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In the 1960s, the Cessna model Three-Twenty Skyknight was my father's favorite flying machine, and many hours of my boyhood were spent in the right seat of this Cessna model flying with him across North America. He was the Vice President of Marketing for Cessna in those days, and my Dad, Frank D. Martin, played a role in the Skyknight's development, especially on one particular flight on a summer evening, inside a Kansas thunderhead.
Skyknight Zero Seven Tango was an incomparable beauty, with a stylish, sweeping stance on long tricycle gear. She had an alluringly shaped tail, and a gracefully sculpted nose, sharp, sophisticated. Yet, the appreciating eye was first drawn to her conical camber wingtip tanks, canted at a striking upward poise to form a soaring, delicate structure of aerodynamic balance; those were her standout dihedral features. Yet there were also those twin, proud, and pert nacelles, thrusting far out ahead of her leading edges, rounding forward past flaring, ovoid intake nostrils, to the tips of her bold spinners that enclosed the hubs of her full-feathering, constant speed, triple-bladed propellers. These were mounted on the drive shafts of 285 horse power, turbo-charged Continental engines. This was an airframe that promised enthralling flight, even when she was standing still, waiting for those select few who were privileged to board her.
It was a sunny August morning that we boarded Zero Seven Tango in Montreal, Quebec, for the flight home to Wichita. Flying out of Canada, it was a seven and a half hour flight back to Kansas including a stop in Detroit to clear customs. As the long day turned to the pastel shades of early evening over northeast Kansas, one of those majestic and awesome prairie squall lines stood up before us, rising to the troposphere. It was not yet impassable. There were holes and great corridors beckoning us toward the other side. We were without oxygen on board, so had to remain below twelve thousand feet. But that was of no matter. Even if we had ascended to the Three-Twenty's 28,000 foot service ceiling, those cloud canyons would still have risen thousands of feet overhead. I had been to this ethereal place before with my father on other flights. It was like an entrance to the vast halls of Heaven, through corridors of breathtaking beauty, whose fancifully architectured walls lofted overhead, beyond sight, that were ephemerons of flashing and fleeting pastel lights; a corridor which would befit the city of God. The Three-Twenty soared on, wending its way through these gigantic catacombs of soft and violent glowing color. The Skyknight, with our family cargo, was just a fly speck flitting amongst the Titans. Dad maneuvered the airplane to and fro, hoping to avoid their notice, but at times he inadvertently teased at their flowing white beards with the airplane's stiletto wing-tip tanks. That seemed to annoy the Titans. The evening pastels were trending toward shades of seething green and angry grays.
Abruptly, rain started to beat a mesmerizing rhythm on the windshield and water streaked up the windows in the fascinating way water does when driven at over 250 miles per hour. The rivulets crawl in pulsating rows of droplets along the plexiglass, clinging and dancing along, resisting, but finally losing their grip, torn off into the tumultuous airstream. Then, suddenly, explosion! Hail! Kansas hail! It was machine guns on the windshield. Dad pulled back on the throttles and slowed to maneuvering speed. He braced in concentration. The pounding noise on the windshield was deafening. Dad reached over and patted my head, then he patted the top of the control panel and made a lowering motion with his hand. It was clear he was telling me to get my head and my eyes below the control panel in case the windshield failed. I began to ponder the possible effect of horizontal hail bulleting through the cabin. Wild rolls ensued as one wing would drop out while the other was caught in updraft. It was one of flying's worst monsters, the convective storm, with immediately adjacent air columns moving at hundreds of feet per minute, one up, the other down, then reversing with the forward movement of the airplane. Yet, Dad continued with my flying lesson. He pointed toward the "DME" instrument (Distance Measuring Equipment) that electronically calculated true ground speed from a ground-based radio station. It was reading five miles per hour! That spoke of an almost three-figure mile per hour headwind! We were stopped dead in the teeth of this storm, despite our howling Continentals. Those teeth were gnashing at the Three-Twenty as a carnivore rends its prey. The machine guns continued.
Then, after who knows how long, a short time really, and just as suddenly as it had all begun, the teeth of the storm lost their grip, and we were flung out into the breathtaking serenity of calm air in the midst of Kansas thunderheads lit in the glorious colors of the western sunset. The Skyknight steadied herself. The engines resumed a synchronous hum. We flew on and landed in Wichita at the Cessna Delivery Center. Mechanics met us on the ramp and walked around the airplane in obvious amazement. One wondered how it had been flyable with such blunt leading edges. The other pointed out how the port nacelle air intakes were chewed away and the cowling had begun to peel back. "Don't know if those engines would have kept running uncovered; hail mighta taken the wiring out," the one said. The tips of the fuel tanks were splintered, the prop spinners were smashed, the rudder was serrated. Our glamorous Zero Seven Tango had been reduced to rags, and now sat in tatters.
