The Last Flight

The Last Flight

By David Barth

It was a warm night on May 27th, 1981, as I sat on the patio contemplating how a friend and fellow pilot, Randy Tully, and I might somehow wrangle a chance to fly a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet. I conjured up this story in which we were the last pilots in the world who were available to fly 747s.

In this story I wrote for Randy, we just couldn't be turned down. It was a case of supply and demand. All of the other pilots were busy. However, for the story to be plausible, it required a world-wide nuclear war.

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Roger Conrad sat on his patio enjoying the cool evening breeze wafting in from the mountains. The temperature drop was a respite from the hot July days. Not only was the weather hot, so was the international situation. Skirmishes had become battles. Nations were beginning to take sides. Roger remembered the Civil Defense Plan he had put together for the savings bank he once worked for. No one had paid any attention to it then, but the research work he had done gave him insights into some of the possible consequences and courses of action that might occur within the next couple of weeks.

The active military services had been called to alert status when Israel had attacked Lebanon. Everyone knew that the Israelis had nuclear weapons and would use them if they felt cornered. The Arab countries had united against Israel, except for Egypt, which, at first, remained neutral to try to stabilize the situation, but finally joined the Arabic block.

The Soviets sided with the Arabs, but they were, by and large, unwelcome supporters. China used the middle east fray as a distraction to attack Vietnam. Vietnam called on Russia for support, and China fell into the U. S./NATO alliance by informal agreement.

Most of the third world countries were forgotten as the most powerful nations counted first their allies, then their enemies. In fact, most of the southern hemisphere didn't figure into anyone's battle plans, except as a supply depot or staging area. Included, were the continents of South America and Africa. India and the rest of the weaker nations fell into this category. Even nations with nuclear weapons, such as India and Pakistan, were discounted because they lacked a capable delivery system.

Roger stared up into the night sky, thinking how nice a night it would be to go flying. He enjoyed flying, and he enjoyed swapping "hangar stories" about flying almost as much. He and his old friend, Max Carpenter, had spent many enjoyable hours together flying and swapping stories. But Max had felt the lure of the sweet California life and opportunities that were out there in Silicon Valley.

Max had a good head on his shoulders, and he used it to good advantage. He had landed a job as vice president of research and development for a water purification company that had ties with the petroleum industry. Some of Max's detractors said he just had a good vocabulary and used it to good advantage, but people who knew the subjects he spoke of knew he had the knowledge to back up his talk.

Roger felt a little trapped. Although most citizens of the country were doing "business as usual," Roger realized that the holocaust could occur anytime. The hard core survivalists had already holed up in the hills and mountains, away from the populated, industrialized centers, self sufficient and on guard from intruders, be they foreign or domestic.

Nuclear proliferation had spread to the extent that one really didn't know from where the nuclear tipped reentry bodies would originate. Roger thought it might be novel to try to identify their launch point by watching the point at which they entered the atmosphere high above Colorado. The most unlikely direction was from the South. North, East, and West would be the probable paths.

The United States had long ago given up on city shelters as a practical means of protecting the populace. Hardened sites below the surface of a city, designed to afford protection from a nuclear attack, were just too expensive. The people just wouldn't stand for the tremendous monetary outlay required for such a setup. In the Soviet Union, where the government had free rein on what projects were deemed necessary, many large cities had hard sites for protection of perhaps ninety percent of the population. Many of the underground cells were actually manufacturing plants.

In the U. S., the problem had been "solved" by planning for mass evacuations from the cities to outlying areas. Denverites would move to Huerfano County. Of course, in practice, such an evacuation would not work. It was only a plan to placate the public. State officials had specially built sites to go to, but these were worthless in the event of a near hit. They would serve as communications centers that would go out of business after the first warhead put out its electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would destroy all the Civil Defense communications. Only hardened defense systems were built to withstand EMP. The strong pulse that emanated from a nuclear blast was enough to cause a strong current flow in any circuit that was not specially shielded, regardless of whether it was energized or not.

SAC and NORAD were protected, but everyone knew that targeting would be dense at all communications sites. About all that the U. S. could depend on would be initial alert of something going awry when an existing Russian or other satellite, ostensibly launched for peaceful purposes, exploded with a strong nuclear blast that would generate a powerful EMP that would spread completely around the globe, following the earth's magnetic field, much as the Van Allen belts, to shut down all satellite activity.

SAC was intent on self preservation, however. It would immediately launch several replacement communication and spy satellites into orbit. Then the next enemy satellite would explode, and so on, back and forth.

Roger was startled from his thoughts by the ringing of his phone. The telephone had become a bearer of bad tidings for many men during these tense times. After the military alerts, the reserves had been called to active duty, then the national guard had been activated, all inactive reservists had been called up, and finally, an emergency draft had been invoked for all men under thirty, then for all men under thirty five. The soldiers were equipped and disbursed, as quickly as possible, to Europe, to Japan, to the few friendly nations that would allow a mass troop encampment on their soil. As Roger reached for the phone, he dreaded that the minimum age might have been upped to forty, the age group in which he fell.

