At one time or another every private pilot dreams about flying a small airplane across the United States from one coast to the other. Some have made the flight and fewer still have written about their adventures. Marianna Gosnell belongs to the latter class of true cross-country pilots and writers. In Zero Three Bravo she writes about flying a Luscombe Silvaire from the East coast to the West and back. Her book is a log of the flight from New York state, down the coast to Florida, through the southwest to California, then back east across the Rockies and the Great Plains. Mixed with the flying are the author's recollections of her life. The narrative moves between descriptions of the earth as seen from a small airplane and stories about the people at small airports and towns.
Perhaps, what sets this book apart from others of this genre, is how Ms. Gosnell treats women pilots. "I don't know if generalizations can be made about female pilots, although people make them. Those who say things to your face may say that women have a more delicate, or sensitive, touch which helps. (...) Then there's the old one about women being better at detail (cross-stiching and all that), and that flying well certainly involves attention to detail. In my own experience the one area where I believe that as a female I came less prepared to fly a plane than an average male, aside from not having all those years of automatic exposure to machinery that boys got when I was growing up, is in planning and thinking ahead while aloft. If I was up flying with my friend Ron, for instance, through some breathtakingly lovely sky and countryside, I'd be much more likely than he to be grooving on the whole scene, paying attention to the current moment and place, while he'd be figuring out the compass heading for a 45-degree entry into the expected pattern at an airport we were planning to land at 50 miles away."
Throughout the book, Ms. Gosnell describes other women pilots she meets. One, nick-named "Carrot Top", is not only a pilot, but also an A&P mechanic, who travels around the country finding work restoring antique airplanes. Another is the first civilian woman pilot to solo in a T-33 Shooting Star - a military training jet.
While passing though Georgia, Ms. Gosnell meets Laura, a pilot who was the second woman in her county to obtain a license. The author spends a few days with Laura and her family - husband Jim, who designs pig environments for a living, and three children, the oldest one fifteen. Laura took up flying after Jim tried it and gave up, and she even got her own airplane, a Cessna 150. But flying did not make Laura happy. Piloting was not something that southern women did, it wasn't ladylike. Women played bridge, did needlework, cooked, decorated and never worked. The freedom of flying and seeing "...that there was another world..." forever disturbed the balance of Laura's existence. No longer content with house, husband and children, but not confident enough to leave, Laura remained mixed up and unhappy.
One of Ms. Gosnell's more embarrassing flying adventures occurred at the Wall airport near the Black Hills in South Dakota. When she landed a number of the locals were amazed to see a woman Luscombe pilot, especially since Luscombe's have a spirited reputation. When leaving Wall, the author decided to try a different take-off technique to reduce the cross-wind angle; instead of pointing the airplane straight down the runway, she started at one corner and aimed at the opposite far corner of the runway. Distressingly, the result was not as expected - the airplane reached the opposite edge much too soon, nearly hit a runway light and bounced few times in the grass next to the asphalt, before finally taking to the air. The pilot was upset: "First female in a taildragger at Wall Airport, ha! Two witnesses: Monty and the Bonanza pilot. As I climbed away a terrible sadness washed over me, a staggering sense of loss. I began to weep. I would never get on top of this thing called flying; what I loved to do most I could not do; trying and caring hardly mattered at all."
Towards the end of the book the author talks about her dreams of flying. As any pilot, she has dreamt about landing in strange places or taking off under power lines, but her favorite dream is:"(...) one where I was in my Luscombe high over the plains of East Africa, able to see a great many miles in every direction, and the shadows of clouds were making giant blotches on the ground, like Andy Warhol blossoms, and standing on the blotches as well as in sunny places between them were elephants - hundreds of elephants. My sister was in the passenger seat, looking out with me over this wide world, sharing it with me. It seemed to me then that in this dream were all the elements it took to make a person truly happy."
Mariana Gosnell was born and grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University with a major in fine art. She worked for many years at Newsweek, where she reported on medicine and science and her articles appear in many magazines including Smithsonian and National Wildlife. She lives in New York City and summers at Lake of the Woods in Canada.
