Rank and Flying

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The main job an officer had in the squadron was to be a pilot or RIO. Pilots were judged on their competency in the air, whether they were ‘a good stick’. This ranking went on a scale from “a damn fine stick’ to ‘unsafe at any speed’.

Lieutenants, once they earned their wings, needed to fly often to build up competence, confidence, and situational awareness. Good RIOs helped with the training after the training command sent the young 'uns to an operational squadron and the best RIOs helped keep them alive in bad situations. With a nugget, also known as an FNG--Fucking New Guy, a RIO had to keep an eye out for trouble on the horizon of the lieutenant's experience and a hand ready to command eject. Generally, lieutenants knew less than they thought they did and were an exemplar of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. A strong squadron scheduled flights to give the lieutenants the experience they needed everyday. When not flying, FNGs were good for weekend duty and holiday duty, voting officer, drug and alcohol officer, mailroom duty, mess officer, dues collection--anything that had little or no effect on actual flying operations.

With luck, lieutenants became captains. Captains flew. The backbone of the operational squadron, the good ones helped both ends: training the lieutenants and getting work done for the OpsO, XO and Commanding Officer. But they had no grey hair, no responsibilities to worry about except to become the best damn pilots in the free world and beyond. Every fighter pilot wanted to stay a captain forever.

Eventually captains either left the Corps or were promoted to major. Majors in the squadron were the OpsO who scheduled flight, the XO who took care of the admin and kept the CO happy, and the Maintenance Officer who made sure the planes all took off each day. Responsibility was their life. Once in awhile they got in some flighttime, at least enough to maintain flight status and flight pay, but the dark specter of Life After Flying hulked over their lives as shit hot pilots.

The CO was a Lieutenant Colonel. Only one per squadron. Being a CO of a fighter squadron in the Marine Corps was an honor, a privilege, and life-changing. The good ones maintained ties throughout their lives to those who served willingly under them and at their wing.

But not all get there.

In the Air Force, aviators fly. Someone else does all the other jobs in a squadron. The Marine Corps, with a smaller force and budget to draw on, needs all Marines to do their duty: to run the 3 mile PFT; to know how to carry a rifle, to load, shoot and clean it; to serve with the grunts on occasion and learn what the Marines are doing on the ground when they need fire support.

Aviators fly, but good Marines do more than that. Good Marines support the whole mission, the operation of the squadron, the training of the lieutenants and stepping up to the responsibility of the rank of major and above. A Marine who never serves a ground tour, never does a favor for his Monitor (the guy in a cubicle in the Pentagon who has to fill all the billets), that guy--he thinks he's Peter Pan, but he's just a lost boy. 

I knew some of those lost boys. Some never married, never should have. A few people I knew loved the flyboys and married them. Usually those boys stayed in NeverNeverLand, while the spouse took care of the real world.

My favorite people knew that Tink's fairy dust wouldn't last forever and they accepted grounding in reality. Just as a squadron needs real Marines, so we need men and women who get married, have children and teach them right from wrong; people who do their best to do what's right.

I know my guy misses the rush of pushing the envelope, a cat launch off a pitching deck, a perfect ACM against a worthy opponent. But I love him for everything he was, has been since his last flight in a Hornet, and still is today.

When were you last captain of your soul?

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Aviator Brief XX: Quick Change #3

When the Change of Command ceremony was held without a marching band or printed programs, presided over by the frown of the Group Commander, and with the outgoing CO conspicuously absent, did Duke Lynne, the brand new CO, feel any need to knock wood, cross his fingers, or light a candle in the base chapel?

Duke had been on the schedule to fly well before the emergency change in squadron leadership. What better way to celebrate, or mourn the ouster of a friend, than to launch into the sky? The flight of two prepared to take off on their briefed, low-level navigation mission. Unfortunately, Duke’s plane did not cooperate in the celebration. It broke in the chocks seriously enough that Duke and the plane were grounded.

The FNG pilot in the other plane asked if he could continue, flying the briefed mission solo. Duke saw no reason both should suffer from his bad luck. He cautioned the new lieutenant, on the radio, to stay above 5000 feet--although the original brief had been down to 1300 feet above ground level.

Perhaps the radio was broken, too.

