, but then made it more difficult by having her also turn to headings. Casey was missing the rollouts and level-offs. She was chasing the altitude and airspeed and failed to notice when her heading drifted off course. This is so difficult. I don’t think I’ll ever get it.
“Let go of the stick, Casey.”
Crap. I forgot to trim the plane.
When Casey let go of the stick, the nose abruptly pitched down and she lost three hundred feet of altitude.
“Who is your friend, Casey?”
“Trim is my friend, ma’am,” she answered sheepishly.
“That’s right. Having the airplane trimmed is absolutely essential to instrument flying. Your cross-check is all over the place and you’re chasing the instruments. The main thing you need to look at is the attitude indicator. This is your horizon. Take your pencil out of your sleeve pocket and hold it in your hand like you are going to write something. Now hold the stick with the pencil in your hand. You can’t have a death grip on the stick as long as you have the pencil in your hand. This will force you to trim the jet.”
“Okay, I’ll try that.” Casey was pleasantly surprised. She had to keep a very light grip on the stick and fly with just her fingertips because of the pencil. She trimmed the plane to keep it level and she was able to detect tiny pressures on her fingertips when the plane was out of trim. She wasn’t flailing nearly as much.
Captain Hardesty showed her several tricks to make the approaches more stable and improve her instrument cross-check. After the sim, Casey was still mentally exhausted but was relieved the instrument flying was starting to make sense.
“You have to be able to fly the jet in the present moment and think about the future—where am I, and where do I want to go? This is one of the most difficult things you will ever do in an airplane, Casey. Overall, your instrument flying is coming along and you know your procedures. You are well ahead of your classmates. Sim grade, Excellent.”