Head in the Clouds
It began when I was about 8 years old, with as simple slip of my mother’s tongue. I was asking her questions about my father, a workaholic-lawyer whom I barely knew.
In response to one of my questions, she said “Your father flew a Piper Cub.” She omitted the word “in.”
I was stunned. I had only a vague idea of what a Piper Cub was beyond “airplane,” and an airplane was a mysterious noisy something in the sky which I could see but not examine. But dad was now my hero: he could fly an airplane.
My curiosity piqued, I sponged information about airplanes. I read about, I asked about, I drew pictures of, and I absorbed airplanes. I asked Cessna and Beechcraft for catalogues, I wrote letters asking for information to Boeing, Convair, North American, and others. I began building plastic and balsa models of airplanes, and as each took shape I imagined flying in it, seeing the world from above, defying gravity and physics, and examining the tops of clouds.
The passion really “set” in me when I began to read the book Fighter Pilot, a collection of stories edited by Stanley M. Ulanoff, Major, U.S. Army Res. Real pilots told real stories about what it was like not only to fly, but to experience the feelings and emotions evoked by combat. Face to face with mortality, numbed by fear and doubt, courage and skill their only protections, they faced equals. Unconsciously, their facial expressions changed to a warrior’s scowl as they dove or soared into private combat against men exactly like themselves.
I was hooked.
In my teen years, I built airplane models, flew u-control gas-powered planes, and rode my bike 12 miles out to the Duluth airport where, if I was lucky, I might see and F-86D or F-89 land or take off, or one of the new jet airliners fly. When I was 16, I decided to build a “really nice” F-101 Voodoo, with a better paint job and fewer glue fingerprints than ever before. I succeeded and couldn’t wait to show my father. When I did, he stared at it in silence for a moment, then threw it as hard as he could against the concrete wall. He roared “Damn it! Aren’t you ever going to grow up??!! You’re still a boy playing with toys!”, and he stomped back up the stairs.
Tears in my eyes, I picked up the shards of plastic and slowly, methodically began to glue them back together. It was no longer a shattered model airplane in my hands, it was me. My tears dried as the fragments began to resemble the model again, my resolve to follow my passion. Somehow, some way, and my father be damned! From then on, I was on my own course.
In my college junior year, I saw a recruiting poster for wanna-be navy pilots. “Come take the qualification test” it said. “See if you have what it takes.” I took the test, and they said, “You qualify!” So, I enlisted in the Navy on the promise of a commission when I graduated and, in 1965, applied for flight training. I was accepted and, exhilarated, bought a Corvette and, on the way to Pensacola, picked up my girlfriend for the trip from Minneapolis. Still exhilarated, I proposed when we got to New Orleans. Very wisely, she demurred, and she flew home once we arrived. I repeated the proposal several times during the 18 months of training, always met with “I’m not ready” … until a month before I got my wings, and then to my shock and surprise, she accepted!
Our first year of marriage, I was a flight instructor in VT-25 at Beeville, Texas, flying the TF-9J. Initially, I was crushed, because after all the training, my buddies were going to fly F-4’s, A-4’s, A-6’s - all the hot-sh**/go-fast jets we all dreamt of. But it was for the best; we had our first year of marriage together, and when my 14 months were up, I chose the Grumman A-6 Intruder because it was reputed to have the most complicated and challenging mission - single-plane night and all-weather attack missions from carriers.
The A-6 had large, side-by-side cockpit with great visibility. Twin P&W J-85P8 engines meant you had two chances to get back to Home-Sweet-Carrier and, with the big wing, it proved to be a helluva dog fighter, especially against F-4’s. In 1970, we deployed on the USS America (CVA-66) to the Gulf of Tonkin and began 9 months of operations. The first week we flew day attack missions in South Vietnam, a warm-up you might say. The second week, the more experienced crews began flying night attack mission in northern Laos against truck traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail. And they returned with horror stories about the curtains of flak, the blazing anti-aircraft guns, the tracers arcing towards them from all directions, and how they pressed on regardless because it was their duty.
We “Green” crews ate it up, and in hushed conversations amongst ourselves shared our personal bravery doubts, and later in the dark, when we should have been sleeping, reflecting on our own fears, our wives and families, and life before Vietnam.
