In the first part of our two-part series on the
high-flying adventures and in-cockpit experiences of Francesco "Paco"
Chierici, he talked in-depth about
flying Grumman A-6 Intruders during
the twilight of the type's service. In the second part, we get into Paco's
experiences, trials, and tribulations going from a 'mud-mover' to a dogfighter
in the legendary F-14 Tomcat. Eventually, Paco would go from a Tomcat pilot to
an F-5 adversary reserve pilot tasked with teaching fleet pilots how not to die
in the highly unforgiving realm of air-to-air combat. But beyond the flying, we
discuss so much more, from the U.S. military's pilot shortage to dealing with
the loss of comrades to becoming a documentary filmmaker and eventually an
author.
Paco's Lions Of
The Sky was recently released and he details below
how the fictional story was ripped directly from the people, places, and
experiences he had as a career Naval Aviator.
So strap into the cockpit, arm your ejection seat,
and light the burners as we blast off on a voyage into Paco's colorful and
action-packed past.
From mud-moving to dogfighting
I had experienced Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM,
aka dogfighting) in the training command and fancied myself a natural. As an
Intruder pilot, I would try to convince as many other pilots to fly a little
BFM at the end of our bombing missions as often as possible.
There is nothing quite as hideous as two Intruders
trying to dogfight.
My delusion was reinforced in the Tomcat RAG
(Replacement Air Group training squadron), whereas a seasoned fleet pilot I was
more comfortable being aggressive than my nugget classmates, but I knew nothing
about how to really fight the jet. That fact was put on display numerous times
when I finally got to my first F-14 fleet squadron, VF-213 Blacklions, and had
numerous flights dedicated to air-to-air maneuvering. I got my butt handed to
me by some of the best Tomcat pilots on the West Coast—Slammer Richardson,
Stash Fristachi, Killer Killian, Whiskey Bond, and my roommate, Waylon
Jennings.
On one particularly humiliating flight from
the Lincoln, a Hornet flown by Mousse savaged me on three successive engagements.
But losing is the best teacher. I had come into the community with a love of
aerial combat and I learned that the best dogfighters were made, not
born.
I read the Topgun manual, listened in the
debriefs, and eventually crafted myself into a respectable BFMer. No Pappy Boyington, but serviceable.
Of course, as good as I thought I was at the end
of my Tomcat days, I was to soon find out how to really fight a plane once I
became a Bandit.
Life is a series of humiliations.
USN
The guy—or gal—in the back
The synergy between pilot and crew member was
crucial to the successful employment of both the A-6 and the F-14. A good crew
working well together was a thing of beauty.
Both platforms were relics of a previous
age—bleeding edge when they were introduced, but hanging on at the ends of
their eras when I flew them. What allowed them to compete with more modern
aircraft was the proper execution of a crew concept. Of course, when the crews
weren’t in sync, it was a frustrating and enormous shit show.
To help maximize the crew’s performance, both
communities endeavored to pair compatible crews and have them fly together as
much as possible. During the course of normal turn-around ops this was
difficult to accomplish. People had different schedules and priorities which
made for a catch-as-catch-can environment. But during work-ups, or combat
operations, there was a much higher effort put into flying with your designated
crew-member.
Working with a RIO in the Tomcat while fighting in
the visual arena was totally binary. Either the pilot and the RIO bonded
synergistically, fusing into a lethal team that enhanced situational awareness
and weapons deployment, or they were a complete disaster.
When the pilot and the RIO weren’t well suited for
the specific dynamics of the visual arena, the result was a massive
net-negative. If a RIO didn’t speak enough or spoke too much, the pilot
wouldn’t get enough information to properly fight the plane while assessing the
threat of the adversary aircraft. When it worked, it was amazing. When it
didn’t, it was frustrating and at times, embarrassing. But it was nice to
always have a RIO to blame!
USN
The Tomcat's biggest arrow
As most Tomcat aficionados are aware, the plane
was built to employ the AIM-54 Phoenix missile. Originally designed for fleet
defense against large and fast Soviet bombers, the Phoenix was massive in every
way, and far ahead of its time.
It weighed 1,000 pounds, was thirteen feet long,
had a rocket motor burn time of over a minute, flew at Mach 5 and 80,000 feet,
and delivered its 135-pound warhead to a target more than 100 miles away using
its onboard radar in the end-game.
A lethal sledgehammer of a missile.
To effectively target this brute, an enormously
powerful radar was required. To carry the giant radar dish and as many as six
Phoenixes, Grumman designed a monster—the F-14 Tomcat—once it was clear that
the F-111B failed in the role. Because the radar was so powerful and its dish
so large, the AWG-9 was able to far exceed the detection, sorting, and
targeting ranges of any other fighter in the world for decades.
The AWG-9’s capabilities were a generational
advance over its contemporaries, the F-4 and even the F-15. Through brilliant
engineering and raw power, it was able to achieve results that we now take for
granted in the most modern fighters—the once upon a time groundbreaking ability
to simultaneously scan, target, and fire multiple missiles.
USN
One of my fondest memories of flying the Tomcat
was the many missile shoots I was able to take part in. I shot AIM-9
Sidewinders at drones and a total of five Phoenix missiles over four separate
events.
The Sidewinder came off the rails screaming like a
bottle rocket, finding its way to the target in an angry corkscrew. The Phoenix
was so heavy it had to be dropped from the plane like a bomb before the motor
could fire. At trigger squeeze you felt the Phoenix release from the jet with a
distinct thump. About a second later, which is an eternity, the motor would
light off and the AIM-54 would howl past the Tomcat from below, leaving a huge
plume as it rocketed into the stratosphere.
It would receive data from the Tomcat’s radar
until it pitched over from 80,000 feet and closed on the target, then the RIO
would cut it loose and the Phoenix’s on-board radar would consummate the deadly
rendezvous.
At close range the missile would aim directly at
the target, flying a horizontal path, smoking all the way to fireball. It was a
sight to behold, from the shooter’s vantage point.
