Prologue

I was standing next to my bright blue baby, all 12,000 pounds of her. Capable of 440 knots running flat out, she cruised at 227 knots. 41 feet long, 33 feet wide and 15 feet tall, she had a Pratt and Whitney radial engine that cranked out 2,300 horsepower. My hand slid over the cool metal of her belly. I was smiling. She was mine now. I had just signed the transfer of ownership, the money had been wired to an escrow company, and I was ready to fly her home.

She was an F4U-4 Corsair, maybe the best U.S. fighter that flew in World War II. Yeah, even better then the more famous P-51 Mustang. The Corsair was faster, more nimble, climbed faster, and carried more payload than the Mustang. Plus, she could fly off of a carrier and flew slower and warned of a stall before the stall. The P-51, however, gave no warning of an impending stall. When it did stall, it was with a total loss of pilot control, rolling inverted with a severe aileron snatch. Recovery usually used up 500 feet or more of altitude. It was not uncommon for Mustangs to spin out of tight turns during dogfights. The Corsair could also be flown at speeds more than 30 mph slower than that at which the Mustang stalled. In other words, the P-51 could not hope to follow a Corsair in a low speed turning fight. Rated to carry a 2,000 pound payload, Lindberg flew a Corsair on a bombing mission with a 2,000 pound bomb under centerline and two 1,000 pound bombs under the wings; twice what was supposed to be the maximum payload. Hell, the B-17 heavy bomber was designed to carry 4,800 pounds of bombs and there are reports of Corsairs carrying 6,000 pounds of ordnance.

This particular plane had rolled off the assembly line during the war and saw plenty of action. She had then been flown by the Marines as a ground support plane in Korea. The previous owner had her restored her to WWII configuration, including the flags with a big Red Sun under the cockpit for the kills. He had proudly opened the wing panels to show me how all of the equipment was there. All I had to do was bolt in the machine guns, put in the ammo, and this baby was ready to rock and roll. The man who was selling had lost his pilot's license and was close to tears having to give up his baby. His wife looked pleased. He had sold me all of the accessories he had. We had put the two wing tanks on it for the flight home. The rest would have to be shipped. With all that fuel I could make the flight in one hop, but it was going to be a long day.

I climbed up the side of the plane and settled into the cockpit. God, but she was beautiful. I started the engine; cowlings open at ¾, and felt the power of the beast in the deep rumble coming through the seat. Here on the ground, the powerful engine noises bounced off the concrete and back to the belly of the plane. I ran my hands over the stick, before saluting the folks on the ground and starting to taxi towards the runway. It was a small field and I was the only one on the taxiways at the time. At the end of the runway, I ran up the engine watching all of the gauges. They looked fine. I retarded fuel and watched again. All normal. A quick burst of power and I turned onto the runway.

I closed the canopy, gave a final look at the gauges, and thrust the throttle forward. The RPM jumped to 2,700 as the beast started moving down the runway. The tail lifted as soon as I was moving and I was able to see forward as the big engine settled. Before I knew it, the plane felt light and the Corsair practically flew herself off of the runway. The plane seemed to spring into the air, the big four-bladed prop clawing at the air.

The Corsair's unusual gull wing design was forced on the designers in order to get that big propeller high enough off the ground. I knew I was no longer flying a Cessna. The wheels came up as the ground fell away. I turned west and smiled as my Corsair, mine, I savored that thought, climbed into the blue sky. The indicated air speed was 125 knots, the Corsair's best climb speed. In less than two minutes, I leveled off at 8,000 feet. I retarded the throttle, set the mixture to auto-lean, set the blower to neutral, manifold pressure to 29 inches, and watched as the airspeed gauge settled at the cruise speed of 227 knots. At this speed and settings, the Corsair burned about seventy-five gallons of fuel an hour turning the prop at 675 rpm through a 2 to 1 reduction gear.

