Kahlia Akasha

He was a man who never conformed to the norm. He was not average, ordinary or normal. If anything, he was weird, strange and – different. He didn’t look his 33 years and though he had been through so much, felt so much pain, lost his innocence so long ago, he was still youthful. He had a dark soul, balanced by his light side. In the nuclear war that had killed some twelve million souls, hadn’t he celebrated and then broken down and wept like a baby – without really knowing why? His yin and yang was perfectly balanced, picture perfect. Lord Satan, help anyone who crossed his dark side, though…

He had always looked skywards, for he loved the sky, the huge majestic sky scapes, always changing, never the same twice, just like himself.  Did he model himself on the same version of that very sky? The one where his beloved air aces and heroines flew fought and died? Douglas Bader – legend had it that this guy could pull more g-forces in a tight turn. The reason? He had no legs. Lilya Litvyak, his Soviet heroine, was killed in air combat over sixty years ago in air combat at 22 years old. She was his real heroine of the tortured sky, torn apart by cannon shells and burning airplanes. Yes, he did love her even though time, space and death separated them forever. He wondered many times, did she really carry white lilies in her cockpit? Had she looked at them as she fell at Dmitriyevka, Russia? And he must not forget Amelia. Amelia Earhart who flew off into the blue and just vanished, to become aviation’s biggest ever mystery. How many times had he almost celebrated when bits of old alloy metal had been found at Nikomouro Atoll? It could only have come from an airplane, her airplane, he dreamed. Maybe it was better that way, to let her loss remain a mystery. It was more romantic, but on some days he pleaded with his pagan gods and goddesses to solve this damn mystery, once and for all. Anyway, he had his own airplane, a very special one. He called his plane “her” and had even given her a name, a very beautiful Russian name – Kahlia Akasha. He flew her regularly, when he could afford fuel to get her into the sky, from the old single-track runway at Oldham Edge. Now this strip was his own. No one else wanted it due to the unsuitability of it in a crosswind, but he could do it; she – Kahlia Akasha – could, too, for her powerful turboprop had more than enough power. She had up till now, anyhow. He would have screwed her if he could, a Russian girl called Kahlia Akasha, only 20 years old; any man would have died for the chance. Yeah, right, dream on…

She was a girl of the sky, a warplane made in the old Soviet Union at Factory Number 1962, situated deep inside Siberia far from any town or village – just Factory Number 1962. Now she was his; he paid less than ten thousand for her and what a bargain he had got. She didn’t need repairing and had just been through a full overhaul which included a zero hour engine and airframe, really a new airplane. After basic checks she was ready for flight. The Russians fuelled her, topped up the lubricants like engine oil and hydraulic oil and anything else that needed doing. They showed him three times how to do this so he would be able to do it on his own when he was back in England with his plane. He paid for Kahlia Akasha with his own money, acquired from the black market in Norway. On a ferry flight back home, they set off from her old home, Factory Number 1962, across Siberia to Scandinavia to a refuelling stop in Sweden and then on to home. To Oldham, a once thriving textile town in the north England heartlands, a real working class town if there ever was one. Many a tough young man lived there and many died in drunken knife fights or shoot ’em ups, a tough bunch just like the German dock workers he had seen in Hamburg or the Norwegian Black Metallers he had seen while on his travels. Oldham had been through so much too: Nazi V-1 missile attacks in the Second World War, race riots that burned the town from end to end, a French air attack with Mirage and Rafale fighter bombers pounding the local Aerospace plant and communication centres in the recent fishing dispute over fishing quotas of 1999, which led to a small war. What stupid idiots, he had thought, many times – how easily mankind went to war. We would never learn, would we? He idly wondered if his Russian girl could stop a Mirage 2000 or Rafale in air combat? Both French fighters carried forty-mile air-to-air missiles; all Kahlia Akasha had was some five-mile plus range off bore sight heat seekers when in Russian service. Her fighter version with a Mig29 engine remained just a design, unbuilt. Yet he knew she could out loop and out manoeuvre them in close combat and get on their tail, then nail them. Again the thought of if only she was here five years earlier, he could have been an air ace from his base on the Edge and followed in the footsteps of his old mentors, Bader or Litvyak. He could have gained immortality in the rain soaked skies. He smiled at the thought; that would have suited him just fine, a blast of red flame and a funeral pyre of black smoke, the ultimate airborne funeral. Like Lilya, no known grave, at least for forty years in her case.

