Second Wind Part 22

Nothing but winning would have pleased his bullish att.i.tude to racing, and I thought Oliver Quigley literally to be invit/!

Ling trouble when in Caspar's hearing he said that given his training methods and his instructions to the jockey, the horse would have won.

By the end of six races, when Kris and I went back to the airfield to fly home, the extra physical demands of the past ten days had drained my normally perceptive self to the equivalent of a worn-out battery. We spent long minutes on farewells to most of the Newmarket contingent in the car park nearest to the landing ground, and I was dozing even when Kris was taxiing down the field for takeoff. He changed fuel tanks ostentatiously. I pretended not to notice.

On this Sat.u.r.day, late in the year for daylight landings, Kris had arranged with his friend in the control tower at White Waltham to put car-battery-powered lamps down the runway to shine a path for his quiet approach and arrival at about five o'clock, half past toast and teatime.

We were in the air and a long way south of Doncaster when Kris shook me awake.

"Sorry, " I said, yawning and reaching for the map. "Where are we? " It was still just light enough to see the three Rs, roads, rivers and railways. "No problem with those, " I said. He always flew a straight heading.

Kris however wasn't worrying about being lost but about oil on the windshield, he said.

"What? " I asked blankly.

"Oil. On the windshield. Perry, wake up. " It was the urgency of those last three words that sharply reached my senses. I did wake up. My heart lurched.

There were dark gold thread like lines on the windshield, which as I watched were joined by more lines, which were running and spreading upwards over the gla.s.s.

Horrified, we both understood what was happening. The hot oil that should have been circulating inside the engine case, lubricating the four thundering pistons, was somehow coming out into the engine compartment itself, and from there it was sliding upwards and backwards in droplets through the engine cowling's crack like edges to hit the gla.s.s of the windshield..

and from there, gradually to spread and cover the whole windshield with oil... and so, effectively, blind the pilot.

The oil itself wasn't the dirty brown-black old stuff that had been cleansing inner engine surfaces for many hours of flight. Kris always looked after his pride and joy, and he had changed his oil regularly. The disaster on the windshield had been clean for the Newmarket lunch.

"G.o.d Almighty, " Kris said. "What the h.e.l.l do we do now? " "Keep straight on our course, " I said automatically, "so we know where we are. " "That's the easiest. What if all the oil comes out? The engine will go dry and seize up. " Kris suddenly sounded comically unconcerned. "And how do we land, if we can't see where we're going? " "Can we break the windshield? " I suggested.

"Get with it, Perry. " He was both sarcastic and fatalistic.

"The windshield's made of toughened gla.s.s to withstand bird strike

And even if we could break it--and what with--we'd have our faces cut to ribbons, and we'd need goggles as in the old Tiger Moth days, and even then we'd be going too fast, it would be like facing a Category 3 hurricane wind, it can't be done. " "Forget it, " I said, "keep our course and height. We'll have to find a large public commercial airport open late on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. " "Oh great. " He glanced across at me. "How do we find one of those? " "It's a doddle.

"With immense thankfulness I took note that this time we were sensibly in contact by radio with the outside world, as we did have an aeronautical map giving the radio frequencies of airports. We didn't have parachutes or ejector seats--couldn't have everything.

"You keep straight, " I told Kris. "I'll get us down to an airfield. " "You get us down, " he repeated, making a joke of it, "and I'll crash. " Such a d.a.m.ned stupid way to die, I thought. Blinded by oil... the only thing worse would be to switch on the windshield wipers, which would fatally smear the oil into a thick continuous curtain, whereas now it was just possible to see through the thread lines to the ground far beneath.

Far... Kris was giving in to the temptation of losing height so as to see the ground better, but height gave us a better chance of clear radio reception by any airfield.

"Go back up, " I said coaxingly.

