FLYING SENSE

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] say Chief we're new Cadets here we're looking for our instructor uh Lieutenant tayl could you tell us where to find him that's him up there [Music] [Music] they ringing it out isn't he he's coming in [Music] now morning sir sir okay chief excuse me sir K Wilkins sir kette Thompson sir we were told to report to you oh good morning glad to know you you men all checked in yes sir do you have any free time right now yes sir okay I'll store this gear and meet you in the ready room in 10 minutes thank you sir see that's Bob Taylor I've seen him in pictures you won't have to worry about that when you get to see stage you sure gave it the works up there sir you suppose we'll ever be able to do that sir oh sure you will I know how you feel I remember how I felt and I was right where you fellas are just starting primary training hasn't been too long ago either yeah I know how it is you joined the Navy because you wanted to fly but instead of flying pretty soon you found yourself doing things that didn't seem to have any connection with flying what you didn't realize was that the obstacle course for example had been carefully planned to increase your agility just as the hours of boxing and wrestling you put in gave you an aggressiveness that every Navy pilot must have you probably couldn't see what swimming had to do with flying being able to swim might someday save your life marching was just a preliminary to the air discipline you would ultimately experience in formation line then the recreation is hike 15 or 20 M plenty tough going you thought but being able to take it and stride might someday mean your survival after a jungle crackup you studied bed making mathematics recognition a lot of other things they good reasons for all of them perhaps the most important is the fact that the foundation of every naval officer is physical fitness you have a good memory sir is it really pretty tough this primary training well if you mean does it take hard work yes but if you mean is flying itself tough no when you get the the right approach flying is relatively simple because the airplane is of value only as a platform some are platforms for guns some are platforms for bombs or death charges or Torpedoes some carry men and Equipment some are for [Music] observation just as a battleship is merely a convenient floating platform so the airplane is a convenient Airborne platform take the carrier pilot for instance flying's only a small part of his job he has to get his plane safely to his objective to do this he has to navigate correctly and even if he's pretty good at it that's almost a full-time job in itself he must stand a 360° w watch at all times or an enemy plane May shoot him down before he even sees it just watch the ocean for enemy ships when he reaches his objective he must deliver his blow at the enemy and at the same time keep himself and his plane from being shot [Music] up [Music] then he must get back safely perhaps all alone he must Backtrack on his own navigation aiming at a tiny moving spec in thousands of miles of open ocean there isn't enough gas for a second guessing all the while he must be on the alert for attacking enemy planes but what I've always wanted is how can he do all that and fly the plane too because a combat pilot handles the mechanics of flying as easily and as naturally as as you handle the mechanics of walking the senses are so keenly developed and so attuned to the airplane that he can he can fly with 90% of his attention on something else and still know exactly what his Planes doing all the time that's what the cadet has to learn to do before he can become a combat planet look at those M6 that's for [Music] me primary training you don't just learn to fly yellow perils learn to fly airplanes any and everything with wings on it because when you can fly the yellow perel and fly it well any other plane is just another kite the operational planes just have more gadgets with which you have to be familiar as far as the actual flying goes the only difference is that the big planes go faster and way more of course you fellas probably think of flying as something entirely strange in you but actually you've been learning to fly ever since you started learning to walk ever notice how babies learn to walk first they get interested in their feet in the mechanics of walking they don't make much progress then one day they get the complete picture of where they are and where they want to go they forget all about their feet and really walk because they forget about the mechanics of walking and put their minds on the ultimate objective you were learning to fly when you first learned to ride a scooter maybe you didn't know enough to bank the first time you went around a corner so you fell over on the outside of the curve or maybe you banked it too much and fell off on the inside but after a while you got so you could tell by the feel of it whether you were banking right well in flying an airplane you use that same sense of balance you learned from riding the scooter you were learning to fly when you learned to ride a bicycle you added to that sense of balance of the right feel of the thing when you bank for a turn you rode with other fellas maybe that was formation riding not too different from formation flying if you rode enough you got the feel of your bicycle so it was almost a part of you like most fellas you probably drive a car but can you think back to the day when you first started to learn to drive remember how hard it seemed you wondered if you'd ever be able to jump into the car and drive like the Kid Next Door you had trouble remembering which gear was which occasionally with almost disastrous results in a surprisingly short time you forgot all about the gear shift and the steering wheel and which pedal was the clutch and which the brake and as the business of driving became more and more automatic it was possible to devote most of your attention to matters much more important than the mere mechanics of operating the car by now you really had the feel of it yes you've been learning to fly all your life because flying isn't so different from the things you're used to we a the ride Brothers have flown in the first place matter of fact they probably didn't know as much about flying as you fellas do right now essentially there's not such a great difference between driving an automobile and flying a plane when you're