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 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 XII: Yen Roll

One O-Club competition, known as the Yen Roll, began on base while stationed overseas--in Japan. Usually later in a drunken evening than earlier, someone collected the yen. Typically, they anteed up 3000 to 5000 yen per aviator, about 10 to 15 dollars. Starting with a number--often the squadron number--say 232, the aviators took turns rolling five dice. Each ace rolled subtracted from the original number. 

The aviator who rolled the last ace, grabbed the money and hai-yakued to change out of his flight suit and make for the bars and girls in the ville. The lucky aviator had to spend the yen as fast as he could in places unlikely to be discovered--if found by any squadron-mate or -mates, he had to split the remaining funds. $300 US could buy a real good time in Japan in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Half that, half as good a time. Find the bogey and shoot it down was a time-honored tradition in air-to-air combat. Not surprising the fly boys figured a way to play it on the ground.

The games aviators play and the games wives play have very different objectives. Find the bogey. I've had bogeys in my life: problems presented by marriage, children, other women--other wives. Chasing after a problem to destroy it while hoping to get rewarded not only didn't work, it was counter-productive. Marriage, family, wives: we were all in it together and needed support, not competition. Bless all the wives and girlfriends who supported me on my run through life.

By the way, there are many games I enjoy playing with my husband, but not to shoot him down. I need him flying high and feeling lucky. Then we both get lucky.

Aviator Brief XI: Flappable

    

      The runway for jets at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma ran parallel to the runway for prop planes. The area offshore for air maneuvers was almost perpendicular to both. Snatch took off and his wingman followed shortly thereafter. The lieutenant in the second jet had been told to join up as quickly as possible. Lieutenants want to please the senior officers and don’t always engage their brains before trying to do so. So he took an early right turn, gear up, immediately after takeoff--right in front of a C-117 holding short, ready to take off in the other direction. An F-4 in take-off afterburner is loud and violently vibrates anything it passes close to--rattling the plane on the ground and probably soiling the C-117’s pilots’ underwear.
 

     Someone complained. Someone always complained. They called the squadron--because the VW on the F-4--the designated tail design for the Black Knight squadron--had been front and center in the windscreens of the startled prop guys. The XO, Hanley, got the call. Remember, deflecting flack away from the CO remained his main job . He stomped into the Ops office and demanded to know who was in the air.
 

     “Why, Snatch is.” The Ops Officer didn’t mention the lieutenant.
 

     After their ACM over the water, fuel low, the birds returned. The XO met Snatch’s plane on the flightline even before the engines had been shut down. Rumplestiltskin had nothing on Hanley for getting purplish-red in the face and hopping up and down and stamping his foot. “You’re grounded! You’re grounded for weeks!” The veins on his neck looked ready to explode.
 

     Snatch had no idea why or what had the XO fuming. He’d taken off first and had been miles away when the lieutenant spooked the props. But he knew better than to argue. He let the bulldog chew on his ear and snarl and snap on the way back to the ready room.
 

      Hanley grabbed the Ops O and stabbed a forefinger at his face. “Snatch is off flying for the next three weeks! Maybe longer!”
 

     The Ops O blanched. “If Snatch doesn’t fly, we don’t have enough pilots to fly the hops to get the required hours.”
 

     “We don’t?”
 

     “Nope.”
 

     “Oh.” The XO paused, regrouped, and retreated. “Snatch, you’re back on the schedule.”

     A wife or girlfriend had many reasons to complain: a move to Twentynine Palms, a yearlong unaccompanied tour while left at home pregnant, too much time having to deal with life’s uncertain turns while a husband flew off and away.

     We all knew those who complained by taking off high and to the right: screaming, shouting, stomping around. Don’t know how it worked in others’ households, but my guy would not give me a good mad back. He’d just wait me out and and do what he was going to do anyway.

     Pilots need to stay cool under pressure--but not with ME! I wanted my guy to have a face curtain so I could command eject both of us to rocket him out of his cool and controlled flight. 

