Biplane

Vicksburg below, and there, with shadows half across its opaque brown waves, the Mississippi. A river barge, a bridge that is probably a toll bridge, and on it automobiles, and among the automobiles a sparkling of headlights coming on. Time to land, and a few miles south is the airport for Vicksburg. But the map says that there are two airports close ahead westward; if I can land at one of these I can be that much farther along my course when the sun begins its launch tomorrow.

Press on, the voice says. If you don’t find the airports you can land in a field, and find fuel farther on in the morning. The voice that speaks is the one within that always seeks adventure, and, living only for adventure, doesn’t care what happens to aircraft or pilot. Tonight, once again, it wins its case. We leave the Mississippi and Vicksburg behind, and press on. Louisiana rolls onto the map.

The land is all cut into dark squares, in which are probably growing green peppers and peas that have black eyes. And on one square grows a cluster of Wooden buildings. A town. There should be an airport here, but I can see no sign of one. It is there, of course, somewhere, but little airports can be impossible to find even in broad daylight. “Airport” is often just a word applied to a pasture, to the side of which a farmer keeps a camouflaged fuel pump. It is a recognized game and point of competition in some parts of the country: Find the Airport. Pick one of the thin blue circles on an aeronautical map, one that no player has ever seen before. Take off at five-minute intervals to find it. The winners, those that find the airport, share a week of superiority over those who may be directly overhead, yet unseeing. “That can never happen to me,” I remember saying, when first a friend suggested we play Find the Airport. “What a silly game.” But in gracious tolerance I condescended to race him to the airport.

I spent the better part of that afternoon circling above the many-pastured countryside, searching and searching, combing every single pasture, and there were many, before my wife finally saw an airplane parked on the grass and we shakily completed the game. A very official airport, too. Under the trees were not one, but two gas pumps waiting, and a row of small hangars, a restaurant, a swimming pool.

So this evening, west of the Mississippi, I do not even bother to circle. I will seek the one next airport, and, failing to find that, will land in a field and wait for the daylight.

The trees are cut far back from the road here, wide farmlands broad to each side, and farmhouses with lights coming on inside. A lonely feeling, watching those lights come on.

Ahead, a town, Rayville, Louisiana. Just to the west should be the airport. And obviously, clearly, there it is. A single narrow strip of asphalt, a short row of open hangars, a lone and tattered windsock. Crosswind. Hard surface and crosswind. But a gentle one; it couldn’t be more than five miles per hour. Surely THAT isn’t enough to pose a problem. The crosswind lesson has been a bitter one, one not easily forgotten, but it is going dark on the ground and I must make my decision quickly. If I do not land here, I must pick my field, and a good field will be difficult to choose in the shadows and I will still need the fuel in the morning. It would be good to land at Rayville. So near, only a thousand feet away from me. Yet, with the crosswind, a thousand feet is a long way away. A low pass certainly won’t hurt, one of the many voices within has suggested. And truly. Nothing to be lost by a low pass down the runway, except possibly a few minutes.

So into the pattern we go and slide down the invisible ramp of air that leads to the end of every runway ever built. Across the fence, ten feet high. Five feet. It is not good. The biplane has to crab into the wind in order to fly straight down the runway; to land like this would be a very risky thing at best. And look there, pilot. Not thirty feet from the edge of the runway, a long earth embankment paralleling. How high? Two feet? Three feet? High enough; a one-foot embankment would be high enough to shear the landing gear from the biplane were she to run off the narrow runway. And with the crosswind from that direction, that is the way she would turn. If she lost her gear, that would be the end of the

story. Propeller and engine would twist and bury themselves into the earth, the lower wing panels rip away and probably take the upper wing with them. There wouldn’t be much left. So. Decision?

I must land without hitting the embankment. I’m a good pilot, after all. Haven’t I flown almost two thousand hours in many airplanes? I have, and I’ve flown from zero miles per hour to a shade over twice the speed of sound. Surely, surely I can land an old biplane on a runway with a five-mile crosswind.

Decision made, we’re once again down the ramp, this time with intent to stop on the ground. Careful, ease it down, let the main wheels touch. Good; forward on the stick to hold those main wheels down and the rudder high in the air. Watch it watch it, she’s going to want to swing to the left, into the embankment. Nice touchdown, just a little while longer and we’ll be laughing at our fears. Here she comes, tailwheel coming down, now pull hard back on the stick to pin the tail down and hope the tailwheel steering works . . . left rudder, right rudder, full right rudder look OUT BOY SHE’S SWINGING IT’S TOO LATE I CAN’T CONTROL HER WE’RE GOING TO HIT THAT DIRT!