Our first night missions were acts of will. “Knowing” the fierce opposition we would soon be facing and realizing it took only one hit by a 37mm canon shell to bring an A-6 down, it was a stone-faced mechanical procedure on the catapult to firewall the throttles and salute the catapult officer to say, “I’m ready to go.” But there was no turning back by then.
Later, after the thrill of a night arrested landing back on the ship, we entered the ready-room gushing laughter and relief. We had now “flown into hell and back,” as the old hands had described it, and we had survived. As Sir Winston Churchill reflected after his experiences in the Boar War, “Nothing is so exhilarating as being shot at without result!” Now, we realized the stories about skies lit by gunfire and tracers were mostly (but not entirely) B.S. Those exaggerations were a form of initiation, creating a phantom which demanded that each of us overcome fear and doubt to be accepted and respected as a fighter pilot. That said, we did, over the course of 9 months, get shot at a lot. But we believed we were, seriously, bulletproof. Because if you ever doubted it, you would have turned in your wings. And a very few did.
Emotional support during 1970 came in the form of letters from my wife. She always was fearful of my flying and what it entailed, but she always supported me. I was not a natural or gifted pilot as some of my compatriots were, and had my ups & downs in the course of 2-1/2 years of training. For example, in the mission of the A-6, night flying was the norm and in the transition training you had to qualify by getting six night landings. On my fourth qualifying landing, I was 23’ off centerline and got a “down” for the flight. There followed a “Speedee Board” (Student Pilot Disposition Trial) in which I had to defend myself and my skill in spite of the off-center landing. Embarrassed and disheartened, I was ready to throw in the towel, but Dorothy wouldn’t let me give up and coaxed me into believing in myself again. I made it, went back to repeat the syllabus, and soon found that I enjoyed them immensely. I wound up with 2,001 flight hours, 100 day and 65 night carrier landings, and 63 combat missions.
So now it’s 1971. I’m 28 and off active duty but still flying P-2’s in the Navy Reserves. Fast forward through 53 years of sailing, motorcycling, and sports cars, to 2024.
Now, at age 81, my cousin Jim and I decide that we should take up something new: Radio controlled airplanes. Jim’s an engineer, has never flown anything, never wanted to fly anything, but he’s a good sport and gamely agrees. We start with hard-to-destroy Volantex airplanes but quickly discover that, while the airplanes are cheap, the sport is expensive because we’re having to buy a new one almost weekly. But the process of learning something entirely new is exciting and it’s fun! And I am buoyed and satisfied with the slow but steady progress of my skills. In a way, the memories of your last two or three crashes is like the Old Hands telling us war stories so that we would refuse to accept a failure to succeed. If you crash and quit, well, you were never gonna make it. Flying, more than almost anything I can imagine, presents unavoidable risk that cannot be ignored or canceled. You can take precautions, like a thorough pre-flight and careful planning, but you will always carry that bag of risk.
I’ve not accumulated a huge amount of R/C flying in the past 18 months, but it’s been great fun, and I’ve made many new friends whom I enjoy very much. Two thousand hours means nothing when you launch that first R/C airplane! If anything, your prior knowledge may help you understand why you crashed (after the fact), but it won’t do anything to prevent the next one …
I’ve joined a flying club based in Rochester, Minnesota, called the Rochester Aero Modeling Society (RAMS), and that association has been wonderful for the experience and guidance they have given me in the past year and a half. I’m all-in on this hobby, and fortunately, my wife has been just as supportive with this flying career as she was in the first one. I do my best to reciprocate, and that’s one of the gratifying aspects of our marriage.
Late in life, things like R/C flying is one of the things we can still do outside. I’m getting a knee replacement in a couple weeks (August 2025), but I flew a couple Mustangs from my walker down at the field a couple days ago, and in a month or so, I’ll be flying 2 or 3 brand new airplanes.
If you are bored, sitting too much, or have a bad back, you can still do all R/C airplanes. You can get started for $150, which will buy you everything you need in a Volantex P-51, T-28, Piper Cub, or a dozen other airplanes. I’d suggest your local Hobby Shop, but Amazon and Walmart have them too.
Then I’ll meet you at 20,000 feet with loaded guns and …
