Aviator Brief XXI: Dark Waters #2

What could go wrong, would go wrong, and ejections were no exception. Jack Hartman on the USS Saratoga was on the catapult to launch. The bridle connecting his jet to the cat broke on one side and the catapult flung him and the plane from zero to two hundred miles per hour in six seconds--twisted sideways with one wing forward. He knew the plane would never fly, so he ejected.

His plane crashed in front of the carrier.

He floated down to the sea surface directly in front of the bow of the ship going twenty-five knots. The aircraft carrier ran over him. The last thing he remembered while underwater was the sound of the screws, with blades twice the size of a Volkswagen. No one could figure out how he was spat out by the wash without the parachute or parachute cords tangling in the blades.

It wasn’t always enough to be good--sometimes an aviator had to be lucky.

What could go wrong, would go wrong. Yep. My life resembled that.

Give Andy a cross-country or a TDY or send him overseas and that was when the car wouldn’t start and our dog would bite me trying to get through me to the tow truck driver. Thank goodness for neighbors to drive me to the hospital to have my artery repaired--and clean up the half inch of blood in the entryway while my three little girls watched with wide eyes.

Three weeks into his year overseas, I’d discover I was pregnant with our second child--and then six months into the pregnancy, I was put on bed rest for two and a half months. Have you ever tried being on bed rest with a two year old? What could I do? I called my mom. Thank you, Mom. My mom didn’t wrap my two year old in duct tape and I didn’t wrap my mother in duct tape either--though we were both tempted. What do women do without a mom close by and willing to put their life on hold for months on end?

He left one weekend and my cat fell off the headboard of our bed on to my face and I drove myself to the ER holding a pad over my eye to hold my upper eyelid together.

Ask any spouse with a partner in the military and I bet they have stories of their significant other gone and things gone wrong. What did we do when that happened? We dealt with what we had to deal with. We asked for help from the other people in our lives. We hoped we’d survive even when we were deep underwater and heard the screws turning.

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 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.