Despite being enormous and labor intensive to
load, the Phoenix evolved with the times quite well. In most metrics, it could
outperform the AIM-120 AMRAAM. The range, motor burn-time, warhead and on-board
radar were no contest. The software and firmware were updated periodically
allowing the missile to compete in the modern world. But like the Tomcat, it
was a beast that was outperforming its design specifications a little past its
shelf life.
USN
Making the big cat dogfight
Though the Tomcat was technically a fighter plane,
it wasn’t really designed for the visual BFM arena. It had a number of elements
working against it when it came to dogfighting.
First was its size, it was fondly referred to as
the ‘Big Fighter,’ and it was huge. One of the basic tenants of aerial combat is,
‘lose sight, lose the fight.’ Against a Tomcat that was almost impossible.
The A-model was also underpowered for maneuvering
fights with an approximately 0.67:1 thrust to weight ratio. Furthermore, we had
a 6.5 G limit, though there was no black box that would tell on you, so we
often went well beyond 7 G. While it had massive elevators that would develop
an incredible instantaneous pitch rate, the lack of ailerons and the sheer width
of the plane made the roll rate sluggish.
Finally, the ergonomics of the cockpit were
designed in the late ‘60s. There was no HOTAS (Hands On Throttles and Stick).
The BVR intercept was run by the RIO in the back manipulating the radar and
working with the pilot. Once the merge was imminent, inside 10 nautical miles,
the pilot took over. But he would still have to call for the RIO to engage the
dogfight mode of the radar.
USN
Despite these massive deficiencies, the Tomcat, in
the hands of a skilled pilot flying with a good RIO, could be quite lethal in
the visual arena. Especially if it had the General Electric motors.
In a two-circle fight, where degrees of turn per
second are a premium, the Tomcat was quite adept. But if you got the A-model
slow, into the ‘black hole’ around 250 knots, you were stuck in a region the
plane did not excel in. The TF-30 engines just didn’t have enough grunt to
allow the plane to fly extremely slowly, nor to power back up to proper
maneuvering speed.
The GE engines, on the other hand, enabled a
skilled pilot to work the slow speed environment successfully. A very good
pilot could even pirouette the plane using the GE engines by bringing one out
of afterburner. The Tomcat would swap ends gracefully and reverse course
instantly.
The auto function of the wing sweep could work
against a pilot in the BFM arena as well. The angle of the sweep was a function
of a variety of factors, including speed, angle of attack, and altitude.
F-15s liked to drag the Tomcat high and use their
superior thrust to gain an advantage. An off-the-books tactic we used to
counter this was to manually extend the wings to the fullest, then
incrementally lower the flaps beyond the normal maneuver setting. It was hugely
successful, but the danger was that the flap torque tubes were not designed for
this and could become stuck.
Life is all about tradeoffs, and not losing to an
F-15 is certainly worth the ire of the maintenance Master Chief.
The fevered
sex dream of every Tomcat pilot ever.
I flew BFM against a variety of dissimilar
aircraft as a Tomcat pilot. During a memorable week off the coast of Pakistan
we flew a number of BFM and BVR sorties against the Pakistani Air Force. I
still have some spectacular HUD footage from engagements against MiG-21s
(J-7s).
I remember being amazed at the lack of proficiency
and proper weapons employment from their F-16 pilots. When we were in the
Persian Gulf, we had a week where we fought the Emirati Mirage 2000-5 pilots.
They were actually quite aggressive pilots who displayed a keen awareness of
the tactics to employ against the weaknesses of the F-14A. They would jam to
the merge, then pull 9Gs, flying so high we almost lost sight. If we did, they
would tag us with a heater (infrared short-range guided missile). But if you
could survive the first merge to employ follow-on BFM, they became easy prey.
Probably the single best BFM platform I ever flew
against was the F-16N. Stripped down and slicked up, it was a dogfighting
monster, virtually unbeatable.
Editor's
note: Read all about the Navy's infamous F-16N and what it was like to fly
it in this past special feature of ours.
I once had a friend in a Topgun Viper park himself
a couple thousand feet on my nose when I was flying a slick F-5. I counted down
“3, 2, 1 Fight’s on!” and tried my damnedest to stay offensive. Inside of 270
degrees of turn, the Viper came nose on and was gunning me.
It was eye-watering performance.
Culture shock
In the summer of 1990, I had been stashed at NAS
Miramar just after completing flight school. I was assigned to VFC-13, the
adversary squadron, while I waited for a training slot for the A-6 at NAS
Whidbey Island in Washington State. Miramar was at the peak of the post-Top Gun sugar rush. The O’Club on a Wednesday night was like what I
imagine Studio 54 was like in the ‘70s. There was an hour-long line to get on
base and go to the Club. It was so profitable for the base that they built a
separate entrance through the perimeter fence directly into the back entrance
of the Club.
Thursday mornings were hell.
NAS Whidbey Island was a markedly different
cultural scene. No one drove the hour and a half from Seattle to party at the
Whidbey O’Club on a Friday night. But that actually made for a very tight
community. We shared the base and the Friday night happy hours with the Prowler
community as well. While Whidbey didn’t have wall to wall revelers and live
music, most of the aviators on base could be found at the club drinking
together.
My favorite pastime was playing a dice game called
Klondike. On a big night just before a few squadrons were leaving on cruise, the
pot could quickly balloon to a few thousand dollars.
There was nothing like leaving for six months to
make gambling with huge piles of cash seem like a good idea.
USN
Being the FNG
I was a new guy in three different fleet squadrons
and one reserve squadron. Each of these had a distinct culture which greeted
the FNG (Fucking New Guy) slightly differently. My first was an Intruder
squadron which I joined the day of their victorious fly-in returning from the
Iraq War I in ’91. I was joining a group which had been to war together and
done great deeds under tremendous stress. They hadn’t had a new pilot in a very
long time and I was replacing one whom they had lost, along with his B/N during
combat ops.
It wasn’t a very warm reception.
They were justifiably proud of their
accomplishments and not super accepting of a bright, bushy-tailed new dude, who
undoubtedly wasn’t as good as he thought he was.
It took a good six months to break into the
brotherhood.
