Every Picture Tells a Story

By Tom Norato

A fanciful patchwork quilt—stories woven of fact, whimsy, and threads of the human spirit.
•Travel four thousand miles for a dinner date? Yes, she is worth it. How hard can it be?
•If you stay and fight, you will likely die in the morning. You have a choice.
•And now a word from our sponsor, forty eight hours from now.
•View of a rogue nation and how to solve the problem, from space.
•Just another day at the office, and the mission statement? No one dies today.
•You may not believe it, but a therapist really can help, especially if he has a gun.
•Looking back, with clarity, you may find the greatest time of your life is not behind you.
•A picture taken in 1864 really did set the gold standard for all paparazzi!
•Ever hear someone whisper in your ear? Someone who wasn’t there?
•When you look closely into an animal’s eyes, who do you see looking back?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Norato
• Release date: Dec 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9780960004515

Tom Norato

Tom Norato is a firm believer in the age-old aphorism “Write what you know,” but with a corollary: Make it authentic, make it engaging, and at the end of the day, make it enjoyable! Having served at the directorate level in both the military and civilian sectors in Washington, DC, for over three decades, he is true to both the adage and his corollary to it. Tom is the author of numerous short stories and essays. His short story collection, "Every Picture Tells a Story," was released in 2018. He lives in Springfield, Virginia, with his wife, Karla, and one domestic and three feral cats, who are stories unto themselves!

Book preview

A Dinner Date in Germany

PREFACE

The story that follows is a bit technical in nature and involves aviation terms and procedures you may not recognize. I have tried to keep these references to a minimum and, when central to the story, described them for the reader. For those of you familiar with the subject matter, especially any remaining DC-8 crews who may still be around as well as air traffic controllers of that period, I ask your indulgence. Some of the checklists, procedures, and control phraseology have been abbreviated, edited, or left out entirely for the sake of the story. For those of you familiar with the consequences of standing up a lady for a dinner date, no explanation is required.

• • •

It is the spring of 1975, and in the news:

Muhammad Ali TKOs Ron Lyle for the heavyweight boxing title.

During Operation Baby Lift 130 are killed, most of them infants, as one of our giant C-5A cargo planes evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashes into a rice paddy.

David Bowie releases Fame.

The last helicopter leaves the US embassy grounds. Saigon surrenders.

Not in the news:

A DC-8 Jet Trader sits alone on the ramp in the rain under gray skies. Dark clouds race across the sky, whipped by a twenty-knot wind out of the northeast. She started her life rolling off the assembly line at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, California, circa 1964. With no windows or passenger seats, she was designed and flown as a freighter, with a gross takeoff weight of 350,000 pounds.

In the early afternoon on a spring day in 1975, I am standing under the covered porch of the passenger terminal at Dover Air Force Base, gazing out across the ramp in anticipation. In just over six hours, I will be loading freight on that airplane destined for our bases all across Germany. The load estimated for this trip is 174 tons, just two thousand pounds short of max capacity. Following a short stopover in Prestwick, Scotland, for fuel, it’s on to Rhein-Main Air Base. After assisting in loading, I will climb into the cockpit, take up my position in the jump seat directly behind the pilot, and head for Germany. My official role on this flight is to be an observer and to serve as an additional crew member if needed, that is, to load freight.

I love flying and have a passion for aviation. I just earned my private pilot’s license and am now working on a commercial rating. Although I am very much looking forward to my first flight in a jet cockpit today, I have an ulterior motive in joining this mission. I can’t afford a commercial ticket, and I need to get to Germany by 4:00 p.m. the following day. I have invited a young lady for dinner and drinks at a bistro in the small town of Simmern, Germany, a favorite of hers from high school days. From there, a serendipitous ten-day road trip across central Europe, assuming dinner goes well. She will be very disappointed if I stand her up.

She is scheduled to depart via commercial air from Dulles International shortly, with plans to meet me in Frankfurt. I was warned that four thousand miles is a long way to go for dinner and drinks, so please be on time!

