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.

Aviator Brief XIV: Loss of Consciousness

A necessary piece of an aviator’s equipment while flying a high performance aircraft was a G-suit worn over the flight suit. The aviator inflated the G-suit by connecting it to the bleed air from the turbine engine. It prevented the blood in the brain from pooling in the toes. Brains do not work well without a blood supply; they black out, experiencing LOC--loss of consciousness. Hard to keep a plane under pilot’s control if the pilot has ‘checked out’ or ‘taken a nap’. When pulling G’s--increasing the pull of gravity from earth normal to up to 10 times earth normal--the valve in the suit connection sensed the onset of G, opened, and the bleed air filled the suit, pressing air bladders in the torso and legs to keep the blood from the extremities. A pilot helped this evolution by grunting, holding air in his lungs, and bearing down--all actions reminiscent of taking a dump. Not romantic, but neither was crashing and burning.

Mike Flood, an FNG lieutenant known as Flash, was flying a 1v.1 ACM hop, which called for a neutral start engagement. As the two F-4s arrowed straight toward each other, radome toward radome, Flash--trying to look good at the field and impress the lead plane’s veteran pilot, Fog--made a high G bat turn at the pass--a very quick, instantaneous turn--to the left, but it was too high G a turn, at least a G or two above his G tolerance. Neither Flash nor the G-suit could compensate quickly enough. Flash checked his six--looked behind the plane--over his left shoulder and promptly ‘took a nap’.

The airplane came off the turn doing odd things, like rolling over and falling out of the sky. Steamboat Willie, Flash’s RIO, tried to get his pilot on the ICS--the Intercom System. No response. The plane continued doing weird things, departing from controlled flight. Steamboat Willie saw the pilot’s head flopping to either side. He called out, “Mike? Mike!” As the plane pointed nose down, passing 10,000 feet above sea level, speeding toward the center of the earth, the wise backseater called, “Eject! Eject! Eject!” turned the T-handle, and command-ejected both of them. From all reports, Flash didn’t come to until he floated in his chute, about to hit the water, with absolutely no clue where he was or how he got there.

Turned out to be one of the first documented cases of sudden loss of consciousness. Not documented before this because, in most other suspected incidents, the pilot, the plane, and the RIO hadn’t survived. As part of the accident investigation, they put Flash in a centrifuge, spun him up to a certain amount of G-force, had him look back over his shoulder and he blacked out. When he came to after they stopped the centrifuge, he had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. In the interest of scientific inquiry--and maybe to fuck with the young pilot--the investigators had the centrifuge cranked up twice more. Flash turned his head and it was, “Say sayonara, baby” all over again. The video was a cult hit at squadron parties for weeks afterward.

On the day of the accident, once the helo had plucked the crew out of the water and flown them to Miramar, after determining both were safe and uninjured, Snatch called Flash’s nineteen year-old wife. Squadron protocol dictated contacting the wife or next of kin before the wrong story came from unreliable sources--i.e. Other wives.

She answered the phone.

“Now, Mrs. Flood, Mike’s been involved in an aircraft accident and had to eject over water. I called to tell you he’s okay and uninjured.”

A pause.

Snatch was sure she’s going to cry, panic, or faint following the words ‘accident’ and ‘eject’--all normal and justified reactions to the survival of an ejection by a loved one. Wives tended to be hysterical when reminded how dangerous their husbands’ jobs were. “The helo’s picked him up and they’re bringing him back to Miramar. He’ll call you himself as soon as he can.”

“Oh. Okay.” Her voice burbled bright and bubbly. “Tell him I’ll be at the beach.”

Unconscious and Unconscious’s unconscious wife.

No fear.

I’ve never been that person. For awhile, I felt safe from loss. All the pilots I cared about were good at their jobs--good sticks. But I have always been a cautious person, thinking ahead to carefuls, watchouts, and don’t go theres. If I climbed a tree, I knew it was sturdy. If I stood on a cliff, I stood well back from the edge. And I warned my friends, husband, children and students. They didn’t always listen.

Risk without fear is foolishness. Risking while knowing all can be lost is a quiet kind of bravery. Some days I am braver than others.

Caution or risk? How do you balance them?

Aviator Brief XIII: Fear and the Aviator

Aviators avoided even thinking about fear. Belief in invulnerability was essential to performance in situations where weak dick pilots and the lesser folks of the universe crashed and burned. Pilots trained to make automatic the choices keeping them in controlled flight. RIOs trained to be an extra set of eyes and ears, and brain for their pilots who held the control stick but might not have total SA--situational awareness. 

Sometimes events happened so far out of normal that fear tapped a skeletal finger on even the bravest aviator’s shoulder. On a hop--out near San Clemente Island--Doug Farmer, a RIO in VMFA 531, hadn’t been able to keep his front-seater from getting disoriented in the clouds and departing controlled flight, so they both had to eject. 

