After Lakenheath, I did a three-year stint at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, where I rose to the rank of captain. Jim was stationed there, too.
He and I became close, though we took different approaches as aviators. He took pride in being a bit of a loose cannon. I considered myself more disciplined. When we were dogfighting, there were rules for how far away you had to be from another jet when you passed it head-on. If the instructions were that we get no closer than a thousand feet, Jim would try five hundred feet. “I know I can do it,” he’d say, and he was right. “Sully, you can do it, too.” I knew I could, but I knew that if I did, I’d be shaving the margins we needed in order to avoid the unexpected, when a slight misperception or misjudgment could put two airplanes too close.
I respected Jim. He knew he wasn’t really putting anyone in danger, because he knew his own skills. But this was training, not combat. I was more judicious in my use of aggressiveness. There would be times in my career, including my years as a commercial airline pilot, when it would be useful and appropriate to use a bit of aggression.
The bonds among pilots were paramount. At each base where I was stationed, we were reminded again and again how vital it was to know about the dangers of complacency, to have as much knowledge as possible about the particular plane you were flying, to be aware of every aspect of what you were doing. Being a fighter pilot involved risk—we all knew that—and some accidents happened owing to circumstances beyond a pilot’s control. But with diligence, preparation, judgment, and skill, you could minimize your risks. And we needed one another to do that.
Fighter pilots are a close-knit community in part because it’s necessary for everyone’s survival. We had to learn to take criticism and also how to give criticism when needed. If a guy makes a mistake one day, you can’t ignore it and let it pass. You don’t want him making the same mistake the next time he flies with you. You’ve got to tell him. Your life, and the lives of others, depend on it.
I’m guessing I met five hundred pilots and WSOs in the course of my military career. We lost twelve of them in training accidents. I grieved for my lost comrades, but I tried to learn all I could about each one of their accidents. I knew that the safety of those of us still flying would depend on our understanding of circumstances when some didn’t make it, and our internalizing the vital lessons each of them could leave as a kind of legacy to us, the living.
AMERICA LABELED Charles Lindbergh as “Lucky Lindy,” but he knew better. I’ve read
Whenever a fellow airman lost his life during my military career, I tried to think of how I might have reacted, and what steps I might have taken. Could I have survived?
At Nellis, each pilot and his WSO were assigned a particular airplane. We had our names stenciled on the canopy rails.
At one point, I was on temporary duty (TDY) at Eglin Air Force Base in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. I was there to have a rare opportunity to fire an air-to-air missile at a remotely controlled target drone over the Gulf of Mexico.
One morning while I was in Florida, another crew was scheduled to fly my plane, an F-4, back at Nellis. The F-4 had a nosewheel steering system that was controlled electrically and powered hydraulically. There was an electrical connector that had wires to connect the cockpit control with the nosewheel. Once in a while, moisture would get into the connector. If there was contamination there, it would short out the connector pins. So the nosewheel could end up turning without a command from the pilot. We’d have to write it up in the aircraft maintenance log and the technicians would check it and repair it as necessary. Sometimes, the connector simply needed to be dried out so it would work properly.
This pilot was set to take my plane for a training flight that morning. Taxiing to the runway, he noticed that the nosewheel steering was not working properly. He taxied back to the ramp, shut the airplane down, and reported the discrepancy in the maintenance log. The maintenance crew took corrective action and signed it off.
Later that day, that same F-4 was scheduled for a flight, including a formation takeoff, in which pilots in two jets were going to power up, release their brakes, and then take off in formation, matching each other exactly in acceleration.
One of the pilots in the formation was at the controls of the F-4 that had been assigned to me, the one which had aborted earlier in the day. After he started his takeoff, the nosewheel turned sharply to the left without him commanding it to do so. It took him into a ditch beside the runway, collapsing the landing gear and rupturing one of the external fuel tanks.
He and his WSO were sitting in the damaged airplane, deciding how to extricate themselves, when the leaking fuel caught on fire, and they were engulfed in a ball of flames.
I wonder if I had been the next pilot to fly that plane, would I have read the maintenance record, seen how the nosewheel issue had been addressed, and known to be especially watchful of any evidence that it would fail again?
That pilot and WSO were a good crew. But at their funerals, I was reminded of how a crew must be diligent on every front on every flight.
This was graphically illustrated in my own close calls, too.
One time at Nellis, I was in an F-4, on a high-speed, low-level flight. The goal was to fly as low as possible, which is what I’d need to do if I ever had to fly below enemy radar. I was flying just a hundred feet off the ground at 480 knots, and there were hills I had to go over. The techniques I was practicing required me to maneuver the jet so it would barely clear a hill without getting too high above it. Flying too high would make me obvious to enemy radar.
Doing this properly took a lot of practice. Each time I had to raise the nose to fly over the hill, and then push the nose back down after we’d cleared the hill. It was a bit like riding a roller coaster. If it was a steeper ridgeline, I’d come up to it, pull up steeply to clear it, and as I crested the top, I’d roll inverted, upside down, and then pull down the back side of the hill and finally roll back to the upright position.
At one point, I came to a ridgeline, thought it was tall enough that I would be able to pull up to the crest, roll inverted, and pull back down the back side. At the top of the ridge, I realized I didn’t have enough altitude ahead of me to complete the maneuver. It was a potentially fatal misjudgment on my part. I had to quickly push myself back up into the sky and then roll out.
I had seconds to correct the situation, and I managed to do it. But let me tell you: The incident got my attention. There were pilots who died after making similar misjudgments.
When we got back into the squadron building, I took responsibility for what happened. I turned to the WSO who had been with me and said, “I’m sorry, Gordon. I almost killed us today, but it won’t happen again.” I then explained to him exactly what had happened and why.
After I had been at Nellis a few years, I was assigned to an Air Force Mishap Investigation Board. We investigated one accident at Nellis in which a pilot in an F-15 had tried an aggressive turning maneuver too close to the ground. He didn’t have enough room to complete it. The vast desert practice ranges we used, north and west of Las Vegas, had elevations starting at about three thousand feet above sea level and going much higher. If you’re looking at your barometric altimeter, it is set to give a reading of your altitude above sea level. It doesn’t give you the height above the surface of the ground. The pilot apparently misjudged how high he was, and how much room he had. It’s likely he realized this when it was impossible to correct. As pilots say, “He lost the picture.” Errors had crept into his situational model and had gone unnoticed and remained uncorrected until too late.
I had to take statements from the other guys in his squadron. I had to sort through photos of the accident, shots of the shattered plane on the desert floor. The carnage was chronicled in exact detail, including photos of identifiable sections of the pilot’s scalp.
As in every Air Force accident, investigators had to turn all the specific circumstances inside out to learn exactly what transpired. It was as if the pilot who died still had a responsibility to help ensure the safety of the rest of us, his fellow aviators.
Pilots are taught that it is vital to always have “situational awareness,” or “SA.” That means you are able to
