I always felt Jimmy was trapped in Hollywood. He felt it himself. He loved aviation so much and he wanted to be able to do more of that. He somehow just got stuck here.
And if flying, like a glass-bottomed bucket, can give you that vision, that seeing eye, which peers down on the still world below the choppy waves - it will always remain magic.
As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] dimished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.
The route to the target is more important than the target. We are going to go for the target, but we enjoy the route as well.
Everything I had ever learned about air fighting taught me that the man who is aggressive, who pushes a fight, is the pilot who is successful in combat and who has the best opportunity for surviving battle and coming home.
It is as though we have grown wings, which thanks to Providence, we have learnt to control.
Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.
There are airmen and there are pilots: the first being part bird whose view from aloft is normal and comfortable, a creature whose brain and muscles frequently originate movements which suggest flight; and then there are pilots who regardless of their airborne time remain earth-loving bipeds forever. When these latter unfortunates, because of one urge or another, actually make an ascension, they neither anticipate nor relish the event and they drive their machines with the same graceless labor they inflict upon the family vehicle.
Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks.
The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.
In combat flying, fancy precision aerobatic work is really not of much use. Instead, it is the rough maneuver which succeeds.
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
Before I went to the Mess I made the excuse I wanted to get something out of my aeroplane, and climbed into the cockpit; I did this, however, to be able to say good-bye to the old dear; and I really felt dreadfully sorry to part with her. I get very attached to aeroplanes, and I am one of those people who think that they aren't so inanimate as we are told they are.
"Just try and remember," I said slowly," that if God had intended men to fly He'd have given us wings. So all flying is flying in the face of nature. It's unnatural, wicked and stuffed with risks all the time. The secret to flying is learning to minimize the risks." "Or perhaps - the secret of life is to choose your risks?"
We thought humble and proud at the same time, all at once in love again with this painful bittersweet lovely thing called flight.
Flying has changed how we imagine our planet, which we have seen whole from space, so that even the farthest nations are ecological neighbors. It has changed our ideas about time. When you can gird the earth at 1,000 m.p.h., how can you endure the tardiness of a plumber? Most of all, flying has changed our sense of our body, the personal space in which we live, now elastic and swift. I could be in Bombay for afternoon tea if I wished. My body isn't limited by its own weaknesses; it can rush through space.
In the case of pilots, it is a little touch of madness that drive us to go beyond all known bounds. Any search into the unknown is an incomparable exploitation of oneself.
Though, as he was torn into a pink upper air, she was a good craft to ride in, for her belly was firm and her breasts enabled a flying man good hold and emotions of heady safety. . . . Steering her peasant tits he bounded off stars.
Buddy of mine once told me that he'd rather fly a jet than kiss his girl. Said it gave him more of a kick.
One cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.
Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.
Now shut the engines off. Come down and flatten out, feel the long float, and at the given moment pull the stick right home. She's down. Now taxi in. Switch off. It's over - but not quite, for the port engine, just as if it knew, as if reluctant at the last to let me go, kicked, kicked, and kicked again, as overheated engines will, then backfired with an angry snorting: Fool! The best is over ...But I did not hear.
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?
I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not.
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies, In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies.
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