“As we took to the skies it seemed the aircraft was almost an extension of his body, carving its way over the water and through the air as if it already knew what inputs came next.” Niki Britton, describing Aaron Singer fly a seaplane over San Francisco. AOPA Pilot magazine, October 2024. It’s what good flying looks like.
“I used to think, I’m just a bird. The glider is the shell, the body of the bird. You become part of it. If you can get to that stage, you can manoeuvre the glider anywhere you want to. Rather than thinking about how to control the machine you’re sitting in, you think, this is all a part of me.“ Lemmy Tanner, quoted in the 2018 book Skybound.
“I just like to be up in the air, and the feeling of being a part of the plane.” John Coward John started in Tiger Moths, flew for the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, and then British Airways, ending his career going around the world in B707s. On retirement, he flew gliders in Wales. Quoted in the wonderful 2018 book Skybound.
“You did not get ‘into’ a fighter, you strapped it onto your ass and it became an extension of your physical body.” Amazing life story of Ed Dwight, almost the first Black astronaut, who could have walked on the Moon: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/us/ed-dwight-was-set-to-be-the-first-black-astronaut-heres-why-that-never-happened.html
Fighter pilot legend. Triple Ace. Multiple combat victories against Messerschmitts and MiGs. Married to a Hollywood actress. Son of a General, who became a General himself. College football star. Best Wing Commander in Vietnam. Hard-drinking mustached maverick, who eventually was Commandant of the Air Force Academy. Robin Olds had an amazing career. But let’s look here at some of his (almost sensitive) writing on flying. He first flew at the age of eight, in an open cockpit biplane with his father, a former WWI instructor pilot who became an accomplished aviator and Major General in the United States Army Air Force. In … Continue reading Robin Olds on Flying