The next few squadrons I joined had a much more
accepting culture. When I joined VF-213, my Tomcat squadron, it was as a fleet
experienced aviator with many hundreds of hours, a few hundred carrier traps,
and I was a fully qualified LSO (Landing Signal Officer). They were a very easy
group to join and I felt accepted immediately.
It helped that I had a fair amount to offer, I
jumped right back to LSO duties, and the Lions were eager to learn how to
employ the F-14 as a ‘Bombcat.’ But despite my eagerness to be a fighter pilot,
I was a complete neophyte in the world of air-to-air combat, and it was
obvious. The Lions took great care training me and the other new crews and we
always felt valued and encouraged, so much as these emotions are possible in a
cutthroat fighter squadron.
Black cats
VF-213 almost changed their name from the
Blacklions shortly after I arrived. To some, she was a cursed squadron and the
black cat logo was as good a scapegoat as anything else.
The Lions had lost a number of planes due to a
variety of causes in the years prior to my arrival. Tomcats hit the ramp of the
ship during landing, stalled in the overhead break, exploded in mid-air for no
apparent reason. There seemed to be no common thread unifying the mishaps, so
straws were grasped at, including changing the famed Blacklion logo. Thankfully
that wasn’t a remedy that was pursued.
When I got to 213, the mishaps continued. In fact,
during my two years in Air Wing Eleven, the entire Wing lost nine jets and had
six fatalities. Four of the lost planes were Tomcats and three of the deaths
were in them.
It was a jumpy time.
As one of my friends, HOB Higgins, said, we felt
like cats in a room full of rocking chairs. Shortly after I joined 213 we
lost Kara
Hultgreen while she was attempting to land on
the Lincoln. I had known Kara briefly in the Training Command.
YOUTUBE SCREENCAP
Kara Hultgreen.
We both had Alfa Romeo convertibles and we laughed
about the spotty reliability and repair costs of the Italian sports cars. She
was the perfect ‘fighter-chic,’ quick with a smile, fun to be around,
sharp-witted, and not afraid to stand her ground. She folded herself into the
fabric of the Blacklions seamlessly and was warmly regarded as part of the ‘pride.’
The treatment she received after her death has
always stayed with me as one of the greatest injustices witnessed during my
naval career. Our XO replicated the mishap 100 times in the simulator and crashed 97 of them.
At the time of her death, she was a pack-player
behind the boat, meaning that she was solidly in the middle of the squadron’s
landing grades. Yet, as one of the first woman to fly Tomcats in the fleet, and
the first to die doing so, she was held as an example of the supposed error of
women in combat.
It hurt to see her sacrifice used in such a
vicious manner, especially since her death had nothing to do with her gender.
Kara was an inspiration for the female character of my novel, Lions of the Sky. I began
with the question, “What would Kara’s journey had looked like had she
lived?”
My character, Keely Silvers, is the embodiment of
Kara’s fighter spirit—tough, funny, a natural pilot, and ultimately, someone to
be reckoned with.
USN
Death and disaster are a dark reality of military
aviation. Despite all of the emphasis on safety and training rules, the
environment is unforgiving and the penalty for error is swift and deadly.
I flew for 20-years and lost more than 20 friends
and comrades. The list of reasons for the mishaps was dizzying: mid-air
collisions, maintenance errors, G induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC),
impacting the earth, and a few more.
After every mishap, we had to both grieve and
disassociate ourselves. It was a battle of opposing emotional efforts. On the
one hand, we would hold a memorial ceremony, complete with missing man flyby.
They were all gut-wrenching affairs which forced you to confront your mortality
and hold loved-ones close. Then, often hours later, it was time to get right
back on the horse, back into the very same environment, the same missions, the
same planes that had just taken your buddy’s life. To do that required a
conscious act of delusion. Forcing fear, trepidation, uncertainty into a box
and shelving them in a storage bunker deep in the back of your mind.
The pilots I knew who perished spanned the
spectrum of skill level, from the best I ever saw, to some who were not very
good. The Grim Reaper didn’t distinguish. We convinced ourselves that we
weren’t next, that the bullet wouldn’t be in the next chamber during our aerial
game of Russian Roulette.
My last two years on active duty our air wing lost
nine airplanes and six people. It seemed like every two months there was an ELT
sounding off alerting us to yet another mishap. I didn’t realize how much
strain it put on me until I left.
After a couple of months away I slept much better
and felt much lighter in spirit. But flying pointy nosed jets, pulling Gs, and
burning jet fuel are as addicting as it gets. Within a few more months I was
back in the air, getting my fix with the reserves, and loving every minute
because I knew I wasn’t next.
USN
Missing Man formationo of the Big
John.
Back over Iraq
My second cruise over the ‘sandbox,’ as Iraq was
referred to, was enhanced by flying a different airframe in a different
community. It wasn’t quite the same stuff, different day. I had a lot to learn
about my new plane and a much different mission to master.
We had three basic missions flying the F-14 over
Iraq during Southern Watch: reconnaissance, strike, and air superiority.
I enjoyed the variety of missions. The
reconnaissance missions required flying with a TARPS (Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance
Pod System), which we fondly referred to as ‘The Turd.” The pod weighed roughly
two-thousand pounds and was hung towards the rear of the Tomcat. It affected
the center of gravity and thus the handling characteristics of the plane. More
importantly, it reduced the amount of fuel available to land aboard the ship.
I always enjoyed the added responsibility of the
pressure to get good pictures and the fact that I only had one look at the boat
before I was fuel critical.
One of the three cameras on the TARPS pod aimed at
a forty-five-degree angle. We would frequently skirt the Iraqi border while
flying along the Tigris River to obtain imagery of Iranian naval bases. Once,
while flying a profile I had flown dozens of times prior, safely—if barely—in Iraqi
airspace, an Iranian controller came up on the emergency frequency and warned
me to leave. He followed by saying that if I did not leave, I was in danger of
intercept by the Iranian air force.
Before the RIO could answer I jumped on the radio
and made sure he knew we would welcome any Iranian jet that wanted to come up
and play. It would have been the coolest thing in the world to do a 1v1 against
an Iranian F-14.
