Free Solo by Clyde Edgerton

I remembered that I hadn’t checked to be sure the crew chief had tightened the Zeus fastener. No doubt he had, but I couldn’t see it from where I sat. I decided that a visual check—by me—would impress the colonel. As I unbuckled my seat belt, I told Colonel Nash I’d forgotten to check the loose Zeus fastener. He seemed a little impatient but didn’t object to my getting out of the aircraft to check. I walked around the front and on around to his side of the airplane. The fastener was tight. I needed to hurry to make the scheduled takeoff time. The crew chief was standing out in front of the aircraft, waiting for engine start. As I hurried around the front of the aircraft—almost in a run—I felt a dull blow to my left leg, just below waist level. What was that? I glanced at the crew chief. His mouth was hanging open. I looked down. The pitot tube, a long pencil-like needle, normally straight out from the nose of the T-37, was pointed off to the left at a sick angle. I couldn’t believe it. Now we couldn’t fly—not this aircraft, anyway. I looked at Colonel Nash, who was taking off his helmet and rising up in his seat. “What happened?” he asked.
    “I walked into the, uh, pitot tube, sir.”
    “You
what
?”
    He was getting out. I’m sure he saw the crew chief’s jaw hanging.
    The colonel stood beside me.
    “I walked into the . . . the, uh—”
    “Into the goddamn
pitot
tube.”
    “Yes, sir. Uh, pitot tube, sir. Yes, sir.”
    The crew chief ambled up, jaw still hanging.
    “We’ll have to abort the flight and get another aircraft,” said Colonel Nash, looking up to God.
    I followed him inside to sign up for another aircraft, and over his shoulder I watched him fill out a form. To understand the significance of what he wrote, you need to know that we’d been warned repeatedly about “bird strikes”: while we were flying, a bird might come through the Plexiglas canopy like a cannonball. Pilots had been killed. We were ordered to fly with our helmet sun visors lowered in order to reduce the chance of injury in case of a bird strike.
    In the space on his form beside “Reason for Abort,” Colonel Nash wrote: “Student strike.”

The T-38
    E ARLY IN THE SPRING of 1967, just as we were getting confident in the T-37, able to “grease on” a landing consistently, it was time to fly the T-38, the aircraft I’d been drooling over since October. And I’d been admiring the scarves worn by student pilots who’d soloed the T-38. White with red polka dots, they weren’t scarves in the traditional sense. They were like miniature aprons. A little cloth belt snapped around your neck, and the scarf looped once back underneath and then over in front. Smoothed out, it looked quite natural, very much like a full scarf folded properly. I could hardly wait to have one.
    A T-38 instructor worked with four students and would typically fly with a couple of students a day, while the other two students stayed on the ground, studying the T-38 flight manual and academic subjects. We were still spending half a day in the classroom and half a day on the flight line. The academics now covered all the specificsof the T-38: the fuel, electrical, and hydraulic systems, and all the particulars of flying an aircraft far more powerful than the T-37.
    Cal, Andy Buckley, Phil Ferguson, and I were assigned to Lieutenant Jackson, a thin, dark, Italian-looking fellow who would fall somewhere between Captain Dunning and Captain Coleman on the “scream scale.” He was knowledgeable and precise in the aircraft, as were all our instructors, but instead of screaming, Lieutenant Jackson lectured intensely, either in the air or on the ground. His verbal tone fell between Captain Dunning’s sympathy and Coleman’s sadism. And he had a sense of humor.
    The first ride in the T-38 was called a dollar ride, a tradition, and when it was over, you handed your instructor a dollar.
    After a preflight guided by Lieutenant Jackson, I climbed up