LET ME tell you about the Ponte de 25 Abril. It is one of the largest suspension bridges in the world, and it spans the estuary of the River Tagus, in Lisbon.
It has a total length of 2 278 metres, is made of a very great deal of steel, and
carries a six-lane road and a double
railway track. The vast towers supporting
the suspension cables are 195 metres
(640 ft) high. And the whole is painted a
cheerful red.
Why am I so interested? Well, I’m interested because, at this moment, I am upside-down at 150 feet and heading straight for one of the towers at 170 knots. Beneath me I can hear the snarl of the second Extra’s engine as Al Wade jockeys into Mirror formation ten feet below me. And right now I am not even concentrating on the bridge but looking half-sideways at the Royal Yacht… I call: “Pushing NOW!” and so push, trying not to push harder than usual so as not to unsettle Al. At the same time – at this point of committal – I look fully forwards. At which point the bridge really does become most interesting.
Normally, once you start to push up into an outside loop or half-Cuban, the world vanishes upwards very quickly. This time, it does not. This time, the screen is filled with this huge red stanchion, which, for a massive and very static structure, appears to have wonderfully acquired the power to throw itself at me.
For a period which feels like a week, I fancy I can see every bolt and rivet on this sunlit scarlet tower as it slowly, slowly, scrolls up the canopy while negative G fills my head…
In perhaps four seconds it is gone. We have passed up above it, our smoke-trails no doubt now wafting over it. I didn’t see the rivets. I didn’t see the bolts. We weren’t that close. But right now I have no time to think about it. We push round to the down-45 line, and I call; “Two, roll NOW...”
The display goes on. And eventually concludes. And after we’ve landed at the lovely aerodrome of Cascais, five flying minutes west of Lisbon, pre-flighted the aeroplanes, fuelled-up and smoked-up and secured them – why, my hands have even stopped quivering. We normally debrief directly after a display – but by some unspoken harmony both of us are mute until we are in the hire-car heading for our hotel.
Eventually I say; “Interesting display, that”.
“Aye. Waren’t it…” There are moments when Al stretches his Yorkshire accent to its broadest. These
moments are succinct. We do not need to be de-briefing this display. Because we will never fly anything like it ever again. And in any case the facts of it are imprinted on our memories for ever. Later, sitting on the balcony of my luxurious room with a glass of rum in my hand, I turn over these facts. Not happily. For I have not been a wise pelican this day. And I know it.
When it was first mooted two months ago, this trip sounded like the ideal conclusion to a successful display season. A steady amble down Europe to Lisbon, a single well-current display for the Royal Yacht Britannia at an easy site in Lisbon harbour, and then an equally pleasant amble home. All for our happy sponsors, the Rover Car Co., who are part of some trade mission aboard the Britannia and wish to put on dog.
(“Oh, we’ve brought our aerobatic team down just to show the company spirit, don’t y’know”). That was then… Okay, so the Portuguese authorities have been a bit difficult. Unfailingly polite and charming, certainly, but starting from the position of: “You want to do what inside Lisbon International’s Control Zone?”
Eventually a combination of our own office’s persistence and a spot of discreet diplomatic pressure won the day and we received a most impressive document in immaculate English giving clearance for our display. So far, so good. Until yesterday. The day before the display.
We had arrived two days early, as planned. So yesterday was a day of rest. Myself, Al and our commentator, brains in neutral, hopped on to the cute little coastal railway train that commutes between Cascais and Lisbon. Drops of rain started to fall. This cute little railway ends at its cute little terminus more or less under the threshold of the vast Ponte de 25 Abril. The wharf we were to display to ran ahead of us, at right angles to the bridge. There were plenty of directions we could walk, and being culture-lovers of
cathedrals etc, we stood under the bridge wondering which street might soonest yield up a bistro wherein we could shelter from what had now become a drizzle. Then Al said: “That’s a fine-looking boat, over there”. And Tim, the commentator, said: “That’s the Britannia.” Suddenly the day off was off. I swung round.
“You two go talk yourselves on board. I’m going to walk down the quay”. I walked down the quay. A distance of nearly a mile. A mile during which the drizzle upped its act to pelting rain. At the end of the quay I stood in the place where we’d been told the Britannia would be moored. Our display centre-point. From here the bridge was a major feature in the murk off to the right – major, but not significant, being well beyond our display box.
Only this was not going to be our display box. This was an ugly wasteland of cranes, blank-eyed industrial buildings, and vast heaps of produce waiting to be loaded into rusty workboats alongside. Not somewhere you moor a Royal Yacht. Someone had blundered. In our office, in Rover’s office, in the
Foreign Office, someone had blundered.
I have rarely been so angry. In what was now a fully paid-up downpour, I stalked back to the Britannia, squelched up the gangplank, pushed through the honour guard, and demanded in no uncertain terms to speak to the Captain now. I have no particular recollection of this, but Al later assured me that I stood there like a drowned rat, dripping on the deck and quivering in every ganglion, and loudly said to the Captain of the Royal Yacht Britannia:
“You’ve parked this */%$#ing boat in the wrong */%$#ing place!”
They most politely led me away and poured a couple of pink gins into me. We returned to Cascais, and I then sat in my posh hotel room and re-drew the aerobatic sequence for Lisbon. About 50 times. Not, not easy. I had started off with our straight, normal display, with centre-point in the
middle. Now I had to re-design it for the centre-point at the bottom corner of an L shape, bounded by the Britannia, the quay, and the bloody bridge. Okay, we had several display plans in hand for different sites – but nothing quite like this.
The easiest – and safest – thing would in fact have been to fly under the bridge, the bottom span being more than 200 feet above the water. But after the hassle of getting clearance in the first place, I could just imagine the reaction if I rang them up on the day and said; “Oh, and by the way, we’re going to fly under the bridge…”
Diplomatically not a starter, that…So I re-designed the sequence. No, not a wise thing to do since the display was next morning, and we had no chance of practising it beforehand. It had to be workable first time…. I finished that design at about 3 am surrounded by a sea of crumpled paper. We most carefully briefed, then flew it unpractised. It did, in fact, work. But now, after it, with the rum in my hand, I face the fact that I allowed the odds to mount up against us. I hold up the rum and know I have been a very poor
airman this day.
It is not a comfortable fact. In my defence I can say that in 2 000 displays I have very rarely been an idiot that I know of – maybe two or three times – but this has been one of them. I did it because our sponsors had paid a great deal of money to get us down to Portugal and would not have been pleased if I’d folded my arms and said “No, Sir”. Under that pressure I risked my life and more importantly Number Two’s life to fly the display.
I wasn’t going to hit the bloody bridge because I was looking at it. But Number Two cannot look at it – he can only look at Lead. And there are times in a display when Lead calls “Break, break, GO!” and Number Two is suddenly pulling like hell and at the same time trying to orientate himself. If I’d got some angles or timings a bit wrong I could have spat Al out straight into the bridge…
Well, I didn’t get it wrong. But it was a pressurised decision, and the rum is sour on my tongue. I know I have been a bad pilot.
Okay, this is all long ago, and maybe esoteric. There is a very good chance that you will never be required to fly upsidedown at the Lisbon Bridge at 150 feet. But there is a considerable chance that you may some time be subjected to parallel pressures. The weather is closing, you need to go, you’ve promised to get home – the pressures may look different, but, in fact, they are exactly the same as when I led our formation into one of the most dangerous displays of our lives. On this pleasant evening, after this
display, I already know it will always haunt me. And it always has. I should have said
– “No!” Just that.
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