NIGHT FLYING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1942, Page 7

NIGHT FLYING

YOUNG PILOT’S EXPERIENCE. A young pilot officer who had been asked whether he was not scared on his first solo flight, said in the 8.8. C. Radio News Reel that he had not been a bit —and that he had had a faint feeling of disappointment because he had not been—as though he had missed something. But, he went on, when it came to his first night solo, he did not feel as though he had missed anything out. That was exciting enough—even for him. “I didn’t realise how extraordinarily different it is from day flying,” he said; “a different sensation altogether right from the beginning.” Even if flying in clouds, in the daytime, you feel as if you can tell which way up you are, even if you actually cannot, was his experience. But at night apparently you' literally do not know whether you are on your head or your heels—except by what the instrument panel tells you. All round you there is nothing but a world-sized blanket of blackness. It is cold —even in mid-summer —and eerie. After a while, it seems, the eyes get slightly accustomed to the dark, and except on the inkiest of nights, you can usually discern some sort of contours in the landscape. But even then, everything you see —or think you see — is deceptive. Distances are impossible to judge, and the faint black outlines of hills, or grey streaks of rivers, appear and disappear like phantoms. “I’ve never,” he remarked, “felt so utterly alone. The night flyer is as different from the day flyer as the owl and the bat are from the swallow and the seagull.”