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Test Pilot

Chapter 29: BUILDING THROUGH
By James Collins
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About This Book

A former army aviator presents a collection of personal essays and reports recounting his rise from modest origins through flight training to a career as a test and stunt pilot. Chapters mix technical descriptions of dive testing, aerial combat, and cross-country flying with vivid accounts of crashes, near-misses, and efforts to refine aircraft performance. Interwoven are reflections on the physical and psychological demands of flying, the teamwork and rivalry among pilots, and the pull of danger that motivates high-risk testing. The narrative alternates between autobiographical memoir, incident-driven stories, and practical observations about piloting technique, safety, and the culture of early aviation.

BUILDING THROUGH

A pilot should never be too stubborn with an airplane. I learned that early, fortunately, without coming to grief in the process.

Another pilot criticized my flying once. He criticized the way I was making my take-offs. Kidlike and cocky, just out of flying school, I took a foolish way of proving he was wrong. But he had me so riled by his caustic and nasty remarks about how I was going to kill myself if I kept that up that I flung out a challenge to him and felt I had to keep my attitude even when I saw I was overdoing the thing and thought I was going to crack up.

“If you think my take-offs are so dangerous,” I told him, “I’ll just go out there and cut my gun in the most dangerous spot of this dangerous take-off and land safely back in the airport.” And I stalked out, fuming, and got in the ship.

I took off toward the high trees at the end of the field, didn’t let the ship climb very steeply approaching the trees, and banked just before I got to them—exactly like I had been doing on the take-offs he had been criticizing. But I also pulled up sharply, just to make it worse. I didn’t want him to have any comeback. I cut the gun and started dropping back in over the trees into the airport. I should have put the nose down a little to cushion the drop, but I was mad. I’d show him the worse way. I wanted to gun it because I was dropping hard, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

I hit like a ton of bricks. The ship groaned and bounced as high as a hangar. Luckily, it was a square hit and a square bounce. That’s the only reason I didn’t spread the ship all over the field. It hit and bounced again and rolled to a very short stop for a down-wind landing.

“All right,” I told the guy when I crawled out of the ship, “you go out now and cut your gun just over the trees on one of your safe, straight take-offs. You won’t have a turn started and already pretty well developed, and you won’t have room enough to start one. You’ll pile into the trees in a heap, and if that’s safer than landing on the airport in one piece, then I’ll admit that your take-offs are safer than mine.”

He didn’t dare and he knew it. So he just glared at me, knowing damned well, as I knew myself, that I should by all rights have cracked up on that landing. But I had him, and he shut up and didn’t make any more cracks about me.