The voice on the other end was not a draft board official, but that of his good friend, Max. Max's voice seemed far away and slightly garbled. He said it was the scrambler that was slurring his speech, not alcohol as Roger had jokingly suggested. Max, a naval reservist (referred to as "reverses" by the regulars), explained to Roger that he had been assigned to a desk job that involved coordination of the activation of the top secret plans for diverting the nation's commercial airline equipment to use by the military. His office had been in turmoil for the past few days as hundreds of thousands of men had been flown to bases around the world in commercial airliners. That job nearly completed, the mop up task was at hand. This included clearing all U. S. commercial airports of usable transport aircraft for the following reasons:

1. To keep them safe from possible damage from enemy weapons so they could be used later.

2. To prevent them from falling into enemy hands in the event unfriendly forces penetrated the country's boundaries or were formed from secret, dissident factions already on U. S. soil.

Roger said that the idea seemed sound, but what did that have to do with him? Max explained that all pilots qualified to fly commercial aircraft were already attached to other missions with the exception of private pilots who did not have turbojet time and had not been called up due to their age.

Roger began to think ahead of Max, wondering if he was being touched for a job such as copilot of some plane like a DeHaviland Twin Otter for a ferry flight. But Max told Roger that the excess of planes to pilots was acute; so acute that only the largest planes were going to be moved, and that each plane would have only one pilot! Max said, "Roger, I've assigned you to a United 747 sitting on the ramp at San Francisco International. The reason I called you is that you can get here in six hours in your Cessna. As you know, there aren't any commercial flights flying. We are fresh out of pilots in just about the entire country. How about it? We haven't got much time!"

Roger was awestruck. He knew that he had dreamed about doing such a flight, but this was it. The real thing. Was this a suicide mission? He asked, "Max, what about training? I don't know a damn thing about a Citation, let alone a 747!"

Max said that had already been considered, that such a trip did have its potential for danger, but as soon as he arrived in San Francisco, both of them would attend a four hour 747 training class.

Roger responded, "Some training class! I don't think UA would approve of this."

They don't have any say in the matter. That 747 is effectively under control of the joint services. Besides, UA doesn't have any pilots available to fly it, and they will be happy to get it moved to a safe place by any means."

"And you'll be in my class, too?" Roger asked.

"Yep, I'm taking B'. O.' out."

"B. O?"

"Yes, Roger, you know, Big Orange, the Braniff 747."

Roger recalled hearing of the orange painted 747 that Braniff had used on its Texas Hawaii flights.

"Hell of a target you'll make, flying that big orange bulls eye into the sunset, Max."

Max dodged the humorous comment, "See you in a few hours, Roger."

Before hanging up, Max gave Roger the necessary frequencies and codes to make his flight to San Francisco in the Cessna 172. Roger would be flying two other pilots from the Denver area. He would have to dead reckon and use pilotage all the way due to a total blackout of all navigational systems. Finding his way would be difficult by pilotage at night because blackout of all surface lights had been ordered, even though it was useless in this age of missiles and accurate computerized inertial guidance systems. Roger wished he had an inertial guidance system in his plane, but it would have cost more than a new Cessna 172. He was thankful for the half moon rising in the eastern sky.

Roger and his two pilot passengers arrived over San Francisco as the sky was getting slightly brighter in the East. The quickie 747 course was very interesting, and not nearly as frustrating as Roger had anticipated. He had been issued a copy of the key speeds and shortened checklists. Most of the training had concentrated on placement of critical cockpit controls and switches. Beyond that, the pilots were told to fly VFR if at all possible, fly conservatively (no wing overs or stalls, please), and the plane would take care of itself.

Everyone wanted to know where they were assigned to fly. The five students in this class were told that sealed envelopes were in each plane. The enemy should not be able to find out where the secret storage bases were located. Each pilot was issued a large package of gear; everything from ocean survival gear to arctic equipment, including food to last three months.

The excitement was increasing. Soon they would be taking off. At least some of them would. Of the five students in the class, one dropped out because he just didn't want to do it. He was scared. Roger thought, "This guy is probably a hell of a lot smarter than the rest of us."

At last, a jeep pulled up to the small group waiting outside the gate. Roger and Max were assigned to go in it. They shook hands with the others awaiting assignments, climbed into the jeep, and were whisked to the giants on the ramp. Roger's white United 747 was closest, so he got out first, saluted Max, and stood there under the long wing of the 747 watching the jeep speed toward the orange Braniff. Suddenly, he felt scared. He was all alone with this monster plane, and he was expected to get it the hell out of the country before who knows what took place.

