A THAT CONTROVERSY CONTINUED to spread, I shipped off to RAF Barkston Heath. Strange time to begin flight training, to begin any
kind of training. My congenitally weak powers of concentration were never weaker. But maybe, I told myself, it’s also the best time. I wanted to hide from humanity, flee the planet, and since a rocket wasn’t available, maybe an aeroplane would do.
Before I could climb into any aircraft, however, the Army would need to make sure I had the right stuff. For several weeks they poked my body, probed my mind.
Drug-free, they concluded. They seemed surprised.
Also, videos to the contrary notwithstanding, not a total thicko. So…proceed.
My first aircraft would be a Firefly, they said. Bright yellow, fixed wing, single prop.
Simple machine, according to my first flight instructor, Sergeant Major Booley.
I got in and thought: Really? Didn’t look simple to me.
I turned to Booley, studied him. He wasn’t simple either. Short, solid, tough, he’d fought in Iraq and the Balkans and should’ve been a hard case, given all he’d seen and been through, but in fact he seemed to suffer no ill-effects from his tours of combat. On the contrary, he was all gentleness.
He needed to be. With so much on my mind, I entered our sessions wildly distracted, and it showed. I kept expecting Booley to lose patience, to begin shouting at me, but he never did. In fact, after one session, he invited me for a motorbike ride in the country. Let’s go and clear our heads, Lieutenant Wales.
It worked. Like a charm. And the motorbike, a gorgeous Triumph 675, was a timely reminder of what I was after in these flight lessons. Speed and power.
And freedom.
Then we discovered we weren’t free: the press had followed us the whole way and papped us outside Booley’s house.
After a period of acclimatizing to the Firefly’s cockpit, becoming familiar with the control panel, we finally took her up. On one of our first flights together, with no warning, Booley threw the aircraft into a stall. I felt the left wing dip, a sickening feeling of disorder, of entropy, and then, after several seconds that felt like decades, he recovered the aircraft and leveled the wings.
I stared at him. What in the absolute—?
Was this an aborted suicide attempt?
No, he said gently. This was the next stage in my training. Countless things can go wrong in the air, he explained, and he needed to show me what to do—but also how to do it.
Stay. Cool.
Our next flight, he pulled the same stunt. But this time he didn’t recover the aircraft. As we went spinning and pirouetting towards Earth he said: It’s time.
For what?
For YOU to…DO IT.
He looked at the controls. I grabbed them, stuck the boot in, regained the aircraft in what felt like the nick of time.
I looked at Booley, waited for congratulations. Nothing. Barely any reaction at all.
Over time Booley would do this again and again, cut the power, put us into freefall. As the creaking metal and roaring white noise of the stilled engine became deafening he’d turn calmly to his left: It’s time.
Time?
You have control.
I have control.
After I restored the power, after we returned to base safely, there was never any fanfare. Not even much chatter. No medals in Booley’s cockpit for simply doing your job.
At last, one clear morning, after a routine handful of circuits over the airfield, we landed softly and Booley jumped out as if the Firefly were on fire.
What’s the matter?
It’s time, Lieutenant Wales. Time?
For you to solo.
Oh. OK.
Up I went. (After first making sure my parachute was strapped on.) I did one or two circuits round the airfield, talking to myself all the while: Full power. Keep the wheel on the white line. Pull up…slowly! Dip the nose. Don’t stall! Turn in the climb. Level off. OK, now you’re downwind. Radio the tower. Check your ground markers.
Pre-landing checks. Reduce power!
Start to descend in the turn. There you go, steady now.
Roll out there, line up, line it up.
Three-degree flight path, get the nose on the piano keys. Request clearance to land.
Point the aircraft where you want it to land…
I made an uneventful one-bounce landing and taxied off the runway. To the average person it would’ve looked like the most mundane flight in the history of aviation. To me it was one of the most wonderful moments of my life.
Was I a pilot now? Hardly. But I was on my way.
I jumped out, marched up to Booley. My God, I wanted to high-five him, take him out for drinks, but it was out of the question.
The one thing I absolutely didn’t want to do was say goodbye to him, but that was what needed to happen next. Now that I’d soloed, I needed to embark on the next phase of my training.
As Booley was so fond of saying, it was time.
