You can bet your anemometer (altitude measurement gauge) that we old, timid pilots –no old, bold pilots they say–read about the airliner that flew 801 miles per hour. Thanks to a powerful tailwind.
Republic Airlines Captain Tom Young said the fastest speed his airliner ever flew was 600 mph. Again, thanks to a tailwind.
Tom was a North Carolina University student of this old, private pilot. I became a professor long after I logged 1,600 hours flying time, before I sold my Cessna 182. When Freshman Young left the family tobacco farm near Chapel Hill, he had never been up in an airplane. But he yearned to go airborne. So, he joined the school’s parachute club. Learned to pack his own parachute.
On Tom’s first flight the plane probably went up over five thousand feet, flew 160 mph. Don’t know how fast Tom was falling after he jumped out. But do know that his speed was zero mph before he touched ground. On Young’s first parachute jump, he landed in a tall tree. His feet dangled until fellow students helped him down.
Tom went on to pursue a writing career with Associated Press and Voice of America. In the air national guard he flew as a flight engineer. In this decade, Tom started piloting an airline twin-engine jet.
All above to tell you when you read Tom’s six military novels, he knows the aviation he describes.
In his “Silent Enemies,” Tom created flying fiction I will never forget. The Air Force cargo plane learns a planted bomb may explode if the plane descends below 8,000 feet. Refueled by Air Force tanker plane, Tom threatens to keep the reader flying forever.
This OLD pilot thinks maybe Tom conceived the plot after he BOLDLY jumped out of an airplane that was working. And it took him nearly an hour to touch ground.