     Crazy accomplished nothing and all too often left me on the tarmac looking like an idiot. I’ve learned not to be a Rumplestiltskin. I too can be a cool calm and collected pilot of my life. Most of the time.

Aviator Brief X: Unflappable

Some wives were hysterical most of their days, others were known for their calm demeanor under the most unusual of circumstances. Fish’s wife (Fish was the XO of our squadron) owned the descriptor unflappable--rightly so. One day she answered the doorbell in her southern California home to find a man standing on the doorstep wearing a Lone Ranger mask--and nothing else.

She swung the door wider, turned, and yelled up the stairs, “Honey, it’s for you! It’s Rob!”

She never did admit how she knew the CO with his face covered and totally, starkers naked.

We had a lot of parties with naked men. Never any naked women. Why? Well, we didn't want our husbands embarrassed. We had our dignity, too. The guys could be silly. We could be silly. The guys could get naked. We didn't get naked, but we laughed about the naked guys. They did it to entertain us and we were entertained.

We wives had to deal with a lot of unusual, unlooked for events. Just about the time everything seemed to be going well, a wife would have a sick baby, someone would be in an accident, the CO's wife would get cancer, a husband would leave for a year long tour of duty in a foreign land. Life happened.
Life still happens.
We need all the grace we can get.

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 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 VII: The Ready Room (#3)

Marine aviators loved to push the envelope--especially if it would win them glory. In aeronautics, the envelope was the known limits for the safe performance of an aircraft. Test pilots had to test (or push) these limits to establish the exact capabilities of the plane, and where failure was likely to occur--to compare calculated performance limits with ones derived from experience. Test pilots called this ‘pushing the edge of the envelope’.

Rules of Engagement for Marine aviators established the ground rules, but the main requirement for being a good stick involved knowing when to push to the edge and when the rules didn’t apply. Marines were told what they couldn’t do; Air Force pilots were told what they could. Air Force pilots flew by the book and had itemized checklists for all contingencies. True, they lost fewer planes on the average, but in a 1v.1 with a good Marine pilot, they were beat like a rug.

The rules also required verbatim memorization of spin procedures, so they could be accomplished automatically, without thought, while in extremis. Out of control? Neutralize everything or just let go and grab two nonessentials in the cockpit. Upright spin? Have to know which way the plane is spinning, then where to put the stick to reduce the angle. Inverted spin? Different G- forces, but a pilot still needed to know where to put the stick. Can’t remember the spin procedures? Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

After briefing the Rules of Engagement, the brief always covered a NATOPS--Naval Aviation Training Operation Procedures--question of the day. Every aviator was expected to know the answers found in the big blue NATOPS book. One question might be, “What is the hydraulic pressure supposed to be?” Know your plane, save your life.

The Emergency Question of the Day followed, such as, “What is the procedure in the event of the landing gear not extending? Know the procedures: save your life and your plane.

The brief almost finished, the guys would talk some more about the hop--the aviator’s term for a flight--using the white board and/or stick models, planes--usually an F-4 and a MIG--on the ends of dowels to represent the good guy and the bogey. “You do this, and I’m going to be trying to do that.”

Any questions?

Time to man-up.

Children are a lot like Marine aviators. They always want to push the envelope, and they don’t want to fly by the book. Their learning curve is sharp and they grow to be strong, independent human beings. Unfortunately, pushing the envelope caused all sorts of ‘office hours’ with my kids standing front and center, getting read the ROEs. Not that the reminders of the rules made any difference in the short term. The next time they went flying, they still tried to skirt the outside parameters without being caught out by gravity--us, their parents. In the long term, they still want to fly outside our box and we have lost the gravitas of the Commanding Officers. They are adults whether they act like it or not.

I was a parent like the Air Force (although my Marine wife soul cringes at the thought), wanting my children to follow itemized checklists. Parents want children to survive their childhood; rules and regulations try to accomplish that.

