Military Writer's Society of America's Book Discussion Forum March 23-25

Please join us for the Military Writer's Society of America's first book discussion forum running March 23-25 on the MWSA site. I am honored that the topic will be my memoir, WING WIFE: HOW TO BE MARRIED TO A MARINE FIGHTER PILOT. Joyce Faulkner, President of MWSA will be the moderator.

I encourage everyone to participate, even if you haven't read WING WIFE, especially if you have written, are in the process of writing, or are thinking about writing a memoir. We'd love the perspective of military types--Marines and other services--aviators and/or their spouses. Everyone's comments will be useful.

The idea is to talk about craft and to talk about the military experience.

Writing Techniques for Memoirs Link: http://www.mwsadispatches.com/node/840

WING WIFE Content and Message Link: http://www.mwsadispatches.com/node/841 


If you are not a member and want to comment on a thread, write Joyce at MWSAPresident@gmail.com and ask to be added to the site.

Homecoming

     My last post was not in the finest tradition of military wives. Anniversaries of death are private. Remembering the one who’s gone by crazy stories of times past is supported and lauded. So here's one story:    

     My brother Don, a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, was coming to MCAS El Toro on his first cross-country from VMFA 333 Beaufort SC in 1969. We knew he was on his way home; he’d told us he’d let us know when he was close. 
   

     About the time he was supposed to arrive, we heard a jet. Not unusual, except this one got closer and closer, louder and louder, way too close and way too loud--so close we were sure it was going to hit the house so we ran outside. We stood on our front lawn in Claremont, California and watched a Phantom F-4 divebomb to within a hundred yards of the ground, then turn up into the sky, great gouts of flame spouting from its twin engines and as it arrowed into the sky, afterburners lit.   
   

     A neighbor with experience in the Korean War threw himself on his wife, knocking them both to the ground, certain the plate glass sliding door was going to shatter. Not one person had the presence of mind to get the tail number or remember the trefoil design on the tail. When MCAS El Toro was contacted, they responded with, “None of our jets are in the air.”  

     My brother had let us know he was close. He was almost home.   
 

     The picture at the beginning of the post of Don with his wings in his Marine green uniform isn't my favorite. He's smiling, but not his smile of appreciation for crazy antics in the air and on the ground. Here's a picture of him at the training command before he got his wings.

Wouldn't it be fun to hang out with him? Yep.

Fighter Pilot Rule #1: S/A

Keep your S/A--Situational Awareness

Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California in 1979 was a base with a mission. A lot of predictions of future wars focused on the Middle East to protect US interests in the volatile region--desert wars. Twentynine Palms had lots of desert to practice in. My husband used to tease me that we lived at the beach--look at all the sand--too bad the water was located so far away. 

VMFA-321, a Marine Corps Reserve Squadron based at Andrews Air Force Base, had come out  to practice close air support on the live fire range.  On July 26th, in addition to the regular briefed mission, the CO of the squadron had a Time/Life photographer Mark E. Meyer in his backseat. The mission had been cleared through Headquarters Marine Corps, Mr. Meyer had flown in many high performance jet aircraft.

Unfortunately, Mr. Meyer arrived only an hour before the hop, after the ready room brief, so he was given an individual “quickie” brief before climbing into the F-4N Phantom backseat of LtCol. Fritz Menning. No one checked the photographer’s flight gear to make sure it met safety parameters.

The briefed hop went well. Afterward, while the F-4s flew in loose formation at 17,000 feet, the photographer asked his pilot, LtCol Menning to make a canopy roll over the lead plane flown by Capt. Rick Loibl. Pictures of the aircraft flying over the desert floor would look good in Life magazine. The squadron CO wanted Mr. Meyer to get the best shots so that his squadron and his planes looked good and got some great publicity on the national stage.

The squadron got publicity all right, though not of the sort they were hoping for.

LtCol Menning didn’t keep his SA. 