"It's my b.l.o.o.d.y airplane. " "It's my b.l.o.o.d.y life. " We needed a big airport as soon as possible, and fortune smiled on us for once. I asked Kris dryly if he had any objection to Luton, almost dead ahead.

"You're joking! A real live airport? Not so much of the dead. " I told the area radio controller about the oil and said we would aim for Luton, approximately only thirty miles away.

There was an incredulous silence at Luton at our lack of any radio aid except radio itself, and we got only a laid back a.s.sessment of our chances (slim) from a useful man in Luton's control tower, who said he could put us over the runway and clear everything else off it, and after that it was up to us.

He gave us a private frequency for talking to him direct, so as not to clutter other air traffic.

"On second thoughts, better than trains, perhaps, " Kris yelled to me, grinning, manic spirits ascendant in the actual face of mortal danger.

I said, "A suicidal pilot is the last thing I need! " "It may be the last thing you get. " "I'll never forgive you... " The man at Luton said in our ears,

"We've an old D/F machine here.

Do you know how to fly a QDM? " Kris said, "Sure, " and I said, "Yes, " but we should both have correctly said, "Affirmative, " which would still not, in my case, have been the truth. D/F meant Direction Finding and QDM was an air code asking for a direction to steer, and that was the extent of my own knowledge. Kris, I thanked the fates, muttered that he had done a QDM approach once, years before, when he had got lost.

Did he remember the procedure?

Not clearly, he said. A joke, he thought it. He typically would.

Our helper at Luton resignedly told Kris to press the "transmit" b.u.t.ton and say nothing, then turn left and after two minutes transmit again, and he told us he now knew which blip we were on his dial, and he knew what we should steer to reach him, but he couldn't tell how far away we were from him, and he wouldn't know until he could see us on his doorstep.

He might see us, we told him, but we couldn't see him.

Oil seemed to be coming out faster. Forward visibility had reduce-d pretty much to zero. The side windows were starting to fog, with droplets blowing backwards in streaks.

We traveled straight to Luton airport with his expert help, Kris again flying on instruments as if born to it and telling weak jokes all the way. Lights were starting to show on the ground in the still see-through bit of gla.s.s along the lower edge of the side windows. Kris's stream of jokes dried as the radio operator carefully steered him round in a pear shaped sky pattern that ended with the Cherokee lined up with the single wide runway that now lay a mile straight ahead.

The runway ran from west to east. We were to land towards the west, into the prevailing wind.

To my private dismay, landing to the west meant also facing into the setting sun. The last rays of sunset hit the oil and made the windshield a glowing golden enclosing glory, exciting and beautiful and more deadly than ever.

"Jeez, " Kris said, "I'll write a poem. " "Not just now. " "Say your prayers. " "You keep your mind on getting us down. " "We'll get down anyway. " "Safely, " I said.

He grinned.

The voice from the control tower said in our ears, "I see you clearly. Lower flaps... descend to two hundred feet...

maintain heading... allow for a ten-knot cross wind from the left... " Kris checked that I'd set the altimeter to match the height of Luton's airfield above sea level and lowered the flaps, the wing sections that gave greater lift at slow speed.

"This isn't Odin, " he said. "Pity really. We could do with a nice warm sea here for a splash-down landing. " I'd thought the same. The oil was thicker on the windows, and getting progressively worse.

"You're about a hundred feet up, " the radio said in my ear. "The runway's straight ahead. Can you see the ground at all? " "Can I, s.h.i.t, " Kris said, which wasn't in the air manual.

He throttled back the power to settle onto his normal landing speed and held the heading straight.

The tower said,

"Stay straight... good... reduce power...

no, increase power... hold it steady... reduce power..

sink... straighten the rudder. I said straighten...

straighten. " Traveling at landing speed we hit the ground extremely hard and bounced back into the air with every bone shaking, with even our eyes insecure in their sockets.

Our airspeed read eighty miles an hour on the dial and was now dropping too fast. At sixty we'd be going too slowly for the wings to keep us aloft.