I started this morning by getting P out the door for work at Doctor's Memorial here in Perry, then began the downward spiral by scanning the NYT, to which I finally subscribed this week.
So many writing possibilities, telescoping from the state of the nation down to my own ridiculous existence. The country is bearing the consequences of a soft secession now, with one party simply refusing to recognize the legitimacy of an elected government, and its elected officials too terrified of the constituency they worked into a frenzy of lies to admit it was all a con. It leaves me wondering what would have happened if Jeff Davis and his treasonous co-conspirators had stayed in Washington, and simply made it impossible for Lincoln to govern. They probably would've spouted on about how any curtailment of human chattel slavery would mean lost jobs, and practically shut down the whip industry.
Then there's Florida, whose diabolical governor is determined to make us the South Carolina in this century's civil war. "Too small for a republic, but too large for an insane asylum." So said Governor Petigru in 1860, so we are here in the Sunshine State today. Our elected leadership seeks to make it easier to murder peaceful protesters in the name of protecting property, to sue Google and Twitter and Facebook for trying to curtail lies and hate speech. They're trying to keep a minimum wage hike from extending to ex-felons, even as they've insisted those felons pay thousands in court costs and fines before their voting rights are restored. If I could support myself elsewhere, I'd be packing the U-Haul with stuff and geese and jumping on I-75, maybe to that beautiful, newly purple state just to our north.
Then there's the realization, down here at the personal level, that there will be no move because, like a lot of late-middle-aged professionals with a bad life decision or two from the distant, distant past, I am bound like Prometheus by obligations my descendants will probably find ridiculously sexist and punitive, if in fact we have any descendants after the next few waves of plague.
Geez, Donk. It can't really be that bad. Find something happier, or at least less emotionally volatile, to discuss this morning.
How about continuing from yesterday, and talking about pilot training?
By the middle of 1987, I'd survived my time in the 37th FTS, along with 31 of the 57 who came through the door with me the previous December, and it was time to say goodbye to the Tweet and hello to the T-38 Talon, flown by the 50th Flying Training Squadron.
By this time I'd been marked as a likely FAIP: I was an incredible tight-ass about all things military (I ultimately won the Military Training Award in my class later that year, given in fact to the biggest tight-ass to survive UPT), and my checkrides had landed me solidly in the top-third of my class. My final T-37 instructor, Rob Holmes, would sing the theme to Welcome Back Kotter to me as we taxiied out for my last few Tweet rides--"Welcome Back," as in welcome back to Columbus for several years of having students puke on you and try to kill you. Fun stuff.
I was determined to avoid that fate, not to join the lost souls here in this Mississippi purgatory. But the only way to escape was to climb into one of the three top spots in the class, with three checkrides left to fly. It was like returning from the All-Star break ten games back in the pennant race--doable, but a high hill indeed.
And I was moving on to a much tougher jet to fly--the T-38 Talon.
The White Rocket, as it was called, was designed in the 1950s to train pilots heading to the Century Series fighters of the day--the F-100 Hun, the F-101 Voodoo, the F-102 and 106 Delta wing series, the F-105 Thud that would go on to fame in the skies over Hanoi, and the F-104 Starfighter, known to the Germans who flew it simply as the "Flying Coffin". These were tough jets to fly, unforgiving and prone to killing the inattentive in the most insidious ways.
The T-38 was, and is, no exception. I place that observation in the present tense because a student and instructor were killed in Oklahoma just last year, in a botched go-around after losing control just before touchdown during a formation landing.
The most well-recognized means of demise in the T-38 was during the final turn. Any pilot will tell you that most airplanes, if you get too slow while approaching the runway, will stall with a shudder and a nose-down pitch. This is the plane trying to save itself and its contents from crunching into the scenery by seeking flying speed. Release a little back pressure on the stick, add a little power, and the plane starts flying again.
Not the Talon. In the final turn for landing, the jet had a bad habit of entering what amounted to a flat stall if you pulled too hard on the stick while trying to drag the nose around to the runway. The scene out the windscreen would remain the same, while your vertical velocity indicator would creep downward until, within a few seconds, you were sinking at several thousand feet per minute, trees coming up fast given that you'd started your turn at maybe 1500 feet. At some point there was no possibility of recovery, nor of ejecting because the seat couldn't overcome the sink rate and give you enough altitude for your chute to open. Your roommate just got your stereo, or your widow just got a great pension and health care plan to go find another life with someone less unlucky.
Oops. Prometheus again. Let's go back to talking about airplanes.
My first ride in the 38 was with Dudley Dave Thorsen, recently sentenced to a tour at Columbus after three years with the famed Wolfpack at Kunsan AB, Korea, flying the F-16. Dudley was the walking embodiment of the cruel, perfectionist culture of the Air Force fighter community--no error went unnoticed, however small, and the criticism was usually dripping with sarcasm.
This "dollar ride", a student's first in a new plane, was no exception. Unlike the Tweet, the Talon had afterburners, and the first takeoff in the syllabus called for a max performance climb. I shoved the throttles forward, and found myself slammed back in the seat as the jet raced down the runway and into the air. Before I knew it, we were pushing 200 knots, at treetop level, approaching the end of the runway.
"Jeezus Christ, Dickey! You plannin' to overspeed the gear on your first ride?"
Realizing exactly that was about to happen, I fumbled for the gear handle and managed to keep from failing my first sortie by overspeeding the gear and flaps.