In his rollover, either he started too low so his wing fell down on to the wing of his leader (gravity at work), or he misjudged the up and over arc needed to stay clear. Wing surface contacted wing surface sending both planes into unrecoverable spins.

All four crew ejected. Both planes--and the Time/Life photographer’s camera with great shots of the lead plane against the background of the desert floor--ended up in a couple of smoking holes.

The Radar Intercept Officer in the backseat of the lead plane was CWO-4 Robert “Lizard” Waltzer, a combat experienced crewman with 3000 hours in the F-4 and a skydiving enthusiast who made a hobby of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. He later told my Andy, who was the the fixed wing Air Officer at the Tactical Exercise Control Group, how jazzed he was to get to use his skills in a bonafide departure. His use of his chute’s four line release to steer clear of obstacles may have been the first time such a tactic had been used in a fighter jet ejection. Gives new meaning to the phrase, “hanging his Lizard out”!

The photographer’s flight equipment made the accident report because no one wants to eject without steel-toed flight boots. History does not say if his feet sustained damage. I’m betting, yes.

Fighter pilots have to be aware at all times of many different things. They not only have to keep an eye on their instruments, but also have a sense of where their wingman is and watch out for their adversary. They need to know which way is up and keep above the hard deck--the designated Above Ground Level. AGL is usually set at 10,000 ft above the ground to give aviators an opportunity to recover from a spin or a plane otherwise departing from normal flight that wants to obey the law of gravity and auger toward the center of the earth. At the same time, the fighter pilot has to fly his plane, communicate on the radio, plan and react to the bogey’s maneuvers. A moment of tunnel vision can be disastrous when flying at supersonic or even subsonic speeds with other fighters in the sky.

Just like fighter pilots, we need to know where we are and know where we are in relation to others and other things around us. Take it all in. Be aware. If we only look at the artificial horizon, we won’t see the altimeter. We may be in level flight but heading straight toward a mountain.

It is also important we need to know who we are. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. I’d make a terrible aviator of any kind. I wear contacts that are always getting dust under them. I drift off into other worlds. I write fantasy well, but dislike strict parameters of behavior.

And once we know the where, the when and the who that we are, we must use that awareness in THIS moment--not be distracted by the fight with the spouse, the problems with the teenagers, that the grass has to be cut, the boss wants the report written, or a parent is sick. Each moment has it’s own imperative for focus. Multitasking in our lives takes focus away from what we need to understand and do right NOW.

Oh--and let’s wear our steel-toed flight boots if we’re in a plane with ejection seats.

Aviator Brief XIX: Flying At Any Cost

Maintenance officers appreciated pilots who got a plane home to be worked on. If it could be flown safely--fly it. Some weak dick pilots and RIOs downed their ride for every little hydraulic fuel leak. Phantoms were elderly planes--they all leaked a little bit. Get some balls, fergodssake.

An FNG lieutenant in VMFA 314 didn’t like causing trouble for his AMO--Aircraft Maintenance Officer. So, on a refueling stop in Yuma, one leg away from home base, frustrated when the F-4 wouldn’t accept external electrical power from the starter, he decided to try a non-standard procedure, principally used for testing the RAT--ram air turbine, in order to get going. In the non-standard procedure, high-pressure air is directed at the RAT, which spins into operation, providing power. The lieutenant deployed the RAT, and standing on the wing, held the nozzle of the hose from his Wells Air Starting Unit.

The pilot intended to guide high-pressure air from the hose across the blades of the RAT. The RAT would spin and produce enough power to light off his fighter.

Fast-moving air charged through the hose to the nozzle.

Unfortunately, back-pressure on the hose caused it to thrash about wildly. The hapless lieutenant, flying twenty to thirty feet in the air, whipped back and forth, held on as long as he could before being tossed to the concrete below.

Medical personnel needed over a hundred stitches to close up the deep three-inch gash on the lieutenant’s arm.

He lived to make general--and to be a credit to the Marine Corps.

