Lesson Plans Fate is the Hunter

Fate is the Hunter Essay Topics & Writing Assignments

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Ernie was uniquely qualified to write about flying experiences. The very simple lesson here is to remember that it is your life on the line when you leave the runway behind. A good example of this appears early on in Fate is the Hunter. Due to a misunderstanding, Ernie once departed on a scheduled airline flight with significantly less fuel on board than he thought he had.

He became aware of this fact when both engines quit at cruise altitude while en route to his destination. Luckily, he had sufficient altitude to glide to a landing on a nearby airport runway. Another interesting story to prove this point also almost cost Ernie his life. He was flying a DC-4 after the war for an airline. Ernie considered the DC-4 a very safe and reliable aircraft. After takeoff on a flight from San Francisco to Honolulu, as the aircraft ascended above 3, feet, all four big radials began acting up, with at least one of the engines quitting entirely.

Had the crew not taken immediate action to adjust throttles, mixtures, and prop pitch, all four engines likely would have stopped turning. The mystery of the reluctant engines was solved after they nursed the aircraft back to San Francisco.

The plugs did not; at least not above 3, feet. Had Ernie viewed the engine log books or made some inquiries about the nature of the maintenance performed on the aircraft, he may have been in a better position to evaluate the real flight risk on the ramp rather than being forced to deal with it in-flight. Ernie tells numerous stories about how good pre-flight planning saved the day and, conversely, how bad pre-flight planning resulted in taking on substantially more risk in the air.

Every pilot who acts as PIC should understand the importance of pre-flight planning. The forecast weather, the winds aloft, altitudes that are likely to have ice, the possible routes and alternates — all help assure a comfortable and predictable flight and arriving safely at your intended destination. I think there are two keys here.

The first key is that planning is relative. A short local flight on a VFR day although it still requires some planning requires significantly less planning than a long cross-country flight through a couple of time zones and into weather or possible icing conditions. Even if you have done the basic planning for a VFR flight, you may still need to engage in additional planning.

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If, unexpectedly, the ceilings and visibilities are coming down around you, do you know where to go? Do you have an exit plan?

How close is the nearest airport? Is it in front of you, behind you, or off to one side? How high is the terrain and where are the obstacles? If your engine starts to run rough, and you work through your trouble-shooting checklist to no avail, what comes next? Can you maintain altitude? Where is the nearest airport or suitable field for a power-off landing?

At the beginning of Fate is the Hunter , a long list of names gives a sobering reminder of what can happen to pilots. These are the names of pilots Ernie knew or flew with, all friends, who lost their lives flying. Some accidents were due to severe weather, some due to engines quitting on takeoff, and some were mid-air collisions.

Fate is the Hunter

Some accident causes were never definitively determined. A substantial number of accidents could be attributed to loss of situational awareness. Situational awareness in the s and s often involved very simple things a pilot needed to do. First, looking out the window. Pilots back then had the disadvantage some would say advantage of not having as much on the instrument panel to look at as aids to situational awareness. Also, pilots back then often flew primarily by sighting landmarks and by reference to heading, groundspeed, wind drift, time, and distance. Pilotage and dead reckoning were the primary means of navigation.

In IMC or at night, when you had to let down in the soup or low visibility conditions, knowing there was a mountain range or towers or buildings across your path that you needed to clear, determining exactly where you were and at what altitude was often the difference between going home at the end of the flight or becoming a memory to your friends.

Situational awareness is still important to pilots today. McIntosh, gloomy-eyed, his thoughts impenetrable, lurks near the large aerial map on the wall. He puffs gently on an enormous pipe and, ignoring us completely, seems rapt in a streak of mud along one of his shoes. Lester moves into the pale January light from the window, and the collection of freckles spotting his face and neck suddenly takes on a brilliant hue, emphasizing the parchmentlike texture of his skin.

He begins by setting us very firmly in our places. You will now learn to fly all over again. I have examined your logbooks. They contain some interesting and clever lies. If you are lucky and work a good solid eighteen hours a day in this school, it is barely possible that a few of you may succeed in actually going out on the line -- that is, if the company is still in such desperate need of pilots that it will hire anybody who wears wings in his lapel and walks slowly past the front door.

Just remember, you were hired on a ninety-day probation clause. To begin with, you are going to know every damn The requirements seem overwhelming. In six weeks we must pass severe examinations in air mass analysis, instrument flight, radio, hydraulics, maintenance, company procedures, routes, manuals, forms, flight planning, and air traffic control. Not only the company but a government inspector will check our final grades. Lester drones on, pausing only occasionally to crack the knuckles of his talonlike fingers.

