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Hatfield -> RE: Hatfield's little corner of the WWW (8/7/2005 12:34:16 AM)
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Good evening friends!
I feel led to post, but I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be saying, so forgive me if I ramble for a little bit. After posting this whole thing I posted the night before last. It felt really odd to me that I had "put that out there," but in another sense, it felt good as well.
My Writing
I guess part of what I like about this little adventure in blogging is that I have a chance to practice my writing. With very little exception, it is a very rare thing for me to edit what I'm writing. Most of the time I'll only even think to use a spell checker AFTER I've posted the final form...but, that's what EDIT buttons are for huh?[;)]
My mother writes, though with the exception of her childhood memoirs (see my earlier posts), her writing is almost exclusively poetry. Very inspired poetry if I dare say so!
My writing on the other hand tends more to short stories and novellas. I still have one of my very first stories:
Flight of the Blue Eagle
Since the beginning of my life, all I’ve ever wanted to be was a pilot. Of course, these days there are about as many fighters as there are sailing ships (which is to say, not many). My sister used to think that I was dumb for wanting to do that. I didn’t care. Big sisters always think their little brothers are dumb. Might as well deal with it.
What got me interested in flying? Well, one summer when I was about nine years old, I got a chance to take a try at one of those old simulators… you know the ones, they used them to train Air Force fighter pilots after the second Persian Gulf war. Anyway, Jimmy Allen and I were with a tour group at the old Grissom Air Force Base near Peru Indiana when the tour guide asked if anyone would like to try out one of the old simulators. At first I didn’t want to, but Jimmy talked me into it. The guide told us there was nothing to be afraid of. The computers they had flying these things did just about everything for you but aim at the target. He strapped us into the pilot seats, and showed us where the controls were… you know, the control stick, the bomb release, radio controls, all that stuff.
So here I am, sitting in this simulator thinking, what am I gonna do now?? Jimmy thinks we’re actually going to fly this thing, I think we’re going to crash (I know it’s a simulation, but I think I’d rather actually crash than to get out of this thing after a simulated crash and have all my friends laughing at me). Just then, the guide starts talking to us on the radio headsets that we were wearing. He says that he’s got a secret that he didn’t share with us outside because it was for pilots only. He explained that not only would the simulator help us fly the plane, it would also keep us from crashing! Boy was I relieved! By the time we got done, we were going to look like we really knew how to fly.
The guide took us through everything we needed to do. Setting the throttles to the starting position, setting the engine igniters, engaging the brakes…he told us everything. Then he says, “OK boys, are you ready for the greatest feeling in your life?” Jimmy pipes up, “You bet I am!” I don’t know why, but somehow I knew to say, “That’s a Roger!” The guide started laughing for a second then says, “Sounds like we got a real pilot in there already!” I didn’t know why he thought that was so funny, but adults are hard to figure out sometimes.
As we went through the start up procedures, you hear the engines fire up and this deep rumbling starts shaking a little bit. The screen in front of us lights up and I find myself looking down a runway. But its not the old cracked up overgrown runway that is outside. Its nice and clean and well kept with a white line running down the middle. The guide tells us that in just a moment he’s going to turn on the outside speakers so that everyone else can hear what’s going on. He tells us that when he says to do something we should repeat it back. If he says, “Blue Eagle, turn left bearing 43 degrees,” we should say, “Roger tower. Blue Eagle turning left, mark 43.” He also gives us some other things to say to make it sound official. It was kind of weird, but it was fun. So then the guide says, “OK boys, I’m turning on the speakers now. Anything you say now your friends outside will hear.”
Here was the time I had been waiting for and I hadn’t even known it until then. Jimmy turns on his microphone and says, “Tower, this is Blue Eagle. Preflight check is green and we are requesting clearance for take off, runway 2 right.” The guide responds, “Roger Blue Eagle, you are clear for take off, runway 2 right.” It was kind of hard to describe. I know that the simulator was really doing most of the work, but I felt like I really knew what I was doing. I knew that when you moved the stick a certain way that the plane would do what you wanted it to. As the simulator sent us down the runway, I could feel when was the right time to pull back on the stick to make the fighter take off. I felt like I could have flown a real fighter.
The guide came over the radio, “Base to Blue Eagle, radar shows a bogey at your 10 o’clock position at 5000 feet, do you copy?” It took me a second to remember that a “bogey” was what they called an enemy fighter. “Roger tower, radar shows the bogey at our 10 o’clock, we are turning to engage.” I shoved the control stick to the left, pulling it back to climb to meet the other plane at 5000 feet. While I’m doing this, the guide is explaining that all I need to do is follow the instructions on the CRT in front of me. Looking at the screen, there are instructions rolling across the bottom. Select weapon. I could choose from air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, radar reflective chaff bundles or a 50mm machine gun. As there were no air-to-ground missiles listed onboard, that meant that this would not be a bombing run. I chose the air-to-air missiles. Lock on radar guidance. I pushed the button for that under the screen and heard a tone in my headset. The guide quickly explained that that was the radar attempting to lock on to the other plane. When radar lock on was achieved, I would hear a beeping sound and should fire my missile. No sooner had he said that when, “BEEP BEEP BEEP !!” He didn’t warn me it was going to be that loud!
