The Bug
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As time passed and I gained flying experience, Piet’s opinion of my aeronautical skills seemed to diminish to new depths with each additional hour that I logged. He almost never trusted me with a takeoff or a landing, and preferred to use the autopilot in between, so I felt about as useful as a second navel.
Actually, as I saw more of his flying I often wondered about his ability to get us safely on the ground, even on the rare occasions when he was feeling fine and had no hangover.
By normal standards I would not say Piet was a good pilot. His checks and procedures were worse than appalling – they simply didn’t exist, and his handling of the aircraft, particularly his landings, would make brave men weep. All his flying, including the final approach, was done with his feet flat on the floor. They would only be lifted onto the rudders at the moment of touchdown.
He saw himself as invincible. He had supreme confidence in his ability to achieve whatever he wanted, so he gave no more attention to flying an aeroplane than he did to squashing a bug.
In fact, bugs were fairly high on the list of things that did get Piet’s attention.
He suffered from entomophobia, meaning he had a thing about goggas, a disorder that was to bring us both to the brink of death.
To defend himself against creepy-crawlies, Piet always carried a brown-paper bag containing DDT, a banned, white, toxic powder. If he considered himself to be endangered by an ant or mealy-bug, for instance, Piet would simply unfurl the top of his bag and sprinkle some of its contents on the offending invertebrate.
There is, however, a time and place for everything. Joining the circuit at Lourenço Marques, in Mozambique – on the east coast of Africa – is neither the time nor the place to be powder-sprinkling, so it’s unfortunate that a member of the arthropod clan should choose this moment to announce its presence by becoming airborne in the cockpit.
Such was old Piet’s enthusiasm for slaughtering these pests that it absorbed his entire concentration. He was like a bloodhound. Once he was on the chase, nothing else mattered. The fact that we were descending at 200 miles per hour into a busy circuit was wiped clean off the slate of old Piet’s consciousness. He was suddenly not a pilot, but a pest exterminator on a mission.
“You vork ze levers, and I’ll kill ze bastard,” he said, handing over control of the Comanche.
By the time he opened his bag of DDT and had it at the ready, the unsuspecting insect was peacefully sunning itself and preening its whiskers on the glare shield above the instrument panel.
It is hard to know exactly how the first dollop of powder affected the creature. One can only speculate that its interest in feeler cleaning was replaced by a sensation of resentment or displeasure. It quite understandably developed a desire to be elsewhere. Searching for a more peaceful location on our planet, it took off and initiated a recce of the windscreen area hoping to find a path to greener pastures. Piet, in his enthusiasm for the hunt, was now applying the entomological equivalent of the saturation bombing that the Allies employed against Hitler during World War II.
The inside of the Comanche soon resembled an explosion in a flour factory. In fact, such an event would have been a huge pleasure compared with the handfuls of deadly talcum that Piet was hurling round the cockpit like a drunk in charge of the confetti basket at a wedding.
Initially, he didn’t seem to notice that we humans were taking more of a battering from crossfire than the solitary member of the enemy contingent.
Within seconds we were so overcome by the stifling dust that I, at least, lost all interest in the offending creature. Indeed, our paroxysms of eye-watering, coughing, sneezing, and choking left no room for other activities. Even our progress through the busy pattern was of no interest compared with our need for lungfuls of clean air. However, Piet retained his single-minded determination to slaughter the intruder.
When I was finally able to devote some attention to the pattern and the other traffic, the situation had worsened. Some trick of science had caused our passage through the tropical air to generate a form of static electricity that attracts molecules of powder to Perspex. The result was an opaque layer, like frost, that clung to the inside of all the windows. This effectively put us in IMC.
ATC interrupted our misery to inform us that they would enjoy a chat with us in the tower, if we were able to regain control of the aircraft and conduct a safe return to the planet.
I was obliged to fly on instruments while Piet improved visibility and ventilation by opening the storm window and using his sweaty hat to rub peepholes in the windscreen.
This was one of the few landings that I was allowed to do uninterrupted; the old guy was preoccupied with poking around under our seats and on the floor. As I brought the aircraft to a halt in front of the marshaller, Piet surfaced and announced, triumphantly dangling the now-deceased organism by one feeler in front of me, “Got ze bastard!”
Jim's other passion is writing, which he studied for five years at Rhodes University, SA (BA), and Curtin University, Australia (MA). He has authored two international best-sellers: PPL, a standard text in Australia and SA, and Flight Tests, which has helped thousands pass their reviews worldwide. Jim has also written more than 1000 articles for flying magazines.
Jim loves Harleys, horses and cats.
All his flying books are available at www.jimdavis.co.za and at https://www.pilottrain.com.au
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Dear Mr. Jim Davis!
It was nice to read your story with your touch of humor.
Great that after this experience of bug hunting, you still manage to land safely.
Looking forward to hear more of those kind of adventure and hopefully you will enjoy my story that should be published closer to September of this year.
Anna V. Grebenshchikova
Ambassador for Samson Sky
Aerobatics pilot in the past