Doug soon floated alone in his little survival raft on a glassy sea off the California coast, his pilot nowhere to be seen. Through the tendrils of fog and mist, he noticed the waters roiling quite close to his raft. Something huge and dark appeared out of the depths and rapidly approached the surface. A black conning tower of a submarine erupted out of the ocean next to him, rocking him with the wash. Rising higher and higher, thirty feet out of the water, it loomed very, very dark and very, very big--with no markings on it to indicate its national affiliation. 

Doug Farmer had a lemur. 

Lemurs typically happened when a pilot got thumped--one fighter came underneath the second plane, then swooped up right before the victim’s radome--the front pointy end of a fighter. The jetwash of the first aircraft thrashed the victim’s plane, resulting in a physical thump. Getting thumped sent a cold shot of piss to the heart.

It wasn’t another pilot fucking with him, but in this confrontation with a submarine, Doug Farmer’s heart stuttered.

Men came out on the deck, but didn’t speak. They threw him a line and waved him toward the boat.
At the time, high tension existed between the Soviets and the United States, with the Soviets known to patrol the waters off California. Why wouldn’t the crew talk to him? The only explanation--they spoke Russian and he would soon be spending years in a Siberian gulag. 

Fear sloshed in his raft. He did not take the line. He did not paddle closer. He did not say anything either. Name, Rank, Serial Number, he reminded himself. 

Détente.

Whoop. Whoop. Whoop. Coming closer.

A helo appeared overhead, US squadron markings clearly painted on its sides and belly. Rescue divers jumped into the water, waving at the sub crew before helping winch Farmer aboard the copter for a ride back to terra firma, terra cognita, California. The sub disappeared again below the waters of the Pacific.

Turned out the sub was a boomer--our nuclear super-secret-stay-underwater-for-two months-at-time-and-never-let-anyone-know-where-you-are-so-you-can-launch-missiles-at-the-enemy submarine. But the call had gone out ‘Plane Down’ and they’d been very close to where Doug’s locator beacon had been pinging. The captain of the sub broke protocol just to surface. Obligated to check in case he needed medical attention, they weren’t going to talk to him. Not even to assure him they weren’t bogeys.

Fear turned into a great story at the O-Club. Looking good at the field.

        Most of the time my life as a mother consisted of making sure  my kids were alive at the end of the day (thank you Erma Bombeck), and that they had been fed, clothed, their homework done. On a good day all had some hugs and love yous thrown into the mix.

        My life as an aviator’s wife meant moving a lot,  leaving old friends, getting to know new people. I also tried to make sure home was a welcome haven from the stress and demands of the job.

      The hardest part of my life has been controlling fear.

        Fear as a mother meant watching the girls try out new things, go to houses of people I barely knew, learn to drive and then drive off in the car at night. I’ll never forget being called by the cops at night. My fourteen and sixteen year olds had met some boys at a park (prearranged). The boys had beer, the neighbors called the police. My daughters tried to run away. The worse part? My sixteen year old had guns in holsters as she ran! Disneyland Frontierland toy guns--but in the dark as they ran I am still so grateful the police did not feel threatened and shoot.

       The worst part about fear is that it did me no good. My fear came after everything turned out all right--or didn’t. Then it was too late.

         Fear as an aviator’s wife stalked me. Every time he flew, I worried. We had lost friends in “training mishaps” where wings fell off, clouds turned to rocks and water met sky. My brother’s F-4 tried to fit into the same piece of sky as another F-4.

        My husband still flew--even transitioned to F/A 18s. I couldn’t, wouldn’t let my fear keep him or my children from trying their wings.

Aviator Brief IX: Compromising Positions

Pilots and RIOs in the Phantoms needed each other. Each had their tasks to accomplish. Each watched out for the bogey and other bad things heading their way. Pilots have saved RIO’s lives with spiffy flying. Backseaters have saved their pilots’ asses by seeing what they couldn’t, or command-ejecting both when the front-seater wanted to save his reputation and/or the plane more than his life. But RIOs all have a story of a pilot determined to fuck it all up.

Mike Fagan was a RF-4 backseater flying with his CO as pilot. They climbed in formation from Navy Dallas, Love Field, under IFR--Instrument Flight Rules--in big thick thunderstorm clouds. Formation flying in thunderstorms is difficult, so hard to do even the best pilots ‘squeeze the plastic’--whiten their knuckles around the plastic control stick. In IFR formation flying, one plane takes the lead, flying instruments only. The wingman has to keep in parade position--slightly back off the wing of the lead plane while keeping it in sight. The planes were buffeted about, in and out of thick clouds. The CO drifted a little too far from the lead plane, and lost sight.

At that point, the smart thing to do would be to take a 45-degree turn away, radio call, “Lost sight,” hold the heading and rejoin above the cloud cover. Instead, the CO tried a shadow rejoin--joining up on a shadow he thought might be the other airplane in the clouds--a definite no-no by all formation flying wisdom. He collided with and damaged the stabilator on the tail of the lead aircraft. The contact, not-so-slight, disintegrated their own radome--the fiberglass nose of the plane covering the radar--that was sucked into the jet intake, FODing their own engine--FOD, Foreign Object Damage--very bad for turning turbine blades.

