Ceiling Zero Visibility Zero

By Clevis O. Laverty

“I will not take that airplane off this field tonight.”

The pilot who made that positive and final-sounding statement meant exactly what he said. He was the captain of a C-54, carrying personnel and supplies from Natal to Karachi during World War II. He had the lives of many in his care; a quarter-of-a-million-dollar airplane was his direct responsibility. He was a sincere man, and he was accepting responsibility.

And as he pounded his fist on the table, he presented a very threatening appearance to the flight dispatcher, as though daring this puny earth-bound creature to make him fly.

As I stood in the brilliantly lighted office at one o’clock in the morning, watching this dramatic scene, I felt like an observer of something that was happening to other people. I was, however, very much concerned; I was the radio officer of the airplane in question, and radio navigation was my responsibility.

Yet, I had the feeling I was watching a drama entirely dissociated from me, and I was trying to guess the outcome. I was trying to take a peek at the last page to discover whether or not the airplane would fly.

I knew that the captain must be right: ceiling zero, visibility zero, ten-ton overload. How could anyone in his right mind expect us to fly? On the other hand, whoever accused the military mind of being rational.

In the cockpit, we settled down to routine duties: the pilot warmed up his engines; the engineer checked his gauges and pressures; the copilot parroted everything the pilot said, and I checked the radio gear from input to output for the umpteenth time.

Everything was unreal. The fog swirled eerily about the windows. The warning lights on the instrument panel flashed on and off in the darkness like signals from another world. I put on the headphones and called the control tower for clearance; even the control operator sounded like a voice from outer space.

This wasn’t happening to me. Would it fly? Ten tons were twenty thousand pounds, and you couldn’t even say it fast. The runway was not long, and there was a two-hundred-foot drop into the city of Natal at the end of it. We would ruin someone’s sleep that night if we dropped into his living room.

The engines thundered to a heavy roar as the pilot held the brakes on until the whole ship vibrated. We lurched like a pregnant woman down the runway. I had a very clear view of the back of the pilot’s neck, where beads of perspiration were rolling down and disappearing into his collar. That didn’t help.

I looked out the window. . . nothing! I could feel the airplane lift, and I strained; it dropped. It made another reluctant attempt to get into familiar air and sluggishly returned to earth. Momentum was gathering all too slowly; it must have been years since we started down that runway.

There was a longer period of running and then a now-or-never constriction of the pilot’s arms as he pulled back on the wheel.

We were in the air. Through the fog, I could see pinpoints of the lights of Natal pass beneath us.

That was close. . . very close.

Suddenly, everything was natural; we were people flying an airplane. Tension left like an unwelcome guest. The fog was no longer eerie, but a rather familiar setting. The panel lights were steady green indications that all was well. Another flight, another day was beginning. The dispatcher never existed.

What happened? The airplane that would not fly that night under any circumstances. . . was airborne.