I don't tell this story very often. Although the
events inside it happened almost 12 years ago, the memory is still fresh, and
still painful.
Over the years I've told it to two ready rooms,
both by way of instruction - a kind of "been there, seen that," in order to
prevent anything like it from ever happening again. But it's not one of those
sea stories you tell over a beer, among friends. It's a sad story. Maybe I post
this one. Maybe I
don't.
The
story is not really about me, but about Terry.
Terry was a senior lieutenant in my
adversary squadron in Key West, Florida, back in the 90's. He was the kind of
guy you'd like your son to grow into, your daughter to marry. He was a superb
pilot, in a squadron full of talent - he'd won honors as the Atlantic Fleet
Pilot of the Year before showing up to Key West. A superb athlete, Terry had
captained his high school football team, who went on to win the state
championship. He drank Guinness (for strength!), was a raconteur, and friendly
to all. His Sailors worshipped him, his peers loved him and his seniors valued
him. We were not very close socially: he was single, and did the single guy
things in Key West. I was married, raising a son, expecting a daughter. We were
in different places in our lives, but I respected him
immensely.
Terry was one of my first
instructors after I left the high tech and afterburning FA-18, for the subsonic
A-4 Skyhawk - the "Scooter." A nimble jet, but not at all automated. There were
no flight control computers to help Mongo point nose, it was all
airmanship:
Five "g" turn nose high,
hook the slats out, flaps twenty degrees, trim up 7-8 units, rudder, rudder
rudder, throttle chop, throttle up, flaps half, 15 units AOA, hold the slats
out, HOLD THEM! "Pipper's on, guns kill, knock it off."
Terry had flown A-7s, mud movers,
attack jets - and I was a Hornet pilot, I had flown fighters. What could Terry
teach me about fighting I didn't already know?
Volumes, as it turned out. Starting
with humility. Which he treated me to in heroic doses, over time. Man, he was
good...Lex is dead, set up
another.
I've been in the squadron for
a while now, it's Friday, and the FA-18 training squadron is in town. We're
suiting up for a 2v2 DACT (dissimilar air combat training) hop. I've just
started flying the F-16, and Terry has a flight tomorrow that I'm lusting after.
When I ask him if he'd let me take his hop the next day, he told me, "ask me
tomorrow." He was single, he had a big night planned for downtown Key West. A
night of chaos potentially, anything could happen. But you didn't give up F-16
hops for free.
We'd briefed a mass
administrative brief (all the several fighters, all the bogeys) in one room. For
simplicity's sake, the instructor pilot briefing the gaggle closes by saying,
"we'll return to the field in similar sections," i.e., by squadron, by two-ship.
The fighters will come back together, and the bandits will come back together.
Simple enough.
Terry's flying the F-5
today, and I'm in the Scooter. The F-5 had a much higher approach speed than any
Navy jet, higher even than the F-16. In our squadron, it was "standard" for the
F-5 to come in on the left wing for a wedge or diamond break. He'd break left
first, the rest of the flight would follow after him. This would keep the faster
F-5 from collapsing the interval on final approach, getting too close to the jet
ahead of him. It was "standard" because that was what we always did. But it was
not in the written SOP, or standard operating procedures. SOP's are written by
each squadron, filling in the holes in higher guidance on things like coming
back to the field in formation, and
landing.
We didn't do wedge breaks on
the west coast, where I'd come from - there had been a midair collision several
years previously, when the lead broke into his wingman. I'd been somewhat
surprised to learn they were still being done on the east coast. But hey, we
briefed it carefully in every squadron brief, it was what we did. It was
standard.
After two hacks fighting on
the range, the fighter lead was bingo, or out of fuel. He headed home. Terry, my
lead, ran low on the third run, and cleared the fight. I ended up in a
protracted engagement with the fighter wingman, no "nugget" or new guy, but an
experienced, mid-grade aviator, transitioning from the A-7 to the FA-18. We
fought to a draw, and as he was now out of gas, he started to head home.
"Join on my wing?" he asked. I said
sure. He was senior to me, also a west coast guy, and it's always considered
good form to go home with someone - one less bit of traffic to worry about going
back to the field, and there was mutual support, in case something went wrong
along the way. You never knew.