driving a car you can see ahead of you the road you're going to travel all you have to do is to follow it in flying a plane there is no path for you to follow don't let that worry you you'll soon learn to create that path in your mind so you see it as clearly in your imagination as you see the highway ahead when you're traveling in an automobile no matter where you fly or what you want to make your airplane do your mind will form that mental path ahead to take you safely past obstacles that mental path will guide you through acrobatic Maneuvers bring you in for well executed Landings it won't be long after you start your training that you begin thinking ahead so your path is always out there planned well in advance of your plane you mean you get so you can actually visualize a road up there ahead of you yeah that's what it amounts to there's nothing so unusual about it it works on the ground too you probably know people who never could learn to park in a tight space somebody told them that if they'd start start cutting the wheel at a certain spot and then cut it hard the other way and so on they'd have no trouble that would be fine if all parking spaces were of a standard size unfortunately they're not he would first look at the space and then visualize the path his car must take to get into that space you have a much better chance of making it on the first try ever been to one of those motorcycle riding exhibitions they have at carnivals and fairs those fellas have to visualize an exact path if they want to go on living as a matter of fact they can give you a pretty good exhibition of the wing over that's one of the acrobatic Maneuvers you'll be doing later on for some reason a lot of people have the idea that it takes a Superman to be a Naval aviator well sir can just anybody Learn to Fly practically any normal person who has all these faculties and in good health I don't care who you are or what your background you've been doing things all your life it'll help you with your flying take uh take stalls and Spins for instance we've had students come in in here with a deathly pair of them whereas actually they're both perfectly safe and simple maneuvers you just don't want to run into the ground while executing them as a matter of fact you're already familiar with some of the symptoms of a stall you learned about them from your bicycle when you start up a grade on your bicycle if you don't pedal you lose speed you see the bicycle going slower the wind whistling past your ears quiets down pretty soon the bicycle gets wobbly then stalls Falls over same way with an airplane pull up into the climbing attitude and unless you add power your speed will fall off you keep the nose in that climbing attitude you'll soon begin to sense the same stalling conditions you experienced with your bicycle you can feel the airplane getting ready to stall the controls get slack and mushy don't respond as quickly the bicycle Wobble the plane vibrates then it stalls drops off on a wing in certain cases it may [Music] of course one of the best ways to avoid an impending stall in an airplane is to get the nose down motorcycle riders use this technique too if they find they don't have enough speed to maintain their attitude they put their nose down and pick up whatever speed they need we've seen speed boats skid when they turn too sharply well an airplane if in properly flown will skid through the air in very much the same way that the motorboat skids in the water on the other hand the boy falling off his scooter on the inside because he misjudged his turn has his counterpart in the airplane which slips downward off course because of a poorly flown turn you see practically everything you'll do in an airplane is paralleled by something you're already familiar with but sir aren't there instruments in the plane to tell you whether you're banking right in a turn and whether your speed is right and so on oh yes the instruments are there all right and the time will come when they're all important many times your life will depend on your insts you'll be able to fly through weather so thick you can't see your wing tips and yet you'll get there safely because of instruments in situations like that your instruments will act as a sort of substitute for your sense of py but it isn't practical to use substitutes for your eyes until you've learned to use your eyes themselves in flying for instance either of you fell ever had a motorcycle I did as a matter of fact I still do at home does it have a speedometer on it yes sir well when you're going uphill do you watch the speedometer to see that you're going fast enough to keep from stalling well no sir I suppose you're going downhill there's a bad intersection at the bottom you don't want to get going so fast you can't stop in case a car comes along do you watch the speedometer to be sure you don't get going too fast no sir well then how do you tell whether you're going too fast or not well you just know that's all but how well sir by how fast things seem to be going by yeah and how the wind sounds in your ears just by the way it feels I guess sure by sight sound and feel right yeah yeah that's right that's how you learn to fly an airplane as a primary student when you're learning to land a plane you'll be so busy trying to keep a straight course and your wings level trying to judge just when and where to set her down you won't have time to move your eyes down into the cockpit you'll have to judge your air speed by sight sound and feel and the sooner you learn to do that the sooner you'll learn to make good Landings but even before that you'll have to learn how to use your eyes correctly well sir how do you mean how should we use them maybe I can show you now I can stand here and look straight ahead at that radio and still see the writing on this Blackboard over here more than 100° away I can't read the writing but I can still see there's writing there over on this side I can see there's someone sitting on that couch I can't tell who it is or whether he's asleep from his attitude it looks like it let's go over the board how much you see depends almost entirely on how you use your eyes now the average person standing here looking at the radio would see the radio and would probably be conscious of objects within this range but training will increase your ability to use your entire field of vision so that eventually you get to the point where you're conscious of objects and movement within