When he hears from me, the man in the polished airplane, with the little cloth oak leaves on the shoulders of his flight suit, pushes his throttle forward and calls, “Falcon formation, run it up.”
It is not really necessary for all 24 airplanes to turn their engines up to 100 percent rpm at the same moment, but it does make an impressive noise, and that is what the people in the stands would like to hear this day. Two dozen throttles go full forward against their stops.
Even with canopy locked and a helmet and earphones about my head, the roar is loud. The sky darkens a little and through the massive thunder that shakes the wooden bleachers, the people watch a great cloud of exhaust smoke rise from the end of the runway, above the shining pickets that are the tall swept stabilizers of Falcon formation. I jolt and rock on my wheels in the blast from the other airplanes, and notice that, as I expected, my engine is not turning up its normal 100 percent. For just a second it did, but as the heat and pressured roar of the other airplanes swept back to cover my air intake, the engine speed fell off to a little less than 98 percent rpm. That is a good indicator that the air outside my small conditioned cockpit is warm.
“Able Red Leader is rolling.” The two forwardmost pickets separate and pull slowly away from the forest of pickets, and Falcon formation comes to life. Five seconds by the sweep secondhand and Able Red Three is rolling to follow, Four at his wing.
I sit high in my cockpit and watch, far ahead, the first of the formation lift from the runway.
The first airplanes break from the ground as if weary of it and glad to be back home in the air. Their exhaust trails are dark as I look down the length of them, and I wonder with a smile if I will have to go on instruments through the smoke of the other airplanes by the time I begin to roll with Baker Blue Three.
Two by two by two they roll. Eight; ten; twelve . . . I wait, watching my rpm down to 97 percent now at full throttle, hoping that I can stay with Three on the roll and break ground with him as I should. We have the same problem, so there should be no difficulty other than a very long takeoff roll.
I look over toward Three, ready to nod OK at him. He is watching the other airplanes take off, and does not look back. He is watching them go . . . sixteen; eighteen; twenty . . .
The runway is nearly empty in front of us, under a low cloud of grey smoke. The overrun barrier at the other end of the concrete is not even visible in the swirl of heat. But except for a little bit of sudden wing-rocking, the earlier flights get away from the ground without difficulty, though they clear the barrier by a narrower and narrower margin.
. . . twenty-two. Three looks back to me at last and I nod my OK. Baker Blue Lead and Two are five seconds down the concrete when Three touches his helmet back to the red ejection seat headrest, nods sharply forward, and we become the last of Falcon formation to release brakes. Left rudder, right rudder. I can feel the turbulence over the runway on my stabilizer, through the rudder pedals. It is taking a long time to gain airspeed and I am glad that we have the full length of the runway for our takeoff roll. Three rocks up and down slightly as his airplane moves heavily over the ripples in the concrete. I follow as if I were a shining aluminum shadow in three dimensions, bouncing when he bounces, sweeping ahead with him, slowly gaining airspeed. Blue Lead and Two must be lifting off by now, though I do not move my eyes from Three to check. They have either lifted off by now or they are in the barrier. It is at this moment one of the longest takeoff rolls I have seen in the F-84F, passing the 7,500-foot mark. The weight of Three’s airplane just now finishes the change from wheels to swept wings, and we ease together into the air. A highly improbable bit of physics, this trusting 12 tons to thin air; but it has worked before and it should today.
Three is looking ahead and for once I am glad that I must watch his airplane so closely. The barrier is reaching to snag our wheels, and it is only a hundred feet away. Three climbs suddenly away from the ground and I follow, pulling harder on the control stick than I should have to, forcing my airplane to climb before it is ready to fly.
The helmet in the cockpit a few feet away nods once, sharply, and without looking, I reach forward and move the landing gear lever to up. There is the flash of the barrier going beneath us, in the same second that I touched the gear handle. We had ten feet to spare. It is good, I think, that I was not number twenty-six in this formation.