Let me introduce the crew. I have long ago forgotten their names, but the individuals are still sharp in my mind. The captain, pilot in command, left seat, I’ll refer to him as Captain Nelson, and he is, in my view, the quintessential airline pilot, late forties or early fifties, just over six feet tall, with black close-cropped hair graying at the temples, and of course, he wears Ray-Bans. He has a square jaw and piercing eyes that seem to take in everything. He is wearing an immaculate black uniform, a single-breasted blazer with four gold bars on the sleeves, a white shirt, and black tie with a plain silver bar clasp. He is all business, with an air of authority that commands respect. If you are a comic book fan, and old enough, you might remember Captain Steve Savage. This is the guy!

The first officer, copilot, I’ll refer to him as First Officer Helms, is just under six feet and about ten years younger than the captain. He is wearing the same uniform but with three gold bars. His uniform somehow does not seem to fit as well as the captain’s. He appears very energetic, talkative and friendly, a nice guy overall, competent and also professional, but he is obviously still in career-progression mode, working diligently for that fourth bar. He is trying hard to please and make a good impression—perhaps too hard?

Lastly, the second officer, flight engineer, about five foot seven with a solid build, is approximately the same age as Helms but minus the career aspirations. His uniform has two bars and is a bit unkempt. He seems content, if not outright happy, with his position in life as a flight engineer. I’ll call him Scott, that’s right, after chief engineer Montgomery Scott of the USS Enterprise! Guys like this really did, and still do, exist. Gene Roddenberry was a professional airline pilot before becoming a writer and later a famous television producer. I would not be a bit surprised to learn the inspiration for the character of Scotty came from his interaction with flight engineers. This position has largely been eliminated by sophisticated automation, which allows the two-man flight crews we see today. However, from the 1920s up until the early 1980s, the flight engineer was a crucial member of the crew and directly responsible for monitoring the engines, flight systems, and fuel management. On average, no one knows more about the airplane than him.

I arrive on the ramp at dusk, three hours prior to scheduled departure time. After loading the last of our cargo, a spare landing gear tire, we button up and begin running the checklists. There are several checklists for any large jet, each a tome unto itself, with references to equipment and procedures I never dreamed existed. Preflight, before engine start, post engine start, taxi and takeoff—you name it and modern aviation has a checklist for it! Until tonight, my own experience with aircraft checklists was limited to my Piper Cherokee: a laminated card, front and back with about 130 items on it. It amounts to a footnote on one of the DC-8’s checklists.

I won’t pretend to know the majority of what is checked out prior to taxiing onto the runway, but I do have a very solid understanding of how airplanes fly. The same basic flight tenets required to coax my Cherokee into the air are required by all conventional fixed-wing aircraft regardless of size. References to hydraulic quantity, standby reverser pumps, accumulators, and pneumatic manifold pressure gauges are all Greek to me, but as I mentioned, I do understand the basics—things like when to decide to continue a takeoff or abort. This is a decision primarily based on speed, and it varies with different aircraft, but the references to these speeds are standard and referred to as V speeds. The V is from the French word vitesse, which means speed or rate. In aviation, it is more commonly associated with the term velocity. V1 is the critical decision point—if you have doubts or experience major engine failure prior to this, you can safely abort. Normally, a predetermined speed will be announced in the cockpit just prior to reaching V1. Once past V1, you are committed to takeoff. Any abort attempt after that will most probably result in the aircraft running off the end of the runway. After V1 comes Vr, or rotate speed—the point at which a pilot will pull back on the yoke to become airborne, and V2 is the safe climb-out speed.

It is full dark as we fasten the five-point restraint harnesses and prepare for engine start.

Turning three, turning four, turning two, turning one.

All four Pratt & Whitney JT3D engines begin spooling up one at a time. They start off with a low, slow whine that rapidly grows in intensity, timbre, and volume until all four are producing a truly stunning resonance that can be heard for miles. We begin to roll, cleared to the active runway, 01. Runway 01 at Dover AFB is over 9,000 feet long and 150 feet wide. It handles the largest operating aircraft in the world at the time, the C-5A. If Runway 01 can safely accommodate the C-5A with a maximum wartime takeoff weight of 840,000 pounds, more than twice the weight of our fully loaded DC-8, I am confident it will accommodate us.