The truth is that life always has spins in store. So children push the envelope, parents impose checklists, and sometimes both need to know spin procedures. Reminds me of driver’s training--learning where to turn the wheel instinctively. I am glad I do not live in the lands of snow and ice--I still don’t know which way is ‘into the spin’--the way the car is moving or opposite to the way the car is turning. I have a feeling I always worked against the natural forces of my children’s spins.

With my grandchildren I am more like the Carrie Underwood song. I throw my hands up in the air and let Jesus take the wheel.

Oh, and then I hug them, tell them how precious they are to me, and how much I love them.

Age does bring some wisdom.

Aviator Brief VII: The Ready Room #2

The preflight brief also covered the ROEs--Rules Of Engagement. Pilots needed the rules and expectations for any hop to take away unpredictability--so they could come back in their plane, and without looking bad at the field. The rules were like a good wingman, the pilot knew ahead of time what the other aviator would do in any given situation. One of the rules for pilots was ‘right to right’--in any potential nose to nose collision, each plane was to turn right, veering away from disaster. Jet fighters went very fast. How fast? Well, if an aviator told you the maximum speed, he’d have to kill you. However, fighters routinely flew toward each other at one thousand knots--1150 mph--of closure. Without prior discussion, a pilot had a fifty-fifty chance of turning the wrong way in a head-on confrontation. Bad odds for planes. Worse for aviators.

A pilot out of Beaufort, South Carolina on an ACM--air combat maneuver--centered the radar dot within a mile of the intercept, pointing his plane at the same piece of sky as the bogey. A mile at a thousand to twelve hundred knots of closure left little time to avoid a midair collision. The pilot found the bogey all right--very quickly and close enough to touch. Oops! One imperative in ACM and formation flying: ‘no touch touch--however slight’. It takes very little contact to make parts of planes fall off--often with catastrophic results. The F-16 lost most of a wing, the pilot ejecting safely. The F-4 ended up damaged, but flyable. The result? A new ROE that forbade centering the dot within a mile of the opponent.

The rules also mandated disengaging from and steering clear of planes out of control. Just as a civilian driver recognized a weaving car indicated the driver was non compos mentis--drunk out of his mind--and should be avoided at all cost, so aviators avoided the pilot who lost control of his plane for any reason. The out of control drunk wouldn’t be looking out for other drivers; an out of control pilot didn’t have the time or the ability to steer clear.

Any pilot experienced departure from controlled flight at some point. A smart pilot knew how to keep a departure from becoming a post-stall gyration. Only Dilberts continued to lose control until an oscillating spin required deploying the drag chute.

Altitude saved planes and lives by giving room to maneuver before air turned to unforgiving dirt. Pilots were to knock off any air-to-air combat maneuvering at ten thousand feet AGL--Above Ground Level. A pilot who flew too low and ran out of sky ended up a smoking hole in the ground. No glory in that.

Right to right. Remember that the next time you head straight toward someone in a grocery aisle or at the mall. Is there anyone who hasn’t done the awkward dance back and forth and then the inelegant sidestep and “Excuse me.” followed by nervous laughter? Right to right--from now on for everybody. I go right and you go right. Nothing to do with liberal or conservative bents. Can you imagine? If liberals go left and conservatives went right and moderates--well they should own the whole damn road, anyway--stayed in the middle--everything would be balled up in a mass of confusion. Instead of moving through the mall or grocery store, we’d be making a statement and in gridlock. Wait. That sounds a lot like the state of politics in America today.

Centering the dot. Some people lock on their radar and refuse to swerve from their goal. That can be a good thing, but not if their goal involves opponents or other people who might be the target. I have to remind myself I do not move through this world by myself. Other people have wishes and dreams and goals and feelings. No touch touch, however slight. Apply that maxim to my neighbor of the preemptive nastiness (Brief VII), and we know why it’s wrong. The slightest contact at high speeds can cause great damage and distress.

Sometimes I have to stay above it all: altitude saving my life--or a relationship I value. When my pride keeps me heading down to auger into the good hard earth, I should break it off and live to fly another day. Walk, fly, run, drive away from those who would hurt me, anger me, belittle me, take off pieces of my fuselage. No glory in that for them or me.