“Mingaladon Tower, CAMCO sixteen rolling,” he said, and then advanced the throttle and turned forward, and moved the fuelmixture lever to the full-rich indent. The plane began to move. He felt himself pressed back against his parachute. The P40-B lifted off its tailwheel without any action on Canidy’s part. The slipstream was screaming past his cars, and he remembered only then that he hadn’t slid the canopy forward to close it. To hell with it.
Very carefully, he ruddered the ship to the center of the runway, and waited for the stick to come alive. And then, all of a sudden, it was. He inched back, and the wheels left the ground. Almost immediately, as he reached his hand out for the wheelretraction control, his right wing dipped and the ship turned right. He corrected, wondering if that had been torque or gyroscopic procession, and knowing-as he felt the sweat of terror soak his khakis-that he would never forget to be ready for that again.
The wheels came up, more slowly than he would have expected, and unevenly, so that he had to correct for the difference in drag U11til they were both in their wells. He’d been holding the same elevator position, and the angle of climb increased. But the airspeed was holding.
He thought, pleased: The sonofabitch climbs like a god damned rocket!
He took it to three thousand feet before pulling the throttle back to cruise. Then he leveled off, trimmed it up, and flew it for a couple of seconds with his hands and feet off the controls. After that he put it into a gentle climb.
He played, swinging the stick from side to side, using the rudder to make it crab through the air, getting the feel of it, until he had reached five thousand feet. He leveled off there and finally slid the canopy closed. The shrill whistle of the windstrearn was gone, and what filled the cockpit now was the dull roar of the thousand or so horses turning the three-blade prop in front of him.
A little later he pulled the stick back and climbed until he ran out of power and speed, and it stalled. It really shook when it stalled. He fell straight through it, pushed the stick forward, and waited for life to come back into it. The needle on the airspeed indicator pointed to 300, then 320, then 330, and then came to the red line at 340. He pulled back on the stick, and felt his stomach sink to his knees. There was a moment’s sensation of everything turning red, and then that passed, and he was flying level with the needle right on the red line.
“Goddamn! ” he said aloud, absolutely delighted. He took a quick look at the instrument panel to make sure all the needles were where they were supposed to be, and then put the ship first into a loop and when he came out of the loop a barrel roll, and when he still had all the airspeed he needed after that, into an Immelmann turn.
After what he thought was about ten minutes he reluctantly decided that he’d better get it back on the ground. He had been flying visually, keeping himself aware of the position of the gleaming, gold-covered Shwe Dagon Pagoda. If he could see that, he could easily find the field. rider his left wingtip at six thousand feet, He flew to it, Put it u nt to three thousand feet, for the first and made a gentle circle desce idle interest. He saw time looking at the ground with more than Rangoon sprawling to the south of the pagoda, and the river, stretching to the Gulf of Martaban. And he saw the thick, lush, deep green jungle. day was beautiful. it was beautiful. Burma was beautiful. The The P40-B was beautiful. it was, he was sure, one of the best days of his life. and got permission to land.
He called the tower The sonofabitch came in a lot faster than he thought it would, even with the flaps and wheels down, and he was much farther down the runway than he intended before he felt the bounce and heard the chirp when the wheels touched. And it took longer than he thought it would to get the tailwheel On the ground, too. The sonofabitch wanted to stand on its nose. He would have to remember that, too.