The landing gear tucks itself quickly up and out of the way, and the background behind Three changes from one of smooth concrete to rough blurred brush-covered ground; we are very definitely committed to fly. The turbulence, surprisingly enough, was only a passing shock, for our takeoff is longer and lower than any other, and we fly beneath the heaviest whirlpools in the air.
A low and gentle turn to the right to join on Blue Leader and Two as quickly as possible. But the turn is not my worry, for I am just a sandbagger, loafing along on Three’s wing while he does all the juggling and angling and cutting off to make a smooth joinup. The worry of the long takeoff roll is left behind with the barrier, and now, takeoff accomplished, I feel as if I sat relaxed in the softest armchair in the pilots’ lounge.
The familiar routine of a formation flight settles down upon me; I can hold it a little loose here over the trees and away from the crowd. There will be plenty of work ahead to fly the slot during the passes over the base.
There in the corner of my eye drifts Blue Leader and Two, closing nicely above and back to Three’s left wing. Around them are the silver flashes and silhouettes that make the mass of swept metal called Falcon formation, juggling itself into the positions drawn out on green blackboards still chalked and standing in the briefing room. The wrinkles in the monster formation have been worked out in a practice flight, and the practice is paying off now as the finger-fours form into diamonds and the diamonds form into vees and the vees become the invincible juggernaut of Falcon formation.
I slide across into the slot between Two and Three, directly behind Baker Blue Leader, and move my airplane forward until Lead’s tailpipe is a gaping black hole ten feet ahead of my windscreen and I can feel the buffet of his jetwash in my rudder pedals. Now I forget about Three and fly a close trail formation on Lead, touching the control stick back every once in a while to keep the buffet on the rudder pedals.
“Falcon formation, go channel nine.”
Blue Lead yaws his airplane slightly back and forth, and with the other five diamonds in the sky, the four-ship diamond that is Baker Blue flight spreads itself for a moment while its pilots click their radio channel selectors to 9 and make the required cockpit check after takeoff.
I push the switches aft of the throttle quadrant, and the drop tanks under my wings begin feeding their fuel to the main fuselage tank and to the engine. Oxygen pressure is 70 psi, the blinker blinks as I breathe, engine instruments are in the green. I leave the engine screens extended, the parachute lanyard hooked to the ripcord handle. My airplane is ready for its airshow.
In this formation there are probably some airplanes that are not operating just as they should, but unless the difficulties are serious ones, the pilots keep their troubles to themselves and call the cockpit check OK. Today it would be too embarrassing to return to the field and shoot a forced landing pattern on the high stage before an audience so large.
“Baker Blue Lead is good.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
I press the button. “Four.”
Normally the check would have been a longer one, with each pilot calling his oxygen condition and quantity and whether or not his drop tanks were feeding properly, but with so many airplanes aloft the check alone would take minutes. It was agreed in the briefing room to make the check as usual, but to reply only with flight call sign.
Six lead airplanes rock their wings after my call and the six diamonds close again to show formation. I do not often have the chance to fly as slot man in diamond, and I tuck my airplane in close under Lead’s tailpipe to make it look from the ground as if I had flown t
here all my life. The way to tell if a slot man has been flying his position well is to look at his vertical stabilizer as he lands. The blacker his stabilizer and rudder with Lead’s exhaust, the better the formation he has been flying.
I move up for a moment into the position that I will hold during our passes across the base. When I feel that it is correct, the black gaping hole of Lead’s tailpipe is a shimmering inky disc six feet forward of my windscreen and a foot above the level of my canopy. My vertical stabilizer is solid in his jetwash, and I ease the weight of my boots from the rudder pedals to avoid the uncomfortable vibration in them. If it were possible to move my boots completely off the pedals, I would, but the slanting tunnels that lead down to them offer no resting-place, and I must live with the vibration that means that the stabilizer is blackening in burnt JP-4. I can hear it, a dull heavy constant rumble of twisted forced air beating against the rudder. The airplane does not fly easily in this, and it is not enjoyable to fly with the tail, like a great dorsal fin, forced into the stream of heat from Baker Blue Lead’s turbine. But that is the position that I must fly to make Baker Blue flight a close and perfect diamond, and the people who will watch are not interested in my problems. I move the throttle back an inch and ahead again, touch the control stick forward, sliding away and down into a looser, easier formation.