I looked down at my screen to see the other plane with a flashing box around it. Jimmy starts shouting, “Fire it Eddie! Hit it, hit it!” So I hit the fire button. There’s this flash of smoke off the right wing and for just a second I see the missile moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen. I looked down at my CRT and it shows a dot moving toward the image of the other plane. The other pilot tries to steer away, but the missile turns with him and then BAM! At the bottom of the screen is the message Target destroyed. The other plane is gone and the CRT is blank.
The guide comes over the headsets and says, “Well boys, that went pretty smoothly. Congratulations, you have just made the world safe for democracy once again.” There is a pause on the other end for a minute, then the guide comes back on. “OK boys, let’s see what you can really do with this thing.” As he’s saying this, a new message comes up on my screen: Multiple incoming targets bearing 23.7 degrees. As soon as Jimmy saw that he says, “Aw CRUD Eddie, lets get out of here!!” I looked over my shoulder at Jimmy, he was white as a sheet. “Jimmy, you’re the one that thought this would be such a fun idea, let’s give it a try.” Then I cover my mike so the others don’t hear and said, “Besides Jimmy, I think this tour guide is trying to see how badly he can scare us. He said this thing can almost fly itself, lets see what we can figure out to do with it.” Jimmy nodded like he would go along with the idea, but he didn’t look like he was too happy with it.
“Jimmy, you take the flight controls, I’m going to see about those other planes.” I said as I let loose of the controls and took a look at the stuff in front of me. There was a computer terminal with a small keyboard tucked in beside me. It displayed on the CRT in front of me. Finally something I knew about, a computer! I accessed the full menus for what we had available to us. Five air-to-air missiles left after the one I used earlier, 5000 rounds of armour piercing 50mm machine gun ammo (I’m sure that could do some serious damage) and ten bundles of radar reflective chaff (used to break radar lock by an enemy’s incoming missile. It scatters the radar signal so it can’t read a possible target…meaning us). Not much, but I wasn’t given much choice. I took another look at the radar screen. There were four planes spread out ahead of us. Hopefully we wouldn’t look all that threatening with one lonely little fighter plane. “Jimmy, get me some altitude. I want to get above these guys.” I had always remembered the time that the school bullies had ambushed Jimmy and I on our way home. They were hiding at the top of old man Gruber’s hill when we came by on our way to Jimmy’s house. As we came into view, suddenly we were getting hit with mud bombs, rocks and anything they could get their hands on. MAN did that hurt!
We climbed through 7000 feet, I kept my eye on the radar as I set up my next missile when the radar gave me a lock. “Jimmy, do you remember the day that Nick Hoogen and his pals pelted us from Gruber Hill? Well guess what? I think Nick and his buds are down there in those planes. Jimmy, its payback time!” Looking back at Jimmy, the smile on his face was all I needed to see. Jimmy took the plane into a rolling dive that pointed the nose right at the four specks below us. BEEP BEEP BEEP! I had a lock on from the radar! “Fire #2!” Jimmy shrieked gleefully. I launched the second missile, watching it flash briefly off the left wing before returning my attention to the CRT. I selected the 50mm machine gun. I had 5000 rounds, this thing could shoot somewhere around 100 rounds a second, which meant that I had to be careful how long I held the trigger or I’d be out of ammo in less than a minute. I looked out of the windshield just in time to see the second missile find its target, man what a fireball!
“OK Jimmy, the guy thats turning away to the right, follow him!” As Jimmy pulled the stick over and went after the guy, I brought the computer’s aiming grid onto the Heads Up Display (HUD). It is a handy thing to have really. It projects the aiming grid on the windshield so that when I’m looking out at where we’re going I can see where the guns are aimed. “Just a little bit closer Jimmy…” I lined up the aiming grid on the exhaust flame of the next plane. Squeezing the trigger, a line of tracer bullets leapt away from my plane until they made contact with the other planes exhaust. At first I didn’t think anything had happened, then black smoke poured out of the other plane as it suddenly lost control and dove for the countryside below.
