Free The Cannibal Queen by Stephen Coonts Page B

flight school. Nauseated, unable to eat, trying to be pleasant to my folks, I studied the material in my BOQ room until the wee hours—the names of all the outlying emergency fields that a solo student could use for an emergency landing, their shapes and dimensions and runway orientations, their precise locations, the shape and orientation of the landing patterns, the height and location of the tallest tower in gulf coast Alabama, and so on, rudimentary essential information that had to be acquired by rote memorization, which I loathed. But I had to do it.
    On my fifth attempt at the test, the fourth retake, Mr. Dustin gave the answer sheet a cursory glance and marked “100%” on the top. He stared at me, gave his leonine head a slow shake, and rumbled, “Get outta here.”
    I found out later that the powers that be changed the rules after my record-breaking academic adventure. From this day forth, they decreed, a student would get only two retakes of the pre-solo examination if he failed it the first time. And failure to pass the second retake with a perfect score would be considered irrebuttable evidence that the student was incurably, hopelessly stupid, incapable of ever becoming a naval aviator. A wise and merciful course was mandated: since capital punishment was no longer in vogue and the jails were already full, the wretch would be washed out of the flight program and sent someplace where he would not need to operate any machine more complicated than a safety razor, with, of course, appropriate annotations in his service record to ensure that he would never be promoted.
    The lesson I got out of all of this was that I had to study and be prepared for every flight, every written examination. I couldn’t loaf in flight school as I had done in college, expect to read the book the night before the exam and waltz in and rack up an A or B. Uh-uh. So I dug in for the most demanding period of my life and never failed another written exam or had an unsatisfactory flight. And I became a jet pilot.
    I don’t know whatever happened to Jimmy Hanks or George Dustin. Neither is listed in the Pensacola telephone directory, which is too bad because I wanted to give them both a ride in the Cannibal Queen. If they ever read this they will probably be surprised to find their names here. They probably won’t recall the incidents related here or remember my name. I can’t remember the names of the students I instructed. But students remember instructors.
    The next day, Sunday, Father’s Day, David and I got a rental car and drove over to the Naval Aviation Museum at the Naval Air Station. This is quite a museum and it’s worth the trip if you ever get the chance.
    Among the planes that you will see nowhere else is the NC-4, the first aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, a feat this particular aircraft performed in 1919. It’s a huge four-engine flying boat, an open-cockpit biplane with a boat hull. The size of this wood and fabric masterpiece will stun you.
    The pre-World War II collection is superb. The World War II exhibit, is, I believe, the most comprehensive collection of U.S. Navy aircraft of that era under one roof anywhere. The PBY Catalina is the best specimen I have yet seen.
    Displayed without apology is a Stearman painted silver and two N3Ns, the Naval Aircraft Factory version of the Stearman company’s masterpiece. The N3Ns have different landing gear, but they are yellow sisters to the Cannibal Queen. I bragged to David that the Queen looked as gorgeous as the two N3Ns before I started putting a lot of hours on her.
    “You bought yours to fly,” David said, “not hang in a museum.” I think he sensed that I was apologizing for the Queen’s chipped paint and accumulating grime. This is not as perceptive as you might think since he has watched me carefully wipe her down after every flight.
    The airplanes in the Naval Aviation Museum are in as good a condition as those at the Air and Space Museum in