Two and Three are using the time that Falcon formation spends in its wide turn to check their own positions. The air is rough, and their airplanes shudder and jolt as they move in to overlap their wings behind Lead’s. To fly a tight formation, they must close on the leader until their wings are fitted in the violent wake of Lead’s wing. Although that air is not so rough as the heat that blasts my rudder, it is more difficult to fly, for it is an unbalanced force, and a changing one. At 350 knots the air is as solid as sheet steel, and I can see the ailerons near their wingtips move quickly up and down as they fight to hold smoothly in formation. During normal formation flying, their wings would be just outside the river of air washing back from their leader’s wing, and they could fly that position for a long time with the normal working and coaxing and correcting. But this is a show, and for a show we work.
Two and Three are apparently satisfied that they will be able to hold a good position for the passes across the base, for they slide out into normal formation almost simultaneously. Still they watch nothing but Baker Blue Lead, and still they bounce and jar in the rough air. Every few seconds the flight slams across an invisible whirlwind twisting up from a plowed field, and the impact of it is a solid thing that blurs my vision for an instant and makes me grateful for my shoulder harness.
This is summer on an air base: not blazing sun and crowded pool and melting ice cream, but the jarring slam of rough air when I want to tuck my airplane into close formation.
The wide circle is completed, and Falcon formation begins to descend to its 500-foot flyby altitude.
“Close it up, Falcon,” comes the voice of the man who is Able Red Leader. We close it up, and I lift my airplane to push the rudder again into Lead’s tumbling jetwash. I glance at my altimeter when the formation is level and three miles from the crowd by the runway. One quick glance: 400 feet above the ground. The leading vee of diamonds is at 500 feet and we are stacked 100 feet beneath it. As a slot man, altitude is none of my business, but I am curious.
Now, in these last three miles to the base, we are being watched by the American people. They are interested in knowing just how well the part-time Air Force can fly its airplanes.
The diamonds of Falcon formation are hard and glittering in the sun, and even from the center of Baker Blue flight the formation looks close and good. I think again the old axiom of bouncing in the same air with the leader, and I am not alone with the thought. Two and Three have placed their wings unnervingly close to Lead’s smooth fuselage, and we take the ridges of the air as a close formation of bobsleds would take the ridges of hardpacked snow. Slam. Four helmets jerk, four sets of stiff wings flex the slightest bit. My rudder is full in Lead’s jetwash and the pedals are chattering heavily. This rumble of hard jetwash must be loud even to the people standing by the bleachers on the flight line. Hold it smooth. Hold it steady. Hold it close.
But the people on the concrete do not even begin to hear the rumble that makes my rudder pedals dance. They see from the north a little cloud of grey smoke on the horizon. It stretches to become a quiver of grey arrows in flight, shot at once from a single bow. There is no sound.
The arrows grow, and the people on the ground talk to each other in the quiet air as they watch. The arrowheads slice the air at 400 knots, but from the ground they seem to be suspended in cold clear honey.
Then, as the silent flight reaches the end of the runway a quarter-mile from the bleachers and even the visiting general is smiling to himself behind his issue sunglasses, the honey becomes only air and the 400 knots is the ground-shaking blast of 24 sudden detonations of high explosive. The people wince happily in the burst of sound and watch the diamonds whip together through the sky in unyielding immovable grace. In that moment the people on the ground are led to believe that Air Guard airplanes are not left to rust unused in the sun, and this is what we are trying to tell them.
In one fading dopplered roar we flick past the stands and are to the people a line of dwindling dots, pulling two dozen streamers of tenuous grey as we go. Our sound is gone as quickly as it came, and the ground is quiet again.
