Flight Journal - August 2017

16 FlightJournal.com
radio checkout with fuel-purging techniques in
the event of low-pressure fuel-system ice. I was
told to teach Lindbergh everything I knew about
flying the Shooting Star.

To me, Lindbergh was the greatest pilot who ever flew, and here he was, mere feet away from me as we went over the F-80 manual. I tried to make small talk with him, but he was rather quiet and didn’t say much, especially if I asked him a question about his historic flight from New York to Paris. I asked him about the difficulties on staying focused and awake while flying for almost a day and a half. Lindbergh quietly responded, “Yes, that was a problem,” and then quickly countered with a question for me: “Lieutenant, how did you enjoy your cadet training?” I soon learned that Lindbergh did not want to talk about himself or his accomplishments. I felt sorry for him in a way because he had been asked the same questions over and over again and had nearly been publicized to death about his famous flight.

It was extremely easy to teach Lindbergh about
F-80 flight operations. It seemed that I had merely
to give him the idea and he not only
took it from there but also explained
it back to me with much more detail.
I also stopped pestering him with
questions about the Atlantic crossing
and let him talk about what he wanted
to discuss. He shared some of his
experiences about flying F4U Corsairs
and P- 38 Lightnings in the Pacific
during WW II, teaching fighter pilots
how to lean out their fuel mixture
to maximize their range. I think the
thing that intrigued Lindbergh the
most, however, was when he asked
me what I liked to do to pass the time
when I wasn’t flying. I sheepishly told
him that I built and flew gas model
airplanes. Lindbergh’s eyes lit up like a
child’s, and he asked if I had a flyable
one. When I told him I did, he asked
for a flight demonstration. I couldn’t
have been any prouder as I stood in
the snow with a 50-foot control line
attached to my Tiger V-Shark on skis as
it zoomed around in a circle at 107mph
in front of the smiling Lindbergh. It
was one of the few times during our
two weeks together that I saw him
smile.

Although I couldn’t see his face under the oxygen mask as our flight of four F-80s took off from Ladd Field, I imagine that Lindbergh had a small grin across his face and was in awe at the quietness of jet flight. With no propeller whirling up front and the lack of noise from the popping and crackling of cylinders that he had been accustomed to since his early aviation days, it must have been a pleasant surprise for him as the only noise was the whistling of air flowing over his canopy. The four of us flew in a tight finger-four formation as we cruised to the gunnery range. Lindbergh flew that F-80 as if it were on a rail—very tight and crisp. His formation flying was excellent, and as a natural-born pilot, it seemed that he had flown the Shooting Star for thousands of hours. We took turns dropping small “blue boy” practice bombs and shooting old barrels that were scattered about in the snow. As we joined up, I couldn’t help but stare into Lindbergh’s cockpit. All I could see were his eyes peering out from his helmet and oxygen mask. All I thought was, “Those eyes belong to the most famous pilot in the world.” There has never been any greater honor for me in my life than when I flew a Shooting Star with the “Lone Eagle” off my wing.