9 minute read
Michael Baer: Flying a Legend
Michael Baer's Spitfire Experience
by Michael Baer
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"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...”
So goes the opening lines in a very wellknown poem by John Gillespie Magee Jr, a young RCAF pilot who was killed in 1941, shortly after the writing of “High Flight”. When I was a twelve-year old, the entirety of the poem was cut-out from some magazine or other and taped to my wall, in a bedroom whose ceiling bristled with all the airplane models I had built, suspended by thread in battle action settings. The cut-out featured an image of my most revered and coveted fighter plane, a Supermarine Spitfire, climbing vertically to join the “tumbling mirth”. To do such a thing was only a dream, and I could not possibly have imagined then that nearly fifty years later, I would climb into the back seat of the most famous fighter plane ever built to wheel and soar and swing through those “footless halls of air”.
I no idea that such a thing was possible for mere mortals, until my brother-in-law dropped an innocent comment one day, informing me that there existed in England two-seater Spitfire trainers in which I could fly. It took me a nano-second to determine that I would do this on my sixtieth birthday, at that time two years away. As it turned out - fortuitously so, given the advent of the Covid pandemic and the cessation of pretty much everything - I Just. Could. Not. Wait. And so in June of 2019, my wife and I travelled to England. Within our itinerary was only one item for me, really, and that was a trip out to the Heritage Hangar at Biggin Hill, south of London. Biggin Hill was an extremely important front-line fighter base during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, with fighters rising daily to meet the bomber streams heading to London, just to the north. Today, what were grass strips are asphalt, and the airfield is home to F1 racing, with cars shipped around the world by very large air transports.
However, on this day it was just me and Jeremy the pilot, strapped into MJ627, ready to take off. This Spitfire was more than a trainer. It was a combat veteran, seeing action in 1944 with a Canadian squadron and, in fact, shot down an enemy fighter over Holland only two days into its service life. After the war it was converted into a Trainer, which meant that as I strapped into my parachute and harness in the very narrow confines of the rear seat, I had a set of duplicate controls, and could watch them move as Jeremy flew. I had briefly wondered if I would suffer some sort of claustrophobia or something when climbing into this very narrow space and having a bubble canopy closed over my head. Far from it.
I knew I had the option to call the whole thing off and be refunded, right up until the start of the engine, but when that Rolls Royce Merlin coughed to life and the airframe shuddered, a thin cloud of exhaust blew back over my canopy and I could smell
it and hear it, I felt like I was born to it. The thrill of that simple shudder and quiet roar at startup is hard to relate. The experience of so many young men dashing across grass toward their fighter, climbing in and firing it up, perhaps even as the enemy was overhead, must certainly have been a thrill, but of a far more dangerous kind and I was aware of that in the cozy confines of my seat.
We taxied out to take-off, and for the first time I was aware of the nature of a trainer. I could see the rudder pedals moving forward and back, in opposition, in exactly the same way the treads on an elliptical trainer would, as Jeremy swung the nose left and right in order to see the taxiway ahead, explaining this as he did so. When he swung left and on to the end of the main runway, I assumed I would have a moment to catch my breath, to still my beating heart, to wonder what this might be like to actually take off in a Spitfire. But no, there was no pause. Jeremy nosed the plane straight down the runway, the engine roar increased steadily as he opened the throttle, and we were away. The noise of that engine, bleeding into my aviation headset, was tremendous. Being a soundman my whole adult life, I could not help but wonder at the effect this constant roar would have had on a fighter pilot’s hearing. But of course, they had bigger things to worry about. I could not tell the moment this beauty left the ground behind, it was that easy and smooth, effortless, and I don’t mind saying I was pretty choked up. To see the ‘green and pleasant land’ unfold below me as we rose was quite a moment for me, knowing this same landscape south of London was lousy with Heinkels and Dorniers and Messerschmitts overhead in the summer of 1940.
We climbed out of the mist and headed for clearer skies. I had picked a date in late June that I assumed would be a fine one. I was wrong, and as we travelled out from London that morning, my wife and I were watching the sky and the forecast which was calling for some really nasty weather in some parts of the south, and there was no guarantee I would get off the ground.
As it happened, we had barely left the ground behind when the airfield was pummeled by a cloud burst and steady rain, although I didn’t know this at the time. Once we were airborne and settled, Jeremy turned the controls over to me, unbelievably, and I gently banked a few times to the left and right, scanning the sky for other aircraft, pulling up the nose when required. I was amazed at the gentility required on the spade, or control column. It needed only a very light touch to control this airplane, and I was surprised that I barely felt anything at all of
the airframe in that column - I expected something to vibrate or shake or do something that told me I was screaming across the sky. Perhaps that unbelievably light touch was a result of the constant vigilance of the maintenance crew, the careful attention paid to every aspect of this airplane.
As thrilling as that was — to fly a Spitfire (sort of), scanning the sky in all directions, looking out not for enemy bombers or fighters but simply other aircraft in this uncontrolled airspace — the best was to come. After about five minutes of my flying, I asked Jeremy if he could do something “a little more swoopy”. Apparently, you don’t have to beg a modern-day fighter pilot flying a legendary aircraft. I watched the throttle, mounted on the cockpit wall to my left, push forward, and could hear the engine comply. We smoothly and effortlessly rolled and climbed and swept the skies over Kent, and I couldn’t believe I was there, that this was happening. It’s truly a hard thing to process, to achieve a dream and remember all of it. In the cockpit were mounted two GoPro cameras, one in front of me, the other behind, and when I look at that footage today, I can recall that emotional feeling, but, just as with a dream, the details begin now to escape me. The feel of my seat, being strapped to a parachute, the instrument panel shaking, the spade between my legs, the closeness of it all, the cramped conditions which nevertheless could not contain my joy. But I wish I could remember with photographic clarity what my surroundings looked like.
When you are bound to the ground and see a Spitfire charge overhead across your limited field of vision, it is so very fast. When you’re in that Spitfire, and you climb and roll and sweep, you have no idea how fast you’re going, or where you are in space. We climbed and rolled, yes, but I have no clear picture of what that might have looked like from the ground. Until we did two Victory Rolls. There is no escaping that image; the effortless rotation, the corkscrew. The picture below is the moment when I realized this wasn’t just another half-roll and we'd be going all the way around. I could have flown all day, but all dreams must end. I had flown with some personal effects belonging to my in-laws, whose legacy afforded me this opportunity. My father-inlaw was a Canadian serving in England during the war, and my mother-in-law was a born and bred Londoner, who survived the Blitz with her family, losing her home, and spending time alongside thousands of others taking shelter in the London tubes. Returning to Biggin Hill, it was clear we had missed a lot of rain, and flew through the remnants of the system to touch down on a wet runway, apparently skidding a bit as we did so, in a howling wind. This I overheard Jeremy say to the ground crew, but for me, it was simply a bittersweet reunion with the earth. As our wheels returned to tarmac, I said a prayer of thanks to my in-laws, and today, reflecting on what was the most exhilarating experience of my life, I am so very grateful that the impatience of my nature sent me to England a year before my sixtieth birthday. Had I been able to wait, had I been able to contain my excitement at the very idea of achieving this childhood dream, I would be bitterly disappointed today. The arrival of the worldwide pandemic meant I could not possibly have flown in a Spitfire last year, let alone the aircraft necessary to get there.
Like any exhilarating experience, I suffer from the desire to repeat it. Indeed, I will again “chase the shouting wind along”. When I first learned of the possibility of flying in a Spitfire, it shot to the top of my ‘bucket list’, and really, was the only item. And now, there it is again, just above the “sunsplitclouds... high in the sunlit silence”.
