Going Sonic

This is one of the first articles i had written. It was written in 1998, when i had just become a fighter pilot and was young and full of creative ideas. Thoughts used to flow freely, and there was a lot of josh...

GOING SONIC

It was a long time ago that I, as a small boy, would look up to the sky and wonder how it felt like to be a bird, to look down at the earth from ‘up there’. It has been many years since and I realised my dream of becoming a pilot. That is another story.
Ever since I started flying as a cadet and heard and learnt about crossing the sound barrier and the sonic boom I had wondered what it felt like to cross the ‘sound barrier’ and leave sound behind. The same sonic barrier which had the aircraft designers of yesteryears in a soup. I had heard stories of aircraft breaking apart or going out of control in their attempts to cross this barrier, and of the legendary Chuck Yeager who was the first pilot to break the sound barrier.
After joining the Air Force my curiosity increased as I studied supersonic flight. The changes that happen as the aircraft goes supersonic were learnt and understood. I was now prepared, theoretically so to say, to break the sound barrier, to go faster than sound and leave sound behind.
It was a clear spring day, bright and sunny. There were hardly any clouds in the pristine blue sky. A day before, I had done the supersonic profile with my instructor in the twin-seating trainer, but that was with someone and not alone! Today was my day, the day I had been waiting for all these years. I was psyched up for the great event. My instructor had told me in detail as to how I was supposed to go about it ‘…climb to 10 km and then accelerate with full afterburner to 1.4 Mach (or 1.4 times the speed of sound). Carry out a couple of turns at that speed…’. Today was my day! I got airborne and proceeded with my sortie. At 10 km, flying over the Himalayas I went beyond the sound barrier. I had left sound behind. There was hardly any difference in the cockpit; all the gauges were going about showing what they were supposed to, and only the air speed indicator told me that I was now travelling at 1.4 times the speed of sound. A little disappointed of the anti climax that everything was still the same I looked outside to see if I could feel the speed. I had not bargained for what I saw. The huge, majestic and regal Himalayas all way to the horizon on the north. I felt frozen in time and space, a lone intruder in this peaceful snowclad world. Here nature showed me her raw power and immense strength in a most serene and calm picture. Up there I might have been travelling at 1200 kmph but it was as good as standing still. In that one instant nature showed me how puny we were inspite of all our scientific and technological advances. In other words she showed me that she was still the boss.
In that one moment I crossed the barrier of time!
-Hobbes
Dec 98