Ignorance was temporary, unless it proved fatal.

Redemption comes if the lesson is learned. The lieutenant had his story told in Granpaw Pettibone--a safety cautionary column in Approach magazine. The theory being that aviators can learn from others’ mistakes and prevent further injury or loss of valuable equipment. Andy always talks of the aviator as one of the more expensive pieces of equipment the service has. In 1970 it cost 1.5 million to train a fighter pilot. Nowadays it is more, probably a lot more. If you add in the time it takes for OCS through flight training--the military can’t afford to lose personnel.

All of that is an accountant’s view of aircraft mishaps and reasons to prevent them.

On the other hand, I know how many people are affected by the loss of a single person.

I dreamt of my older brother Don last night. Sunday will be the 31st year since he died in a midair. In my dream, he walked into a room where I spoke with other writers about writing and publishing and marketing. He was so big and full of life. He grinned and said, “Hi guys!” I was so very glad to see him.

Many things would be different if his plane hadn’t run into the same piece of sky as another. His loss changed my family dynamics and exposed so much of the dysfunction of my childhood.

As the New Year begins, I need to look at the costs of my own mishaps and learn my lessons so they are not repeated, so I don’t crash and burn leaving sadness and regret in the ashes.

What mistakes have you made that you need to learn from?

Aviator Brief VII: No Guts, No Glory

On a day of such crappy weather even the seagulls stayed grounded on the grass between the runways, Colonel Sullivan turned for takeoff from Runway 7 at MCAS El Toro. Pushing forward the throttle and kicking in the afterburner, he lifted off from the surly bonds of earth into a flock of seagulls startled by the decibels of an F-4 turbine.
 

Three hundred seagulls funneled into a jet engine were a problem of compressibility. Blood and feathers, guts and bones don’t pack well into the relatively small space of a Phantom’s engine.
With one turbine destroyed and unsure of the damage to the other, the colonel looked at the land near the base. If the jet stopped being able to fight gravity and he had to jump out, the hunk of steel and explosive jet fuel would twist and burn into homes, schools and/or stores. Not a good option.
 

Good pilots make good decisions in the worst of circumstances. He pointed his radome south and flew the crippled bird with its many mangled birds to Yuma, Arizona, where he managed to land safely.
 

The CO of the squadron appreciated the decision to divert, preventing a potential public relations disaster. He also appreciated the skill of the pilot in preserving a valuable piece of machinery. Engines could be replaced. A plane crashed and burned was unrecoverable.
 

Yuma, the day Col. Sullivan landed, had a high of 105-degrees. Yuma registered 105-degrees the next day, too. The plane, with its multiple bird strike, FODded engine, sat on the flight line in the heat for two days.

Then the maintenance officer, Snatch, flew to the desert to inspect the extent of the damage to the engine.
 

The guys in Yuma working on the tarmac were happy to see him. A wide area had been cleared around the colonel’s aircraft. No one wanted near the miasma of gull guts rotting in the gutted turbine blades. 

Neither did the hapless maintenance officer.
 

Snatch got the guts. Col. Sullivan the glory.

I never thought about this story much before re-reading it this week, but the troops were the ones who had to use the pressure hoses and replace the engine in the Yuma heat with the smell to high heaven. The AMO would have supervised, and had to deal with the smell, but the guts were on other hands. Snatch says the plane still stunk for awhile afterward, which would have made the airframe one of the least favorite to win in the “What am I flying today?” lottery.

So who am I in my life? Am I the person who in the nick of time and with derring-do flies a plane away from those who could be hurt by it if it crashed and burned? Am I the maintenance officer who has to supervise the rotting guts of the disaster and repair it to fly again? Or am I the troop on the ground who actually gets my hands dirty fixing what the magic flyboys wreck (even when it is no fault of their own?)

