The Cold Weather Guys - Part II

[Part I here]

The giant bird took an eternity to tear free of the earth's pull, even without a massive bomb-load. James Martin sat in the front crew cabin for take off. In the back, separated by an 80-foot long tunnel, sat the cook, the tail-gunner and the photo-recon guys looking after the cameras. Once aloft, the RB-36 needed a leisurely 25 minutes to get up to cruising altitude, slightly above the maximum ceiling of the latest Soviet fighter jets.

James peered through the domed window at the sun rising over the horizon, the deep indigo blue of the sky at 40,000 ft. The throbbing and hum of the six piston and four turbojet engines were constant, soon overlooked by his consciousness as he contemplated the external beauty of the heavens. Though should something go wrong with any engine, he'd be crawling into narrow tunnels running into the wings to check that the radiators were not iced over, that oil or fuel were not leaking, or that the engines weren't overheating. His ears were fine-tuned for any tell-tale sound that one of the ten engines was misbehaving - he had a vast number of instruments to keep checking too.

As they headed north, hour after hour, night would not befall them. Making the most of the midnight sun, the RB-36 would fly over three thousand miles across the Arctic icecap to make landfall over Russia, probe enemy territory and turn back with high-resolution photos and radar maps. An hour into the flight, they'd just left the North American continent and were heading out over the Arctic ocean. All was proceeding smoothly - indeed uneventfully. Several hours to go. All was well. Outside, the beauty of the Arctic was glorious. Several hours later, James made his way to the rear crew cabin to take a rest, and got chatting with Tony the electronic intelligence officer, whose job was to plot where the Soviet radars were located. They were approaching the enemy coast.

James loosened up and started getting philosophical about the glories of flying so high above the ice cap. "Why d'you fly, Tony? I mean, educated guy like you, you could get a job with IBM doing stuff with electronics and computers, yet here you are, risking your neck in a dangerous mission?" "Yeah? So how about you, James - what makes you fly, eh?" Both men quickly reached the same conclusion: women. "Dames - they're a distraction. I want fun. They want commitment. Soon as they do - I lose all interest in them. I can't settle yet - so I figured that getting back to the military would take my mind off them. 'Till I'm good and ready. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

Tony winced at James. "Me? It's the other way round. I fall in love. Beautiful girl. Immediately I want to marry her. Start a big family. She runs a mile! I try to forget. Meet another one. Same thing happens. And again, and - like, James - what's wrong with me? Hell, I need to forget. Too much pain, repeated sadness. Everything reminds me of the girl. But at 40,000 feet over enemy territory, eyes focused on the electronic read-outs, I forget all about 'em. So do me a favor, pal, don't remind me!"

"Hey bud, you seem to be meetin' all those dames I wanna be meeting!" laughed James. He was just about to offer swapping places with Tony, when the captain called Action Stations. Down beneath and to the left of their flight path, a pair of MiG-15 fighter jets had been scrambled to intercept them from a hitherto uncharted airbase. It would be a mere five minutes before the Reds reached their altitude. The pilot pulled the RB-36 higher, as high as it could possibly fly in the thin air of the stratosphere, turning it round back towards the Pole. Tony had a fix on the interceptors and the radar that guided them. James kept an eye on the instrument panels for the engines as all ten were now delivering full power - just the time for something to go wrong.

Neither man could give a thought to women.

This time last year:
Demise of my old Nokia N95

This time two years ago:
Late June lightning