He was shocked out of his thoughts when he saw the tiny figure of Max running up the roll up stairs to his Big Orange. Roger began to climb the steps up to the cabin of the big United jumbo. Lack of ground support was highly evident. At least the auxiliary power unit was running. He secured the door and climbed the circular stair to he top level and entered the spacious cockpit.

He pulled out his check list and began to set up for taxi. All four engines started up on the first try. He hoped Braniff had taken as good care of the B. O. that Max was already taxiing out as United had of his 747.

Roger applied a good boost of power to achieve breakaway thrust. He began to roll out slowly, as instructed, to let the stairs get pushed gently out of the way by the fuselage. He followed the Braniff Big Orange that Max was threading gently through the maze of taxiways to the active runway. All radio frequencies were shut down, so this was to be not unlike flying off an uncontrolled airport.

As he rolled, Roger went through the pre takeoff check list. Everything was in the green. Only after they were aloft, would they be allowed to use the radio to talk to any planes in the area, but ground stations would not answer. This was to prevent a missile from tracking the radio signal into the ground station.

Fighter squadrons had orders to come up and shoot down any aircraft that strayed outside predesignated routes. That order was designed to preclude any planes from going into enemy territory by design or by ignorance.

Roger watched Max's plane begin its takeoff roll. He lined up behind the climbing Braniff and applied power. The ship began to roll. The pre calculated V speeds were in his memory, but because he was traveling light, he had been told that he could pull the nose up within a given range of speeds, not unlike flying a light plane. The takeoff was not the greatest. He did not have a feel for the proper angle and tended to bob around the pitch axis until he got the right speed.

Ahead of Roger, Max was coming up on his preassigned altitude. No planes were in sight. He and Roger had been assigned altitudes and headings to fly in the classroom, and, upon reaching those parameters, they had been instructed to open the secret mission envelopes.

As he began to open it, Max felt a little like saying, "The envelope, please . . . (rriiiip) and the best picture is . . ." Max's envelope contained one page. "Big deal," he thought. His assigned base was located on the edge of Great Bear Lake in Northern Canada, about forty miles southwest of Port Radium.

"Well, all that arctic weather gear will come in handy," Max thought. He dialed the radio and called a code that he and Roger had previously agreed on. No response. "Well, maybe Roger isn't on the air, yet." Max set the autopilot and went back to find the appropriate VFR charts. IFR charts would be useless without navaids. Get caught in weather, and you were on your own. The missions were coordinated for destination weather conditions, however.

Max figured he had about four hours of flying to get to Great Bear Lake. He went back to his seat to try to learn as much about the cockpit as he could and to study the check lists. About an hour into the flight, he noticed a contrail above and to the right of his plane. He could see that it was another 747.

Max got on the radio again and said, "Augie Doggie, this is Mighty Mouse." There was silence for a moment.

Then, "Hey, Mighty Mouse, where the heck are you?"

Max replied, "Well, I could be below and to your left. Have a look."

Roger came back over the radio, "I've got someone down there. I'll slow it up a bit and drop down." Soon Roger and Max were flying in loose formation at 35,000 feet.

Curious about why he wasn't able to reach Roger after takeoff, Max asked, "Hey Rog, what took you so long to come up on frequency?"

"Well, I had to take care of a couple of stowaways."

"Stowaways! What happened?"

Roger chuckled, "Tell you about it later, but let is suffice to say the 'stows' were a couple of 'stews'".

"Holy cow!" Max replied. "Did you have any trouble handling them?"

"Not to worry, they want to be removed from what they believe to be a possible strike zone: the U. S. And I guess I can't blame them. Actually, they handled me!"

A few minutes of silence passed, each pilot checking their position. Everything was going like clockwork, on course, on schedule, no problems. Suddenly Max broke the radio silence, "Traffic at twelve o'clock, opposite direction, low."

Roger spotted the traffic, "Got it. Actually, looks like several. Boy are they moving!"

"No doubt military, and probably supersonic. I'll bet they are Russian bombers heading for the U. S."

Roger saw they were too large to be fighters. "Yep, probably not heading for Mexico. Should we shut up and maintain radio silence, or should we try to warn someone?"

Max, thought for a moment, "We would have to have HF on board to reach the U. S. now, and our VHF conversation is small potatoes compared to the radar return these big jumbos are throwing back. Those guys down there know we're up here, but their mission has a higher priority than nailing us. You can bet they're tattling on us."

"Good point, Max. Think we'd be safer on the deck?"

"For sure. I'm dropping the nose, now."

Both ships began a high speed descent. Max, now leading the duo, said, "Be careful, Rog, we shouldn't exceed Mach 8.5 except in an emergency."

Roger pulled in behind Max, then, after experiencing severe vortex turbulence, pulled off to the side again saying, "I have a lot of faith in these Boeings after the supersonic dive that 727 did."