I’d never have made a good pilot. My reaction time is slow in an emergency. I don’t panic, but I don’t automatically react with split second decision making. In a disaster, time slows waaa-aay doowwwnnnn. I usually get to a good solution, but I’m afraid the plane might be in twisted bits if I were at the controls. I’m no Col Sullivan.

I would have made a good maintenance officer. I like to know how things work and I like to fix my life and those of my friends. I’d much rather tell someone else how to fix things than get seagull guts all over me. I don’t much like taking orders.

So I’d probably not make a very good troop. God bless them for what they do and the shit they take. The troops help keep the derring-doers and the other pilots like my husband up in the air and back down again for safe landings.

So who are you? In your life and relationships do you fly through bird flocks, but recover well? Do you analyze a situation and figure out how to fix it? Do you like to give orders or just follow them?

Aviator Brief IV: To Eject or Not to Eject

The Phantom F-4 came equipped with a Martin-Baker mkH7 ejection seat. Aviators fly planes. This is important to remember when discussing ejections. An aviator without a plane to fly becomes just a Marine, not a bad thing--but not as good, either. Ejections guaranteed a pilot would look bad at the field by abandoning a multi-million dollar piece of machinery to crash and burn.

Aviators did not want to eject. But plane wings could fall off; engines inhaled birds through the turbine blades--something known as FOD--Foreign Object Damage; or equipment could malfunction at a critical point in flight, creating an unrecoverable airplane. Those were regrettable, but not the pilot’s fault. A pilot who ejected in these circumstances and survived received sympathy and joined the Lucky Bastard Club--an unofficial community, as well as the Martin Baker Tie Club--an official honor and tie given to all pilots who eject from a plane with the aid of a Martin-Baker seat. The count currently stands at seventy-two hundred pilots saved. Most of the time, ejection seats worked.

But too many things could go wrong with an ejection, not all of them dependent on the manufacture of the seat. First, the canopy had to be blown off. If not, the pilot or RIO would impact the thick plastic. The plastic would win. Then, an explosive had to explode under the seat to send it and the aviator up the rails, pulling ten to twelve G’s. Elbows, knees, and shoulders needed to be tucked in or the force of the ejection would break, dislocate, or mangle. A rocket had to shoot the seat free of the plane. If the plane traveled at too high a rate of speed, the jet blast of air would hit the aviator like a brick wall. The jet blast would win. The parachute had to deploy properly and the aviator had to come down somewhere he could be recovered, preferably not in the fireball of his crashed bird. Pilots thought paratroopers crazy for jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. So there was a corollary to Rather Be Dead Than Look Bad At the Field: Airplanes Are Meant To Be Flown, Not Jumped Out Of.

A Musing: This reminds me of that commercial where people are in extremely uncomfortable situations and the voiceover says, “Want to get away?” However, the people are not at risk of dying like a pilot with a malfunctioning aircraft, they are only at risk of dying of embarrassment.

Only.

I have chosen to live my life without an ejection seat.

As a child I feared so many things: embarrassment, my father’s anger, being caught doing something I shouldn’t, letting someone down. I never feared the dark. I never feared death. I never feared strangers. I feared the monsters I created and that were closest to me.

And when I did what I knew I should not--why do we do those things?--I almost died from the dread of what might happen when I was found out. A friend of mine--who is Catholic--calls this Catholic guilt. I have not found it to be religion specific since the Jewish writers I’ve read think they own guilt--or a least their mothers are the masters of it. I am sure the Protestants and the Buddhists have their own versions of ownership.

Part of my journey to live without choosing to eject has been: Doing what is right as much as I am able, then facing what happens head on. I’m only responsible for flying my own plane in life and making sure I do regular maintenance of my body, my brain, and my heart.

I am not responsible for other planes who might choose to crash into my life, or for bird-strikes, or for unforeseen maintenance mishaps. I listen to my conscience, but try to live without the dread of guilt.

It’s tough--and I don’t always do it right--and then I feel bad. But not as bad as I used to feel, and not for as long.