Sadly, it was an empty threat. We did a quick lap,
eagerly looking for a jet to tangle with, but no one showed up.
USN
The strike missions we flew were similar to the
missions I had flown in the Intruder. Occasionally we would plan missions
against specific targets scattered across Iraq, then fly practice strikes
against them as we patrolled southern Iraq below the no-fly zone. Other times
we would fly to a predetermined box and check in with a ground controller for
tasking. During my cruise, we never received any, we just orbited at the ready.
One of the more interesting missions we flew was
to escort for the U-2s that flew parallel to the 33rd parallel that defined the
southern border of the no-fly zone. Iraqi jets were permitted to operate
between the 32nd and 33rd parallels in a narrow band of air space. The rules of
engagement prevented us from engaging with the Iraqis so long as they stayed in
their box, but if a MiG penetrated south of the 33rd, then it was fair game—the
rules allowed us to chase it down.
The Iraqis often played a game of chicken, flying
their MiG-25s south at high speed then turning them away at the last moment,
avoiding triggering the line of death. The AWACS would alert us of the threat
and we would commit toward the target, arming up the missiles in case shit got
real. While it never happened to me, it was always cause to spike the
adrenaline system and ultimately a whole lot more fun than burning another hole
in the sky.
When we took on the tasking to escort the U-2s
however, the threat became much more real. The U-2 flies at extremely
high altitude, though well within missile range of the AA-6 air-to-air missiles
the super-fast MiG-25 Foxbats carried.
We took the threat to the vulnerable U-2s very
seriously and took it upon ourselves to devise a plan that would allow us to
protect the pilots from an Iraqi jet that wanted to take a shot. The challenge
was that the U-2 flew far higher and much slower than the Tomcats. One of our
RIOs, Smash Kormash, devised a zig-zag flight path where we could fly below the
U-2s while maintaining our slowest tactical speed.
While they flew their missions oblivious to us, we
were flying a long, jinking pattern below, keeping our knots up in the event a
Foxbat showed any interest.
USN
RIMPAC
Rim Of The Pacific (RIMPAC) ’96 was my last at sea
period with the Tomcat, VF-213, and Air Wing Eleven. It was a bittersweet
three-month mini-deployment for me. I felt at the top of my game, yet I was
just a few months from leaving active duty for whatever lay beyond.
As an Air Wing, the involvement of the dozen or so
foreign ships was largely transparent to our operations. The only time we
noticed anything unusual was on the occasion when our practice intercepts were
controlled by someone with an Australian, or Spanish, or Japanese accent. There
were no foreign navy air assets that we wrangled with, so the international
aspect of the exercise was no factor for the aviators.
All of that changed on the night of June 3rd. The USS Independence was operating in RIMPAC along with the USS Kitty Hawk, which Air
Wing Eleven had transitioned to. One of the A-6s from VA-115, attached to Air
Wing Five, was towing a target on an extremely long cable. The target was to be
fired upon by a Japanese destroyer, the JDS Yuugiri, with her Mk15
Phalanx 20mm CIWS.
As the Intruder flew past, the Yuugiri armed
her gun far too soon. The CIWS performed as advertised, immediately shooting
the A-6 out of the sky. Fortunately, both crew members ejected safely, though
they never quite lived down being the first US plane shot down by the Japanese
since World War II.
USN
Phalanx firing at a target during
live-fire training.
I was lucky in that I caught both the A-6 and the
F-14 during good cycles of their maintenance and reliability. Ironically, I
believe it was due to the fact that they were both near the ends of their service
lives.
As I mentioned earlier, shortly after I checked
into VA-155 as an A-6 Intruder pilot, we began receiving brand new jets with as
little as ten hours on the airframes. The old jets they were replacing had been
depressing to fly. Wing crack issues kept us to below 4 Gs, which sucked
badly.
Having a brief taste of a jet that was barely
hanging on gave us an appreciation for the new Intruders we received. We flew
the hell out of them, though, knowing the squadron was to be decommissioned
when we returned from cruise.
I had much the same experience when I was in
VF-213. The squadron had experienced so many bizarre mishaps over its recent
past that we got the best of everything. The best A models (a dubious claim),
the best maintainers, an amazing maintenance Master Chief (Hulbert), and
priority for parts. The maintainers were determined not to be a factor in any
future mishaps and the jets were groomed to perfection.
USN
On my last cruise I was the Avionics and Armament
Division Officer, responsible for the majority of the maintainers. It was a
great opportunity to observe them as they worked the jets and I could not have
been more impressed. Unbelievable intelligent and hardworking young men and
women working twelve-hour shifts in the blazing heat and stifling humidity of
the Persian Gulf. Not once during that deployment did I miss a sortie,
which is unheard of. There was a launch where I came close, however.
I had a Central Air Data Computer (CADC) issue
that we discovered just after engine start. The CADC was vital to making the
complex wing sweep mechanism work in the Tomcat. It was a hundred-pound box
just behind the cockpit under a panel with dozens of fasteners. It wasn’t a
difficult fix to swap it out, but it took time and effort.
When the mechanic informed me of the problem, I
knew I was going to miss the launch. We only had ten minutes. But he said,
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll get you going. Hang tight.”
I watched as he pulled the massive box and
scrambled down my ladder, hustling across the flight deck in 130-degree midday
heat. I knew he had to lug that box down three flights of ladders to his shop,
grab a new one and lug it back up.
With minutes to spare before the Air Boss canceled
me, I saw him labor back across the deck, up my ladder, and onto the back of
the jet. The box was inserted and checked, the panel was refastened, and we
were ready to go with barely a moment to spare.
I was deeply moved by that commitment, then, and
now. It was an impressive display of dedication and professionalism and I have
never forgotten it.
USN
Qualifying Carriers
I had the great privilege to deploy on the Forrestal class USS Ranger (CV-61),
the nuclear-powered Nimitz class USS Lincoln (CVN-72), and the first-in-class USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63),
getting over 100 traps aboard each. They all hold a special place in my memory
and were distinctive in surprising ways.