He walked up the steep track to where she was, his plane, his girl. No, an airplane, his father had told him – it flies through the air, so it’s an airplane. She needed fuelling and checking before the day’s flight and then the air test, a few manoeuvres and speed runs. He was already in the clouds but he had work to do so he focused his mind and walked to the single story building by the side of the single-track 2,000-foot concrete runway. Arriving, he keyed in a security code, unlocked the two deadlocks and entered the door. A dozen halogen spot lamps came on right away, triggered by a pressure switch operated by body weight just in the floor by the doorway. His eyes adjusted to the bright light, to the stark blackness in the middle of his vision, to her. Yin and yang in perfect balance, like him. She was there before him, his Kahlia Akasha, born, rather than made, in 1984, a child of the cold war generation like himself.

She was a thing of extraordinary beauty. He stood there for five minutes staring at his airplane, his girl. Almost embarrassed, he looked away. Everything was just as he had left it. He walked closer to his own desire, for hadn’t he felt every human emotion in her cockpit while airborne in the gaping maw of the skies? She was a bit bigger than a late mark Spitfire in length and span, a few thousand pounds heaver in weight and more than twice as powerful, with weapons never before dreamed of, to kill and to maim, to do her job of close air support and close air combat. He never fired a single bullet or shell or dropped a single bomb or weapon from his beloved girl, let alone used four Bright Star off bore sight heat seeking missiles on her outer underwing pylons, or four medium range guided attack missiles or the twin barrel 30-millimetre cannon pack under her fuselage. The gun was still attached but he had no ammo and no fairing to put there if he removed it, so he left it in place as a memory of what she really might have been, a girl with teeth. On his ferry flight he had been over two thousand pounds under her maximum gross weight with four underwing fuel tanks, enough fuel with one stop for the 2,300 mile flight from Factory Number 1962 in Siberia to Oldham. He felt she could lift even more when she had taken off fuel laden from the snowy wastes. Half an hour into their flight, he hesitantly did a barrel role, slowly turning 360 degrees in the sky while flying forwards. She handled well even on cruising power. He felt the weight of 2,500 pounds of fuel weighing him and the plane down when they were briefly upside down; more rudder and stick allowed for this and he was delighted. Not many other airplanes could be flown like this, so carefree. Never had he been so happy – well, just once.

He had a girl once, long ago now. She was a really dark one, a real girl of the foreign lands, from Sweden, and for a while she had been his girlfriend. They had made plans to live in a third country but it all fell apart due to distance and age difference. Her name had been Angelica. He had named his warplane after a Goddess of the northern sky, a Norwegian Goddess of the heavens. Was this because he still loved Angelica? Silly, but he knew she was the only girl he would ever be in love with. Half a dozen girls had been and gone in the meantime but they were really just company and someone to be physical with in lovemaking, nothing more and nothing less. He prepared his own company and the skies – they were enough, and now he had a means of sharing the skies, his plane, the real Kahlia Akasha.

On the return flight, he had brought his airplane down in a perfect landing at a Swedish Air Force base to refuel. Gripen fighters were based there. He had idly wondered if he should ask the base commander for a dogfight but he was being silly – he had a long flight back to England to finish and he needed to be sensible. He was still unfamiliar with his plane’s controls so he needed more experience before anything more than basic flying was carried out. He thought of dropping by on Angelica for he still knew her address and the house where they had both lived for a few precious months. He really wanted to see her; an ache filled him deep inside, a feeling he fought hard to control but he had to, just had to. He didn’t want to ruin her life again, to bring back all those memories that he himself struggled with time and time again. No, he would leave it as just a memory. No one on the Gripen base knew his past romantic history so he would refuel and move on. No journey to see her, even though she lived just half an hour away by car. No fly-by to get an airborne view: he would return home as soon as he could, at one third throttle, optimum throttle and good cruising speed all the way. At two hundred knots and thirteen hundred miles it would be awhile, but home would come closer to him and his new girl.