As I set the throttle, I remembered watching a World War II training video, How to Fly the Corsair. It was the only training available. In it, the narrator was running through various settings and said of maximum endurance cruise that the Corsair will, 'hum along like a sewing machine.' I had to laugh now. I was really aware that I wasn't flying a Cessna anymore. The Corsair was a warrior. This wasn't a sewing machine. Planes had flown back to their base with whole cylinders blown off the engine. She was tough. But it required that the pilot really fly the plane, constantly adjusting settings that on modern planes were automatic. It made for a more challenging flight, but it also made me feel that I was really flying a plane, not a sedan with wings. I smiled and settled back, letting the plane fly on. I had a five hour flight in front of me.

I checked the Navigation computer which was GPS enabled. It showed the track of the plane so far. I had covered 15 of the scheduled 1,162.5 miles at a flight time of 5 hours, 7 minutes. Before I took delivery of the plane I had the latest avionics installed, including a Garmin GPS with color screen and satellite weather. Weather was fine all of the way. In an hour, I'd have to climb to get over the Rockies. The highest elevation along my track was 12,270 feet. It isn't good to be lower than the terrain. Running into the side of a mountain is not good for the airplane, or the pilot. I'd need to be higher than that. That wouldn't be a problem in a Corsair with a ceiling of 41,000 feet. One other thing I had updated was the oxygen system. Nothing worse than running out of air when you needed it. The original oxygen system, if you could call it a system, was a tank of oxygen which sat on the cockpit floor at the pilot's feet. Pilots used to take off their gloves at high altitude and watch the cuticle to see if they turned blue indicating the oxygen system wasn't working properly. There was no other way to know with the old system.

As I crossed the state border, I started a gradual climb. I added throttle to climb, intercooler flaps open, high blower. Once at 13,500 feet, I had to leave the blower at high, add another half inch of manifold pressure and set the mixture to auto-rich. The Corsair wasn't quite as fuel efficient above 13,500 feet but the plane still wasn't using that much fuel, leveling off at 14,000 feet. I had to put on the mask as any flying above 10,000 is supposed to be on oxygen. I probably wouldn't pass out even if I wasn't wearing a mask. It wasn't any higher than the observatory on Pike's Peak, but, that big but ... There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there aren't any old bold pilots. I'd rather be an old pilot. Flight rules have always been learned at a dear cost.

The Rockies reared up below me. The ride got a little bumpy from the wind boiling up off of the peaks. Imagine the biggest roller coaster you have ever been on, then imagine being on it for an hour. I didn't lose my lunch, but there were a few times...

The flight settled out as I hit the high desert plateaus. The hard part of the flight now was staying awake. I kept the nose pointed towards home, and kept the altitude and speed on target. I checked the computer: two minutes ahead of schedule. They don't build war birds with auto-pilots, so I had to fly the plane continuously. It was physically tiring on a long hop like this one as well as mentally draining.

You have a lot of time to think while flying long distances over desolate places. My mind wandered a little as I looked down on the barren reaches of desert below.

People live in Utah and Nevada, but you do have to wonder why. I followed a main highway for a while and saw occasional buildings, even a 'town, ' if you could call a cluster of dirty buildings in the middle of nowhere a town. Occasionally, a dirt road would lead off into the desert to a lone building or trailer. I'd wonder about the person living there. What had they done in a prior life to earn this kind of a life? Maybe one of those lone buildings was a brothel. Nevada is the only state civilized enough to legalize sex between consenting adults. But they did make the brothels set up out in the desert. Sex is okay only if it's hidden. Lord, but Americans are backwards.

Soon, I could see the wall of the Sierra Nevada rising up out of the tawny brown of the Nevada desert. The other side of that was home. As I crossed the mountains I saw Lake Tahoe off to the right and Yosemite off to the left. I made up my mind that my first flight in this new plane would be to Yosemite. Maybe I'd scream down the valley at 400 knots. That would be exciting.