I am glad I served aboard the Ranger first,
as she was the smallest and oldest. Despite her age, and the fact that I was on
her for her very last cruise, she was a very well-maintained ship. I remember
distinctly that Ranger and Air Wing Two were a fantastic pairing. You could set your
watch by the sound of the first catapult shot of a scheduled launch. It was the
kind of precision the ship’s company took great pride in and it was reflected
in every aspect.
The dirty-shirt wardroom, where the aviators ate,
was arranged differently than other carriers. It was a subtle, but significant
variation in that the tables were only 4-tops, like in most restaurants. Other
carriers had massive picnic-style tables that could seat 20 or more.
Squadrons would have tablecloths made with their
logos, staking out territory. This tended to divide the wardroom, where
aviators felt compelled to eat at their squadron table even if they were alone.
On Ranger you generally ate with whomever you were in line with, regardless
of squadron. The result was a much tighter Air Wing where all the aviators knew
each other, reducing parochialism and enhancing camaraderie.
The best part about cruising on Ranger’s last
cruise was being able to modify the living quarters with impunity. We knew the
ship was to be decommissioned right when we returned. That gave us a sense of
liberty when it came to some major modifications which weren’t possible on a
ship that would be carefully scrutinized during a turnaround period.
One threesome of Lieutenant Commanders took
possession of a 6-man bunk room. They saved half of the bunks, desks, and
wardrobes, then cleaned out the other half, chucking it all overboard one
night. It left a huge empty space, which was an unknown luxury on a warship.
Despite the fact that a carrier is an enormous
1,100-foot long ship, it is illusory when it comes to space inside. 5,000
people are crammed into that tiny real estate and there is no room at all for
comfort or lounging—except for in this one room on Ranger.
The guys filled that empty space with carpeting, a
poker table, couches and lounge chairs, an awesome poker lamp, and they
finished it up by covering the drab gray walls with fake wood tack paper. It
was an incredible space to congregate, drink some illicit beverages, and play
poker deep into the night.
The downside of the Ranger was
that she was a conventionally powered ship. That meant that she didn’t have
unlimited fresh water for ‘Hollywood’ (long) showers or air conditioning.
USS
Abraham Lincoln approaching its new home port
of Everett, Washington in 1996.
The Lincoln, my second home away from home, is the only ship
I served on still in service. As a nuke, she was able to pump frigid air into
all the spaces even in the miserable heat of the Persian Gulf. You may laugh,
but that was a major enhancement to the quality of life. She was also able to
make unlimited fresh water. Despite that, she had the same spring-loaded hand-held
shower nozzles as all the conventional boats. We easily bypassed that
restriction with a three-inch C-clamp, which we would affix to the shower head
to hold down that damn button. With that minor mod, we were able to enjoy an
almost normal shower after coming back from a six-hour mission over Iraq—a
luxury we thought we absolutely deserved.
The Kitty Hawk was the ship I spent the least amount of
time aboard, just half a work-up and a RIMPAC. I don’t remember too much about
her other that she was definitely my least favorite. She wasn’t as clean
or well run as Ranger and she wasn’t shiny and new as Lincoln. We took to calling her ‘Shitty Kitty,’ probably
because we were a little bitter about the crap air conditioning again.
It doesn’t take much to make an aviator bitch.
USN
USS
Kitty Hawk steaming to Hawaii in the
1990s.
Sainthood
Once I left active duty, I joined the airlines as
a commercial pilot. It was a good decision for family reasons, but after a few
months, I found myself missing the smell of jet exhaust and the sensation of
pulling Gs.
I was extremely lucky in that a good friend of
mine from 213 had joined VFC-13 at NAS Fallon as an active duty pilot. He
called me and told me they were forming a selection board to screen for new
reserve pilots.
I couldn’t put my package together fast enough.
I was selected and began flying a few months later
and I couldn’t have been happier. Flying pointy nosed, afterburning fighters
was still in my blood and I was thrilled to get some more hits at the JP-5
crack pipe.
The Adversary syllabus at the Saints (VFC-13)
was extremely rigorous. As I mentioned earlier, when I left the F-14 I felt I
was a pretty good fighter pilot. Once I began the syllabus with the Saints, I
quickly learned I was still a neophyte.
These guys were amazing pilots who were also able
to recall each instance of each engagement. It was mind-blowing. Despite having
only 15 hops, the syllabus took anywhere from nine months to a year to
complete. The standard was perfection and the norm was multiple re-flys. I was
so happy to finally complete the training and join the squadron as a basic
adversary pilot.
Despite the fact I was flying pointy nosed jets
and wearing a flight suit, it was obvious we weren’t an active duty squadron.
About a third of the pilots were still on active duty, assigned to the Saints
for administration and continuity. A few more were full-time reservists, called
Selective Reservists. The rest of us were airline pilots who came in seven to
ten days a month.
The core of the unit stayed together for the whole
ten years I was there, which made for a very tightly knit group. But we spent
most of the time scattered across the country living with our families and
working our real jobs. In a fleet squadron, it was the opposite, you spent the
vast majority of your time with your squadron mates and at work, they were your
de facto family. Your spouse and kids got what was left over on the
occasion you were at home.
I left active duty for family reasons and I’m glad
I did. But the closeness of a fleet squadron is something I’ll remember fondly
as long as I live.
COURTESY OF PACO
Paco inspecting an F-5 before a
flight out of NAS Fallon.
From Tomcats to Tigers
There were some major aspects of moving to the F-5
from the mighty Tomcat. The most obvious were size and a single-seat cockpit.
The Tomcat usually took to the sky at around 65,000 pounds. It was 63 feet long
and 64 feet wide. The F-5 weighed around 15,000 pounds in the max configuration
we flew her in, with a single centerline drop tank—less than the Tomcat’s fuel
load alone. The Tiger was 47 feet long and 26 wide—a lawn dart compared to the
Big Fighter.