Two down, two to go. I had been distracted from the radar while I shot the other plane down, now I was having trouble finding our last two targets. I checked the radar just in time to see them both pulling in behind us. Now there was a different tone in my headset and the words Scanning for lock flashed on the computer screen. They were trying to get a lock on us! “Jimmy, try to lose them! Give me a hard right and then pull straight up!” Jimmy did, and I almost wish he hadn’t. The force of the right turn was so hard that my helmet whacked the left side of the cockpit. It felt kinda like when you whack your head on a low doorway or something. As I strained against the g-forces to look at the radar, I saw that one of them had been totally surprised by the move. The other one hadn’t, but he reacted too slowly and was working to catch up with us. This time it was Jimmy’s turn to have a big idea. “Eddie, hang on. I’m going to pull us through a loop before this guy catches us, and then we’re going to go after the other one.”
“Do it Jimmy!” I said as I started looking for our target. There he was! “OK Jimmy, we got him now.” I started scanning for a radar lock. BEEP BEEP BEEP! As I launched the third missile, I thought to myself, this is too easy. Me and my big-mouthed brain! Just as the missile was approaching the target, suddenly there was this gray cloud behind the plane. Jimmy said, “Chaff bundles! He’s using chaff bundles to break our radar lock. Aww man!” The chaff did its job though. The missile fell harmlessly to earth. I could just imagine it blowing about 100 feet of simulated soil from some simulated farmer’s simulated field. Though I admit, that would have to be a good simulation!
Jimmy, take us up again. I want to get this guy from a direction that he can’t use chaff bundles.” So up we went, and this time, we came out of the clear blue sky I decided to see how well his plane could fly with the nose shot off. I selected the machine gun and when the targeting sights appeared on the windshield I lined it up and hit just in front of the windshield cutting the nose of the plane off like the head of a fish. The first couple of tries I didn’t quite get it. On the third try I finally got it. I didn’t actually shoot the nose off, but I think I busted up about everything inside the plane, including the pilot. There wasn’t too much to it going down, it just veered away from us and headed for the fields below.
Before I had a chance to even think about what might be next, there was a tone in my headset that told me the other plane—the last plane—had slipped in behind us and was trying to get a radar lock on us. I turned to look at Jimmy. Before I could say anything he said, “And I think now would be a good time to get the heck outta Dodge!” Jimmy reached down and pushed the throttle controls all the way into the afterburners. We were moving so fast and so suddenly that I felt that we had been launched on one of our missiles. I looked down at the radar. While the other pilot had been surprised by our move, he was moving quickly to catch up to us. “Jimmy, DO something,” I said through gritted teeth. Jimmy wasn’t even paying any attention to me. “Eddie in just a minute, I’m going to hit the speed brakes. That’s going to slow us way down. Get the radar up and running now. When we slow down this guy’s going to come past us like we’re standing still. As soon as you get a lock on him, let him have it with everything you have.” Looking over at Jimmy I say, “I think this is where I say, ‘That’s a Roger!’”
As soon as I had the radar going, I let Jimmy know. “OK Eddie, here we go! 3-2-1…NOW!” Jimmy popped the flaps on the wings and the plane slowed down so fast I was thrown into my safety harness straps. Sure enough, the other plane came over the top of us just barely missing us. BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!! The radar locked onto him! I fired off two missiles and for extra measure, I let him have it with the last of my machine gun ammo (Okay, so I got a little carried away). Actually, I think the first missile might have been enough. From what I could see, our move surprised him so that he didn’t have a chance to throw any chaff bundles. Both missiles went right into the back of the plane, and the bullets were pretty much just wasted. I had to admit though; I was really surprised by how well that had worked.
Just then, the guide came over our headsets (I’d almost forgotten about him). “Tower to Blue Eagle, excellent job! Please return to base. You are cleared to land on 4 left.”
“Roger tower, Blue Eagle returning to base.” Jimmy said. Covering up his microphone, Jimmy asked me, “Hey Eddie, since you did the take off, can I land it?” “Sure Jimmy,” I said, “I think I’ve had enough flying for one day.” Jimmy landed the plane, being coached in by our guide and the computer. When we got out of the plane, our classmates were there and they were cheering. That was definitely a first for me.
Our guide came over and said, “I told you boys that would be a blast! You did pretty good out there too.” Jimmy accepted the compliment for both of us saying, “That computer flying those other planes must have been the greatest thing around back then. It almost seemed as if we were flying against real pilots.”
The guide smiled. “But the computer wasn’t flying the other planes. The computers were good, but they weren’t that good. Computers could never think intuitively like people do. They couldn’t guess or play a hunch.” Jimmy seemed a little confused, but then, so was I. I asked, “So, if the computers weren’t flying the other planes—who was?” The guide paused a moment and said, “Well lets have everyone come out and meet each other.” Four doors on simulators on the other side of the room opened up. “Boys, let me introduce you to the members of Falcon Squad.” Standing across from us were Nick Hoogen, and his pals Chuck Hanlor, Timmy Lee and Bob Thomas. I swallowed twice in a dry throat. They really had been flying those other fighters!
From that day forward, something told me life would never be the same….
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