Back in the Cockpit at 80

GeoCities.us » Pentagon » Flight

Get your FREE home page!

Back in the Cockpit at 80

A Thunderbolt pilot tries the computer version

Home · My Flight Log · What I Remember

My name is John Davis. I am eighty years old, and I live in Mesa, Arizona, with my wife, Genevieve.

From the spring of 1944 until the war in Europe ended, I flew the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt with a fighter group of the Ninth Air Force. We flew from England first, and then from France, after the invasion.

Last Christmas my grandson Jason gave me a computer program called Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, and a joystick to fly it with. The Thunderbolt is one of the airplanes in it. Jason said, "Grandpa, I want to see if they got it right." I have been trying to answer him ever since. This page is my answer, so far.

Learning a Computer at 79

I will be honest. The airplane was not the hard part. The computer was the hard part.

I had never owned one. Genevieve had used one at the church office, and she was a good deal braver about it than I was. Jason set it up for us on the day after Christmas and wrote out every step on index cards, which I still keep in a rubber band next to the keyboard. Turn it on. Wait. Double-click. (It took me most of a week to learn to double-click. My hand kept moving the mouse between the two clicks.)

The first three times I tried to fly, I never got off the ground. I couldn't get past the menu. I would find myself in the wrong airplane, or in the wrong year, or watching a replay of something I hadn't done. Jason talked me through it on the telephone from college. He was very patient with me, which I am not sure I was with him when I taught him to drive.

By February I could start the program, choose the Thunderbolt and take off by myself. By March I could land it, now and then. Now I am on the computer about an hour every morning after breakfast, and Genevieve says she has not seen me this happy since the grandchildren were small.

What the Computer Gets Right

	The weight. The Thunderbolt was a heavy airplane, the heaviest single-engine fighter we had, and you felt every pound of it. She didn't float. On takeoff she wanted a long run before she'd lift. In a turn she wanted to keep going straight. The people who made this program understood that. Their Thunderbolt feels heavy on the stick, and it takes its time to come around, and you have to plan ahead. That is exactly right.
	The dive. What all that weight bought you was a dive. Put her nose down and she went, and nothing I ever saw could stay with a Thunderbolt going downhill. The program has that too. I pushed over from altitude my first week and watched the airspeed wind up and up, and I laughed out loud at the kitchen table. Genevieve came in to see what was the matter.
	The cockpit. The instrument panel on the screen is close enough to the real one that my hands knew where to look before my eyes did. And the nose! On the ground you could not see a thing over that big engine. You taxied in S-turns, swinging the nose left and right so you could look past it. The computer makes you do the same thing. I ran into a hangar my first day, just like a cadet.
	The rudder. Two thousand horsepower turning a big propeller pulls you to one side on the takeoff roll, and you hold it straight with right rudder. My joystick twists for the rudder, which is not the same as having your feet on the pedals, but the airplane pulls the way she ought to.

What the Computer Can't Do

None of this is a complaint. They couldn't put these things in a box, and I wouldn't want them to.

	The cold. At altitude in the winter of 1944, the cold came right through everything you had on. I wore two pairs of socks and still couldn't feel my feet by the time we started home. At my computer in Mesa it is 78 degrees with the air conditioning on, and I fly in my slippers.
	The noise. That engine was right in front of you, eighteen cylinders, and it filled up your whole body. You didn't hear it so much as wear it. After a long mission your ears rang through supper. The computer makes a nice engine sound. I keep it turned down so I can hear Genevieve if she calls.
	Being afraid. Every man I flew with was afraid, and anybody who tells you different wasn't there. You did your job anyway. When I get shot down on the computer, I say a word I shouldn't and press a button and start over. There was no button. I am grateful the program can't make me afraid, and I don't think it should try.
	The mud. The computer gives you a nice long runway every time. In France, after the invasion, our field was a farmer's pasture with steel matting laid over it. When it rained, the mud came up through the holes in the mat, and you took off throwing it behind you like a farm truck. When it was dry, the dust got in everything, your eyes, your food, your bedroll. I have not missed it once in fifty-five years.

A Word to the Young Fellows

Since Jason put this page up for me, I have had letters from young men all over the country who fly this program, and two from a young lady in Ohio, who flies it better than I do. Several of you have asked me what it was really like. I have tried to answer some of that on the memories page. I have left some of it out, and I hope you'll understand why.

Others have asked how good I am at the computer version. The answer is on the flight log, and I have graded my landings honestly. Some of them are not good.

Jason also showed me Indian River Virtual Airlines, a club of flight simulator pilots who fly a real schedule out of Melbourne and Orlando in Flight Simulator 98 and send in a report after every flight. I like the way they do things. They fly by the numbers, and they don't log crashes. If I ever learn to land something gentler than a Thunderbolt, I may write to them.

You are visitor number

since April 1999. Thank you for stopping by.

Write to me at [email protected]
I answer every letter, but slowly.

Last updated September 18, 1999