It's just possible that some of you have heard
of Tailhook '91 - I was
there.
Now, you're going to have to
wait a little longer (like: Forever) for my frank and honest opinion on how this
fiasco came about. There is a book to be written on this subject from the inside
(several have already been written from the outside - sample title:
Naval Aviation Neanderthal Frat Boys -
Why they Should All Be Chemically Castrated. Or Else
Surgically.
Whichever.)
The
inside book will be a sensitive exposition on the complex sociological factors
that go into a grown man's need to get together with a bunch of like-minded
confreres
and drink until he howls at the moon from time to time. It will touch on the
post-Desert Storm euphoria meeting in an unfortunate confluence of time and
space the growing (and chiefly political) effort to gender neutralize (if not
feminize) the combat arms - I will go on record as saying that this has worked
out far better than many in the ranks would have forecast, a dozen years ago.
The madness, and frankly un-officerlike (not to mention, illegal) actions of a
relatively small number of people in that the moment, and how their actions were
used to tar the reputation of an entire service will be contrasted against the
House of Representatives check kiting scandal, a contemporaneous event which was
somewhat fortuitously (for certain members of the latter body) overshadowed by
the seamy revelations forthcoming from the western desert. It will conclude with
the rather ludicrous image of the senior Senator from Massachusetts finding
himself shocked, shocked! to find out that among other things, people would do
belly shots in Las Vegas.
But that is
not this story.
Full disclosure: I
stipulate for the record that criminal acts, of a kind and nature which brought
discredit upon the naval service took place at Tailhook '91. I also state for
the record that I myself committed no crimes. Nor did I witness any crimes being
committed. Late Saturday evening, I did witness an environment that was growing
increasingly chaotic, and potentially dangerous. I reported my observations to
hotel security. And then walked back to my hotel and
slept.
So. That's
that.
My story commences some seven
months or so after the events at the Las Vegas Hilton, in the Fall of 1991. A
Naval Investigative Service investigation has made, ebbed and waned, but
insufficient numbers of miscreants have been burnt at the stake. The Department
of Defense Inspector General has been called in to finish the inquisition,
complete with bell, book and candle. Oh yes, the guilty will have their chance
in court this time. And then they will be judged. Judged most
harshly.
The IG started on the west
coast, at (then) NAS Miramar, intending to sweep east across the country. Those
of us on the east coast were energized to communicate with our west coast
compatriots - how did it go?
"Bad,"
was the word we got. "SERE school
bad."
The IG had gone to Miramar
bringing the heat - it was the full third degree. Article 13 rights (a Miranda
equivalent) were read to everyone. One investigator asked questions, while
another sat at 90 degrees to the interviewee, watching body language. Voices
were raised, imprecations were made, threats were hurled. And the investigators
were infuriated to find themselves
stonewalled.
Two things were in play
at this point: First, the naval aviation fraternity is one that has been tested
in combat - it is designed to ensure survival first, and victory second. The
bonds are exceptionally strong, and difficult for an outsider to break. Second,
all TACAIR aviators must, as a matter of course, attend Survival, Evasion,
Resistance and Escape training. SERE, for
short.
SERE trains you how to survive
off the land if shot down, how to evade capture, how to resist interrogation
(and torture) if captured and how to escape - just like the name implies. And of
all the many things that have in some small way sucked in my naval career, it's
absolutely certain that SERE sucked the worst, on a time-weighted scale.
But it was really, really effective
training. And when the IG turned the screws tighter on naval aviators across the
country, they reverted to their
training.
If the IG had appealed to
the aviators' sense of justice or fair-play, rather than brazen attempts to
intimidate and threaten, the investigation would have no doubt have taken a very
different course. But that is all in the way things might have been, rather than
they were. Never mind.
By the time
the investigation washed towards Naval Air Station, Key West, Florida, there
were only three of us on board who had attended. We would be interviewed
separately, and had agreed to only discuss those things which we ourselves had
witnessed. We would not speculate, or tell "hearsay" about stories we might have
heard from others around the ready room table, against the chance of misspeaking
- there was a very real and palpable environment of fear, and the sense that we
were all guilty in the IG's eyes until proven innocent. The media were baying
for heads on platters. They too, were
shocked.
A good friend went up on a
Wednesday afternoon, the day before I was scheduled to see the IG. Like a good
friend, he called when his interview was over and admitted that the pressure had
been significant, and he was sorry, but that he'd spilled his guts on every
story he'd ever heard the rest of us say about that weekend.
"Well," I said, "Tell me what you
remember me saying, so at least I'll know what they think they know."
Which fortunately, is pretty much
what I'd remembered myself.