But still, after we pass the crowd, we fly formation. Baker Blue flight and Falcon formation are just as present about me as they have been all morning. The brief roar that swept the people is to me unchanged and constant. The only change in Falcon formation after it crosses the field is that the diamonds loosen a few feet out and back, and the bobsleds take the ridges a tenth-second apart rather than in the same instant.
During the turn to the second pass across the base, I slide with Baker Blue Lead to form a new pattern in which our diamond is the corner of a giant block of airplanes. Regardless of the position that we fly, the rough sky beats at our airplanes and the jetwash thunders over my vertical stabilizer. I think of the landing that is ahead, hoping that a light breeze has begun across the runway, to clear the jet-wash out of the way by the time my airplane slides down final approach to land.
Maybe they don’t want to be pilots.
Where did that come from? Of course they want to be pilots. Yet they watch from the ground instead of flying wing in Baker Blue flight. The only reason that they are not flying today instead of watching is that they do not know what they are missing. What better work is there than flying airplanes? If flying was the full-time employment of an Air Force pilot, I would have become a career officer when the chance was offered me.
We force our airplanes close again, fly the second pass, re-form into a final design and bring it through the rocky air above the field. Then, from a huge circle out of sight of the runway, flight after flight separates from the formation, diamonds changing to echelon right, and the echelons fly a long straight approach across the hard uneven air into the landing pattern.
It is work, it is uncomfortable. The needle that measures G has been knocked to the number 4. But in the moments that the people watch this part of their standby Air Force, and were glad for it, the flight was worthwhile. Able Red Leader has completed another little part of his job.
That was months ago. These days, in Europe, our formation is not for show but for the business of fighting. A four-ship flight is loose and comfortable when it is not being watched, and the pilots merely concentrate on their position, rather than devote their every thought and smallest action to show flying. At altitude we wait for the left-right yaw of the lead airplane, and spread out even more, into tactical formation. Three and Four climb together a thousand feet above Lead and Two; each wingman sliding to a loose angled trailing position from which he can watch the sky around as well as the airplane that he protects. In tactical formation and the practice of air combat, responsibility is sharply defi
ned: wingman clears leader, high element clears low element, leaders look for targets.
Flying at the contrail altitudes, this is easy. Any con other than our own four are bogies. During a war, when they are identified, they become either bogies to be watched or bandits to be judged and occasionally, attacked. “Occasionally” because our airplane was not designed to engage enemy fighters at altitude and destroy them. That is the job of the F-104’s and the Canadian Mark Sixes and the French Mystères. Our Thunderstreak is an air-to-ground attack airplane built to carry bombs and rockets and napalm against the enemy as he moves on the earth. We attack enemy airplanes only when they are easy targets: the transports and the low-speed bombers and the propeller-driven, fighters. It is not fair and not sporting to attack only a weaker enemy, but we are not a match for the latest enemy airplanes built specifically to engage other fighters.
But we practice air combat against the day when we are engaged over our target by enemy fighters. If hours of practice suffice only to allow us a successful escape from a more powerful fighter, they will have been worthwhile. And the practice is interesting.
There they are. Two ’84F’s at ten o’clock low, in a long circling climb into the contrail level, coming up like goldfish to food on the surface. At 30,000 feet the bogie lead element begins to pull a con. The high element is nowhere in sight.
I am Dynamite Four, and I watch them from my high perch. It is slow motion. Turns at altitude are wide and gentle, for too much bank and G will stall the airplane in the thin air and I will lose my most precious commodity: airspeed. Airspeed is golden in combat. There are books filled with rules, but one of the most important is Keep Your Mach Up. With speed I can outmaneuver the enemy. I can dive upon him from above, track him for a moment in my gunsight, fire, pull up and away, prepare another attack. Without airspeed I cannot even climb, and drift at altitude like a helpless duck in a pond.