Well, if we’re going to hit it, we’re going to hit it hard. Full throttle stick forward and maybe we can fly off before the dirt, a chance in a hundred.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT THROTTLE WE’RE GOING TO HIT THE DIRT THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT LOOK OUT HANG ON HERE WE GO!!

In a second the biplane rolls off the runway, throttle wide open and engine roaring full power, angling sharply toward the dirt wall.

And here, in the space of another second, two people struggling within the pilot. One has given up, is certain that there is to be a big splintering crash in the next instant. The other, thinking still, playing one last card, one very last card, and now, playing, without time even to glance at the airspeed to see if the airplane will fly, slams hard back on the control stick.

The biplane points her nose up, but refuses to fly. The card player is philosophical. We played what we had and we lost. There will be a crashing sound in the next tenth of a second. Pilot, I hope you’ve learned about crosswinds.

The crash comes, and over the engine roar I can hear it, I can feel it in the controls. A dull thud at first, as though we had hit something that was very heavy but also very soft, with the left main landing gear. And then—nothing.

We’re flying!

We are just barely flying, staggering through the air above the grass over the embankment. One tenth of a second for relief, and another for shock; ahead is a barbed-wire fence and a stand of trees. The embankment would have been better. I’m going to hit those trees in full flight, I don’t have a chance of clearing them.

Here, let me have it.

It is the gambler again, taking over.

Nose down, we must put the nose down to gain flying speed. The stick inches forward in my hand, and the wheels roll in the grass. They lift again in a moment and the biplane gathers speed. Here comes the fence, and the gambler waits until the last second, gaining every bit of speed he can. Then back on the stick and the fence is cleared and no time to think a full hard right bank and we flash between two poplars, thirty feet above the ground. For a second the world is green leaves and black branches and then suddenly it is darkening blue sky.

OK, the gambler says offhandedly, you can fly it now. That is a weak hand on the control stick, but a hand that would sooner guide the biplane to landing on the highway into the wind than take another try at the crosswind runway. There must be another place to land.

Another circle of the airport and there it is. Like the prayers of the ancients answered in manna all about them, there comes for me the knowledge that the Rayville Airport has two landing strips, and the other strip is grass and it is facing into the wind. Why didn’t I notice it before?

Five minutes later the airplane is parked by the hangars and I walk along the embankment to see where the left wheel hit the dirt.

How was it possible? Even the gambler had been sure that we were going to hit the dike, and hit it very hard indeed. But we didn’t. We grazed it so softly that there is no sign left in the grass. The biplane had no reason to fly then; only a moment before, she was not even moving fast enough to hold her tail in the air. Being a big inanimate object, some would say, the biplane could not have put forth any special effort to fly. Show me aerodynamically, they could say, one single reason for that airplane to fly before it had reached its proper flying speed. And of course I cannot give one single aerodynamic reason. Then, they say, you must have had proper flying speed at the moment you pulled back on the stick. Case closed. What shall we talk about now?

But I walk away unconvinced. I may not be able to land an old biplane in a crosswind, but the other is true: I have flown airplanes for a long enough time to know what to expect from them. If the biplane, in the space of what was at the very most seventy feet, went from twenty miles per hour to full flight, it is the shortest takeoff I have made in any flying machine, save the helicopters. And I have deliberately and very studiously practiced short-field takeoffs in airplanes heavy and light. The shortest I have ever made took some 290 feet of runway and that was wheels-barely-off-the-ground, not clearing a two-foot dike of earth.

My old impossible beliefs have today been reaffirmed. The last answer to flight is not found in the textbooks of aerodynamics. If it were up to aerodynamics, the biplane would at this moment be a cluttered trail of wheels, fuselage and wingpanels angling off the runway at Rayville, Louisiana. But it is not, and stands whole and complete, without a scratch, waiting for whatever adventures will come our way tomorrow.

The clatter of a pickup truck turning onto the gravel drive of the airport. Painted dimly on its door, ADAMS FLYING SERVICE, and behind the wheel a puzzled smile beneath a widebrim Stetson turned up in front, as the Old-Timer always turns up his brim in the western movies.

“Couldn’t figure out what you were. Came over the house and I haven’t heard an engine sound like that for twenty years. Ran out and looked at you and you were too small to be a Stearman, didn’t look quite like a Waco and for sure not a Travel-Air. What the heck kind of airplane is that, anyway?”