Today I visited a small air museum, the Atlantic Maritime Aircraft Museum, outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was a small building near the airport, and this being a Sunday, there were no other visitors. Cynthia chose to wait in the car, airplanes not being her "thing," and she ate a cold lunch while I went inside.
There was a replica of the "Silver Dart," Canada's first heavier than air craft, build by Alexander Graham Bell some time shortly after the Wright Brothers build their flyer. There were several other models, there was a home built that was, well, never quite built, from the 1920s, then there was the star of the show, a beautifully restored, complete, F-104 Starfighter in Canadian Armed Services colors.
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was developed as a high-altitude, high speed (Mach 3+) interceptor for the US Air Force in the early 1960s, primarily designed to counter the threat of intercontinental bombers from Russia. The plane was for its time the fastest and highest flying craft in the world, and its lines, essentially a streamlined dart with two short, stubby wings built around a huge jet turbine with a cockpit on the nose, says nothing but all business. When the role of interceptor began to go to other, more modern planes, this plane was sold to our NATO allies, especially Germany and Canada, for their front-line interceptor fleets.
The Germans considered the plane a widow-maker. It killed more pilots than any other in training and flying accidents; the landing speed was atrocious (200+ kts) and it was easy to stall in the hands of a less-than-fully confident pilot.
The Canadians loved the plane. It seemed to perform even better in the super-cold, rarified conditions of the extreme north, and many pilots fell in love with the crate. The Canadian Air Force kept the plane in service longer than any other.
Which brings me to this one plane: there was no one there, just me and the F-104.
When I was young, and beginning to decide what kind of things I might want to do in my life, I set my sights on one thing and one thing only: to fly fighter jets, and the F-104 in particular. The lethal character of the plane drew me to it even as a lad of six or seven, and I read all I could about the plane, at that time our first-line fighter interceptor. I built models, I had drawings, I bought a book about it. This plane, to fly this beautiful deadly machine, was all I wanted to do with my life.
The summer before I entered the eighth grade, I had to start wearing glasses. That was, in effect, the end of all my dreams to fly an F-104. Late at night, when all is quiet, I can still feel what I felt that first night with my glasses - my dreams, my life, slipping away.
Until today, I had never actually touched a Starfighter. I had read that the leading edges of the wings were so sharp, that plastic protectors had to be fitted on them to protect the handling crew. I never really believed that, until I saw it today. The wings, those short, stubby wings, *were* sharp! The cockpit was crowded and all business, not a wasted inch. I could imagine a person "putting on" the plane, and flying it to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, cozy and confined in that cockpit. She looked even more lethal in person than ever in one of my drawings or photographs, long ago put away.
I just sat with the plane for a bit, admiring, imagining. Then I said good-bye, good-bye to those dreams of long ago, finally, let go of the pain of change and of never achieving. Its good to face old dreams now and again, and realize that you are made of broken dreams, lost chances, paths not taken. It was good no one was there, I could say good-bye to my Starfighter, and my childhood.
-Crow
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