Testimony of Pilot #6
An experienced aviator through his own eyes seeing and telling another aviator’s story of a dark and stormy night over the ocean most certainly more than qualifies for a “this is no s…t” testimony. With more night flying and night carrier landings than I ever needed, the selection from Dan Hampton’s THE Flight really strikes home and is spot on for this series.
THE Flight Chapter Six – Excerpts
THE EMPIRE OF THE NIGHT
by Dan Hampton
… THE LAST GATE is closing behind me. I’ve reached the point where real navigation must begin.
… as Slim stares out at the lonely black Atlantic, New York seems another world: chatting with the mechanics in the drafty hangar, eating a hot meal, writing letters. Right now it’s after 8 P.M. back in New York and there are folks dressed for dinner, or off to see a Broadway show, as he had done the night before takeoff. Others would be visiting with family, as he had the prior week. Arriving from Detroit, Lindbergh’s mother, Evangeline, had spent May 14 on Long Island, then left, satisfied that her son knew what he was doing. How strange was the fate that had put him here. Now he was alone in this frail cotton-and-steel cocoon over a dark ocean while millions of others around the world were warm and safe. People were doing all those mundane tasks that constitute most of life, and are so seldom appreciated unless one realizes it can all be lost. In his case, very quickly. Would anyone remember him? His whole life summed up in a few lines of newsprint to be read, then forgotten.
Shifting and stretching, Slim checks the gauges again. Continue reading