The FNG lieutenant returned and landed--miraculously--at MCAS El Toro in an A-4 that had its canopy and tail sawn almost in half by 90 to 100 feet of high tension wire. No ceremony was held for Duke’s ouster.

His tenure as a CO? Six hours.

Sometimes shit happens through no fault of our own. In the Corps, the final responsibility rests with the Commanding Officer. I hope Duke went on to live a long and happy life regardless of his tenure as a CO of a squadron.

I know I have not been a perfect wife or an infallible mother. I wish I could have been better at either task. But no one gave me a training manual! I never had the equivalent of carrier quals. Flying the ball in a marriage with teenage daughters is landing without an LSO, the ball, or a hook on a pitching deck in a howling gale at night.

So I am working on accepting that I did the best I could--just as my dysfunctional parents did the best they could. Each day I try to make the world a bit better for someone else. I can’t fix what I did. I can live each day forward while hoping I am not trailing high tension lines.

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 VIII: The Officer’s Club

El Toro Marine Air Station O-Club

Any aviator worth his wings knew when to lock his pipper on the O Club, or Officer’s Club, the predicted impact point of wild and crazy pilot life: Friday afternoon, squadron day done? Tuesday evening, date life slow? On a cross-country to someplace your mother had never heard of? Go to the O-Club and find fellow aviators with whom to drink beer, roll dice, and swap stories. Happy Hour at the O-Club--a mandatory activity for all squadron aviators. The bonding benefits of alcohol were well-documented in male social organizations.

Pilots needed time away from the airplanes to debrief and detour from the stress of flying high-performance aircraft. Happy Hour started on Fridays after the squadron shut down for the weekend, sometime between 1600 and 1630--4 to 4:30 pm. Wives and girlfriends joined their drunken other halves at the club as soon as the babysitters came, typically 1800 to 1900. Single women, looking to play, filled up the barstools and walls by 2100.

In the days before a DUI would end their career, aviators without semi-sober wives at the O-Club just drove slowly on the way home and watched out for MPs, the Military Police. Or not so slowly. Donut discovered orange trees in 1976 cost $3000 to replace when he crashed into and knocked over a prime specimen on his way home from a raucous Happy Hour at the MCAS El Toro Club.

No one knew how to party better than Marine pilots--no one--and they partied best with alcohol and other aviators to compete against.

The lowest rung on the competition ladder was the FNG, the Fucking New Guy. An FNG could be a new 1st lieutenant, but usually an FNG was an Air Force puke, or a Navy pilot, or a ground Marine who hadn’t spent time with aviators. It almost didn’t even count to mess with their heads because they wanted to be one of the boys so badly they’d do anything to be accepted. Also, most of their brains were newly minted and/or not used to playing the game.

What game? Any game. The best games to play with FNGs were games that allowed the FNG to buy all the drinks and all the meals--for everyone. FNGs were never told all the rules. In fact, they weren’t told any rules or strategy except the most basic--“In this game you roll the dice.” While playing Horse, a regular O-Club game, the object was to roll the best poker hand possible with five dice in two rolls. When the FNG chose dice to hold aside, the experienced O-Club aviator deployed the Iwakuni double-tooth-suck (open lips, put upper and lower front teeth together, and inhale briskly) to indicate the FNG had made a bad move--whether the move was bad or not--a strategy meant to cause much second-guessing and doubt. Every pilot knew, ‘He who hesitated, lost’--in any case, he who lost bought the drinks and often the meals.

The FNG was only told a rule when he broke one. “Bummer. You dropped the dice. You have to buy a round.” “Double bummer. You didn’t have the drinks by the time the game finished. You have to buy another round.” “Well, damn. You lost the game. You get to buy lunch for everybody.” At the Kingsville Training Command, that meant the FNG bought lunch for all ninety-nine other students and instructors.

Why did drinking until stupidity kicked in seem so fun and funny when I was in my twenties? Only a few never drank. We looked at them askance--it wasn't really understood if someone 'didn't handle their liquor' or chose not to join in the idiocies.

Now I agree with having a Designated Driver; I don't drink until I throw up; being drunk is not an excuse for bad behavior. However, I am so sad the camaraderie of Friday nights at the O-Club has gone the way of passenger pigeons.