Within a couple weeks, an amazing thing happened. I found I could fly this temperamental, unforgiving old plane with much more ease than the Tweet. Maybe it was because I couldn't see the instructor, but only heard his breathing in the seat behind me. Maybe it was because, by this time, the crisis of folks washing out had passed, and I was living happily with a classmate, who like so many other old friends was destined to become a general, in a rental house in the middle of a sorghum field out near Caledonia. There was no drama at our house; only study and sleep.
Whatever the reason, I started to rack up the checkride scores I needed to creep my way up in the class. I was told I was FAR'd about halfway through T-38s; maybe six weeks before graduation, my flight commander pulled me aside to let me know that, barring a stupid mistake down the stretch, I'd be assigned to whatever I asked to fly after graduation. I wasn't the top of my class, but I'd gotten what amounted to a wild card berth.
Ever the contrarian, I had it in my head that I wanted to be a Wild Weasel.
Flying antique F-4Gs, the Weasels had the coolest job in the fighter community--flying in a four-ship hunter-killer team, the lead Weasel in the G model would saunter into the middle of a SAM (surface-to-air) missile ring, and get the batteries to engage them (two guys in that jet) with their tracking radars. The G model would then put the SAMs on their wingtip, and fly an arc so their 1960s-vintage computer could triangulate to the precise location of the radar, after which the Weasel would sling a HARM (high speed radiation missile) at the radar while the other three Phantoms, E-models, would charge into the melee and flatten the batteries with 500 pound bombs. Amazingly fun stuff.
And kinda dangerous--the Weasels adopted "YGBSM" as their motto for a reason. Any civilian would recognize the whole exercise as nuts.
I was about to put an F-4G to George AFB, CA (yes, I thought it'd be nice to fly fighters an hour from my sainted mother's house) on my follow-on assignment request form, when none other than Dudley Dave pulled me aside.
"They're gonna give you whatever you want, so if you put an F-4 at the top of your dream sheet, you'll get one. But let me tell you something--the F-4 is going away, it's old. Those guys are going to have to compete all over again for an F-15 or F-16 in three years. Don't do that to yourself."
He then went on to explain that the F-15 community was full of effeminate nerds, and what I wanted was a man's jet, the "Whisper Jet" as he called it--an F-16, preferably to Korea.
So, I reckon you can see where this is headed. I asked for an F-15. They were stationed in nicer places, which sadly was the beginning and end of my analysis.
Assignment night at the end of pilot training was a raucous, alcohol-fueled affair at the Officer's Club, as each class graduated roughly every six weeks. The whole flying community would show up, and cheer with delight and howl with schadenfreude as each student learned his fate, whether a sexy F-15 to Bitburg or a KC-135 somewhere on Michigan's upper peninsula.
And each assignment night had a theme. Ours was a slave auction (1987 was a different time), with each command bidding for the soon-to-be graduate. An instructor who'd flown C-141s was there for Military Airlift Command, in a flightsuit stuffed to suggest the obesity that tended to follow hours spent droning across the Pacific in a transport, signature plastic fork and spoon in the flight suit shoulder pocket. I frankly can't remember what the Strategic Air Command guy was wearing--those guys are weird as hell, and I knew I wasn't going there anyway. The Air Training Command guy, there to harvest the FAIPs, eschewed any sort of costume at all. His job was to drag a few souls back into the pit, and console them at the news.
Representing Tactical Air Command and the fighter community as a whole was, again, Dudley Dave Thorsen, hamming it up in dark Ray-bans, oversized TAC patch on his chest, flightsuit pulled down so the world could see some manly chest hair. It was a hoot.
Several of my classmates took the stage ahead of me, climbing onto the "auction block" for us slaves, and several slunk away dejected as they learned their future would be spent flying something huge someplace cold, sitting alert for days at a time. The SAC guy was the big winner in this auction so far.
About halfway through it was time for me. A couple of my instructors from my Tweet days poked at me and said they'd already set up my desk back at Thunderbolt Flight. I shuddered. The bidding started, and on-script the MAC and SAC guys pulled back, leaving Dudley Dave and the ATC guy bidding past each other. Holy crap. Am I about to get FAIP'd? I'd been assured it wasn't so, but by this time I was both quite drunk and thoroughly distrusting of the beneficence of the United States Air Force.
Finally the ATC guy dejectedly threw down his monopoly money, or whatever they were bidding with, and Dave made the final bid. The captain at the lecturn made the announcement as the screen behind me filled with the image of a sleek jet streaking upward.
"Lieutenant Dickey, you're heading to Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, to fly the F-15!"
I jumped up and down, waving my arms like a lunatic. I cried those Irish tears that said I'd had too much to drink. It was almost over. I was getting the hell out of here.
My instructors came up and congratulated me, all except Dudley Dave who was already pretending to bid on the next student. There was an awkwardness to the shoulder slaps and handshakes--these guys would remain, would be back in this room in another few weeks to congratulate another batch of students who'd survived the process, while abiding here in this pressure-cooker tucked in the woods of rural Mississippi for perhaps several more years. There was congratulation, and there was pride at getting me through all this, but there was also envy.
The last few weeks of pilot training were spent mostly flying four-ship formation in the T-38, four students jostling around at 400 knots, several miles above the fields and hardwood stands that were exploding in fall color below. It was beautiful and terrifying, all at the same time.
Then it was over, and I was packing for survival school followed by Lead-In Fighter Training in New Mexico. Maybe I'll write about that tomorrow. It beats the hell out of current politics.
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