I study the others, curious about my fellow unwashed who have come from flying fields all over the land. They are strangers still, and I wonder if their natural cocksureness, without which they could never have survived to reach this room, is being as thoroughly squashed as my own. With Gay I am the most familiar. We share a room in the cheap, musty hotel where we are supposed to live and study during the period of our incubation.

He is younger than I am, of dark complexion, very handsome, and most generous with his magical smile. He has come from a small field in Tennessee where he instructed and on Sundays flew passengers for a dollar a ride. Lippincott is immensely eager. His alertness is almost offensive, and it is already apparent that he will have little difficulty in mastering the engineering aspects which Lester has emphasized so much, to my own despair. Sisto, a hoarse-voiced enfant terrible from somewhere in California, seems defiant, even bold enough to prod Lester with questions.

I have spoken to Owen only as we gathered, and I was then astounded at the basso-profundo voice emerging from so slight a young man. Mood and McGuire have also come up from the South, and the contrast between them is a measure of the group. For absolutely no reason, I have already taken a dislike to Mood and I am certain he regards me with equal antipathy. McGuire, however, endeared himself at once by confessing both homesickness for the sight of a Carolina mule and claiming his head is composed almost entirely of bone and therefore a poor receptacle for all that Lester demands.

His face now, as he listens to Lester, is so chiseled in honest planes of concentration it would please the most finicky sculptor. I have learned only that hitherto he was mostly engaged in crop dusting -- a chancy way to earn a living with wings. Carter, large and red-faced, is propped audaciously and yet aloof against the back wall of the classroom. I do not know where he calls home, if indeed he has any in the usual sense.

He must be a much-traveled man, for just beneath his shirt cuffs, encircling both wrists with intricate design, are the beginnings of what must be vast and elaborate tattoos. I am very impressed with anyone who can so absolutely disregard convention. Charleton is a silent enigma, not having spoken so much as a word to any of us since first meeting.

His face is kindly, although his eyes lack sparkle. His hair is prematurely gray and he seems very tired.

Summary of Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann

Peterson is a thin and hungry-looking man, slow-spoken and droll, and thus already much valued as a companion. Now straddling a bench, he looks like the reincarnation of Ichabod Crane. Watkins is near him, sprawling in his seat as if even Lester could never alert him. He is very tall and in his debonair manner seems to patronize the gaunt figure pacing before him. He drums softly on a large silver belt buckle. He has a fine head of hair, blond, curly, and carefully groomed. Were his teeth better he would be an exceptionally beautiful man.

It is not in my power to know the ultimate destinies of these new companions. Certainly I cannot perceive or even imagine that three of them will be totally abandoned by fortune, six will several times experience incredible fondling and protection by whatever fates dispense them, and even the indestructible Lester will one day succumb in such a prosaic affair that it would seem his doom had been merely postponed. Within a week it becomes obvious that our path to advancement will be strewn with thorns.

Lester proves to be a devil, with a genius for probing his pitchfork into our most tender regions. His remarks are scalding as he becomes better acquainted with our individual faults. They become the more wounding because they are so frequently true. I am a favorite target since I am an idiot at hydraulics. I cannot seem to comprehend the innumerable relief valves or the exact function of each pump and line, much less draw the whole intricate labyrinth from memory as I am supposed to do.

My private excuse is that the hydraulic system of an airplane is a mechanic's business and that if the landing gear or the flaps -- which the hydraulic system controls -- refuse to go up or down, then there is nothing I can do to effect repairs while actually flying. I am equally thickheaded in the matter of engine theory and maintenance, perhaps because those engines previously responsible for supporting me aloft were of extremely simple design.

They either ran or did not run; there was no compromise. In the latter situation you landed in the nearest corn patch. In spite of Lester's insistence that a pilot should be thoroughly acquainted with the complexity of a Wright engine, I have difficulty visualizing myself climbing out on the wing and performing any beneficial repairs while still in flight. There were to come certain times when I devoutly wished it were possible. Lester's caustic and brutally frank dictum becomes for us a standard flowing in the wind. We need their business. Since once you are in the air there is no practical way of separating you from our customers, you will completely master the meaning of flight safety or you will never go near the line.

When skillfully rolled, slipped, spun, and dived, a plane could provide endless delight if not a bountiful income. For us there was still enough glamour left in flying to relegate all monetary considerations far to the background. We did not begin to fly because we might make more money with an airplane than we might have if otherwise employed. We are, almost without exception, in love. It is more than love at this stage; we are each bewitched, gripped solidly in a passion few other callings could generate.

