BX October 16, 1917
Lieutenant Thomas Ryan in First Flight – Local Officer Who Transferred from 215th Tells of His Feelings
Mr. John Ryan of the local customs department, has just received the following very interesting letter from his son, Lieutenant Thomas Joseph Lannon Ryan, written from Netheravon, Wiltshire.
It was only on Tuesday last that I wrote you, but seeing that I am now a flyer, I thought you might be a little interested in hearing how I am progressing – which I am.
I have been here for just three days now, and in that time have been up twice, flying altogether for an hour and a quarter. So you see I am more or less of a seasoned aviator.
Flying is hardly the remarkable thing I expected it to be. In fact, the sensations are merely a collection of several that you ordinary mortals experience at times on terra firma. Once you’ve climbed into your bus and got your goggles adjusted and the pilot has opened up the engine, the sensations commence. First of all you go tearing across the aerodrome at about 50 miles an hour with the wind whistling briskly past your ears. Then the pilot gives the joy stick a bit of a lift backwards and the bus starts to waver up off the ground. Just for a minute it’s a bit wobbly, but immediately its wheels are free of the ground, it steadies down, and after that the sensations pretty well cease for a while. The engine drones away and the breeze rushes past and old mother earth goes reeling by, as if you were up high – say on top of Grace church tower, and someone was turning Brantford round below you. Then all of a sudden, just as you are beginning to marvel at the steadiness of everything the pilot slips his joy stick over to the right, and you start to turn in that direction, tipping forward a bit so that you see the earth from an entirely new angle. Before long even this gets flat, but there is still the big sensation of evening in store for you, and it comes when you decide to land. Without warning the instructor throttles down his motor to a mere purring hum, and with the same movement tips his nose so that you suddenly see the earth make a bit of a jump at you and then come straight for you at a fairly decent speed. Then just when its proximity borders on familiarity the pilot straightens out and you slide back into Salisbury plains with a couple of bumps and the bus taxis in two or three hundred yards and comes to a stop ready for the next flight.
As I say I have flown all told considerably more than an hour and naturally I am beginning to know a little something about flying. In fact to make a long story short, I’ve taken off, flown and landed the bus myself with the instructor always ready to correct me with his controls and giving me an occasional hint as the orthodox way of doing the various things. It comes easy enough, and I’m conceited enough to consider myself a fairly apt pupil. The instructor tells me that I’ve got a good touch on the controls and fly well, and when I land a little neater and get used to the feel of flying, I’ll be as good as the next. Of course I’ll need a lot more training before I can really fly well, but I expect before October is over to be sufficiently advanced to be ready to go to a squadron where there are modern machines and where the finished pilot is turned out.
However, that remains for a future chapter to show.