The mountains fell away and I began a gradual descent. At 10,000 feet, I took off the mask, glad to breathe air that didn't taste of rubber. I could see Sacramento ahead of me. I was tired, but concentrated on landing. The Corsair had been built as a fighter and was a series of compromises. In all fighter aircraft, agility comes at the expense of stability. The power to run like the wind also made for problems. The engine was so powerful that applying power too quickly on landing could actually torque the whole plane. Pilots had flipped their birds over by hitting full throttle during a landing and there aren't any wheels on the top of a plane. I had watched training films for the Mustang and the P-47, the P-47 actually used the same engine as the Corsair, and both had warned of the same thing; driving a wing into the ground with the torque of the powerful engine.

I called in for landing and got on glide. I lowered the gear and extended flaps. The plane slowed and the controls got a little mushy. Nice thing about the plane; it had been designed to land on carriers, so the designer built it to fly slowly and the stall was not sharp. It wouldn't just fall out of the sky. On a Corsair approaching stall, the whole left wing would start to shudder like crazy while it was still six knots above stall. That should get a pilot's attention.

The big engine hid much of the forward view on landing. In the 4 and later versions, they had raised the pilot's seat and angled the nacelle down to give the pilot a better view, but that beast still blocked much of the forward view. I hit further down the runway than usual for me, but being slow, it didn't matter. I taxied to my new hanger. I had to trade up when I decided to buy the Corsair. My old hanger, big enough for the Cessna, would have been wide enough, but that big prop would never have gone in. The new hanger, with a tall door, was twice as wide as I needed. It would make putting the plane away easy. I stopped in front of the hanger and cut the switches. Home.

As I climbed down and stretched, I saw several friends coming. They knew when I was scheduled back with my new baby and they had come by. They ran their hands over it, looking everywhere. There is something about the old war birds, some romance that holds us, connects us with their past, the stories, the glories that they represent. I smiled as I looked at their faces, open with wonderment, just as mine had been on this first flight.

I was tooling around over Napa on a Saturday afternoon some weeks later when it hit me: I had the range to fly this plane around the world. It would be a stretch; some of the hops would be long and over open ocean. I'd have to put the wing tanks back on even though they added drag. The flight manual range chart said the bird had a 1,600 nautical mile ferry range with tanks. Weather could make those hops not only difficult but dangerous as well. When the military hopped those planes across the ocean they always flew in pairs. Lone pilots could become subject to disorientation and fly the plane right into the drink.

But the thought of doing it, flying around the world, just wouldn't leave me. That night I got on the Internet and started exploring possibilities. By the time I was done, I had a tentative flight plan. The longest hop was 1,606 miles and 7 hours of flying time. That was the Naka Shibetsu to Adak hop. I'd have to do it in summer. Winter weather would make those trans-oceanic jumps way too dangerous if not impossible. Using the official Navy charts, the 1,600 mile ferry range still left me one hour reserve fuel. But there wasn't anything within an hour of Adak so I'd have to be certain before I hopped. Back on the Internet and I was checking visa requirements, getting maps ordered, hotels, and finally entertainment. The decision was easy. Until the weather got better I could plan and get clearances. I could also practice long range flying, just to make sure I knew what I was doing. I also wanted to make sure I could fly the Corsair without thinking about it, handling the various controls and settings automatically. Oh yeah, I wanted to make sure of that ferry range.

I also thought one day about those guns. I'd be in pretty wild areas at times. It was stupid, I realized, to think I'd fight my way out of trouble with 50 calibers, but it did make me feel better. So I applied for permits to the ATF. Yeah, I know, it ought to be the FAA, but ATF handles permits for machine guns. I registered as a collector, bought six 50 caliber guns and ammo, and had them installed. I wasn't really supposed to do this, but I did go out over Nevada and practiced a little. There are a couple hill tops in Nevada that have been beaten up. The nice thing is, if you fly close to the military training sites but not in them people blame the military jets for those sounds. Those guns make quite a racket.

