Friday, March 30, 2012

Fighter Pilot Rule for Life: Lowkey Information


The first plane my guy flew was a T-34 propeller trainer, the T-2 was his first jet, then the T-2B, a twin engine T-2 jet, the TF-9 jet trainer, and finally in VMFA-333, he flew the Phantom F-4. All of the planes were double-seaters with an instructor or a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the backseat ready to tell him when he was doing it wrong. It served a dual purpose to have dual seats. The backseaters kept the valuable plane from terminal damage and also kept the young, brash, and maybe-not-yet-up-to-snuff pilot from terminal damage. A lot of time and money had been invested in both aircraft and aviator.

If a pilot had figured out a way to auger into the ground or lost his S/A or departed from controlled flight, a RIO or instructor would verbally help him get his act together. The best RIOs and instructors kept cool in the lightning storm. The idea wasn't to destroy the young pilot's confidence but to train him up to be a calm, steely-eyed gunslinger with wings and sidewinder missiles. Even after leaving the training command there were many times an extra set of eyes or another brain proved valuable. When worse went to worst, the RIO also had a command-eject capability.

And then in 1983, the new latest fighter arrived at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station: the F/A-18 Hornet, a single-seat, high-tech aircraft that featured computerized instrument panels, nine on-board computers (more now!), and television screens to aid in bombing run accuracy. The training squadrons had two-seat planes, but once finished with the flight simulator training and the instructors, no RIO flew as a backseat driver or failsafe guy.

McDonnell Douglas had a solution. They asked a secretary to record some standard warning messages in a calm, female voice. (Millions of dollars went into research to determine that a female voice was easier to hear in a stressful situation) The F/A-18 Hornet voice warning system was called by the aviators Bitchin’ Betty. In the worst of circumstances, her voice is composed and measured: “Left engine fire. Left engine fire” or “Bingo Fuel. Bingo Fuel.”

Here's what I've been wondering: why does my beloved other ignore my voice in disasters? Could it be that jumping up and down screaming and using tons of !!!! does not make my point better?

So I've been practicing. I keep my voice low and slow. "Honey, you are about to turn left on a red light and I do not think that tractor-trailer sees you," and "You might want to bring your wallet that is on the bedside table before we leave with our luggage to catch a plane to Timbuktu," and "Darling, the ladder you are climbing to put lights on the second story of our house has not been latched properly and is about to collapse."

Not my fault if he does not hear my reasonable warnings. Not my fault, but in a marriage we both suffer the consequences.

13 comments:

  1. The more dire the emergency, the calmer my voice becomes. It's a reflex - I don't even think about it. My mother was the same way. Odd, isn't it?

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    1. Me, too--it's the little stuff I tend to go high and to the right on.

      In this post http://wingwife.blogspot.com/2011/08/tads-and-deployments-3.html I write about a dog bite and a punctured artery and a bunch of blood. What I didn't write about was entering the calm, low voice zone when I applied direct pressure and when told my 11 year old to call the neighbor.

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  2. Once upon a time there were single seat jets without Betty and in those fabled days pilots enjoyed peace and quiet while competently dealing with whatever required their attention. Must have been a female engineer who created Betty.

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    1. On the contrary, the team of engineers probably recognized a pilot's initial training as a young whippersnapper to listen to his momma.

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  3. Good stuff. Will make my Lovely Wife read same. Thanks for filling the niche that was the viewpoint of a Wing Wife. Merely a prior NFO/ECMO/Skywarrior/Prowler vr jug

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    1. Thanks, Jug. Hey, Dale Brown the awesome author was an ECMO! No merely about it. At least they let you fly in their planes. Your Lovely Wife and I remain sisters in the Society of the Grounded.

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  4. Many of those little things toward the end apply to us wrench turners as well.
    I get the lower voiced ones my self.

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  5. Yeah, the low, clear, urgent voice gets the attention. There's something about the excited voice that draws attention to the source of the voice rather than the content of the message.

    Un-related - No Betty in the F-4? I thought there was. I think I like the recorded voice better than the computer generated ones.

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  6. So, Pogue, I need to add urgency to the low and calm? I'll remember that.

    I checked with Snatch and he is positive there was no Bitchin' Betty in the Phantom.

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  7. A long time ago,when I was a youngster of 20 onboard Indpendence, we did a major Fleet CQ. Among the units we hosted was VMFA-333. A rather unique bunch of guys they were. It was my first exposure to Marine Air. The Gunny who was in Flight Deck Control when I was the phone talker for the Handler was the most interesting man I had ever met back then and remains so to this day. Sadly I do not remember his name.

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  8. ORPO1, I posted this on VMFA 333's Facebook page. I'll let you know if I hear from anyone who knew the gunny.

    S/F

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  9. This is a comment I got:

    "It wasn't Gunny Fargo was it?"

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  10. When my wife and I were at Cubi Point in the Phillipines our duplex couple was a Navy Fighter-Pilot named Ken Webster and his new bride, Sandra. From them, we learned a phrase Mary still uses. In a dangerous auto situation, including speeding, she calmly utters, "Crash. Crash. Crash." If nothing else, the humor corrects my actions.

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