The Tomcat pilot famously had a RIO for the pilot
to blame for all his errors, while in the F-5 you had to rely on a bad wingman
to suck up the critique. The cockpit in the Tomcat was huge, lots of room for
limbs and noggin. Strapping into the F-5 was akin to putting on your last piece
of flight gear.
It became a part of you.
It was so tight in that cockpit that I couldn’t
straighten out my legs or sit completely straight. If I had been forced
to eject, I’m sure I would have suffered some negative consequences.
The Tomcat was so fun to fly, it was like a muscle
car, a ’65 Shelby Cobra. Lots of power, even in the A model, a sense of weight
behind the controls, it buffeted under G, bucking and straining through the
turns. The F-5 was like a go-kart. Underpowered but light in the controls and
nimble as all hell. It could do two aileron rolls per second.
USN
F-5N of VFC-13 landing at NAS
Fallon.
The Tomcat was a fleet bird, built to carry
missiles and bombs into combat. She had so much drag that when you were
supersonic and came out of burner it felt as though you were slamming on the
brakes. The Tiger was clean, just an AIM-9 and a telemetry pod on the wingtips,
and occasionally a centerline fuel tank. She slipped through the ‘number’ (Mach
1) easily.
They were both jets from the same era, but the
Tomcat was a warfighter, bristling with equipment meant to find and destroy the
enemy and survive the encounter. Radar, RWR gear, chaff and flares, IFF, TCS,
and much more. The aviators had to be proficient with all of the equipment,
using as many as possible on each mission. The F-5 was a pair of engines and wings.
It was so simple and it was perfect for reservists.
All we had to do after a few weeks away was come
back for one warm-up flight and we were ready to rock. The F-5Ns the
squadron received
from the Swissstarting in 2005 were a bit more complex, sporting
anti-skid brakes, basic pulse radar, RWR gear, and an INS (inertial navigation
system). But it was an incremental upgrade, still basic when compared to the
fleet birds.
It was a pleasure to jump into the F-5 and go
fight, whether it was the professional adversary mission we provided to the
fleet, or the in-house 1v1s we loved more than anything. But it could never
match the adrenaline rush of flying the Big Fighter from the boat. Each and
every launch was like suiting up for the ‘Big Game.’
The Tomcat absolutely dwarfs the
svelte F-5.
Tiger trick
Air-to-air fighting doesn’t require crazy maneuvering.
It isn’t about who can do the wildest stunt to gain an advantage or who has a
secret trick up his sleeve only pulled out when needed to get that last-ditch
advantage. Real dogfighting isn’t like in the movie Top Gun—hitting the
brakes and he’ll fly right by. The best fighter pilots are masters of
their plane. It is an extension of their bodies and minds. They are able to fly
it to the absolute edge of performance, whether that is a rating high G
two-circle fight, or a one-circle fight where nose position is key—as well as
myriad permutations and variations in between, such as rolling and flat
scissors.
It is as much an intellectual challenge as a
physical one, where creativity meshes with integrally with skill. The best
pilots I saw were able to think three merges ahead and set up their opponent
for the weapon of their choice. It was a thrill to experience, even from the
wrong end of the kill shot.
That said, there were some fighter pilots who were
just a whole level above the rest in their stick and rudder skills. One of the
best at a specific ‘move’ was a friend and squadron mate in VFC-13.
Memo could swap ends in an F-5 more perfectly than
I believed possible. Somehow, when he was defensive in the vertical, he was
able to pirouette the Tiger in a manner that reversed his course and still
afforded him airspeed to continue maneuvering. I witnessed it many times while
nipping at his heels over the Nevada skies. Sure, I was just moments away from
a guns kill, then he would snap the jet impossible fast and pass me close
aboard going the opposite direction.
He tried in vain to teach it to me. I could come
close. I could swap direction and end up slow, or I could mush through a turn
and keep some knots on the jet, but I could never get the right combination of
both.
It still pisses me off.
Editor's
note: You can read more about what it is like putting the F-5 to work as an
adversary in this
past special feature of ours.
TYLER ROGOWAY/AUTHOR
A colorful formation of VFC-13
F-5s.
Forever F-5
The F-5 has lived many lives and is on the verge
of yet another. It began in the ‘60s as a basic fighter/bomber we could sell to
allies who couldn’t afford top of the line fighters. It excelled at that
mission. It has been continuously updated to meet the requirements of the
evolving battlespace.
Aerodynamically, the F-5 will always be what we
call a category 3 fighter, where the F-35 and F-22 are now category 5 fighters.
Compared to modern jets, it is underpowered, slow, and bleeds airspeed badly in
a sustained turn, not to mention it has no stealth other than its tiny size.
But with just a few modifications, the F-5 is being turned into a threat plane
with a legitimate sting. The newest
upgrades include an AESA radar, good RWR gear, chaff
and flares, a jamming pod, and a helmet mounted cueing system for a high
off-boresight IR (infrared-guided) missiles.
A Tiger so outfitted can provide Super Hornets and
F-35s a legitimate threat, especially in the training environment.
One of the aspects of the Tiger as an adversary
platform that has served it well across the decades is that if you are a Blue
fighter and you lose to an F-5, there is a definite error you made. A decisive
training moment that can be isolated and debriefed and remembered, so that the
same mistake will not be made in combat.
TACAIR
TacAir just won a Navy contract to
support the adversary mission at NAS Fallon alongside VFC-13. Their F-5s will
be the most advanced F-5 aggressors ever put in the air. Read all about these
aircraft in this previous
feature of ours.
It's your captain speaking...
Stepping into the cockpit of a 737 after flying
F-14s and F-5s is like stepping into a different skin. The person and the
mindset you have as a fighter pilot and the manner in which you fly the plane
are diametrically opposed to the style of piloting required to be a good
airline pilot.
A good flight in a fighter involved lots of
sweating and action, high Gs, close passes against another plane with a
thousand knots of closure and aggressive, in-close maneuvering. A good flight
in an airliner in one where the passengers feel as if they are enjoying a nice
cocktail in their living room and just happen to be whizzing across the
continent at 500 knots. Maybe a movie and a nap—certainly nothing exciting.
