Pilots find pilots.
Well, we find anyone who wants to talk about airplanes.
Another pilot?
The conversation will be easy. Others may dip in, but they vacate pretty quickly.
A decade ago, I met a World War II pilot at a party.
Suddenly, there was no one else at the party.
It was a birthday party for my wife’s late grandmother. The man was her brother. While fishing around among the people I’d just met to see if anyone wanted to hear stories about being a pilot, someone suggested I go talk to Herb’s Uncle.
“He flew in World War II.”
After that, I don’t remember anyone else at the party.
He flew B-26s in Europe and he knew he’d found his guy when I said, “The Marauder? I’m glad you survived the Widow Maker.”
“Aw, it wasn’t that bad. If you knew what you were doing. Well, it did kill a lot of people. It landed fast. Not everyone liked that.”
After the war, he never flew again. It was just a job.
He told me recruiters came to the factory where he worked when the war started, asking if anyone wanted to be a pilot. He said yes.
Some of his stories were familiar to me. Others were just insane in how far removed they were from my world.
When he raised his hand to fly, they sent him down to Florida for flight school.
“And we waited for a few months, but they had no planes. Then they shipped us off to another field. No planes. And then another.”
That part of the story has never changed. There’s a lot of hurry up and wait in aviation.
But there was one story that has stuck with me the most.
He told me that after the war, he was sent to Germany to help decommission an airbase.
“We gathered up the supplies and shipped things off and basically tidied things up.”
He told me that one day, a group of French soldiers were looking for someone to fly them down to the French Riviera for some time away. They approached him because he was a pilot.
He volunteered and asked his supervisor if he could fly them down. He was given permission to fly a German plane down to drop them off.
“A German plane?!”
“Yes.”
“Had you ever flown it before?”
“No.”
“How about a German plane?”
“Nope. And I thought nothing of it.”
“Did you have to get checked out in it or anything?”
“Nope. I just flew them down. And then, after I dropped the boys off, I was told on the radio that boats were out in the water blowing up mines. If I saw any mines, I was to shoot them for ’em. So I flew in low and blew one up. I was so low that it sprayed water up onto the windshield. And the damned thing was, I couldn’t figure out where the windshield wipers were! Of all the things I couldn’t figure out on the German plane. The wipers!”
In my world, I could never imagine flying a plane I wasn’t trained on. Not needing a sign-off to fly it. Just being handed the keys.
Though he hadn’t flown in years, he still remembered the specifics of the Marauder and asked me questions about the plane I was flying at the time that only a pilot would care about.
Years separated us, but the bond of aviation drew us together.
I never had the chance to talk to him again after that, but I carry those stories with me.
I didn’t get the impression he talked much about his flying days. I hope I gave him a little charge by getting him to think about that time in his life.