CONTRAILS

By

Charles L. Lunsford

All rights reserved

It has been more than forty years since I flew in airplanes for a living.  Airplanes and flying in general have progressed to a point where the aircraft I few and the flying I did are not only obsolete, but have passed into the realm of ancient history.  Almost the only thing that remains constant is that airplanes are still held aloft by the lift created by their wings.  Nearly everything else has changed.

In those 40 years, I have pursued other things.  I married, had children and raised them, and watched them leave the nest and do well in careers that have very little to do with flying.

Why, then, do I feel compelled to look up every time I hear an airplane fly over?

I used to think that this compulsion would pass over time, but not so.  If anything, it’s getting worse.  I even find myself wasting my time watching the Boing 737s climb out from the local terminal.  Why would I watch a 737?  I know they are fine little airliners, but not very interesting.  They all look alike, and they always climb out making exactly the same turn and exactly the same altitude and at exactly the same speed at exactly the same time of day.  What’s interesting about that?  Why must I look up at them?

My work takes me out of doors, and I know my co-workers think there is something wrong with me because I’m looking up all the time and stumbling occasionally because I’m not watching where I’m walking.  Poor old guy in his dotage.

The civil terminal here shares the runways with a large Air Force base, so I’m treated to a rich variety of aircraft flying over.  I play golf at a course that is directly off the north end of one of the runways.  The other golfers complain about the noise and the wind, but I love it.  The airplanes are so low on final over the course one can almost reach up and touch them.  The base is home to a few C-130s that drone overhead from time to time, and I have to look up at them.  I flew in their predecessor, the Fairchild C-119, and I never see a C-130 without being reminded that they are the reason I quit flying when I did.  They were so sophisticated that they didn’t need my particular skill as a Radio Operator.

There are F-16s on the base, too, but I only hear them roaring off the ground in afterburner, and doing maximum power climbouts.  Now and then, I’m treated to a formation peeloff over the end of the runway, about 3 miles away.  But the F-16s are only fighters, flown by very young men who do tactical practice and gunnery practice on the range near the base.  They are homebound.  They never get to GO anywhere.

Very rarely, I’m treated to the unmistakable old sound of large radial piston engines driving multiple propellers.  For them, I have to run outside if I’m inside, or to run to a clear area in a frantic effort to locate the source of that wonderful thunder.  Usually, the source of the sound is a “slurry bomber,” an old DC-6 or a Neptune going to fight a forest fire someplace, but once or twice it has been an old Connie or a B-29.  The old 2800s, 3350s and 4360s running on 115/145 octane aviation gasoline – the highest ever refined.  Engines that permeated one’s very being with their power.  Those are my kind of engines.  The ones that took my high-pitch hearing.  Nothing else sounds like those big engines.  I  MUST go and look up at them when they come over.  They are the engines of my youth.

My town is also directly under a major east-west airway, and when conditions are right, the contrails are nothing short of spectacular.

When I was flying, there were few contrails.  Not many aircraft flew high enough to generate them—certainly not the aircraft I flew in.  Most airliners didn’t fly that high either, so if one saw a contrail, it was more than a little exotic.  It almost had to be a military jet; flying at altitudes we could only dream about, on some fabulous and exciting mission.  We were guilty of envy when very occasionally, we were treated to a feathery white streak going south over the Mediterranean.  We were seeing the first jet airliners.  Their callsign was “Springbuck” and they were the ill-fated De Havilland Comets of BOAC, on their way to South Africa.  They flew so fast and so high that they usually didn’t bother with radio calls to the air traffic controllers.  There was no other traffic up there for them to worry about.

Now, of course, those envied white streaks are commonplace.  Every airliner makes one.  So why am I still fascinated when I look up at them?

On those good contrail days, there I’ll be, gawking up at the head of the contrail, trying to see that little silvery speck that is causing that long white streak against the blue, watching it for a long time until it passes below the vault of the mountains, and wondering what the final destination of the little speck could be.

Sometimes I can see one that is not on the airway, but streaking across the sky at some odd angle, usually very high, and very fast.  A military jet, probably, doing his own thing uncontrolled by anyone on the ground.  And once in a while, a flight of fighters in loose formation, making multiple, parallel streaks across the sky.

And now and then, I’ll see a very large aircraft spewing out a big contrail of four little wisps behind its engines that quickly merge into two larger ones.  Something big and majestic.  Maybe a 747 or a B-52.  Or one of UPS’ stretch DC-8s.  There is one of those old, refurbished DC-8s that climbs out among the 737 traffic every evening, no longer loaded with passengers now, but loaded with the myriad stuff of overnight parcels and mail, but it doesn’t matter—this airplane has some class.  Whatever I’m doing, I always have to stop and watch this beautiful aircraft as it climbs out to the east and then makes a slow and majestic turn back toward the west in the gathering dusk.  Sometimes, just after sunset, the airplane gleams with the golden light of the dying sun, while the rest of us are in shadow.  I must watch until he is gone from sight.

A few days ago, I watched the contrail of something large moving toward the horizon to the east.  It was very high and probably 20 miles beyond the mountain, but I could still see the end of the contrail moving perceptibly away from me.  The crew of that airplane had no idea I was watching them, nor did their passengers.  I thought back to my own flying days and wondered if ever there had been an old flying man somewhere down there watching me fly over, and wishing he had those days of his youth back.  Maybe his hearing was damaged from freezing in an open cockpit and listening to the pounding roar of his engine only a few feet away amid the wood and fabric and wires of his fragile aircraft.  Watching me, he would have had no idea where I was going, but he’d have envied me my destination.  Wishing he were going with me. He would have been a type who, regardless of his age, still had to look up when an airplane went over.

In the future, I have no doubt that many of those young men currently roaring around in F-16s and other modern aircraft, will be looking up, too.  Looking for the speck at the head of the contrail, feeling a little envious, wondering where it’s going, and remembering what it was like to be up there – high and clean and free of the Earth.

They will have to look up because, just like me, a part of them will always be up there.

Flying.