And that’s ok. That’s the way it should be. That
is why I fly Yak-50s on the weekend while some of my friends are on the golf
course. I still get to go up and pull Gs and dogfight against other fiends, but
now it’s in propeller planes and we have to pay for our own gas!
Socially, in the cockpit, the worst kind of
airline pilot to fly with is the former military jet jock who tries to hang on
to the glory of his former life. We get fantastic training from our company on
how they want us to fly the airliners, there’s no need to bring up war stories
from your fighter days.
All the pilots in an airliner cockpit here in the
U.S. are exceptionally qualified to fly commercial planes, whether we came up
flying canceled checks in a Cessna 172 in the middle of the night or were blasted
from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
Where have all the pilot's gone?
It has always amazed me how poorly the Navy
treated its aviators. Even during the best of times, we had to battle the
establishment to maintain our distinct identity and esprit de corps. The
relentless tide of bullshit that the administrators threw at us demanded a
constant self-evaluation—do I really love flying these jets so much that I’m
going to put up with this crap?
The stark reality is that a carrier costs $12 billion.
Add a few billion more for the requisite ships and now you’ve got a Carrier
Strike Group, the basic war-fighting unit of the modern Navy. Add a few billion
more and you can arm that strike group with purpose, the seventy-odd planes and
helicopters required to outfit the Air Wing that embarks on the carrier.
The many billions in ships and aircraft exist for
one purpose, to project power against the enemy from nearly any place in the
world. The 11 (counting the impending arrival of the Ford) carriers
and their associated Strike Groups are the most lethal offensive weapon the
world has ever seen. Yet they exist almost entirely for the deployment of the
150 or so aviators that will fly the jets and helicopters into harm’s way.
Recent studies have determined that it costs $6-11
million and five years to fully train a front-line combat aviator. In any other
environment in the world, the asset that provided the highest value and costs
the most to replace would be considered a prime asset. But in the US military,
combat pilots are treated like crap and subjected to harassment from senior
ranking support personnel.
The misalignment of interests is grating during
the best of times, but when the airlines begin to hire after many years of
drought, the frustration finds a ready expression in the form of an exodus.
Paco with his VFC-13 brothers. Paco served in the squadron for a decade as a Reservist.
In the last five years the Navy and Air Force have
lost billions in highly trained aviators to a profession they are severely
overqualified for because they couldn’t take the bullshit anymore. Most of us
would have continued in the military for a fraction of our airline salaries if
only they hadn’t squeezed the fun from the most fun job you could ever have.
The resulting pilot shortage in the military is no
shock to those of us who served. But it has helped to create a new, unforeseen
industry—contract
adversaries.
Back in my day, when you needed someone to play
the red fighter—the bad guy—you simply scheduled an in-house asset to that
role. So, an F-14 squadron scheduling a 2v2 sortie would need four Tomcats. We
thought nothing of it as the planes, parts, aviators, flight hours, and fuel
were plentiful. Today none of those parameters are true.
Now factor in that the dramatically improved
capabilities of fifth-generation fighters mean fewer planes are required, and
thus fewer planes are on the flight line, and now you have a training issue.
Fast forward a few years and we now have at least four major players in the
contract adversary space. They have a corral full of former fighter pilots,
frustrated airline pilots, who are happy to fly pointy-nosed crack pipes for
relatively low salaries.
There is a glut of third generation fighters on
the world market - Mirage
F-1s, F-5s, A-4s – that are being upgraded with AESA radars, top line RWR gear,
jamming pods, and other fifth generation toys, making them capable adversaries
to F-35s and F-22s and a fraction of the hull costs. The Department of Defense
is thrilled it doesn’t have to pay for any of the assets or personnel, they
merely manage the requirements and demand high standards.
The contract adversaries are staffed with former
Topgun and Weapons School graduates, men and women who have been trained to the
highest standards and represent a tremendous vault of corporate knowledge. They
are eager to provide the mission they trained for while escaping the grinding
mundanity and incompetence of military leadership.
Contract adversaries are here to stay and I
believe they will be an excellent solution to the problems the modern military
brings to readiness.
ROGOWAY/AUTHORA VFC-13 F-5N blast out of PDX.
I never took any moment of flying in the navy for
granted. It always seemed like a spectacular playground filled with action and
adrenaline. When I was in the reserves, I wanted to tell the real story of
naval aviation. I decided a documentary would be the best way to make that
happen.
I convinced a good director friend of mine, Payton
Wilson, to come to Fallon with me for a weekend with her camera. At first, she
was reluctant, she was a female filmmaker from San Francisco, just about the
opposite demographic that would be interested in making a film about Navy
pilots. But once I got Peyton in the ready room and on the flight line, she
began to come around.
The energy of a squadron is infectious. The
personalities and banter are unique. And the type of flying we do in the Navy
is both visually beautiful and dramatic. Within a few weeks, we had made the
fantastic sizzle reel called Last of the Dogfighters and I
used that to both get permission from the Navy to produce the full-length
documentary and raise the funds needed to pay for the film.
We originally intended to make a film about the
Saints and dogfighting, but once Peyton met the RAG students we were fighting,
she fell in love with their stories.
The RAG students were going through an intense
year of change. Every day they faced a new and exciting challenge and an opportunity
to fail. Every couple of weeks there was a new final exam they had to prepare
for, and of course, the huge culminating obstacle of carrier qualifications
made for fantastic, foreboding drama.
Once Peyton convinced me that the Saints weren’t cool
enough for our own full-length movie, we quickly settled on the two pilots we
would follow for the course of the film, Jay and Meagan. They both had amazing
backstories, incredible obstacles they were forced to overcome just to get to
flight school. They are both compelling, charismatic personalities who light up
the screen. And they both continued to give to their stories in ways we could
not have anticipated before we began following them.
They each had ridiculously dramatic events once
they left the RAG that we discovered by accident. If it had been scripted, it
would have defied credulity, but in real life, both stories were remarkable and
showed just how amazing Jay and Meagan truly are.
