Flight Of The Intruder Quotes
"All the wide sky / Was there to tempt him as he steered toward heaven."
"He watched the pressure altimeter unwind and shot anxious glances at the radar altimeter."
"His life seemed compressed into this moment, without past or future."
"He felt extraordinarily alive, in absolute control."
"The pilot ignored the guns fired behind or abreast and concentrated on negotiating his way through the strings of tracers that erupted ahead."
"Each type of radar had its own sound: a low beep was a search radar probing the sky; higher pitched tones were fire-control radars seeking to acquire a target; and a nightmare falsetto was a locked-on missile-control radar guiding its weapon."
"On that cheerful morning, the jungle-covered mountains that encircled the U.S. Navy’s home in the South Pacific would rise from the sea and break the monotonous horizon."
"The water came up white with a tinge of green, ceaselessly renewing itself."
"The room they sat in was lit entirely by dim red light."
"If you kill yourself, son, I’ll piss on your grave."
"If anyone asked, Maggot would tell him he owned this aircraft. It was responsible for its pre and post-flight servicing, its routine inspections, and its movement from place to place aboard the ship."
"Talk to Mister Lundeen in personnel and he'll get it fixed up so you can use a government line. Won't cost you any money."
"We're all going to miss him," the pilot replied.
"Keep eight degrees nose-up no matter what. Much less and we go into the water; much more and we'll stall and go into the drink anyway."
"He looked down the catapult, as he had countless times before. Beyond the deck was the end of the world."
"He read the letter again slowly, replaced it in its envelope, and returned the envelope to his sleeve pocket."
"He had no idea why Sammy wanted to rendezvous over the ship. Maybe he needed fuel. Maybe he had a problem with his airplane."
"Jake Grafton concentrated on the ACLS gauge, which meant he looked at it about half the time and scanned the altimeter, angle-of-attack, rate of descent, and gyro the other half."
"Confidence is so slippery: one either has it at a given instant or one does not."
"The skipper looked around the room at the hushed crowd. He settled on the mustachioed fighter pilot and smiled at him. 'Have you got a sister?' he asked."
"You wear the uniform, you take the pay, you fly where they tell you."
"We pickle the bombs and you don’t see them fall and you don’t hear the explosions."
"It’s tough when your models won’t sit still."
"You don’t really know if you’ve killed children-maybe you haven’t."
"I used to think that I was the luckiest guy in the world-to be paid by the navy to do something I’d be happy to do for free."
"We always have a difficult time figuring out how to handle CODELs."
"If you make it through the first flight without crapping in your drawers, you’re going to do okay."
"The world is full of lonely women pining for a chance to meet some swell guy with a wad of bucks."
"You should have talked to me, Morg. You should have told me…."
"We came to bomb. Now get the goddamn system running again or we'll be up here all fucking day."
"If you can read this you are one lucky gook."
"We're gonna have to get our shit in one sock or we'll never make the target, good weather or not."
"Goddamn, Hardesty! You think this is a Boy Scout camp? What the hell else are you going to lie about?"
"You’re drunk, Jake. You always feel great when you’re drunk."
"I'll give you one real good reason. Right now there’re over a thousand guys in prison camps in Vietnam."
"If you’d turned out to be a candy-ass, I was gonna ask for a new pilot. But you’ll do."
"I think of myself as flying a plane for Uncle Sam."
"There's no such thing as a 'nonmilitary target.'"
"I'm good enough. 'Shit hot,' I believe you said."
"We went, the weather was lousy, they shot a good bit, some of us managed to bomb in spite of the clouds, and we all came back to the ship in one piece."
"Personally, I always thought the original dude was a traitor but he had a big rep back in Virginia."
"I wouldn’t know Diplomacy’s a long way from my department."
"You can’t win a war unless you’re willing to fight."
"Freedom is the most expensive commodity on earth."
"I'm not a doctor, I just fly the planes. For Uncle Sam…"
"If those elected civilians didn’t intend to put on enough pressure to win, then they had no right to waste lives just screwing around."
"You will do as you are told even if it kills you. You will obey even if it costs you your life and your immortal soul, if you have one."
"Life is a hell of a lot more mundane than flying, isn't it? It's a lot more complex. Not much glory."
"I always thought flying was worth the sacrifices."
"A dead bombardier, a plane blown out of the sky, and now this."
"I'm sorry, Skipper. I know we’ve blown your trust."
"The lives of our fighting men are being wasted every day. Either we end this war or we fight like we mean it."
"I think I love you. I want you to fly forever."
"I’d do it myself, Bob … but I can’t. Christ, Bob … I’d do the same for you…."
"The smell of death is the smell of shit. Appropriate."
"The desire for water and a cigarette roused him."
"I thought you were dead. You going to make it?"
"No way. Hey, you have something on your neck. Looks like a leech."
"Jesus, Jake, you looked like Wyatt Earp when you gunned those guys."