1957
The new country house is located about 45 miles east of Paris. We have a privileged life and love this week-end shelter-like place. An hour and half away from the big town, getting there is our reward for long week-ends amongst old books, rose bushes, cats while the three kids run around and make a general nuisance of themselves.
The “Art of Piloting”! A book by aviation writers MONTVILLE and COSTA, a 1955. An old blue coloured cover page bearing the drawings of a wind-socket, what I believe is a seagull of some kind, and the contour of a cloud, all of it inviting imagination. I found the book on one of my dad’s bookshelves between two other books in Polish language. Everything is explained in it with incredible drawings, sketches and various skilful calculation. Roll, pitch and Yaw is also described using different colours, aircraft fuselage and wings manufacturing techniques are also generously explained.
(Turn and bank indicator: a source of conflict with the instructor)
What? Aircrafts are made of wood and canvas? How can they fly? How is the canvas attached to the wings? Plenty of questions come to my mind. Three kilometres away from the house is the small Coulommiers-Voisins airfield used during last war by the Luftwaffe as a base for one of its night fighter squadron.
The DC-3 of the Air Postal service often fly over the house during pilot’s training. The flying is so low that I can clearly see the registration of the airplanes under their wings. The terrifying noise of the two Wright Cyclone engines both scare and fascinate me. In July of 1962, one of the airplane (F-BAOE) will crash shortly after leaving the ground. One of its wings got clipped by a truck passing on the road crossing the axis of the active runway about two hundred feet after the threshold.
Half of the fuselage is found in a cornfield, the rest with five victims out of the eight pilots on board, is spread over several hundred square meters.
( Engineers of the US 425th night fighter squadron rehabilitate Coulommiers airfield during september of 1944. The airfield was a former Luftwaffe base for night fighters of the 4th Nightfighting group of the German Air Force)
Sometimes during week-ends, my father invites for a visit a business associate who flies over from Marines in the north of Paris, to Coulommiers in his STAMPE SV4. I Love the smell of hot engine oil and aviation gasoline. Starting-up the airplane is done using a compressed air cartridge but if more than five attempts are needed, the cartridge has to be renewed. There are so many things that I do not understand, there are so many things that I love to see, especially when an aircraft leaves the ground. I don’t know it yet, but I have been contaminated by the virus of aviation! I am still infected at this date.
1969 « Landing gear, air-brakes? » N/A! “Controls?” Free and moving! “Engine oil”? Quantity checked ok « Electricity? » Magnetos 1 and 2 Off! « Fire extinguisher? » N/A « Visibility? Outside visibility checks. No tools on wings! “Fuel?” Required quantity on board. Fuel quantity visually checked « Settings? » Altimeter Zeroed, trim tab adjusted for take-off, carburettor heating on cold!
A couple of fuel injections and I would open the small window cut in the altuglass canopy.
“Brakes are set, controls full back position, magnetos 1 and 2 on, ready to start”
Then the man outside would swing the propeller, one two or three times, the 65 horsepower Continental engine would come to life and my old and decrepit Wassmer Jodel D112 airplane was ready to fly. The CACB aero-club used a single big old generation hangar where airplanes and gliders alike would be stored during the night. I remember the old C.800 Caudron sailplanes, the Rallye “Commodore” and above all the old Fieseler Storch, an observation airplane probably forgotten there by the Luftwaffe in 1944.
Besides me is flight instructor Roger T. (his family name started with a T, but most of the time for me, the T meant Tyrant!)
Roger works during the week at the Aerospatiale plant in Saint-Nazaire, close to Nantes. On week-ends, he trains idiots like me to become pilots and hopefully develop and nurture their passion for aviation. He is a perfectionist and tortures me for hours “Watch your turn- and- bank, watch your speed.
"Check your yaw, why do you pitch? You call this an approach? Are you a total idiot? Where do you want to go? What are you doing to this engine? For Christ sake, look at you speed! » But Roger is not always that bad. He taught me not to long ago how to “skid” or “slip” during approach if I was too high, he taught me how to get out of a stall.