Easily the most difficult part of making Speed And Angels was
the air-to-air filming. It literally took me years to finally get permission to
fly F-5s and F-14s on dedicated filming sorties. The budget for the cameras,
film crews, camera Learjet, and the bill from the government for the Tomcat and
Tiger time was nearly half of the total budget of the film. But it’s a movie
about beautiful jets so we did everything in our power to get beautiful
footage.
To tell the story of a dogfight is a difficult
cinematic challenge. Actual aerial encounters take place at 20,000 feet,
hundreds of knots, and after the planes merge, they can be a mile or two from
each other as they claw through their high G turns to point back towards each
other again. I had to choreograph a series on maneuvers and shots we could film
and then cut together to give the viewer a sense they were in the cockpit, with
their hands on the controls, pulling for a shot.
We filmed from the air, from a specially modified
Learjet, and from a mountain top in Fallon— Fairview Peak. We strapped small
cameras throughout the cockpits of the fighters to give a number of vantage
points, including on the helmets of some of the pilots as they were maneuvering
or landing on the ship.
COURTESY OF PACO
The Speed And Angels crew next to an F-5 and F-14—both stars of the film—and the Wolfe Air Learjet camera-ship that
captured the amazing aerial action sequences.
All in all, it was an amazing experience. We set
out intending to make a cool film about the Saints and dogfighting over a year
and ended up making an amazing movie about two of the last F-14 students
struggling against every obstacle imaginable to achieve their dreams and much
more.
Lions Of The Sky
I was a fighter pilot for 20 years, but I’ve been
a writer all my life. Writing novels has always been my dream, aside from
flying fighters. I finally got the gumption to combine my two passions into a
great story.
On a macro scale, Lions Of
The Sky is a fictionalized distillation of the crazy
stories and characters I experienced over two decades in the Navy. Nearly every
insane scene, both in the cockpits, in the ready rooms, and in the Officer’s
Club, actually happened, with a little extra fiction dust thrown on top. That
includes the dramatic, climactic final battle scene between the United States
and China in the South China Sea.
Not to give away too much, but in the mid-‘90s a
U.S. Navy plane thought it was chasing a U.S. submarine for training. It turns
out the sub was really Chinese and its captain thought he was being attacked.
He radioed back to the homeland and a wave of Chinese fighters were launched.
The carrier launched its own fighters to meet the challenge. Fortunately,
cooler heads prevailed and the situation was quickly diffused. But in my book,
things get a lot more interesting.
COURTESY OF PACO.
More specifically, my novel is about a hard-boiled
RAG instructor, Slammer Richardson, who became somewhat of a legend, but at the
cost of losing his best friend. He is eager to get back to the action of the
fleet because he can see that something big is brewing in the South China Sea.
He’s got some misgivings about women in the cockpit so he does his best to
avoid them, but the last class he’s assigned to mentor has not one, but two
female students.
Being aspiring fighter pilots, the women are bold
and brash, and have no intention of fading into the background. The challenges
of training in the F/A-18 force them to choose wildly different paths as they
navigate the many hurdles and force Slammer to come to terms with thoughts he’d
rather leave deeply buried.
One of the aspects of flying in the Navy that
always fascinated me was that once aircrew finish the RAG they are qualified to
go to the fleet and possibly into combat, though they are far from proficient.
It has happened many times and to Jay in Speed and Angels, in fact.
During the course of the training in the story,
there is a constant background drumbeat of aggressive action by China against
their opponents to territorial claims in the South China Sea. The tension
rises steadily as the students face successive challenges. Ultimately, Slammer
and a few of the students that survive the RAG are assigned to the carrier that
is sent to face the Chinese.
Far before the new fleet pilots are ready, they
are thrown into a situation where the opponents are legitimate, the missiles
are real and life and death decisions are made at the speed of sound.
Much like Speed And Angels, I wanted Lions Of The Sky to be
about the people behind the larger story. And also, like the film, as much as
possible, I wanted the readers to feel like they were a part of the action, not
just observers.
Lions is a fantastic novel of action and peril, about the intense and real
personal stories that underlay the wider fabric of geopolitical conflicts.
It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times...
Easily the worst experience I ever had in a Navy
jet was the day I crashed an F-5. It’s a long story, but the salient points are
that I had blown tires on landing and skidded down the runway on nothing but
the metal hubs. As I left the end of the runway, I shut down the engines just
before the plane flipped over, shattering the canopy. The plexiglass
broke into razor-sharp shards and as the canopy rail bent back one of the
shards pierced my neck like a dagger, just above the jugular. If I had
been going a knot or two faster when the plane flipped I would surely have bled
to death.
The second worst day I had in a Navy jet was my
last flight. It was the culmination of over two decades of effort, sweat,
dodging death, joy, and epic fun. But I had reached the end of my tenure and
the next step for me in the military would have been a desk.
I had spent a solid 20 years in the cockpit and I
wasn’t ready to leave yet, but that wasn’t my decision. I felt like a perfectly
healthy person who had to walk into the hospital to have his legs amputated. It
didn’t make sense to me. But such is life.
I had so many fantastic experiences in the Navy
and in the cockpit. loved flying low-levels through the Cascade mountains
during beautiful summer days, weaving back and forth with the other jet across
valleys and darting through canyons, showing off to the people out boating or
hiking. Bringing the Tomcat in for a 600-knot shit hot Break at the ship and
nailing the landing was as intense as it gets.
But if I was given the opportunity to go back and
relive just one experience from my 20-year thrill show, I would have to drop
back into December 1999. I was flying F-5s as a reservist, but I was also a
junior airline pilot. I didn’t want to work over the Millennium New Year as I
surely would. So, I got the squadron to cut me orders to fly with the reserves
from December 15th of 1999, to January 7th of 2000.
We didn’t have any ‘customers’ and there were few
pilots in the squadron, so there were plenty of jets to play with. For three
weeks, minus Christmas and the big New Year’s blowout in Tahoe, I flew three
air combat sorties per day against the best dogfighters in the world. The
weather was perfect, the gas was free, the jets were plentiful, and the
dogfighting was the most intense and fun I ever experienced.
If I make it to Heaven, that’s what every holiday
season will be like.
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