Controlled Approach the second-by-second instructions that a well-equipped airfield can give a pilot to bring him home in the worst of weathers, following his progress on ultra-precise radar screens, watching him descend all the way to the tarmac, tracing his position in the sky yard by yard and second by second. I glanced at my watch: thirty-four minutes airborne. I could try to raise Lakenheath now, at the outside limit of my radio range.
Before trying Lakenheath, it would be correct procedure to inform Channel D, to whom I was tuned, of my little problem, so they could advise Lakenheath I was on my way without a compass. I pressed the transmit button and called.
"Celle Charlie Delta, Celle Charlie Delta, calling North Beveland Control..."
I stopped. There was no point in going on. Instead of the lively crackle of static and the sharp sound of my own voice coming back into my own ears, there was a muffled murmur inside my oxygen mask. My own voice speaking... and going nowhere. I tried again. Same result. Far back across the wastes of the black and bitter North Sea, in the warm cheery concrete complex of North Beveland Control, men sat back from their control panel, chatting and sipping their steaming coffee and cocoa. And they could not hear me. The radio was dead.
Fighting down the rising sense of panic that can kill a pilot faster than anything else, I swallowed and slowly counted to ten. Then I switched to Channel F and tried to raise Lakenheath, ahead of me amid the Suffolk countryside, lying in its forest of pine trees south of Thetford, beautifully equipped with its GCA system for bringing home lost aircraft. On Channel F the radio was as dead as ever. My own muttering into the oxygen mask was smothered by the surrounding rubber. The steady whistle of my own jet engine behind me was my only answer.
It's a very lonely place, the sky, even more so the sky on a winter's night. And a single-seater jet fighter is a lonely home, a tiny steel box held aloft on stubby wings, hurled through the freezing emptiness by a blazing tube throwing out the strength of six thousai'd horses every second that it burns. But the loneliness is offset, cancelled out, by the knowledge that at the touch of a button on the throttle the pilot can talk to other human beings, people who care about him, men and women who staff a network of stations across the world; just one touch of that button, the transmit button, and scores of them in control towers across the land that are tuned to his channel can hear him call for help. When the pilot transmits, on every one of those screens a line of light streaks from the centre of the screen to the outside rim, which is marked with figures, from One to Three Hundred and Sixty the number of degrees in a complete compass. Where the streak of light hits the ring, that is where the aircraft lies in relation to the I, 1 control tower listening to him. The control towers are linked, so with two cross-bearings they can locate his position to a few hundred yards. He is not lost any more. People begin working to bring him down.
The radar operators pick up the little dot he makes on their screen from all the other dots; they call him up and give him instructions. Begin your descent now, Charlie Delta. We have you now.... Warm, experienced voices, voices who control an array of electronic devices that can reach out across the winter sky, through the ice and rain, above the snow and cloud, to pluck the lost one from his deadly infinity and bring him down to the flare-lit runway that means home and life itself.
When the pilot transmits. But for that he must have a radio. Before I had finished testing Channel J the international emergency channel, and obtained the same negative result, I knew my ten-channel radio set was as dead as the Dodo.
It had taken the R. A. F two years to train me to fly their fighters for them, and most of that time had been- training precisely in emergency procedures. The important
Before trying Lakenheath, it would be correct procedure to inform Channel D, to whom I was tuned, of my little problem, so they could advise Lakenheath I was on my way without a compass. I pressed the transmit button and called.
"Celle Charlie Delta, Celle Charlie Delta, calling North Beveland Control..."
I stopped. There was no point in going on. Instead of the lively crackle of static and the sharp sound of my own voice coming back into my own ears, there was a muffled murmur inside my oxygen mask. My own voice speaking... and going nowhere. I tried again. Same result. Far back across the wastes of the black and bitter North Sea, in the warm cheery concrete complex of North Beveland Control, men sat back from their control panel, chatting and sipping their steaming coffee and cocoa. And they could not hear me. The radio was dead.
Fighting down the rising sense of panic that can kill a pilot faster than anything else, I swallowed and slowly counted to ten. Then I switched to Channel F and tried to raise Lakenheath, ahead of me amid the Suffolk countryside, lying in its forest of pine trees south of Thetford, beautifully equipped with its GCA system for bringing home lost aircraft. On Channel F the radio was as dead as ever. My own muttering into the oxygen mask was smothered by the surrounding rubber. The steady whistle of my own jet engine behind me was my only answer.
It's a very lonely place, the sky, even more so the sky on a winter's night. And a single-seater jet fighter is a lonely home, a tiny steel box held aloft on stubby wings, hurled through the freezing emptiness by a blazing tube throwing out the strength of six thousai'd horses every second that it burns. But the loneliness is offset, cancelled out, by the knowledge that at the touch of a button on the throttle the pilot can talk to other human beings, people who care about him, men and women who staff a network of stations across the world; just one touch of that button, the transmit button, and scores of them in control towers across the land that are tuned to his channel can hear him call for help. When the pilot transmits, on every one of those screens a line of light streaks from the centre of the screen to the outside rim, which is marked with figures, from One to Three Hundred and Sixty the number of degrees in a complete compass. Where the streak of light hits the ring, that is where the aircraft lies in relation to the I, 1 control tower listening to him. The control towers are linked, so with two cross-bearings they can locate his position to a few hundred yards. He is not lost any more. People begin working to bring him down.
The radar operators pick up the little dot he makes on their screen from all the other dots; they call him up and give him instructions. Begin your descent now, Charlie Delta. We have you now.... Warm, experienced voices, voices who control an array of electronic devices that can reach out across the winter sky, through the ice and rain, above the snow and cloud, to pluck the lost one from his deadly infinity and bring him down to the flare-lit runway that means home and life itself.
When the pilot transmits. But for that he must have a radio. Before I had finished testing Channel J the international emergency channel, and obtained the same negative result, I knew my ten-channel radio set was as dead as the Dodo.
It had taken the R. A. F two years to train me to fly their fighters for them, and most of that time had been- training precisely in emergency procedures. The important
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