Munitions Empire

Chapter 349 345 is worth it

On Dragon Island, atop a deliberately chosen cliff, a man wearing a leather jacket and goggles was carefully adjusting his gloves.

His outfit was custom-made, featuring zipper designs that had not yet become popular. These zippers were quite intricate, not easy to produce, and naturally, more expensive.

However, to ensure the pilot's safety, this costly latest design was rightfully placed on the standard-issue leather jackets of the aviators.

There was no choice in the matter, for pilots were living Gold, an immensely treasured fighting class, the most expensive in history!

The pilot was very young; he had goggles on his head, ready to be pulled down to protect his eyes at any moment, and his aircraft actually had a cockpit, a rather enclosed one at that.

Unfortunately, it was not a complete aircraft with its own power. It was a glider for training pilots!

This glider was almost entirely made of wood and canvas, with steel cables stretched across it to control the flaps and reinforce its structure. These wires made the aircraft look somewhat complex and added a steampunk aesthetic to the glider.

Truthfully, the airplanes of World War I were not about aesthetics; the design of aircraft of that era was focused solely on getting them to fly. How they looked wasn't a concern.

As for why many people like the backward steampunk style, it's due to film and television and a pop culture return to antiquity, which has nothing to do with the actual objects themselves.

Please believe, if you showed a 1914 Air Force pilot a J-8 fighter jet, he definitely wouldn't think his wooden flyer was better looking.

Similarly, if in 1914 someone used a syringe to spray black ink on white paper and claimed it was art, they likely would have been considered for a lobotomy.

"I'm really nervous now!" the pilot said to his classmate, who stood outside the plane, before ground crew helped secure the transparent windshield.

"Me too! Any of us should be nervous!" his classmate, standing there somewhat dejected at losing the chance to be the first human to fly in an experiment, retorted with indifference.

On the other side, the glider's anxious engineer kept instructing the pilot in the cockpit: "Pay attention to your position! Make sure you understand every technical maneuver! Control the flaps, don't wobble! Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do! But it's 60 meters high here! I don't think this thing can really fly," the pilot inside said, seeming even more anxious.

He had been to the restroom several times just earlier because he wanted to make sure that he wouldn't do anything embarrassing on the glider because of a sudden need to pee.

Of course, asking him to use the restroom before takeoff also served to reduce weight, which might affect the precision and success rate of the flying experiment.

"I heard the experiment succeeded," said the backup pilot, standing with his hands behind his back and squeezing out a bit of a smile, seemingly trying to offer reassurance.

"Don't joke with me, am I not the first?" Hearing that the experiment had succeeded, the test pilot was shocked and immediately became unsettled.

He had fought tooth and nail to score first place, all for the chance to become the first person in history to truly take flight, hadn't he?

Those hot air balloons and airships were nothing compared to airplanes. They didn't fly; they merely went up! They don't deserve the title of flying!

Suddenly, he felt the joystick in his hand become a bit heavier. Then, through the windscreen, he saw the distant horizon.

And then... he saw the earth, saw the endless forests... Yes, after witnessing the magical sights and a brief moment of stupor, he finally realized his plane seemed to be crashing towards the ground.

"Pull back to go up, pull back to go up..." He repeated the phrase desperately, pulling the joystick with all his might.

The next second, the glider responded to his action—quickly, the horizon once again came into view, followed by his nosecone, pointing toward the blue sky and white clouds.

He felt the G-forces on his body but being used to them, he wasn't too uncomfortable.

For someone who had inexplicably become accustomed to vomiting, and took tumbling and spinning as part of the norm, the slight sensation of floating was truly a wonderful, joyous experience.

He finally understood that all the hardship he had endured, all the suffering he had gone through, was just the price he had to pay for this moment.

The feeling was so great that he could not to help but want to shout out loud—although no one would hear him here, he just wanted to open his mouth and scream to vent his excited emotions.

Almost instinctively, he aimed his nosecone towards the sky and started to climb, regaining altitude.

He glanced over his instruments with his peripheral vision and realized his altitude had already exceeded 200 meters.

Not knowing whether it was madness or something else, the next second he spread his legs apart and yanked the joystick hard to the right.

The glider, still riding the wind, immediately responded to his action, starting to roll to one side.

As it rolled, its altitude dropped because of the aerodynamics involved, and the cockpit was filled with the bizarre howling of the wind invading through the seals.

After completing a roll, the aircraft descended more than fifty meters, but it executed a perfect roll maneuver!

On the ground, the staff were shocked by the suddenly wild flight maneuver by the test pilot; they had not arranged for such a complicated flight test.

According to plan, all the pilot needed to do was maintain level flight, then turn, and land at a predetermined location.

But there, under everyone's gaze, the pilot just performed a roll, nearly crashing the glider.

"If he doesn't crash to death, give him a good beating!" The onsite commander of security forces said as he watched the glider continue to fly off after leveling off, he ordered his aide, "That little rascal has gone too far!"

"Yes!" The aide grinned.

"Mind the buttocks! Don't damage him," remembering the cost of pilot training, the officer also painfully reminded.

"Yes!" The aide's smile grew even brighter.

"A beating would be worth it..." The envious reserve test pilot gulped and murmured resentfully, "I want to fly like that too... I'd take two beatings for it! No! Three would be worth it..."