Twin Cities

Hop 1

It turned out to be more work than I had imagined, but I had done it. Day 1, KSAC to KMSP, Sacramento to Minneapolis. During the time I had the plane and all systems checked and updated. My baby was ready and so was I. I input the flight info into the computer and it came up 1,316 miles and five hours forty-seven minutes flying time. The computer automatically checked the weather from satellites. All clear along the flight path and tail winds most of the way. One reason I was flying west to east was the prevailing winds blow that direction. I'd fly higher on this leg to catch the tail winds, reported at 50 knots, and to get over the Sierra and the Rockies, so I'd be on oxygen the whole time.

I taxied to the end of the runway. I set the rudder tab to 6 degrees right, ailerons to 6 degrees right wing down, and elevators to 1 degree nose up. The right tab was to compensate on take off for the torque of the powerful engine and the tail was to help keep the tail down when the prop revved up. That big prop would push so much air that the tail wanted to lift up and drive the nose into the runway, not real good for the propeller. Since I was on a hard runway, I didn't need flaps. The Corsair only needed the extra lift to get off the short deck of a carrier. The takeoff run was only 900 feet off a hard runway with this load. The tower gave me clearance, I ran the engine up to military power, and watched as the airspeed climbed. The plane flew itself off the runway and I turned northeast and headed for a trip around the world. I felt giddy with the idea. I was going to fly around the world, or at least, I was going to try. Or die trying. The old bromide flitted through my head, I hoped not as an omen. I shook it off and smiled at the beginning of a quest.

In a few hours I would be in Minnesota, 1,316 air miles from where I started. As I sped east, I thought about the people who had settled these lands. First, a group from Siberia came over a land bridge and found a virgin continent teeming with game and predators. The abundance of game made up for the predators and in a thousand years these initial Siberians had moved across the continent. A few thousand years later another climate change encouraged a second wave of immigrants. These people conquered the first inhabitants and became the folks we call Native Americans. They were the next to last conquerors. Then those light skinned barbarians, my ancestors, fled Europe and its despots, to found a religious Eden, at least, that's what they intended. They took a few hundred years to conquer the conquerors and create the United States. They traveled across the continent that sped below me in wagons, taking six months to travel the same distance I would travel in less than six hours. A thousand years became six hours; we call it progress.

First, I traveled over the barren stretches of Nevada and Utah, clipping the northern end of the Great Salt Lake. Next up was Wyoming. I saw Cheyenne on the map and thought of the Cheyenne. I could only picture them as Thomas Berger painted them in Little Big Man. I looked down at the rolling plain and saw Old Lodge Skins sitting in his tepee, smoking his pipe, and pondering the fate of the white boy sitting across from him. What if I had been that scared white boy? Could I have lived among the Cheyenne where death and life were inextricably entwined? Could I look across the plains and see a Pawnee band and say, "Today is a good day to die," and ride off screaming my war chant? By the way, if you have ever seen the movie and think you know the story, forget it! Hollywood, as usual with any good book, fucked it up. Read the book.

The Great Plains rolled by under my wings. As far as the eye could see, and at altitude that is a long way, I could make out the regular shapes of farmed fields: rectangles, squares, and circles depending on the water available. The imprint of man had reshaped the very land itself. A few hundred years ago these plains teemed with buffalo and antelope. They fed a few thousand humans. Now, they had been domesticated, watered, and fertilized and they fed three hundred million people. We call it progress.

I thought about the modern Luddites who wanted to scrap what we call civilization and return to the old days. We could, if we were willing to watch 299 million people starve, since the old way would only support those few. That is the flaw in the argument to 'Return to nature;' only one in a hundred thousand could live the old ways. These modern eco-terrorists, like Earth Now, say they are lovers of nature, painting their struggle as a fight for Nature, with a capital N. But they aren't really lovers. Anyone who could seriously support the idea that the death of 299 million people is a good idea has to be a hater; a hater of Mankind, not a lover of Nature. Groups like Earth First and PETA put Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Mao all to shame as haters of man.

As I flew northeast, the land gradually changed from brown to green, the plains changed to forest and I entered the land of 10,000 lakes. I began a gradual descent as I approached the Twin Cities. The wing tanks were empty long ago and the main tank was below one quarter full. If I was in a car I would have long before pulled over to fill up. But there are no gas stations along air routes. The computer said I was fine. On the descent, I throttled back and let the stick keep up the airspeed.

