"Yeager"

[fiefoe]

Being a fighter pilot:

• The weather officer is always grim. The weather is seldom good, but no matter how bad, he predicts even worse.
• Over Dummer Lake, farther south, they fire vertical clusters at increasing altitudes. Once you know the flak patterns in various places, you can practically navigate by them.
  
• ... by give her a pair of fancy silk panties. "Honey," Boch said to her, "you stick with me and you'll be fartin' through silk." That line became famous throughout the entire Eighth Air Force.
• But, apparently, the big shortage in Germany was not of airplanes, but of pilots, and they were probably under orders to jump for it in tight spots. (After the war, it was learned that a few of their leading aces had flown more than a thousand combat missions and bailed out more than twenty times.)
• And we were particularly alert while flying beneath high thin cirrus clouds. Germans could look down through them and see you, but you couldn't see up through them.
• Chuck had planned the day for both of us. I followed him to Switzerland.
  

And how:
__ We used to make bets on how close to the end of the runway his wheels would touch down on landing. Actually go out with a measuring tape. He was always a foot or two right at the end of the runway.
__ Later, he told me, "God, Jock, that was really great. I could actually see the bullets hitting the target." I said, "What!" He replied, "The vortex from the shells. I saw them."

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