Snapping back to now, to reality, he actually looked before him, at the airplane. He noticed her layout, so very futuristic, like twenty years ahead of what is now, in any year, period. She rested on her three-wheel undercarriage, a nose wheel and one under each wing that retracted for zero drag in flight. She had a large swept wing of perfect design with a large amount of sweep back for high speed flight and agility. Two small vertical fins were situated on each wing tip for stability. A pair of large vertical fins with powerful rudders mounted on structural beams were just opposite the leading edge root extension, a section of wing with shallow sweep on it at the leading edge of the main wing. The rudders, at the back of the wing each, were connected by a single horizontal stabiliser, which had an elevator control that worked together with the large inboard flaps for low speed control. At higher speeds these flaps provided a high degree of authority to maintain controlled flight. Ailerons backed up by canard foreplanes provided the rest of the flight control surfaces to fly this girl of the sky. The canards occupied a position just in front of the main cockpit near the nose but not enough to give bad visibility. An airbrake mounted under each inner wing section slowed the plane down in high speed flight and manoeuvres and sometimes on landing when a short run was needed. His Oldham Edge strip needed their use but normal length runways only needed flaps and canards for a reasonably short landing run.

She was all black, a menacing colour in any light but against the spot lamps, she was like some primeval monster from the depths, an illusion of optics. She almost hid her great agility and speed sitting there silent on the hangar floor, again an illusion. A shark like fuselage housed a multi-mode radar in the very nose, the key sensor for combat and navigation. With air to air modes for close combat, air to ground modes for anti-tank and attack missions, precise navigation modes with a type of terrain following and a basic air to sea mode for ship attack, this radar did a specialist job. An infrared sensor mounted in front of the first cockpit provided infrared search and target identification without the enemy being aware he was being watched. In good weather this sensor provided good navigation out to ten miles or so but cloud, rain and smoke hindered it somewhat. It made night flying a great joy on cloudless nights and he had done a dozen night flights and planned many more yet. A laser range finder was coupled with the infrared sensor to provide distance of the target or distance to, say, a hill when low level flight was being practised.  Twin air data probes three feet long protruded over and above the nose to give flight data to the instruments and computers. They gave the airplane an appearance of a large predatory catfish waiting to strike. Two single seat cockpits under a huge one piece plastic canopy gave superb vision in almost a full circle, essential due to a crowded airspace during an air battle or flying near to the ground. Two pairs of eyes also gave good observation. He had flown her from both cockpits but he preferred the forward cockpit due to the slightly better forward view. In combat the pilot sat in the rear cockpit and the weapons man in the front using the radar, infrared and other sensors to aim weapons or to navigate. A similar set of flight controls was in both cockpits so changing over was no problem. The main radar displays was repeated in both cockpits as was the other sensors; a main difference was weapon options, controlled from the front, so the pilot had to get the weapons man to set up his weapons for him other than the off boresight air-to-air missiles and main cannon in the air combat role. However, he had his plane but no weapons whatsoever and he flew her from which seat he preferred depending on his mood. Behind the tandem cockpits were the main fuel tanks and an avionics bay, above which was a large air intake for the engine, a single large Aeroprogress turboprop of quite compact size yet providing some 4,500-shaft horsepower. This was a jet engine turning a large eight bladed prop, with carbon fibre blades, the power of his Russian girl. When turning, these carbon fibre blades were invisible but deadly knives turning at several revolutions per minute, easily enough to decapitate a person.

