Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you don't do, you don't believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane.
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.
My senses of space, of distance, and of direction entirely vanished. When I looked for the ground I sometimes looked down, sometimes up, sometimes left, sometimes right. I thought I was very high up when I would suddenly be thown to earth in a near vertical spin. I thought I was very low to the ground and I was pulled up to 3,000 feet in two minutes by the 500-horsepower motor. It danced, it pushed, it tossed. . . . Ah! la la!
Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.
I think there is something exhilarating in flying amongst clouds, and always get a feeling of wanting to pit my aeroplane against them, charge at them, climb over them to show them you have them beat, circle round them, and generally play with them; but clouds can on occasion hold their own against the aviator, and many a pilot has found himself emerging from a cloud not on a level keel.
A pilot who says he has never been frightened in an airplane is, I'm afraid, lying.
Leader, bandits at 2 o'clock! Roger; it's only 1:30 now-what'll I do 'til then?
Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.
Why fly? Simple. I'm not happy unless there's some room between me and the ground.
I don't think I possess any skill that anyone else doesn't have. I've just had perhaps more of an opportunity, more of an exposure, and been fortunate to survive a lot of situations that many other weren't so lucky to make it.
It is hard enough for anyone to map out a course of action and stick to it, particularly in the face of the desires of one's friends; but it is doubly hard for an aviator to stay on the ground waiting for just the right moment to go into the air.
There are two kinds of airplanes - those you fly and those that fly you . . . You must have a distinct understanding at the very start as to who is the boss.
Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror.
The happily married man with a large family is the test pilot for me.
Cloud-flying requires practice, even if you have every modern instrument, and unless you keep calm and collected you will get into trouble after you have been inside a really thick one for a few minutes. In the very early days of aviation, 1912 to be correct, I emerged from a cloud upside down, much to my discomfort, as I didn't know how to get right way up again. I found out somehow, or I wouldn't be writing this.
Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up.
A pilot must have a memory developed to absolute perfection. But there are two higher qualities which he also must have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake.
Get rid at the outset of the idea that the airplane is only an air-going sort of automobile. It isn't. It may sound like one and smell like one, and it may have been interior decorated to look like one; but the difference is - it goes on wings.
What is it in fact, this learning to fly? To be precise, it is 'to learn NOT to fly wrong.' To learn to become a pilot is to learn - not to let oneself fly too slowly. Not to let oneself turn without accelerating. Not to cross the controls. Not to do this, and not to do that. . . . To pilot is negation.
Rule books are paper - they will not cushion a sudden meeting of stone and metal.
Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
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