IN THE BEGINNING

From my earliest memories, I've had an interest in flying. This interest no doubt blossomed as a preteen during that period in the 1940s when those magnificent airplanes like the P-51 Mustang and the P-38 Lightning were controlling the skies during World War II. Later, the memories of real-life activities found their neurologic position of importance in the scale of life — like the time I was taking some forensic scientists to view a site and the remains of a terrible highway accident in the vicinity of Redding, California. An RV had gone off the road, hit the ditch, and erupted into flames. We were going to find out why.

The flight to Redding from Monterey was three hours. I was scheduled to rent the twin Comanche, but when I got to the Navy Flying Club at the Monterey airport, the only aircraft available for the trip was a Cessna 172. It was a bit small for three large people.

My first stop was Palo Alto to pick up my childhood friend Bob, who was a PhD, professor emeritus from San Jose State, and expert in matters dealing with strength of materials. The second stop was to pick up his attorney in Sebastopol, who was standing by when we landed at that little airport. With the three of us back in the air, we headed north along Interstate Highway 5. A few miles south of Redding, Bob asked if I would overfly the site of the accident, which had severely injured the RV's occupants. It was Bob's task to determine why the RV had burst into flames. It was my task to fly us up and back and to render my lesser opinion on what had gone wrong. As a trained aircraft accident investigator, my ideas were of some value, but Bob was the expert in this field. We circled the accident site a couple of times to get an overview and then continued north for a few miles before landing at the Redding airport.

It can get unbelievably hot in Redding, and this was one of those days when it was well over one hundred degrees. Before leaving the aircraft for our RV inspection, I arranged for the plane to be refueled. With three large persons to board and the extreme heat, I was concerned about the weight of the aircraft when it came time to take off again. I decided to limit my refueling to twenty gallons, which is a little over three hours of flight time in that Cessna. With the fuel I still had on board, that would give me close to five hours of flight going home.

We proceeded by car to view the wreckage, and it wasn't long before Bob found that the rod from a shock absorber had separated at impact and ruptured the fifteen-gallon cylinder that held liquid petroleum gas under pressure for use in the vehicle, resulting in a fiery explosion.

After our examination of the RV wreckage, we headed back to Monterey at 2:00 p.m. Our return trip was uneventful, dropping off the attorney at Sebastopol and Bob in Palo Alto. As I prepared for takeoff from Palo Alto, I noticed the gas gauge was pretty close to empty for both tanks. I had noted earlier that the gas gauge had been suffering from old age — the plane was over thirty years old, and years of sloshing fuel had taken a toll on the rheostat in the gas tanks. Over time, these sending devices lose sensitivity in the mid-range, and the gas gauge tends to read either full or empty. Now it was reading empty. With nearly six hours of fuel on board when I left Redding, I suspected the problem was in the sending unit, not the amount of fuel remaining. An experienced aviator determines the amount of gas remaining in the tanks through careful computation of fuel burn. I checked the Operator Handbook and noted that the fuel consumption at the altitude I was flying was 6.3 gallons per hour. I was in good shape for the forty minutes it would take to get home.

As I rose from the runway at Palo Alto and pointed the nose of my little craft toward the Santa Cruz Mountains, I again was aware of, but only slightly uncomfortable by the near-empty reading of my gas gauges. Then, just north of Watsonville, I noticed that the needles seemed glued to the empty position in a persistently motionless state. Should I land at Watsonville? Again, I checked my operator's handbook and computed the fuel remaining was enough for over two more hours of flight at my cruising altitude and power setting. I motored on. As I arrived in Monterey's air space, the controller delayed my landing for about three minutes for a larger aircraft. Now it was my turn. I lined up on final approach, slowed my speed, and put down full flaps. At that point, the engine quit! As the saying goes, the propeller must be there to keep the pilot cool; otherwise, why would he start to sweat when it stops?

Normally, engine failure is not a big deal for an experienced pilot — a bit distracting but well within the realm of one's ability to cope. At five thousand feet above ground level, a 172 will glide in any direction for ten miles, so that gives you some 214 square miles of surface to pick out a suitable place to land. However, on short final, at five hundred feet, with full flaps deployed, your options become a bit thin — and even thinner as you lose altitude while contemplating. And so it was that I began contemplating. At that point, the "pucker factor" was not too high, so I pushed the transmit button and, with the mike at my lips, said matter-of-factly, "Monterey Tower, Navy 372 has a...