Free Solo by Clyde Edgerton Page B

Engine failure. No problem.”
    We descended to about 30,000 feet on one engine. Lieutenant Jackson told me from the back how to restart the engine up front. “Okay, the left throttle is in idle. Hit the start switch. There you go. Good. We’re up and running again.” The left engine instrument needles moved until they matched the needles on the right engine instruments.
    Then we were on our way home.
    “Do you want to fly for a few minutes?” he asked.
    “Yessir.”
    “You have the aircraft.”
    “I have the aircraft.”
    Oh, angels. Oh, angels who have visited me. I tried a gentle right turn, then a left turn. “Okay if I roll it, sir?”
    “Sure.”
    I pulled the nose up slightly, snapped the stick to the left, and held it. The aircraft rolled 360 degrees, through inverted, and as it neared upright I centered the stick. I looked out and about and did a clearing turn to be sure no other aircraft was in sight. I rolled inverted, wings level, then pulled back on the stick and performed the second half of a loop. The maneuver is called a split S. Back straight and level, I pushed the throttles into afterburner. We jumped forward, accelerating. What a kick! I rolled it again as I pulled the throttles back out of afterburner. Those two trees on the way to New Orleans were fading into the second row of all-time exciting flying events. Lindy Land lingered.
    Lieutenant Jackson took control of the aircraft and we headed home. It was, overall, a relatively short flight because the afterburners consumed so much fuel. Back on the ground and safe inside the flight-planning room, I handed Lieutenant Jackson a dollar bill.
    My buddy Cal Starnes was about to fly. He asked how it was. I told him it was about the same as the T-37.
    “You lie.”
    “Naw, I swear. I was expecting something special, but you can tell on run-up that . . . I mean, I don’t know if it’s the insulation of the cockpit or what, but there is no feeling of power or anything, and then the burner climb-out actually felt slow.”
    Cal turned his head to the side a bit, tucked his chin, frowned. “Are you shitting me?”
    “I’m thinking about switching to helicopters.”
    A FEW MORNINGS LATER , at 0700, we all sat at tables in the main briefing room. At my table sat Starnes, Buckley, and Ferguson. Our instructors walked into the room. We stood at attention. Lieutenant Jackson approached us and said, “Be seated.” On the surface he was all business. Behind the facade was a twinkle in his eye. Looking back, I think the kindness and sentimentality he’d lost in instructor training had been replaced by a kind of nonabrasive, humorous sarcasm.
    Jackson would fly with me at 0830 and then with Ferguson at noon while the others studied. After a brief discussion of scheduling and other business, the other pilots left for the study lounge. Lieutenant Jackson and Idiscussed what would happen during my first instrument ride—the first after the dollar ride. I’d be in the backseat under a hood that extended, accordion-like, just under the canopy and over the entire backseat so that I couldn’t see outside, and with the exception of taxi and touchdown, I’d do
all
the flying. Then after weeks of learning to fly on instruments only, I’d move to the front seat and be able to look around.
    Lieutenant Jackson asked me a few emergency procedures. For example, if he said, “Engine-fire warning during flight,” I’d recite, “Throttle-affected engine retard to idle. Throttle-affected engine off if fire-warning light remains illuminated.” Then we stopped by the equipment room to pick up our helmets, G suits, and parachutes. A G suit snaps around the waist and legs and inflates when g’s are pulled. G’s are a measure of gravitational pull. During certain maneuvers (rapid pull-ups, hard turns) the pilot is pressed downward toward the bottom of the aircraft.
    It works like this: say the aircraft is cruising at 400 knots. Your body is sitting in the airplane