Read Solo for Free Online Page B

a.m. Wednesday (Thurs.?)—next day
    Have been in meetings and filling out forms since 7 this morning.
    Things so far have been informal, relaxed and friendly.
    I have found out good news about my pay. My gross pay is $451.78 a month. After taxes, etc. are subtracted I will get total of $382.12.
    I am getting a $10,000 life insurance policy for $2 (two) dollars per month.
    I wonder if my parents ever mentioned the insurance policy to each other. I wonder if they already had feelings, beliefs, and fears about what I considered “a small war.”

The T-41
    T HE T-41 WAS THE Air Force designation for a small, slightly modified Cessna 172 airplane much like the Piper Cherokee I’d flown back in North Carolina.
    My T-41 instructor was Mr. Washburn, one of the civilians hired to train us at the outset, to weed out the nonfliers. He was only a few years older than I.
    Our flight training was from the local airport in Laredo, off base. Every day we’d load up in a bus and head that way. Our training-class designation was 68-C. There were about fifty of us, divided into two squadrons, each with its own set of commanders, pilot instructors, and academic instructors. One group attended academic classes in the mornings while the other group flew. In the afternoons we switched.
    We were getting some military training during our flying sessions as well. Besides calling our instructors “mister,” we stood at attention when the instructors walked into the room together at the start of each flying day. Ourshoes were shined. We weren’t allowed to wear boots with our flight suits (drab gray, one-piece suits with zippered pockets here and there on the chest and legs and a small pocket for cigarettes and pencils on the upper left arm) until we flew in the T-37, the little jet trainer we’d fly after finishing the T-41. And after we soloed the supersonic T-38, we’d get to wear a scarf—red polka dots on white for my squadron, sky blue for the other squadron. Wearing the scarf was the last and best uniform change before getting our wings, the silver emblem that we’d wear pinned over the left coat pocket of our dress blues and that would be sewn onto our flight suits in the same place.
    We fledglings stood waiting for the bus every day, scarfless, wearing, of all things, plain black shoes, watching other student pilots walk by—guys wearing boots, or boots
and
scarves. We were at the bottom of the totem pole. We weren’t even training on base. We had to ride the bus out to the damn
Laredo Airport
every day.
    We were graded (Fail, Fair, Good, Excellent) on each flight, and we took academic tests every week or so. Academic subjects included navigation, weather, aircraft systems (the word
airplane
was a no-no), radar navigation, and use of radios.
    My training with Mr. Washburn was similar to that which I’d had with Mr. Vaughn, but more formal and structured. And Mr. Washburn, unlike Mr. Vaughn, was athletic, cocky, and a tad sarcastic. He liked to show off.
    During an early flight, he set a Zippo lighter on the instrument panel of the T-41. It sat there while he flew straight and level, no problem. Then he started a climbingturn to initiate a lazy eight. If the maneuver is performed correctly, with just the right rudder and yoke movements, then no left or right pressures (slipping and sliding) are felt in the cockpit, and the Zippo stands upright on the instrument panel—even while the aircraft is in              a              ninety-degree banked, descending turn, that is, with one wing pointed straight down toward the ground as the aircraft falls and turns. Eventually, after several weeks, I could do the same trick. About half the time.
    We had a spot-landing contest (to see who can land nearest a painted spot on the runway), and Doug Blockner won it. Doug was clearly the nerdiest of all of us. He was an excellent pilot who’d had lots of flying experience before entering the Air Force. But for some