Authors: Clyde Edgerton
Solo
Solo
“[A] spare, heartfelt celebration of the flying life. . . . One of the great pleasures of this modest, winning memoir is [Edgerton’s] rediscovery of his youthful passion. In
Annabelle,
a funny-looking, high-nosed three-person plane, Mr. Edgerton finds true love the second time around. It’s a match made in sky-blue heaven, with just enough room, in the back seat, to accommodate a happy reader.”
—The New York Times
“A perfect read for anyone who wishes they could skip security and proceed right to the cockpit.”
—MSNBC.com
“Edgerton is either the best living novelist to fly planes or the best living pilot to write novels. . . . He casts his cockpit exploits—from flying combat missions over Laos during the Vietnam War to piloting a Piper Super Cruiser—in the same droll Southern prose that has garnered him a cult following—and gives readers an intensely rewarding aerial view of war, passion, and 400-mph adventure.”
—Men’s Journal
“[An] engaging memoir.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Anybody who has ever flown, or served in an air force, will find that Clyde Edgerton’s
Solo
brings back many memories, some of them pleasant, others terrifying. I found my years in the Royal Air Force coming back to me in one big gush, as exhilarating as one’s first ride in a military aircraft. If you like flying, you’ll love this book.”
—Michael Korda, author of
Charmed Lives
and
Man to Man
“Give[s] you a whiff of the bedewed infield grass at dawn, and the sensation of what it feels like to take on and enjoy a thing totally alone, the way we hardly do anymore.”
—The Raleigh News & Observer
“I reveled in this true story of an Air Force pilot’s love affair with the skies. . . . With vivid recollections, Edgerton gives a candid account of his passion for flight, displaying his trademark humor.”
—Southern Living
“Even if you don’t give a hoot about airplanes, Edgerton’s graceful, witty writing is likely to seduce you.”
—The Charlotte Observer
“In this memoir, Edgerton hasn’t really traveled all that far from his roots as a writer of fiction. In it one will find that impeccable sense of timing and inflection that marks his dialogue and that subtle humor he often slides our way.”
—The Durham (NC) Independent Weekly
“
Solo
is a fantastic book—spellbinding, exciting, funny, informative, moving, and beautifully, beautifully, beautifully written. Count me among the blessed legions of Clyde Edgerton fans.”
—Tim O’Brien, author of
The Things They Carried
“Edgerton has written a most intriguing memoir of his love affair with flying and how he fulfilled it as a combat pilot in Vietnam. . . . Edgerton’s vivid but laconic style should captivate Vietnam and aviation mavens and general readers alike.”
—Booklist
“Clear and truthful, this is what it was like, bringing back all you did or wish you had.”
—James Salter, author of
Gods of Tin
“
Solo
covers flying from Piper Cub to supersonic fighter and the Vietnam War. Pilots will feel a tug of pleasant nostalgia, and nonpilots will find it entertains while it teaches.”
—Bob Buck, author of
North Star over My Shoulder
Solo
Also by Clyde Edgerton
Raney
Walking Across Egypt
The Floatplane Notebooks
Killer Diller
In Memory of Junior
Redeye
Where Trouble Sleeps
Lunch at the Piccadilly
C
LYDE
E
DGERTON
My Adventures in the Air
R
A S
HANNON
R
AVENEL
B
OOK
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2005 by Clyde Edgerton. All rights reserved.
First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, November 2006.
Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2005.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Illustrations by Laura Williams.
Design by Anne Winslow.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edgerton, Clyde, 1944–
Solo : my adventures in the air / Clyde Edgerton.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-426-4; ISBN-10: 1-56512-426-X (HC)
1. Air pilots—United States—Biography. 2. Air pilots, Military—United States—Biography. 3. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961–1975—Aerial operations, American. 4. Novelists—United States—Biography. I. Title.
TL540.E3734A3 2005
629.13’092—dc22
[B]
2005041094
ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-546-9; ISBN-10: 1-56512-546-0 (PB)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Paperback Edition
For Shannon Ravenel
With thanks to the boys,
Johnny Hobbs, Jim Butts, Hoot Gibson,
John Barker, Jim Schellar, Dave Grant, Butch Henderson,
Lynn Snow, Tom Wright, and Fox Batistini
In memory of
Bill Katri, Danny Thomas, Rick Meacham,
Dick Olsen, and Terry Glavin
And thanks to Louis Rubin; Liz Darhansoff;
Tonita S. Branan; Margaret Bauer;
Rachel Careau; P. M. and Hannah Jones; Tom Purcell;
Sterling and Anita Hennis; my daughter, Catherine;
and especially my wife, Kristina
P
ART
1 (1948–66)
G
ETTING
T
HROUGH THE
I
NITIAL
S
OLO
The Cherokee 140 and the Basics
P
ART
2 (1966–67)
A
IR
F
ORCE
P
ILOT
T
RAINING
P
ART
3 (1968–70)
F
LYING
J
ET
F
IGHTERS
First Assignment: Japan and Korea
P
ART
4 (1970)
P
REPARING
F
OR
C
OMBAT
This book is not for flying instruction. Some details—drawn from memory—may be inaccurate. And exceptions surely dot the landscape of my generalities about flight and flying. Those seeking technical accuracy should read the appropriate flight manuals, and for those needing a detailed, enlightened book about how airplanes behave, I suggest the classic
Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying
by Wolfgang Langewiesche. Furthermore, the most consistently technical and “how-to” parts of this book are all together on pages 11–37 (“The Cherokee 140 and the Basics,” “Lessons,” and “Cross-Country”). So, if you’re not looking for nuts-and-bolts reading about flying, then you may want to skip those pages.
Most conversations in this narrative have been re-created from memory. Though all the people are real, most names (and radio call signs) are made up. Some facts may have become slightly distorted by the fog of time.
Many women pilots fly today, but none were present at flying events described in this book, and so none are included here. In any case, I respect women’s piloting abilities and significant contributions to aviation.
Finally, thanks to Karl Polifka, Jack McMahon, Bruce Williams, and Lloyd Kaufman for pointing out technical errors in the hardback edition of this book.
Y
OU STAND AT THE
end of a long dining room table that is bare except for a single toothpick lying there in the middle, pointed toward you. The toothpick is a runway—from two thousand feet up. You are alone in a little airplane. You are sweating, just home from your first solo cross-country flight. And as for that toothpick: you must somehow get a big spoon (your airplane) to land on it and stay on it
or you will die.
I dreamed of coming home from a solo flight soon after I was old enough to look into the sky and see an airplane.
Sometimes a dream’s realization falls short of the dream. Occasionally a dream and its realization match, and then we feel lucky.
For me, flying airplanes has trumped any dream of it. I could never have dreamed the hypnotic beauty of a lake of clouds scooting just below the belly of my aircraft, of towering cumulus cloud formations to my left and right. And I have been blissfully alone while flying solo, tucked securely in my protective cockpit, far away up there in a tiny spot in the wide sky, finding a peace that, as the Bible says, passeth understanding.
Aircraft engine and engine instruments have become, along with airframe and landing gear, an extension of my
nervous system.
Beneath the exhilaration lies the unforgiving, exact nature of the whole business of flying: a dependence on geometry, on the number of degrees in a turn, on an exact speed and angle as two aircraft join into formation, or on imagined lines drawn through the sky. This dependency calls for skill. Skill brings confidence and security.
I’ve flown among billowing clouds, alone, in a supersonic jet, run the aircraft up against and through the edge of a cloud at four hundred miles an hour, turned the airplane on its back, cut the power, fallen upside down through vertical halls of air, and then snapped the aircraft upright and added power to climb again.