this range even including an area slightly back of your eyes so you can cover something like 210 of the 360° so you see it's a matter of divided attention you have to learn to be conscious of several things at once of your entire field of vision the natural tendency is to concentrate your vision on a single object and the minute you concentrate your attention too much on one thing you're narrowing your vision blotting out everything else you're doing to yourself exactly what you do to a horse when you put blinders on it that's one of the principal causes of automobile accidents the driver gets his gaze fixed on some one thing he stares at it and so Narrows his vision that he loses all sense of the relationship of his car to the road the expert driver keeps his gaze moving moving all the time he spots a car just behind him while he may not look directly at it again he's conscious that it's there he glances at that intersection with the car approaching while his gaze moves elsewhere still that car is within his full field of vision so that he never actually loses sight of it to some degree a good driver develops his sense of sight instinctively a good pilot it must be developed to a very high degree but sight alone isn't enough one of the first things you'll learn when you start to fly is to hold the plane in straight and level flight at first that'll seem like a pretty hard job the nose will wander up or it'll wander down you'll think you're in level attitude lots of times when you're actually climbing or gliding but you'll soon find several ways of knowing the attitude of your plane oh by the way the nose looks in relation to the horizon or the way the wings look you'll know by the sound of the engine when you're in level flight it'll probably sound something like this but pull the nose up you'll hear the difference hear it you can tell it's working harder on the other hand put the nose down hear the engine speed up sounds too fast also you can tell a lot about what your plane's doing by combining your senses of Sight and Sound with the way the airplane feels to you the feel of the controls and that seat of the pants feeling Flyers sometimes talk about you want to put your plane into a Glide cut the throttle and push your nose down how far do you push it you learn to push it down until your eyes tell you it's right for a Glide till the whistle of the Wind Through the stretch sounds right till a Glide feels right to you the nose starts to wander up sounds of the wind will change the wings and nose won't look right for a Glide in relation to the Horizon just know that something's wrong oldtime Pilots will say you feel it something's wrong but they actually mean a combination of all three senses sight sound feel learning to fly the way we want you to learn is a little like like learning to type by The Touch system the oldfashioned way of learning to type was by looking at the copy you're typing from and then at the keyboard to see which keys to hit that way you must pay attention to both the copy and the keyboard so you never can become very fast or very efficient the correct way to learn is to forget about the keyboard entirely by blanking out the keys and referring when necessary to a chart soon you're hitting the right keys without thinking about them your attention remains on the copy all the time your fingers find the right Keys automatically likewise in learning to fly if you try to control the attitude of your plane by looking in the cockpit you give your eyes two jobs to do and you see what's going on outside the cockpit and must watch the instruments too later on you'll be able to so divide your attention that this will be possible but in the meantime too much attention to what's going on inside the cockpit will cut your efficiency your Landings won't be so good you can't watch the attitude of the plane the relationship of plane to ground and Horizon and all the other things you should be seeing keep your eyes on the instrument panel as well it's harder for you to fly figure eights around the pylons takes too long long for you to get your eyes from the general patternn to the instruments and back again you have more trouble with acrobatics simply because you're trying to watch two things at once so naturally you don't do as well the well-trained pilot keeps his attention out of the cockpit he handles the mechanics of flying as easily and as effortlessly as a Touch system typist handles the mechanics of typing he sits relaxed in his cockpit relaxed but alert his touch on the controls is as light but yet as firm as a touch of a doctor taking a patient's pulse he's always aware of the general pattern of the ground beneath him he makes metal notes of All fields or roads where he might be able to land in case of emergency in formation he is continually conscious of the position of planes flying with him he's always on the lookout for other planes in the area and once he's SP them he keeps track of them as long as they're anywhere near him he's like the basketball player the mechanics of handling the ball dribbling are automatic he sees the entire court he's aware of the position of the opposition players and his own team he constantly sees the whole picture actually the finnished pilot in his airplane operate as a single unit the designer of the bicycle didn't plan a two- wheeled vehicle and then decideed would be nice if somebody rode on it he began with the rider and built the bicycle around him likewise the early designers of the airplane didn't start out by designing a flying machine and then putting a man in it they started with the man himself and tried to put Wings on him so that he could fly like a bird to the trained Aviator of today the controls of the modern airplane are merely an extension of his own arms and legs as much a part of him as the wings are part of a bird when you want to walk from one place to another you don't have to stop and figure out every movement of your feet and your legs nor do you consciously decide on an exact path all that's automatic and when you can learn to fly an airplane or learn to make a landing or shoot a circle or do a slow roll or a snap roll and execute them all with the same effort toes with which you walk or a bird flies then you and the airplane will truly have become one an efficient coordinated unit and you will have achieved the purpose of primary flight and will be well on your way toward becoming a United States Naval [Music] aviator