As we
headed back to the field, Terry joined on the left. He'd been hanging out, clear
of the fight, saving gas. We were now in a wedge formation, with the FA-18 in
the center, leading, me on the right wing and Terry on the left. Where the F-5's
would break formation from, to join downwind and land.
Standard.
There was a traffic call from
the tower, prior to the initial. Someone lifting off from Key West
International. F-5's and A-4's only had one radio, this we tuned to tower
frequency, and you didn't chatter on tower - it was a control freq. FA-18's had
two radios, but since we only had one, we couldn't share the radar situational
awareness the FA-18 pilot gained. Terry and I drifted out a bit, ready to
react, scanning the area visually. When the traffic was no longer a factor, we
tightened up the formation, looking good for the overhead.
The FA-18 lead looked left towards
Terry, looked right, towards me, and made a quick series of non-standard hand
signals. They looked to me like "break from wedge, F-5 first." Which is what I
expected to see. A standard procedure, even if it wasn't SOP.
It also wasn't what we'd briefed
before the flight: "Return to the field in similar
sections."
Seconds later, overhead the
field, we're looking good. We're looking great! Nice, tight formation, three
dissimilar jets. The lead, in the center, looking straight ahead, gives me the
goodbye-kiss signal, meaning he was breaking away, breaking left.
I turned my head fractionally to the
left - there was Terry, still on the left wing. He hadn't left the formation
yet. The picture doesn't synch, and I've got less than one second to figure it
out.
It's called cognitive dissonance:
<psychology>
Motivational state produced by inconsistencies between simultaneously held
cognitions or between a cognition and behaviour; e.g., smoking enjoyment and
believing smoking is harmful are dissonant.
Or between "my lead is breaking left,
and our wingman is still there, on his left
wing.
On the radio, I got out a muffled,
"No, no!" It wasn't in time - in seeming slow motion I see the FA-18 bank away
from me, towards Terry, who banks away slightly, instinctively. Startled?
Certainly. Terrified? Perhaps. Aware of impending mortality? Can't
know.
The FA-18 starts his hard turn. His
left wing knocks the F-5's nose and canopy off, 40 feet away from me. The FA-18
tail hits the F-5 empennage and stabilator. There is no sound, none at all, but
my engine in my ears, and the sound of my scream in the oxygen
mask.
In the now open cockpit, I see
Terry slumped - I see his yellow t-shirt, I see the hairs on his chest above the
shirt. And then the sight is removed, as his jet spirals down to the waiting
ground, 800 feet below.
"Eject, eject,
EJECT!" I scream. But he doesn't.
And in
slow motion, his jet becomes a black, grey and red flower, a blossom planted on
the runway intersection And just like that, Terry was
gone.
I had to join on the crippled
FA-18, get him on deck. No telling how long he could stay controllable in that
configuration, bleeding hydraulic fluid. He trapped on the last available
runway, and I had to land somewhere else. Key West International, not enough gas
to go anywhere else. So that's where I went, and I used all of the 4300 foot
runway, crack to crack, to stop the jet, barely, by the end. Shut her down,
climbed out and cried until the sobs turned to
shudders.
"Is it bad?" asked the civilian
linesman.
It was bad.
I got picked up by the squadron PAO, was
driven back in silence to the squadron, started giving statements to the mishap
board when I arrived.
The FA-18 guy had
assumed Terry would cross under to the right, just like they did on the west
coast. Terry had assumed we'd break from wedge, just like we always did. Such
little, small things to assume. Such enormous
consequences.
We'd briefed one thing,
unthinkingly, and done another, unthinkingly. Just that one time, just that
little thing. It was all so meaningless - we weren't at war, the republic wasn't
at risk. Nothing we had done that day, certainly not coming back to land, had
been worth dying for.
The FA-18 guy never
recovered his confidence. Don't know what he's doing
now.
So
later in life, when I would tear into a wingie for violating some seemingly
inconsequential bit of the flight brief, I was OK with it. Because I decided
that day that no one would ever die on me again, because I didn't say
something.
"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
