Flight to the Past: Thirty Minutes Aboard a 1944 U.S. Navy Plane

Duxford (United Kingdom)Traveling back in time is possible. Reading a novel –War and Peace– or watching a movie. Back to the Future, for example, is an allegory about how the past has conditioned the life of the protagonist, Marty McFly, and how, back in the future, which is his present, he has learned – or not – from the experience. Can we learn anything about our present and our future by watching Save Private Ryan or the much lesser-known film The Winter War, an epic and also brutal recreation of the Russian invasion of Finland in November 1940, and the unexpected resistance encountered by the Red Army?

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of VE Day – Victory in Europe Day; the end of the Second World War on the continent –, I take this opportunity to one of the many acts of remembrance that take place in the United Kingdom and the privileged position of journalist to –in military terminology– embed myself aboard a vestige of that tragic history.

It involves flying in a Douglas R4D, a 1944 twin-engine aircraft that was used for the transport of material, the evacuation of wounded, and the dropping of paratroopers over Normandy, practically as soon as it left the factory. The R4D was the military version –around 10,000 were made– for the US Navy of the very popular DC-3, the commercial airliner that had entered service in the middle of the previous decade and that revolutionized passenger air transport. Indiana Jones was riding in the first adventure of the series.

The initiative I am joining is possible thanks to the Imperial War Museum in Duxford – a former RAF and US Air Force airbase – and an association of military aviation history enthusiasts, the Commemorative Air Force, who have organised what they have called the Tour de la Vic.Ready for Duty, to commemorate the aforementioned birthday at a time when transatlantic ties seem more threatened than ever thanks to Donald Trump.

Imagine the unimaginable

Warning: I don't like flying. I do it because I have no alternative. I suffer more than I should, probably. Even so, I climb the five steps of the loading and unloading ladder and enter the cockpit without a clear idea. Beforehand, I had to sign a waiver of liability in case things go wrong. "Nothing, just a formality," TJ Cook, the pilot, tells me.

So why am I embarking on this flight to the past? Because I would like to imagine the unimaginable: what must the occupants have felt when they took off in these coffee pots with wings during World War II, leaving their lives suspended on the ground? What would the paratroopers who sat where I am right now think, waiting to jump over Normandy or, later, over Korea? The security line –static line– the one they clung to before taking the plunge into the abyss runs from head to tail across the cockpit. She's as tense as I am. Andy O'Dell, one of the crew members, notices, laughs, and gives a reassuring thumbs-up. I smile.

From the inside, everything looks very different than from the runway, however. The R4D's aluminum hull seems very thin to me. Too thin. The door, aged like the entire casing, shiny on the outside but chipped on the inside, doesn't seal tightly. There's a six- or eight-millimeter gap through which you can see the outside if you get close. Perhaps to enhance the realism, two deactivated depth charges attest to the device's use. They were thrown at enemy submarines.

The drone of the radial engines is extreme at takeoff, and the trembling of the floor plates and the window panes—single, not double—is also intense. Perhaps like the trembling of the soldiers flying toward who knows what destination. The fold-down metal seats are very uncomfortable: Ryanair is super luxurious compared to them. The seatbelt mechanism seems very rudimentary and unsuitable for disengaging in an emergency. The head of the crew member, Robert Collier, who is a little younger than the plane, but not much younger, helps me unravel it.

After ten minutes flying over southern England, I have to admit it's not that bad. The R4D is more stable than I suspected, but less than I would like. Any turn or change of direction is more abrupt and syncopated than that of a commercial airliner in optimal weather conditions: the ailerons and rudder are controlled mechanically, with cables and pulleys operated by the pilot from the cockpit without any electronic assistance. Our captain warned us about this and other details of the aircraft, but he didn't give it any importance. Me neither? I try to think of the R4D as a giant model of the Tibidabo plane.

Half an hour later, with my feet on the ground, gripped by the rigidity I've subjected myself to as a safety measure as inevitable as it is useless, I consult the flight data: we reached an altitude of 517 meters, some 2,000 meters below cruising altitude.

What have I learned from this brief return to the past? That there is no glamour in the skies of war—past, present, or future—not even when wearing a windbreaker. vintage of a US Air Force pilot, like Harrison Ford in Hanover StreetI accept, based on the testimonies of veterans and history books, that perhaps, from a certain point on, there was no other option. But I still don't understand how it came about. Fear of flying? Even more so in a fighter plane. It trembles despite life being infinitely more fragile. Will we learn?