A pilot with good judgment would shut down the affected engine to avoid a fire and evaluate if the plane was flyable. If it wasn’t, then a smart pilot would slow down the plane for a safer ejection. A sharp pilot knew to yell, “Eject! Eject! Eject!” because the RIO is the first to leave the plane via ejection. By the time the third “Eject!” left the pilot’s lips, the canopy would have been jettisoned and the RIO would be up the rails, well warned and in a safe position for sudden departure from his flying machine.

None of that happened. Mike Fagan, the backseater, knew he had a good fifteen minutes after take-off before he had any necessary task to perform. So he brought out his flight maps for later, kicked back mentally, and had just opened up the latest Hustler magazine to the centerfold spread when he heard a thump, followed shortly by a cough. He didn’t know it was the sound of shit hitting the fan--the radome parts hitting the blades of the turbine and the subsequent engine deceleration. He didn’t know and he had no time to think about it.

Within half a second, and without warning from his pilot, the canopy blasted into the jet stream, maps and magazines sucked out in the vortex. Immediately, he was exposed to a driving thunderstorm with no mask or visor--he had been looking at the pictures, fergodsake!

A half second later the seat gun exploded him up the rails and out into blinding rain, cracking lightning, and hailstones.

The plane landed in an empty schoolyard--thank the good Lord for Sundays. The wheel chocks punched three feet deep in a driveway. Mike Fagan and the pilot landed on a golf course, an empty golf course because of the sheets of rain, wind, and lightning flashes. Mike never recovered his Hustler magazine, though his sense of humor did help him recover his temper--eventually.

All of us need our backseaters, the people in our lives who are another pair of eyes. All of us suffer when we take them for granted or don’t keep them in the loop.

We have to be the backseaters for our loved ones too. “I’ve got your back” what a great way to say I love you. Being the backseater means not always being in control. Behaving when we are left back home. Staying in touch.

My husband had an unaccompanied year-long tour to Okinawa when my oldest was 18 months old. Three weeks after he left, I realized I was pregnant with our second. I hated having him gone. I struggled with my high energy toddler during the not-so-good days of pregnancy and then had problems with the pregnancy and went on bed rest for the last two months. My mother and all her advice came to stay with us. Bless her for her help and bless her heart I wished she’d kept her opinions to herself.

My middle daughter arrived in October. My dad called Andy and told him about his baby girl. I sent him a picture in December--yes, two months later. My husband met her when she was two and a half months old, on his return home from his tour of duty.

It took me a year and a half to forgive him for having been gone. Does that make sense? No. He didn’t want to be gone; he wanted to be with us. I’m ashamed of my young self. Sorry, honey. I love you.

Aviator Brief III: Squadron Jobs (#3)

The Administration Officer worked for the XO doing all the grunt work of the picayune details of filling out all the paperwork a military bureaucracy can generate--and then taking the shit dished out when it wasn’t done right. Admin was a thankless job even when the pilot liked the XO he worked for.

What was the worst job in the squadron? Call it the Voting Officer. The pilot holding that ‘esteemed’ position had to make sure everyone had absentee ballots if needed. Later, when drug tests came into vogue, the VO made sure guys peed in the bottle. Why was that the worst job? Well, part of an aviator’s mystique and power was tied to the importance of the job he had in the squadron and the excellence in which he performed it. Absentee ballots and drug tests were completely non-essential to flying, with no opportunity for excellence. In fact, being excellent at getting your fellow pilots to pee in the bottle pissed them off in more ways than one.

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’. Pity the pilot in VMFA 314 known by the call sign Unsafe-At-Any-Speed. Pity him, but don’t respect him--and if you’re a RIO, try not to fly in his backseat.

RIOs lacked control in the air--except through the radio yelling at their front-seater to land before they ran out of fuel and through a RIOs capacity to command eject. They could decide to eject both seats if the pilot was incapacitated--or too stupid to realize he had reached the point of no return to controlled flight. Since some pilots would rather be dead than look bad at the field, that ability to make the decision to abandon a multi-million dollar airplane often rested on a RIO’s realization that staying alive allowed for redemption, while a smoking hole in the ground did not.

Control. Woo-eee. Some people want to control everything. Some people spend years trying to set the boundaries for a controller--parent, friend, spouse, child, or sibling.
Try to control the world and the world/life/God eventually gets around to giving a lesson and whomping you upside-the-head.

One thing I’ve learned in my lessons: I don’t control everything. I can’t control everything. I don’t want to control everything. That’s the Big Guy’s job. I can only control how I act, not how it is perceived by others. I can only control my words, not how they’re heard and interpreted. I can only control the gifts I give, not how they are used, squandered, rejected, or loved and appreciated.

And staying alive allows for redemption.

One other thing--the wife job has no designator. There is no alpha-wife job versus low-life job. Well--I guess some wives could be designated a ‘good stick’.