The damaged parts on that Three-Twenty had been fabricated of fiberglass. It was a new, lighter-weight, cost-saving manufacturing innovation. Fiberglass was easily molded into any shape, thus saving the production costs of laboriously hand-forming aluminum parts to the complex shapes of the sharply curved and conical components of the Skyknight's exquisitely sculptured design. Zero Seven Tango had been one of the first Skyknights with fiberglass molded parts. Therein lies an inscrutable twist to the story of this incident. Was our flight into that storm an accident, or a demonstration?
The fiberglass parts issue had been much debated among company engineers and management. There were doubts raised, my father's among them, but the innovation was being moved forward to production. Yet, after our flight from Montreal, when the damage we did to Zero Seven Tango was analyzed, Three-Twenty production was recalled, and thenceforth the airplanes were built with traditional aluminum leading edges. Had Dad found his way to win the fiberglass argument? If our flight into the storm had been intentional, then I have wondered this: with three kids, wife and friend's wife aboard, did Dad find more than he bargained for inside that Kansas storm, or did he find precisely what he was seeking as he surveilled those cloud canyons that evening? No pilot expects to find flying pleasantries inside Kansas thunderheads. That was my Dad though. He was at once, thoroughly and incontrovertibly competent, and yet, so impulsive in his self-confidence, that many wondered about, yet few could question his judgment.
In flying with my father, and on my own, I have marveled at the spheral cynosure of the far horizon that, in flight, we venture toward, and upon which we set our course and bearing. The farther we fly toward the horizon, the farther it recedes, so, as I discovered, the horizon is something toward which we journey, but also something that journeys with us. Faith and death are like that. For me, this awareness, gained from flying, has become a way to view eternity. Flying aloft by one's own hand does impart lofty perspectives. After all, in any past age of human history, flying would have been regarded as a divinely transcendent act, a privilege reserved for the angels. In his later years my father's Christian faith greatly solidified, as has my own. That brought him to a recognition that the eternal and transient worlds are tightly woven together, separated by a thin veil, and when eventually we do arrive at that far horizon, the veil is parted to reveal the embrace of the divine that has always traveled quietly beside us. My father was able therefore, to arrive at this event horizon with the same confidence that he had shown in so many of his flights throughout the transient world.
At the Rocky Mountain Airport in Colorado, where I often flew, I have admired a beautifully restored Cessna Skyknight based there. This model is a very rare bird now, and when that aircraft flies over my home it imparts a sense of my father's continuing influence that seems more substantial than just sentimental. One day I climbed aboard this airplane and sat in the right seat. I had not been in a Skyknight since I was a boy, yet, I scanned the panel and it was so familiar it seemed like a homecoming. I took the control yoke in my hands once again, set my feet on the rudder peddles, and laid a hand on the throttles. On the right side of the engine control quadrant is a small knob that tensions and locks the throttle settings. I had not thought of it for years, and probably never would have again, but, so many times when Dad would reach for that tension lock, his hand would bump my left knee and then he would place his hand on my knee in an affectionate gesture he often gave me.
I closed the cabin door and looked out on the wing at the beautifully designed engine nacelle, and the stunning sculpture of the canted-up wing tip fuel tank. Those windswept shapes, masterworks of aeronautical styling and craftsmanship, had been the view out my window during epic boyhood adventures. That structure had carried me over many thousands of miles of my finest boyhood journeys. Just then, as I sat there, absorbed in these reminiscences, I felt that bump on my knee! I was startled! It made me gasp! A sense of elation swept over me. It seemed entirely real; a sensation that was a completely lost memory, and now returned to me in physical experience once again. I sat in that Cessna for a time in emotional epiphany. I couldn't help a few tears running on my face, brought on by that touch on my knee. Those emotions were caused as well, by all the remembered joys and regrets that, in my own flying of personal airplanes, on journeys with and without defined destinations, had been exactly what I was seeking to find again in personal flying.
This article was excerpted from "A Reminiscence Over Old Airplanes", by Fred T. Martin, available at Amazon.com, or at a discounted price at http://www.fredtmartin.com/.
Fred T Martin is a Home Business and Self Employment coach now developing a new website for opportunity seekers. More on this is also at his website.
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