Flying down to Texas the other day, I sat beside a man who pilots helicopters for lumber operations in the West. He’d learned to fly in the Army, long ago, and had hundreds of combat missions in Vietnam under his belt. When I told him I was on my way to Kingsville to watch my son Tom graduate from aviation training for the Navy, he set to work to flatter a mother’s pride, regaling me with stories of flyers’ heroism and skill.
Once, he said, in his days as a commercial pilot, he worked with two guys who’d flown helicopters in Vietnam and had bonded forever when one of them saved the other’s life. They’d been out on a joint mission when one helicopter took fire and went down in a rice paddy, turning over in the process. Some Viet Cong appeared and leaped onto the overturned chopper, shooting into the wreck. The second pilot instantly landed nearby and, with his buddies providing cover, dove under the downed copter, cut his friend out, and dragged him to safety.
Those military pilots, my companion said, they’re something else. You see it in the way they live, and the way they party.
Graduation is party time. It crowns a long, rigorous course of learning. Each stage of training begins with weeks of ground school, in classrooms, followed by weeks of practice in simulators on the ground, then of practice in the air, first with an instructor, then solo, then in formation, then at night. The last hurdle is “going to the boat” and executing 10 carrier takeoffs and landings. Every flight is graded, whether in a plane or simulator. Each accomplishment brings the airman closer to securing what the Navy likes to call his coveted wings of gold.
Not all of them make it. A friend of Tom’s faltered — only by a hair — on the carrier landings. He gets a second chance; he’ll repeat a month’s worth of land-based practice, then go to the boat again, though this time the cut-off score is higher. If he falls short, he’s out of the Navy.
Understandably, those who make it enjoy a high exhilaration. The scene at Tom’s apartment when I got there the night before his winging was mellow. Creedence was playing. Several family members, a college friend, and a particular blonde C-2 pilot named Stacey had come in from out of town and were getting acquainted. From time to time, handsome guys in shorts or flightsuits would wander in from the Texas night, stopping first on the patio to help themselves at the kegerator, a 1950s fridge painted red and fitted out to hold a keg of beer, with a spout through the fridge’s side.
In the morning, Tom took us to the base to see some planes — mostly T-45s (the F-18 he’ll fly next is based in California). And he let us experience a carrier landing in the simulator. For any aberrant reader as ignorant as I was until recently, a carrier is too small to act as a proper airport. Planes don’t have enough runway length to take off and land. So instead of taking off the usual way, they are thrust into the air by a catapult; and they land by extending a “tailhook,” which catches a cable stretched across the deck and drags them to a halt. Since the hook might fail to trap the cable on any given pass, planes have to speed up as they near the deck, ready to fly back out over the water. The simulator — a bit like an Omnimax movie — leaves you certain these things cannot be done.
The winging itself, at the Officers’ Club, seemed almost anticlimactic — modest and friendly rather than solemn or imposing. There were four “wingees” in all, two Marines and two Naval officers, crisp in their dress uniforms, identified in the program by their call signs, “Skunk,” “Skirt,” “Wink,” and “Stockboy.” Skunk’s grandfather, a retired distinguished admiral, made some fitting remarks. I got to pin on Tom’s wings. Photos were snapped, cheeks kissed. Then the wingees were called to attention for “A Navy Pilot’s Creed”: “I am a United States Navy flyer. My country-men built the best airplane in the world and entrusted it to me. They trained me to fly it. I will use it to the absolute limit of my power. . . . When the going is fast and rough, I will not falter. I will be uncompromising in every blow I strike. I will be humble in victory. . . . I ask the help of God in making that effort great enough.”
We hugged some more, and repaired to the bar across the hall to toast the guys; then we ate, drank, and made merry at Tom’s place, then over at Skirt’s. A few of us peeled off around midnight, but the rest went back to the O Club for more serious carousing. I’m sorry I missed the belly-slides along the bar lubricated with dishwashing liquid, moves known as carrier landings. Apparently my son distinguished himself by his willingness to go flying off the end of the bar.
A wimp, I asked Tom who’d caught him. “Frankly, Mom,” he said, practically purring with contentment, “I was too drunk to remember. My buddies, I guess.”
CLAUDIA WINKLER
