Part XXXVI Post-flight with the BB stackers

The pilot breathes a sigh of relief and pulls the right throttle off, makes sure there’s no loose gear around the glareshield before he opens the canopy, finds the switch under the rail to raise and OH MY GOD IT’S HOT OUT THERE!

The wingman settled down to the baking flight deck with a heavy thump, carrying his helmet bag with loose gear and 40 pounds of survival gear webbed into his restraint harness. Liberated from the secret places it had been pooling, sweat sprung immediately out from under his helmet and ran into his eyes. Suddenly every pore on his body seemed to open up, and he felt an itching he couldn’t reach under his restraint harness as he wondered, not for the first time, how anyone could tolerate working in such an environment. In moments he would be below decks, in the ship’s air conditioned core – but not the men laboring here on the flight deck. Far too few moments of respite for them. It seemed impossible.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex