(A Warbird is a certain kind of vintage military airplane. Read on.)
It was a time immemorial. Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The little airport there. The only security was a low wooden split-rail fence. And I was so young I had to look though, not over, the rails.
Some days or evenings in the summer my Uncle would drive me and my brother to the airport so we could watch the planes. Take off, land, taxi around, start-up and shut-down.
There was a control tower. And a grass lot to the side where planes were tied down when not flying. There were also a few gray matte-finished metal hangars further away.
This flock of small planes looked to me almost like a gaggle of geese. Or maybe even a recess at a girl’s school. They were mostly white. They sat even and level and quite low on tricycle landing gear. When their pilots started them up, the sound was of that of a motor that buzzed and whirred. They had big clear cockpit windows that looked almost like a pretty women’s eyes. They were rather cute and fetching to me. I was a little boy, but already I shyly and secretly liked girls.
Then one day we came to the airport and there was something different parked in among the familiar friendly white flower airplanes. Something I had never seen before. Something that looked like it had come from the Dark Ages. At first it seemed a malevolent monster. It was a Warbird. An airplane that flew in anger during World War Two. A single-engine craft that pursued bombers of the enemy -- and protected bombers of the Allies.
The Warbird was so huge it towered over and beyond the other planes like a dinosaur. It was painted in camouflage shades of very dark brown and green and black. With big bright bold American insignia on both sides and both wings. And it sat back on its haunches, like a bulldog poised to strike. Like a machine already pointed to the sky that was clearly its domain.
The cockpit looked to my young innocent eyes like a jail cell. The windows were heavily reinforced with metal and it was sunk far away from the front and deeply into the ridge of the plane’s backbone.
And the engine. It sat in a huge dark cavern at the very front of the plane. Up very high. I could hardly see inside to know what technical wonders, what immense power lurked within. Out from those mysterious bowels sprouted a shaft that held crosswise a shiny metal propeller so long and tall it was a giant saber of air, I thought. To the side I could see where the engine exhausted its gases. Most of the little planes had one, two or – rarely – three pipes to do so. I begin to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And then I realized there were another nine on exhaust pipes the other side. The engine had 18 cylinders.
I stood next to my Uncle, transfixed by this amazing machine in a curious mixture of fear and rapt fascination and wonder. He leaned over and said very quietly, “That’s a Razorback, nephew. It was built by Republic.”
I knew I would never be so lucky as to see this magnificent bird-of-prey fly. Not a chance.
But then as I see out of the very corner of my eye, along came a man. The pilot of the warbird. No question. He was strong and young and tall and walked in long confident strides. But still how puny he was, compared to the massive and powerful ship he approached. To reach the cabin, he scaled a series foot holds like a rockclimber going up the face of a Himalayan mountain.
He slowly carefully raised a heavy cockpit door and then the monster suddenly enveloped him. The door closed with satisfying thud. He was inside. I can see just the head of the pilot in his pleasant prison and he was clearly checking many things before flight. All sound ceased for many moments. It was so silent I could hear the breezes I could usually only feel -- in the cacophony of a busy summertime resort airport at the height of season. It seemed if the whole world waited expectantly for this warbird.
The suddenly, a high pitched squeal broke the stasis. I heard gears grind, metal move, internals reciprocate. The pilot was starting the engine. The propeller turned slowly around.
And then all hell broke loose. The engine sputtered, coughed, and then caught with a roar and rumble so loud and deep it shook the ground and rattled my chest. It spewed withering feathery sheets of amber and orange flame, and billows of silver smoke out the exhaust. It seemed as if it was running not on mere gasoline, but on war itself. The noise was beyond stentorian. As a little boy, I often plugged my sensitive ears when something was too loud. But now I just stood and consumed in amazement this beautiful, strange and deafening music.
I feared the warbird had caught fire, was going to explode in a vicious conflagration and take every living within a mile with it.
But demeanor of my uncle – who flew in the war – remained calm. Indeed he cracked just the slightest of knowing smiles. I gathered that this clash of angry and violent mythical armies in front of my eyes was not that at all. It was just a normal and successful engine start procedure.
And indeed the engine and the million minions of parts in its belly quickly settled down. It idled back into a smooth powerful effortless lope. The smoke and flames dissipated. I heard incredible complexity, but it was all carefully operating – in tandem – as one. It was all in copacetic sync. It was running perfectly.
Before too long, the engine note rose just the merest iota. But so powerful was this powerplant and its propeller that this 6-ton plane quickly began to move . It had begun to taxi. It then slowly ponderously rotated on its wheels as if on a turntable and headed for the runway. Now I was behind, instead of in front of, that gargantuan fan. It suddenly blasted us all with furious buffeting gushes of hurricane wind -- heavily scented with the pungent perfume of engine smoke, raw aviation gas, hot oil and burning rubber. My hat careened off, but remain unfetched. I was too rapt to notice or care.
As it taxied, the pilot turned the warbird from side to side as it went. This puzzled me. Then I realized the engine was so big and the stance so aggressive that he could not see directly ahead on the ground. He had to partially turn the plane to each side and peer around from each side in turn. Wow.
Farther and farther away the big wardbird went. The runway seemed miles long to me. The plane receded so far in the distance that its rumble wafted in on the wind. But I could still see the big bright propeller spinning in the sun.
Now coming in on the wind I began to hear the sound of gathering thunder, of a mythological freight train coming down the track. The Warbird began to rumble down the runway toward us. In a flash it was upon us, deafening our ears with a hoarse and throbbing roar from its engine and a piercing snarl from its propeller. The ponderous bulldog pose was gone. Its tail was already flying above the ground and now it looked like a sleek streamlined cheetah streaking straight for its prey.
Most of the little planes slowly gracefully floated skyward when they took off. But this miracle beast attacked the atmosphere. It leapt almost vertically from the runway and cork skewered itself into the sky as if gravity had been repealed . My head spun at the dizzying rapidity of its ascent. It rose like an angel and with a trice was almost out of sight. My Uncle remarked the pilot had performed a chandelle on take-off. His tone indicated that was rather unusual. To say the least, I learned later
As Uncle drove us home, with the wonderful scent of engine in our clothes and the echoes of its the rumble ringing in our ears, I realized I had been weeping. They were not tears of pain or sorrow or fear. But something akin to joy or religion or gathering awareness.
I wondered if I had ever lived before and that this magnificent flying machine had been the one I died in.
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