I called in to Approach and was put in line for landing. The tower operator asked three times when I said the type of plane I was flying. Then the supervisor came on. I confirmed the type, F4U-4. Finally, another voice came on from a commercial jet, "It's a World War II fighter. Give him plenty of room because the thing lands like a pig." I laughed because he was right.

I was on the ground fifteen minutes later. I parked in the General Aviation section, an area for small planes to keep them out of the way of the jets, and arranged for refueling. I carried my gear through the building and jumped into a taxi.

I had intended to prowl the city and see if it was true about these Midwestern farm girls, but I found myself dead tired. When I hit my hotel room, I fell on the bed and couldn't get up. I turned on the TV and ordered room service. I was asleep before I knew it. I had no idea of the physical drain of flying the Corsair for almost six hours. I tried to imagine doing it day after day in combat and couldn't. It felt like I had run a marathon.

This turned out to be a blessing, but that's getting ahead of the story.

O Canada

Hop 2

I was awake early and was at the airport as the sun crept up from the horizon. I beat the business travelers into the sky on that lovely morning. I climbed out and headed southeast to Canada. Yep, southeast to Canada. I know, Canada is north. That's what I always thought until I flight planned this jump. Now I was flying over Minnesota and Wisconsin and headed for Toronto, southeast.

Down below me was one of those places where the fight over Intelligent Design took place. I had to laugh to myself that people still can't tell the difference between science and religion, that some goofy people still think that religion is science. It is a shame that we could have a presidential candidate in America who says he doesn't believe in evolution. That's the same as having a president who says he doesn't believe in atoms or electricity because they aren't in the Bible.

You know, we look back at the Greeks and Romans, and we look at their anthropomorphic gods, and we feel superior. Imagine, we say smugly, thinking that thunder is Zeus' weapon. Or that Bacchus resides in the wine. Silly! Except that we still think that God is transubstantiated into the wine in our religious practices. How free of ridiculous superstition are we, really?

It bothers me that we teach something called Social Science or Political Science, as if these fuzzy subjects are anything at all like science. They aren't. One of the hallmarks of a science is that any hypothesis is checked to see if it accords to reality. If it doesn't, the hypothesis is tossed. Imagine if economics or political 'science' did that. They don't, but imagine if they did.

Marxism would be gone right now. It only takes a room temperature IQ to see what a colossal failure Marxism was once it was implemented in the real world. Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, everywhere it was tried it led to unbelievable hardships. And don't get taken in by the line, it didn't work because it wasn't pure. Crap. The more 'pure' the attempt, the more awful the reality; read the history of Kampuchea. The reason there never was a pure Marxist economy is that starvation set in so quickly the system had to change to prevent everyone from dying. 90% of the food in Russia was produced on 10% of the land, the private plots; the non-Marxist economy.

Yet there are university professors in this country teaching Marxism as if it were valid. How in the hell can that be? The most casual observer of reality and Marxism knows that it was a horrible failure. Even so, social 'scientists' are allowed to teach it as if it were still a workable political theory.

Economics is no better. UCLA has an economic model that for five straight years predicted an economic downturn. It was wrong for five straight years. Did the economists at UCLA change the model? No, I just read in the paper that their model was predicting a downturn for the sixth straight year. Maybe this will be the year they will finally be right. Economists don't have to worry that their 'dismal science' doesn't have the least bit of relation to reality. It's just another social science game they play. When those subjects are taught, they should be called fantasy, not science: Social Fantasies, Behavioral Fantasies, and Political Fantasies.

At one time, people believed that flies grew spontaneously from spoiled meat. This theory of spontaneous generation of life was accepted by scientists at the time. But other scientists have shown how flies actually breed and spontaneous generation has been shown to not accord with reality. If a science teacher started teaching spontaneous generation in a science class, he would be tossed for incompetence. Science is always checked against reality ... unless the Bible said so.