Flight hours cost money, so I dig the garden for the folks, and spend most of my week ends cleaning airplane windshields, pumping air in the types, filling up tanks with aviation gasoline. This helps a lot and every now and then, Roger T tells me “Well done, you worked your ass off, come on, I take you for a ride”
(My first cockpit. The small handle pointing up is the throttle...besides the engine and the control cables, all the rest was made of wood and canvas. During descent at max descent speed and ratio, one could see flicks of paint vanished from the wings)
Un old and grumpy airplane mechanic whose name could well have been “Lagoupille” or “Lamolette”, or any kind of nickname dating back to WW. I and the Escadrille des Cigognes, is in charge of maintaining all of the airplanes in flying conditions and up to date from the administrative standpoint. He spends a lot of time working on the engine of the Fieseler but will not have anything to do with sailplanes. Mr Larmignat proudly says : “I am an aircraft mechanic” , thus ignoring any request not directly connected with aviation oil, gasoline, or aircraft electricity and controls.
Roger T. has also trained me to properly land airplanes. He often says “your wheels must lightly kiss the ground exactly like you would kiss your girlfriend in front of her mother”! He also warned me against the dangers of not being attentive when flying an airplane. “Pretty soon, there will be a new airport not far from Coulommiers (Roissy-CDG was being built), so you’d better watch it when you fly! Keep one eye on your speed and one on the traffic”!
I have also learned how to navigate with a watch and air maps covered with “peau de couilles” (1) but obviously to no avail!
One day, looking at my flight instruments instead of looking at the ground to locate the airfield of Pont-sur-Yonne, with its grass runway hardly visible, I continue my flight when suddenly Roger takes over the controls, turn the airplane by 180°, put the craft in a dive just like a German aviator piloting a Stuka bomber and screams in the cockpit:” You can’t find your airfield? Look you idiot; you are just over it!” I am livid and can hardly stay on my seat as the plane is gaining incredible speed and the needle of the speed indicator is entering in the red circle. I would swear that I can see the paint on the canvas wings chipping away!
But tonight, it feels like things are different. There is peace in the air and serenity in the cockpit as I have just completed my pre-flight and carefully checked what had to be. With Roger T. besides me, I go through the pre-start routine and give the traditional “brakes set, both magnetos on, ready to start”. The engine comes to life and on our way we go towards runway 27.
(Wassmer's Jodel 112 tpe airplane. Just a two seater, no radio on my plane, one had to keep one eye on the instruments and the other on traffic...)
For any flight instructor in the world, flight trainees will never know enough and never do well enough. So, I am eager to learn, and eager to do better and line up for take-off. At Vr the plane lifts off the ground and I Keep it horizontal to gain a bit of speed before starting up to climb. Speed indicator and Turn-and-Bank are my friends today. Reaching 300 ft., flaps are retracted. “90° Left turn, check the angle with the runway, continue till your next checkpoint…” Roger T. does not need to speak, I have heard all of this before so I conduct my traffic pattern like a good boy and pretty soon it is time for the final approach. Slowly, the small JOdel D112 gets closer to the ground and soon the front wheels get in contact with the concrete of the runway used by German pilots till 1944. At the end of the runway, as I am readying myself to get the airplane back to the parking, Roger tells me “Ok, leave me here, I walk back, go for a ride, don’t forget the time, fill up the airplane when you ‘ll be back”
He gets out of the airplane, wearing his leather jacket,does not even glance at the airplane, and I am left with this weird feeling associating fear and pride.
(Crash of F-BAOE in 962, a DC3 used to train mail pilots at Air France. On take-off, one of the wings clipped a passing truck. 5 people were killed out of the 8 on board)
Check-list now, rolling towards runway 27, a last check before take-off, and the plane is slowly gaining speed. Reaching 1500 ft, higher than the Eiffel tower, I can see Paris, my Paris, caught in the lights of dusk. I fly alone. This is the first solo flight.
As the time comes to get back into the airfield pattern for landing, I think about the DC3 crew in this 1962 crash. They certainly knew how to fly since it was their job, so let’s be careful.
Long final, short final, 50 feet over the road just before the runway threshold, and the wheels are already on the runway. I Open the window and let the hot June air get inside the plane. Landing check completed while I was on my way to the hangar, I get there and park in the best possible way for a quick refill.
A perfect day, a wonderful experience, but no one told me where I could find the keys to the gas pump! I guess Roger T. will be pissed off when he finds the airplane with an empty tank tomorrow morning!
(1) Peau de couilles : literally “ skin of the testicles” . a slang word used by french general aviation community describing a thin clear plastic like adhesive used to protect any type of aeronautical map. It gives the map more rigidity and above all allows for marks made with a “grease pencil” to be later erased without damaging the map itself.