"Ya, but note that it wasn't a controlled maneuver."

"True."

Within a few minutes, both aircraft were flying at 200 feet, pulling up for hills. Max commented, "We must be laying down one hell of a racket on the surface."

"Yes, but we are midway up Canada, and outside of a few animals, not too many ears will hear."

Suddenly Max shouted, "Up there! High flying fighters, southbound!"

Roger looked up and saw contrails. "They are really high. Could be Foxbats with look down, shoot down radar. Too bad we don't have some camouflage."

Max chuckled, "Orange and white! From up there how could they miss us? They must be over 70,000 feet. They built the Foxbats for going up to get the B 70, you know."

"No, I didn't. Anyhow, they might be high altitude recon to do post strike damage assessment."

Minutes passed and nothing happened. No more aircraft, foreign or domestic, were seen. Soon the flight of two was nearing Great Bear Lake. Both pilots were soon engaged in pre landing checklists. "Rog, it is tough going through these checklists, solo."

Roger chuckled, "Too bad, old boy. I've got plenty of help. I just gave field commissions to my 'stow stews.' One is copilot and the other is playing flight engineer."

"I won't ask what they had to do to get a field commission."

"Thanks, I embarrass easily."

"Sure you do."

The landing area came into view. It was unmistakable. A three hundred foot wide concrete strip that looked like it was about four miles long. There were no other planes on the ground or in the air.

Roger went in first for his approach. "Desolate down there, Max. No people, no animals, no structures."

The strip was positioned on the edge of the lake, on a long, broad peninsula halfway along the southeast side of it. Roger turned to final. "This is going to be a piece of cake, Max!"

The big United jet came down hard and blew a tire. That caused several others to blow with it, and as Roger was throttling up with reverse thrust, the plane veered off the runway onto the sandy soil, gouging deep tracks and decelerating rapidly."

"You O. K. down there, Hotshot?" Max inquired.

"Ya, but the 'cake' is a bit stale. You must have to flare at two hundred feet!"

"I believe it." Max, learning from Roger's mistake, floated the Big Orange in for a squeaker.

Max and Roger made ropes out of seat belts and climbed out to survey the situation. The United that Roger had run off the runway was inextricable from the soft soil. They decided to join forces aboard the Orange Braniff. The girls were willing helpers, moving the survival gear and food from the United to the Braniff and organizing the living quarters as well as possible, considering the materials they had to work with.

They listened to the radio for days, but no communications were heard. Max figured out a way to start the auxiliary unit without ground support equipment so that they could completely shut the plane down to conserve on fuel.

Three weeks following their touchdown, Roger was looking out the windshield at the stars when he saw what at first looked like a meteor falling, close to the horizon, to the South. Then he saw another, then groups. He called the others, and they crowded into the cockpit to watch the sight, realizing that in a few minutes, centuries of progress would wiped out.

In the following days, they used the Geiger counters that had been included in their survival kits to measure the radiation changes. Depending on the winds, some days the counters showed increases significantly above the background level.

Roger's idea of a high speed taxi to the opposite end of the runway to blow off some of the radioactive dust was adopted. It seemed to work somewhat, but they were glad that they were not directly downwind from a dirty nuclear blast that would saturate the air with gamma ray emitting particles.

Nearly three months after their departure from the U. S., the foursome discussed their situation. They were running low on food. Since that one dreadful night of the "meteors," they had not seen any more "fireworks."

"Do you think anyone besides ourselves is left?" one of the girls asked.

Max said, "Yes, probably a few who weren't near a ground zero point and were protected form the fallout."

The other girl asked, "Well, what do we do now?"

Roger couldn't resist the comment, "Screw our brains out to rebuild the human race."

"Just like a man! One track mind," she retorted.

They started up the Boeing's main engines on a bright, clear morning. "All ready to go VFR, Rog?" Max asked.

"I guess so. It wasn't easy moving the fuel from the United to this plane, but it ought to get us back to civili . . "

"Ya, I know what you mean."

They took off, all four in the cockpit. The flight South was smooth, but weird. They saw no sign of life in Canada. Roads and highways were deserted. Finally, reaching the Washington border, they saw dead cattle on the land. San Francisco was a moonscape of giant craters. Nothing of an appreciable height was standing.

Max solemnly commented, "If Frisco is any measure of the rest of the country, I'd say we'd better stay on the Pacific coast where the prevailing westerlies will have dropped most of the fallout before they reach the coast."

"Sounds like a good idea, Max," Roger said.

They set the Boeing down on highway 101, on a long, straight stretch of road south of what had been San Francisco. The Boeing's wheels settled into the asphalt and it came to stop, fast.

And there, on the coast, Max, Roger, and the two girls began the arduous task that lay ahead: just surviving.