That's the difference between science and the fuzzy subjects: tangible proof and a provable relation to reality. That is also the difference between science and religion, reality. But the Fundamentalists want to corrupt science and make it into their version of religion, whether it is Intelligent Design or Creationism or whatever they will call it in the next attempt to pervert science away from reality and make it agree with their personal beliefs. I wish they would quit calling the fuzzy subjects a science. They have co-opted the name science, which represents things that work, and applied it to their disciplines, which never work. They aren't and they probably never will be a verifiable science. Using the term science in relation to those subjects bring the term itself into disrepute and makes real science vulnerable to attack by the people like the Intelligent Design wackos.

I shook my head to clear it as I flew over one of the Great Lakes. My flight took me over three of the Great Lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Ontario as I circled into Toronto for landing. At that altitude, I could see all of the way across, but they are still impressive bodies of water.

I had booked a room at the Renaissance Toronto Hotel, a 348-room hotel with 70 rooms overlooking Roger's Field, home ballpark of the Toronto Blue Jays. During the trip planning, I saw that the Toronto team would be at home, so I booked a room at the hotel, not cheap, in one of those 70 rooms overlooking the field. I could lie in bed and watch the game from the privacy of my hotel room. I had also read that it wasn't all that unusual to see, if you had powerful binoculars, that the guests in those rooms would sometimes entertain themselves as they watched the game. That was my plan.

I had found a willing lady on the Internet. Since sex between consenting adults, even if there is cash involved is legal in Canada, I planned to take advantage of the situation. I had booked time with the young lady before I arrived. She was scheduled to arrive an hour before first pitch and be there until after the game, even if it went extra innings. And I planned to get a little extra innings work in myself.

When I booked the girl, I had planned to have her there for a quick tryst. I was surprised how inexpensive Toronto prices were until I realized that of course, legalization brought the prices down. Prohibition always increases the price. And the exchange rate favored the US dollar. So I booked her for half a day and I thought it was still a bargain.

She was a blonde, of Danish heritage, and very pretty. She was also a little older which was fine with me. Even though I have the same young girl fantasies as any other guy, let's face it, until a woman hits 30 she doesn't usually know the first thing about fucking. Until then, she's always gotten by on her youth. They say a woman hits her sexual peak around 28 to 30. After that she's got experience, technique, and her peak.

I got cleaned up and ready for Victoria. I had room service bring up some wine and hors d'oeurves as I watched the players below go through batting practice. It was hard to believe that in a few hours this place would be rocking with tens of thousands of fans. Right now, it seemed leisurely, like a Saturday afternoon in the park.

I had out some maps and reviewed the upcoming legs of the trip. I watched a little TV and found an adult movie that helped set the mood. The movie ended about twenty minutes before Victoria arrived. I was right ready for her when she showed up.

She looked pretty in the picture. She looked ravishing in person. "Hi, please come in."

She came in and gave the suite a quick once over. She saw the floor to ceiling windows and went over. She turned back to me. "You're kidding? We're going to watch the ball game?"

I laughed, "Among other things." She looked back out. I continued, "They really can't see in."

"Hmm, I guess not," she said but the voice sounded unsure.

"Wine?"

"Yes, that would be nice."

"White or red?" I offered.

She smiled, "White."

I poured us each a glass and handed hers to her. I held up mine, "To a beautiful woman."

She blushed slightly and acknowledged the toast.

The dynamic of prostitution completely changes the relationship between man and woman. Usually, it is the woman who knows whether or not the man was going to get lucky. With the exchange of money the man knows and that leaves the woman without her usual edge. (I sometimes suspect that is why so many women oppose prostitution.) She was nervous instead of being in charge. But, being the professional she was, she thrust that aside.

"Hungry?" I asked pointing at the tray.

"Yes, thank you," she said, setting her glass down and walking up to me. She pushed me back onto the bed. She knelt between my legs. "We have an hour before the game. A little snack would be nice," she said as she ran her hands up the inside of my thighs and onto my crotch. My cock sprang to attention. She noticed immediately, "Somebody likes the idea."