With the click of a shutter

Flight Journal, Oct 2002 by Davisson, Budd

EDITORIAL

The opening photo for "Pearl Harbor's Lost P-36" came as a surprise to us here at Flight Journal. It is seldom that you see an outstanding photo that deals with something as significant as Pearl Harbor that you haven't seen before. But this one was new to us. And it affected us; the camera has frozen a piece of world-changing history for eternity and clearly portrays the mood of that early Sunday morning in December 1941.

The pilot stands by his aircraft, probably urging the mechanic up on the wing to hurry. The enemy will soon be back. Onlookers in the background stare intently at the fires raging off frame to the right. Maybe the Japanese have already returned. You can almost hear the pilot shouting. "Hurry! Get me off the ground and back into the fight. Hurry!"

On the one hand you can sense the desperation, but at the same time, there seems to be an aura of disbelief enveloping the entire scene-as though those present can't believe this is happening. It can't be real and they don't know how to react.

One of the real pleasures of producing Flight Journal and its accompanying special issues is that we are privileged to live history vicariously through the words and photos sent to us. Every issue has us looking at young faces and famous airplanes in the process of making history and every one of them presents as many questions as it does answers.

In the Pearl Harbor P-36 shot, for instance, what happened to the airplane? Did it survive the attack only to be stricken from inventory as being obsolete? Did it sit around rotting on the fringes of a Hawaiian airfield while the War raced past it and newer, sleeker aircraft carried the fight to the enemy? Was it finally crushed and returned to scrap metal?

And what of the young men in the photo? The tall youngster standing in front of the airplane and staring at the camera is the only one aware the scene is being recorded on film. Did he survive the attack? Did he survive the War and go on to speak of the horrors of the day to his children and grand children? Or was he a casualty who never had the opportunity to detail his role in the day that changed the world?

The photo from "The Able Dog in Korea: Skyraider" (below) shows men working frantically to free an AD from a tangle of barrier cables. If you look carefully, you'll see some of those on deck aren't looking at the Skyraider but are staring back toward the fantail. There is probably another airplane settling into the groove and preparing to land. We don't know what kind of airplane it is or the circumstances. It might be damaged. There might be a scared young pilot who is bingo on fuel and has just been told the deck is fouled so he is facing the real possibility of having to ditch. Another drama may be in the making, but we don't know that for sure. We only know what the camera has allowed us to see.

It's fun to look at old photos from a forensic point of view while trying to read things into the background detail. But a photo is nothing more than a single frame in the never-ending strip of movie film that is history. When the shutter button is depressed, a quick slice is taken out of time and we are left to guess what went before and came after. This can be frustrating, but at the same time, it is exhilarating-at least that single frame exists. At least a fragile piece of film has come down through the ages to be captured in bits and bytes so it can continue to delight and enlighten future generations.

History before the invention of the camera has a mythical, unreal quality to it that prevents us from identifying with it. The camera, however, puts a face on history and it is in the scrutinizing of those faces that we realize history is us. We are the history of the future.

Generations will look back on our own faces in fading photos and wonder what happened to us after the shutter was tripped. They won't have any more answers than we do when we look at old pictures, but at least we'll know that our own moments on stage will have lived on, even if it's only in two-dimensional form.