Same Wings, New Sky

The story

When the war ended in November 1918, thousands of pilots and aircraft were suddenly without a purpose. Some of them found a new one very quickly.

On December 25, 1918, the industrialist Pierre-Georges Latécoère flew from Toulouse to Barcelona as a passenger, with pilot René Cornemont, in a Salmson biplane taken from military service. They crossed the Pyrenees and landed at the Can Tunis racecourse. It was the first step of the Latécoère airline, "la Ligne", which soon reached Morocco and later became the Aéropostale. Its pilots, among them Jean Mermoz, Henri Guillaumet and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, carried the mail to Africa and South America. Saint-Exupéry later wrote about those flights, and gave the world The Little Prince.

In the United States, the army sold its surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" trainers cheaply, and many former pilots bought one. They became barnstormers: they flew from town to town, landed in farm fields, performed stunts and wing-walking, and offered short flights to people who had never been in the air.

The song closes the album as a foxtrot duet. It shows the two paths, the long mail lines and the joy of the air shows, and its outro brings back the "knights of the air" from the first song.

Lyrics

Verse 1The thunder was over, the fighting was done,
And thousands of pilots had nowhere to run.
No orders to follow, no patrols at dawn,
Just engines and wings, and a life to go on.
But hands that had flown through the fire and the rain
Were itching to climb in a cockpit again.

Pre-ChorusPlanes built for war, now planes for hire,
A pilot's got a new desire.

ChorusSame wings, new sky,
No more thunder, still we fly.
Letters in the cockpit, loops in the blue,
Same wings, new sky, and a world to fly through.

Verse 2In Toulouse on Christmas, a biplane took flight,
Over the Pyrenees, in the winter light.
Open to the wind, with a sack full of mail,
Barcelona was waiting at the end of the trail.
They steered by the mountains, they steered by the sun,
And landed on a racecourse when the long flight was done.

Pre-ChorusPlanes built for war, now planes for hire,
A pilot's got a new desire.

ChorusSame wings, new sky,
No more thunder, still we fly.
Letters in the cockpit, loops in the blue,
Same wings, new sky, and a world to fly through.

Verse 3Across the ocean, the surplus was sold
For a song, to the pilots too restless and bold.
They landed in fields, in the shade of a barn,
And the whole town came running to watch them perform.
They stood on the wings with their arms open wide,
And sold every farmer his first flying ride.

BridgeSome chose the mail, the long, lonely line,
A writer among them, a little prince in his mind.
Some chose the show, with a grin and a spin,
Two ways to make peace with the sky they were in.

Final ChorusSame wings, new sky,
No more thunder, still we fly.
Letters in the cockpit, loops in the blue,
Same wings, new sky, and a whole world to fly through.

OutroKnights of the air... same wings, new sky...