Unconsciously or consciously, depending upon our individual courage for acknowledgment, we are slaves to the art of flying. There is already ample proof that this love is not a passing infatuation or merely a steppingstone to be endured until time brings another opportunity. The wedding is permanent. Many of us are barely able to afford shelter and three full meals a day; indeed, some are existing on borrowed money, or have sold their planes or whatever they possessed in order to manage through this training period.

Yet we should each have been completely uninterested if the company had offered other employment. Separation of the dedicated from the merely hopeful has been a crafty affair performed mostly by the line's chief pilots. They are braced with a fixed set of standards from which, in self-protection, they rarely deviate. They are hard, suspicious men, navigating uncomfortably between what is a frankly commercial enterprise and a group of fractious, often temperamental zealots.

And since it is also their lot to be the first to inform a pilot's wife that she is now a widow, they do what they can to see within an applicant. They try to picture him a few years hence, when he may find himself beset with troubles aloft. How will he behave in sole command, when a quick decision or even a sudden movement can make the difference between safety and tragedy? Yet the chief pilots do not look for heroes.

They much prefer a certain intangible stability, which in moments of crisis is often found among the more irascible and reckless. While Lester berates and McIntosh humiliates, we are separated into groups of three and allowed occasional relief from their porcupine society. Four times a week we are permitted to lie with our bride and actually fly an airplane. It is mostly a serious reunion, although when unobserved we still manage minor caprices such as vertical banks, sideslip approaches, and so-called cowboy take-offs.

These energetics are not accomplished in an airliner, for we have thus far only been allowed to stroll through one. Instead, we are provided with a single-engine cabin plane in which we are supposed to perform, in actuality, lessons learned in the classroom. As medical students work over a cadaver, we have assigned problems to complete, each pilot taking over in rotation. Though accompanied by others who impatiently await their turn, a student pilot striving to master the technique of instrument flight and radio orientation may well be the loneliest man in the world.

If his problem is ill performed the results are so painfully obvious that no combination of excuses can serve to forgive him. All but the final sum is realized. Even so, the notion of disaster, what would or could have happened, lingers; and the chastened pilot will not be so lonely again until some dreadful time a few years hence when the scenery and the situation are real and he may learn to pray hurriedly. For weeks we follow the same routine.

A Pilot's Memoir

In the mornings we struggle with hydraulics, weather analysis, and paper problems flown in the Link Trainer. To the uninitiated this machine can rival the Chinese water torture.

It is a box set on a pedestal and cleverly designed to resemble a real airplane. On the inside the deception is quite complete, even to the sound of slip stream and engines. All of the usual controls and instruments are duplicated within the cockpit, and once under way the sensation of actual flight becomes so genuine that it is often a surprise to open the top of the box and discover you are in the same locality. The device is master-minded by an instructor who sits at a special control table.

He can make the student's flight an ordeal. Godlike, he can create head winds, tail winds, cross winds, rough air, fire, engine, and radio failure. He can, if he is feeling sadistic, combine several of these curses at the same time. McIntosh, our usual instructor, is ever partial to such fiendish manipulations.

Full Lesson Plan Overview

When the flight is done and the student emerges sweating and utterly shaken in confidence, he will blandly point out that reality may one day treat him with even less consideration. Some of us soon learn to hate McIntosh. Only much later will we recognize that his persecution is well intended and thoughtfully designed to harden us for what is true and inevitable. While McIntosh appears easy enough with Lippincott and Watkins, who are more inclined toward engineering and mathematics, he is near despair with Gay, McGuire, and myself.

His views on our potentialities as airline pilots are merciless and without subtlety. We are charlatans, flying clods, vastly overreaching our native capabilities. We belong back in some converted pasture, our empty heads adorned with helmet and goggles, our thoughts untroubled with the complications of bisectors, time-turns, localizer beams, and power graphs. Our temperaments are better suited to pure barnstorming or the happy-go-lucky, pseudo-romantic existence of a flying circus. McIntosh does not know how he tempts us. For a return to such a familiar environment would now be so comforting.

Still awkward and unconvinced when we cannot see, we reflect all too often upon the peculiarly sensual delight found only in open-cockpit flight. We remember summer evenings when the air was smooth, the deep satisfaction in a steep sideslip down to a field of soft green grass, the wings of a biplane slow-rolling around the dawn horizon, the thrumming of flying wires in a dive through a break in the clouds, and the strangely pleasant odor of wood and shellacked fabric, of which our airplanes were made.

All that is gone now.

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