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Test Pilot

Chapter 34: IT’S A TOUGH RACKET
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.

IT’S A TOUGH RACKET

The hazards of a pilot’s life are sometimes different than some people suppose.

For instance, I flew some people to a ranch in Mexico once. I fought bad weather most of the way from New York to Eagle Pass on the Border, skimming mountains and swamps, and then flew eighty miles of barren mountain and desert country to the ranch house.

They insisted the next day that I go out hunting with them. That meant that I had to ride a horse. I had ridden a horse once before in my life and remembered it as the most uncomfortable means of transportation ever invented by man.

But I went with them. I even began to like it after we had been out a while. I discovered that you could wheel the horse around in a running turn and that it was almost like banking an airplane around. I was having pretty good fun experimenting until I noticed that a certain portion of my anatomy was getting very warm, and then, soon, that it was getting very tender. Pretty soon I began to think that we would never get back to the ranch house. When we finally did, my pants and my anatomy were brilliantly discolored. And when I went to take the pants off, I noticed that quite a bond had developed between me and them, quite an attachment indeed! They were stuck fast and could be persuaded away from me only with their pound of flesh.

I decided that I would stick to my airplane after that. But the next day, I discovered that my airplane was uncomfortable too—and I had to make a five-hour flight to Mexico City.

When I got to Mexico City everything was uncomfortable, and I had to eat my dinner off the mantelpiece that night. There was an additional humiliation. The doctor had to undress me. He had to use plenty of hot oil and go very easy.