Aviation Brief XXIII: Landing

1.    Take turns coming into the break to land.
2.    Open canopy with canopy lever when entering fuel pits; in case of fire, get out quickly.
3.    Hot refuel.
4.    Taxi to flightline.
5.    Wait while plane captain chocks airplane.
6.    Wait until plane captain signals, ‘Cut engine’
7.    Cut engine.
8.    Get face curtain pin out of pin bag and put it in to ‘safe’ seat.
9.    Climb out of plane and on to deck.

Aviators brief hops so the unexpected is expected. All involved know who comes into land first--usually the flight leader. An emergency such as bingo fuel might change that, but other routines prepare for anything not routine.

The canopy is opened before going into the fuel pit because the risk of fire exists and someone somewhere wasn’t able to get out of a burning plane on the ground.

The plane captain chocks the plane then signals to cut the engines because it helps to have hands and eyes on the ground to do and see what the strapped into the seat cannot.

The aviator turns off the engine and makes sure the one very important pin safes the ejection seat from ejecting an aviator too close to the ground. Good to have control of your own life and power.

In marriages we need to brief each other on the expected and be prepared for the unexpected.   Who’s the flight leader? Are there any emergencies? Are there fires in the fuel pit? Do we need to make sure the plane doesn’t run over our plane captain?

I confess I tend to take care of a lot of our life missions. Somedays I believe I briefed the hop as the flight leader only to realize Andy didn’t get the brief. He wants to take care of everything. Tension.

Except when he doesn’t. Sometimes he wants someone else to take charge. Tension again.

 When it’s tough--the kids are misbehaving, the money’s tight, work is frustrating--then I want him to take charge and he wants me to be the flight leader and lead the way to a safe landing. I want to be refueled without fires and explosions. I want someone else to chock my plane and let me know I can cut the engine. So does he.

The hard part is making sure we don’t just brief each other once--like 36 years ago when we married and I thought he was the next best thing to a god on earth. We have to keep briefing and re-briefing and looking out for our wingman.

We all want a safe landing and to be able to climb out of the high-performance fighter jet that is our life on to solid ground.

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 XV: Swim Quals and Sea Monsters

      Trigger dreaded swim quals. Raised in inland Texas, comfortable on horseback, roping calves, and comfortable training pilots from his rear seat in the airplane, he could barely manage to keep his head above water even in a pair of swim trunks, much less in a flight suit, g-suit, seat harness and flight boots. 

      Pilots and RIOs were required to pass a swim qualification--recreating what they’d have to do if they ejected over water and their life raft failed to inflate properly. Aviators had to jump into the practice pool fully clothed, take off their flight boots, and tread water for a period of time without drowning. Since the military invested a lot of time and money on aviators by the time they got to swim quals, there were rescue divers in scuba gear in the pool watching to save any who might be in trouble.
 

     Taking off his boots required the longest time with Trigger’s face underwater, so he thought he’d outwit the hardest part by loosening the laces until they barely stayed on his feet on the pool deck.
When ordered, the aviators jumped in. Unfortunately, leather became sodden and sticky when wet. Trigger tried to remove his boots without submerging, only gasping on the surface, his lower lip barely clear, while tugging frantically. He must have struggled too much. The ever-helpful rescue diver on the bottom of the pool came up and helpfully tugged on the boot as well, pulling Trigger’s lower lip and head under. He gasped in a lungful of chlorinated water. He clawed his way to the surface. Snatch always laughs and says Trigger's eyes were the size of a ship's steam gauges.
 

     He did not pass that round. Rumor had it he took three tries before barely succeeding.
 

     Trigger was even less fond of the parachute drop. A motorboat would tow the aviator up in the air over the ocean--think Acapulco parasailing--and then disconnect the parachute and aviator from the towrope. The aviator would then float to the sea, and into the sea, where he would practice disentangling or cutting himself from his parachute without drowning.
 

     As much as Trigger disliked the intimate contact with water, he feared what lurked beneath the surface more. He knew, just before his toes touched the water, a great white’s open maw filled with razor sharp teeth waited. He called the parachute drop, ‘Trolling for Sharks’.

      Life is a lot like trolling for sharks. I took the leap: I’m here, I married, I had kids. But taking the leap with a parachute isn’t enough; just when I think I am ready for what comes next, it occurs to me to worry about what might lurk below the surface, circling with teeth. The fear is worse than what lies ahead of me. When the dread hits, the dread of the future, my guts turn to water and I forget to climb into the life raft once I settle into the ocean.

    I have to focus on today. To live for this day, this task. Tomorrow will come, but worry will not help me swim to the raft unencumbered by parachute or shroudlines.

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.

Aviator Brief I: Rather Be Dead Than Look Bad at the Field

One of the major tenets of fliers involved looking good at the field--the airfield. That meant pilots and RIOs--Radar Intercept Officers who sat in the backseat--were allowed to do wild and crazy things, even encouraged to do wild and crazy things in the air and on the ground. However, if they didn’t show to advantage while doing whatever, they knew they’d get a ration of shit ranging from being given a bad time, all the way to losing the respect of any flier who heard the story. Most pilots would rather die than look bad. However, no pilot believed he could or would die--the wings conferred immortality. Other guys died. Stupid guys, young guys, and guys who had no luck. No pilot claimed fallibility or stupidity--except after they escaped by the skin of their plane from the teeth of death. Then they had joined the “goddam lucky bastards” club and they were golden. Grins all around.

I hate looking bad anywhere. No one likes to look a fool, but my daughters are much more relaxed about their physical appearance. My hair has to be freshly washed, blown dry. My makeup has to be applied and my clothes worthy at least of a lunch date if I am going to step out to the store--or even step out to get the paper. My youngest daughter will rubberband her sleep hair into a sumo knot on top of her head, drool tracks still apparent across her cheek, and run out to Ralph’s grocery store dressed in pajama bottoms and a ratty sweatshirt. I envy her confidence. Actually, my non-maternal, little green meany side is totally pissed off at her.

And then I wonder, who do I meet at the grocery store or getting my paper? Why do I care how I look to the strangers and my neighbors? My life as a writer is internal and they have no control over whether I publish or perish. Come to think of it--I’ve seen some of them outside in CRAZY outfits with CRAZY hair. I am going to get my paper tomorrow wearing my robe and slippers. Proudly.

Change comes in small, often crazy increments. Looking good at the field is in the mind of the doer.