Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [47]
Mr. Shivers had familiarized me with the controls and the basics of flying before he suddenly bailed out. Apparently, my new instructor thought I was about ready to solo because she emphasized emergency landings in our first couple of flights together. Undoubtedly, her thought was that before she sent Cadet Barker up alone, it was her responsibility to prepare him to get back down safely in case the engine of his Taylorcraft conked out. I learned that in an emergency, the pilot should immediately spot a place on the ground where it would be as safe as possible to land his plane.
Now, my instructor didn’t tell me what I am about to write. She didn’t even hint at it. This was my own idea: If I were flying over a forest or a city, finding a place to land an airplane in an emergency could indeed pose a problem, but because I was flying over Iowa, it was no problem. There were excellent landing fields in every direction. In fact, that’s all there were—beautiful open fields. Besides, I had a backup position. We always wore parachutes, and parachutes are for jumping. Jumping was exactly what I would do if there was a really serious problem. Let the airplane get down on its own!
In any event, the fateful day for my solo flight arrived. An instructor doesn’t tell a student, “Tomorrow you’ll solo.” The poor student probably wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. The accepted way for an instructor to solo a student is to take the student up for a routine lesson, at the same time checking to see if the would-be soloist is behaving in a reasonably sane manner that day. If the cadet’s behavior justifies the risk, the instructor has the cadet return to the airfield, where the instructor gets out of the airplane, and almost casually but with an air of complete confidence, tells the future ace, “OK, take it around by yourself.”
That is precisely what my instructor did. When she said, “Take it around by yourself,” she meant for me to take off, fly once around the field in the landing pattern, and land the plane, hopefully without unpleasant incident.
I’m delighted to report that I did my instructor proud. As I was flying, I thought: “Here I am, a nineteen-year-old kid who had never been up in an airplane until a few weeks ago, and now I am up here flying this thing all by myself. The United States Navy has worked a miracle.” I was elated.
I made a nice three-point landing, navy style, taxied to the hangar, shut off the engine, jumped out of the plane, and gave my instructor a big kiss right on the lips. It was a lot more fun than kissing Mr. Shivers would have been.
• • •
After learning to fly a Taylorcraft at Iowa State University, I headed south for the University of Georgia and what the navy called preflight school. At preflight we put flying aside again and concentrated on ground school and physical conditioning. Our day was to consist of four hours of books and four hours of bruises. But, as I shall explain, I lucked out.
The navy had four preflight schools in the United States: the University of Georgia, where I went; St. Mary’s in California; the University of Iowa (not to be confused with Iowa State University, where I soloed); and the University of North Carolina. These preflight schools were notorious throughout the navy for being tough, both in the ground school and in physical training—particularly the physical training program.
Both at William Jewell and Iowa State University, the athletic instructors had warned us that if we thought it was tough with them, just wait until we got to preflight school, and it was