He started the start up procedure: first a walk round check of his black heroine, around the port (left) wing and circling the plane checking all control surfaces for movement, for alignment or damage, inspecting all access panels securely fastened, no loose fasteners or screws, undercarriage in order with no hydraulic leaks or cuts in the tires, to the large dorsal air intake to see if any object blocked the vent and opening. Onto the eight-bladed propeller, each blade straight as a knife and not being bent or broken; an unbalanced prop could shake her to pieces in seconds. Pausing to check the time, he looked again at her, not to find any problems but to take in her aesthetics and beauty, equal to a Spitfire in her delicate feminine beauty, a goddess of the blue summer skies. Snapping out of his reverie, he completed his checks, underwing weapons hardpoints secure and underfuselage empty cannon firmly in place. If this were a real wartime combat flight, uploaded weapons would be checked, warheads armed and weapons computers loaded with target data. Checks complete, he fuelled her up with the liquid that would take Kahlia Akasha into the skies. Her engine would run off normal jet fuel, standard petrol or for a short period, on paraffin which was a last option as the engine would need flushing out of the fuel system afterwards. Walking to the fuel bowser ten yards away by the hangar wall, he took the control arm and turned on the electric motor which turned the big fat rubber tires. These squeaked on the spotless hangar floor. He wheeled the bowser to the correct position slowly.

Opening the hatch on the left wing/fuselage fairing, he earthed both bowser and aircraft with special rubber straps to stop any sparks. Just like filling your car up: fuel hatch open, fuel cap off, fuel nozzle in place onto the connector, turn on the pumps. All automatic, hydraulic controlled and finished in five minutes. When the tanks were full a sensor stopped fuel flow so none was wasted or spilled. A manual back up allowed a slower operation from hand held drums if need be; on a wartime mission this would be routine. Pump shut off, cap on, hatch shut, move the bowser back to position and check the fuel amount – yes, half fuel load of fifteen hundred pounds on board for the short test flight. An hour or so of flying at full throttle, more at a slower speed.

He opened the massive teardrop canopy, climbed aboard into the front cockpit. Main power online, flight computers spooling up in two minutes to be displayed on three medium size multi-function displays. Flight data, engine data, navigation maps and weapons data was shown on each screen, in any order as a matter of personal choice. He liked his nav data and maps on the left screen, flight instrument data on the right and simulated weapon info on the middle screen. Taking ten minutes to flick through the menus on each screen, he checked his airplanes condition. Navigation data indicated a map of his location; he was marked by a simple “x”, the runway and hangar could be clearly seen, as could the surrounding area in clear computer graphics. The airfield was shown at an indicated height of 831 feet above sea level, sensors on the plane checked and adjusted height at any airfield which they landed at. Many an old plane had been lost due to wrong airfield height which a pilot had to input into his altimeter. A single push of a button changed the scale of the map to any of ten different scales; more sensors scanned the heavens for Russian or Western navigation satellites giving accuracy of a metre. If the constellation of satellites failed, a disc containing information could be downloaded into the nav computer in minutes; this could be target data or purely maps.

Now for engine start up: click the main menu, scroll down and pick start up procedure, follow the basic instructions. No red lights, no errors or problems, ready to go in six steps, eight bladed prop turning, the auxiliary power unit having spun up the main engine. Itself a small jet engine, the APU used fuel from the main tanks and shut down when the engine was at speed. With prop a blur, steady at two thousand revs a minute, he moved the single throttle slowly forward and released the brakes.

Moving forward, slowly, slowly, slowly, past the open hangar doors at the click of his remote control into the early afternoon air, under a clear cloudless blue sky. Hangar doors closing, lights out, now turning onto the runway after a twenty-yard taxi run, a two thousand foot runway of concrete ended in grass and bushes.