The next
day I manned up with another guy, a new pilot in the squadron who had also
attended 'Hook. We were in an F-5F, a two-seat jet of late 60's provenance which
we used as an adversary platform. It was the jet the squadron could spare for
the trip up to Jacksonville. It was not the jet that Lex would have preferred to
fly in poor weather, given the choice. You could get vertigo just strapping
into an F-5 on a bad weather day.
Given all that, it shouldn't
surprise you to find out that the weather up in Jax was pretty much awful. We
pressed on regardless, however - we were authoritatively informed that this was
not a meeting we were free to
skip.
It was pretty quiet flying up
the length of Florida, with none of your usual banter on the intercom. No jokes,
just checklists. We were... preoccupied. In what had seemed a very short period
of time, we had gone from war heros and Defenders of the Republic to presumptive
criminals, and we weren't entirely acclimated to the new environment. So much
so, that I almost blew through an altitude assignment on the descent into Jax -
my back seater (not even qualified in the jet) saved my bacon - a tremendously
embarrassing thing for a single-seat pilot, and an indicator of the level of
stress we were under.
The airfield
was right at minimums for a precision approach - 200 feet overcast and 1/2 mile
visibility. We'd need a ground controlled approach, a talk down using the
precision radar. The instrument panel on the F-5 was all on the starboard side
of the dashboard, with the engine instruments on the left and an almost entirely
useless pulse radar system taking up the entire center console. An instrument
scan involved lots of vertigo-inducing head jinks up and left from the
instrument panel. The jet was also fast on final approach, nearly 180 kts on its
stubby little wings, leading to a flare to about 150 kts to land. The higher
ground speed necessitated a higher rate of descent (just trust me on that) and
of course, there was no radar altimeter, so your absolute altitude above the
ground was impossible to judge. In effect, we'd be coming down like a turd off a
tall moose in a jet hauling ass with no distinct notion exactly how high we were
to an airfield that was at the absolute limits of our legal ability to make an
approach - and where, the loyal reader is reminded, we were earnestly awaited by
an unsmiling pair of interviewers who held our service records in one hand, and
our futures in the other.
So yah, it
was a pretty good time.
We (I) got a
little high on our (my) first approach, and as we approached minimums I couldn't
quite make myself force the nose low enough in the clouds to get back on
glideslope, without being able to see the landing environment or knowing (for
certain) just how high I was - we were already coming down like a bat out of
hell. I had to execute a missed approach - my first ever, in nearly 2000 hours
flying fighters. I added power, raised the speedbrakes and went around, just
like I was supposed to. As we bottomed out, I caught a glimpse of the runway
environment - just enough to let me see that a landing was
possible.
Just.
Possible.
Which was good news / bad
news, in a way. Making another approach would put us very close to a fuel state
which would require us to land - our options to divert somewhere with fairer
weather would evaporate. If the weather at our primary destination got just that
little bit worse on our next approach, we would be out of options, and committed
to landing or ejection.
And the
interviewers were still waiting.
We
had a brief, terse conversation: My backseater was a cheerleader, essentially.
Junior in rank to me, and not qualified in the jet, he was automatically
absolved of any responsibility. Whatever I thought was best. That'd be fine with
him.
We tried
again.
Fierce concentration, the kind
where all sound that isn't your voice or your controller's gets filtered out,
the kind where the tiny vibration of the wings, control surfaces and engines
provide the subtle feedback of the way the jet senses the environment through
the stick and throttles, and it's as
alive
to you as your own breathing and pulse, as the hairs on your forearms in a
breeze. After no time at all, a time that lasted forever in zen-like union with
the machine, we broke out of the weather in a good position to
land.
The runway was wet - there had
been a rainstorm recently. This necessitated the use of the drag chute to slow
the high-speed F-5 down without
hydroplaning.
There was a strong
crosswind - this meant that using the drag chute was prohibited. It would
weather-cock the nose and send us off the
runway.
This was a bit of a
conundrum.
Put the nose down firmly -
no aero-braking this time. Hope the nose gear stands up to the stress. Stay off
the brakes, for God's sake. Don't let her start to wander. Use the rudders as
long as possible. Touch the brakes so gently, oh - a mere caress. The lightest
possible stroke, a lover's kiss - please, oh please don't hydroplane. Don't
breathe. Don't.
She stopped at the
far end of the runway, the rain pattering on the canopy overhead. I switched to
the ground controller once clear, and asked to taxi to the transient line. Where
a car would be waiting, to take us to our
interview.
And I had never worked so
hard to get to someplace I really didn't want to
be.
Posted @
08:16 PM
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Posted in
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Sendit
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Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