As we taxi into position to await takeoff clearance, I see the runway at night for the first time from the pilot’s point of view, not my accustomed view from the control tower: almost two miles of black pavement stretching off endlessly into the darkness, illuminated by lights, bright but not blinding, embedded in the ground and outlining the runway edges as well as the centerline. Runway feet remaining markers are lit up and aligned on either side of the runway in thousand-foot increments, an additional aid to the pilot in determining runway remaining for takeoff or abort. Over the years, I have heard this view described in many different ways; mesmerizing, beautiful, and awesome come to mind. I think they all apply. But of course, even though we cannot see the end of it, we know it is not endless and that a tree line lies in wait just beyond the overrun for any pilot foolish enough to break the V1 rule.

The tower:

Global Ten, wind three-six-zero at twelve knots, runway zero-one, cleared for takeoff.

Contact departure on one-three-two point five.

Roger, cleared for takeoff runway zero-one, Global Ten.

The pilot slowly advances the four throttles and calls out, Maximum thrust.

Once again, the four Pratt & Whitney engines begin their ascending whine. I can feel the airplane straining against the brakes. Then they are released, and we begin to roll. A cursory call to the tower: Global Ten is rolling.

We slowly pass the nine-thousand-foot remaining marker. For some reason, I suddenly recall the mantra my flight instructor drilled into my head: The two most useless things to a pilot are runway behind you and altitude above you. Soon the six-thousand-foot remaining marker passes by, much too slowly to my inexperienced eye.

Four engines spooled up, number one checks.

The pilot keeps his hand over the throttles, guarding them until V1 is reached.

Airspeed alive eighty knots.

As the five-thousand-foot remaining marker casually passes by, another mantra comes to mind: When in doubt, abort.

V1.

We are now committed. The three-thousand-foot remaining marker comes into view and quickly vanishes behind us. It went by much faster than the previous markers, but still at an agonizingly slow rate. The two-thousand-foot remaining marker now slides past.

Rotate positive climb.

In unison, the pilots pull the yoke all the way back, but the airplane remains on the ground, apparently ignoring the command to fly. I can now see the end of the runway, the brightly painted overrun, and the trees beyond. Yet another thought pops into my head, this one having nothing at all to do with flying an airplane: Looks like I’m going to miss my date in Germany. She will not be happy! Both pilots hold the yoke in their laps as the one-thousand-foot remaining marker flashes past and the nose gear slowly lifts off. The runway lights wink out beneath the wings as the main gear lifts off. I can see the tree line now starkly illuminated by the bright white taxi lights attached to the nose wheel strut.

V2.

Our rate of climb increases dramatically as we clear the trees. Passing four hundred feet, we start a leisurely right turn out over the Delaware Bay. The lights of Atlantic City are glowing on the horizon.

Flaps up, climb check, gear up.

Dover departure control, Global Ten is passing one thousand feet.

Global Ten, Dover departure radar contact, climb on course.

In the early 1980s, the FAA will institute what is known as the sterile cockpit rule after it is determined that more and more accidents are, at least in part, the result of pilot distraction associated with casual conversation not related to flying the airplane. The new rule is that if the conversation is not essential to flying the airplane, save it until passing ten thousand feet. This rule does not exist back in 1975, but the majority of professional flight crews adhere to it as an unspoken protocol. Well, we are all adhering to it that night, and then some.

I know something was just not quite right with that takeoff. Keeping my mouth shut, though, has never been a strong point with me, so I wait until we pass through fifteen thousand feet, and then I have to say something, to no one in particular. I’m guessing that wasn’t the norm? To this day, I cannot remember a response from anyone. The rest of the flight is relatively uneventful until we enter the Scottish Area Control Centre seven hours later. That’s when things really become interesting.

• • •

We continue our climb to a cruise altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet, tracking the coastal route up over Pennsylvania and New York, past Nova Scotia and over Newfoundland, almost the exact same route Charles Lindbergh pioneered only forty-eight years earlier. Like Lindbergh, we leave land behind after passing Newfoundland, and head out over the North