A feeling of anticipation came over him, with a bit of nerves to keep him alert, sharp. One last check of all systems, a look at the wide angle Heads Up Display (HUD) that was at eye level, flight data and compass was shown. Now, almost time… Almost. If this were a Soviet combat mission he would have a triple layer flight suit, fireproof boots, a g-suit for hard manoeuvres and finally a helmet complete with Helmet Mounted Sight. Great for off boresight missiles, one glance and click the switch and missile away, a revolution in air combat. Of course he had no helmet, no weapons, no flight suit on, just a pair of old army boots along with his black jeans and t-shirt. After all this was just a short test flight and a few basic manoeuvres. He was strapped into his ejection seat but left the safety pins in and only fastened his seat straps. Nothing would go wrong, for he maintained her well – he was an expert. Turning up the air conditioning, he opened the throttle all the way to the stops, brakes off and away we go.

A gentle feeling of speed building up to a push into the seat, a positive feeling of acceleration like a giant hang pressing you down, a rush of excitement and happiness. Yes! We are here, in the crucial moment before flight, speed building up. 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 mph and lift off speed. Keep her on the deck for a bit more, now! 115 mph. Up and away into the blue, we are airborne, me and my Kahlia Akasha, together, climbing up steeply with wings level to the horizon but up and up and up. Bring up the landing gear and flaps into the flight position, less drag, more speed. Two hundred miles an hour, nose up steeply to sixty degrees angle and watch the speed increase up the scale to maximum climb limit, a seal level rate of 8,000 feet per minute. Speed increasing up to 350 mph, slowly to 400 mph, maximum for this weight and full power, a real joy and feeling of total freedom – so this is how the birds feel then… Real freedom…

He must remember that he had no oxygen mask on so he must not go above eighteen thousand or he could lose consciousness; if the pressurised cockpit failed, he would die a slow asphyxiated death. He levelled off at sixteen thousand even though an exited voice in his head said “Climb!”, “Climb!”. He did a speed test, still at max throttle: his rate of speed increased breathtakingly! She was a quick little thing with 4,500 shp pushing her along in the turbulent free sky.

A flight path over Lancashire to the Yorkshire border, a stunning black airplane well worth a second glance. Red stars on her wings, tail and fuselage from another time, yet living history right here, part of her history. Top speed coming up. An indicated air speed of five hundred and ninety miles an hour, Mach 0.85, level flight; just think, with one quick push of the stick and she could go supersonic given enough height. A feeling of freedom, a rush of clear air and a vista of blue and perfect view, hills, fields and towns below.

At Kahlia Akasha’s maximum height of fifty thousand feet she could reach six hundred and thirty miles an hour due to the high thin air. At sea level this became five hundred and forty five miles an hour. For five minutes he kept this speed, then stick full forward with his right hand and a vertical dive. He screamed with pure joy as the g-forces took hold and briefly lifted him out of his seat as level became the vertical. Down, down, down, horizon shifting crazily, ground coming up, details swam into focus, positive g-load taking hold pressing him into the seat, hard. Three g’s as they screamed downwards, seconds left to pull up as details below come into view – a copse of trees, a small lake and farm buildings. Pull up!

Down to three thousand now, a ground height of 1,200 here. Stick way back, a madman’s pull, make the flight computer work. What a rush! Seven g’s coming on, pushing his head down and blurring my vision to red, grey and almost black. Scream, shaking his head, he can beat this, he must beat it or oblivion will take them – we will avoid the ground and fly, fly, fly. And we do, yes we do.

Airspeed down to 250 on the pullout but increasing slowly, from almost supersonic in the dive. Throttle back and level flight now, get my head together. Wow! This is better than sex with Angelica. What a plane, all his, he is so lucky, a dream in reality.

No time for reverie. Where are we? Okay, time for some more manoeuvres, what shall we do now? A few rolls, almost without thinking, the sky pivoting on a central axis around him and his black plane. With a roll rate approaching 360 degrees per second you really felt it when pushing the envelope. A roll to the right, then to the left in less than ten seconds, dizzying and stunning the senses. Now a barrel roll, like the first ever manoeuvre he had ever done in her, now seemingly so long ago, familiar now like a pair of old boots, he thought, in no way violent like a flick roll that was at the other end of her agility. Just like a real woman, he laughed – she will bite you without warning, yet be as gentle as an angel. An angel and a devil all in one!