Chapter 30: Full Circle

For a few years this was my corner office, and many enjoyable hours were spent flying the brightly painted Robin Sport, which introduced many of my students to the world of flight test and aerobatics.

Once again I was immersed in the demanding world of fighter design, and teaching aircraft design to a new generation of enthusiastic university students. My weekends now gave the opportunity for flying a variety of smaller aircraft. All were challenging in their own way…

I eased my stick a fraction to the right to level my wings as our two aircraft came out of the gentle left hand bank where we had been circling out over the channel between Los Angeles Harbor and the island of Catalina, just visible between banks of low stratus. With the wings leveled, I scanned the sky through the bubble canopy of my French-built Robin Sport, carefully checking for other traffic, then looked back at the aircraft riding off to my left. Propeller shining in the sun and resplendent in a red, white and blue sunburst, it was a mirror image of my own aircraft. Twenty feet off my left wingtip fellow pilot and aerobatic instructor Rick Remelin was grinning across the intervening space.

A product of the eighties, the little Robin could give a creditable account of itself in basic aerobatics, but had enough avionics to make it capable of transporting me through the intricacies of the Californian Air Traffic Control system in comfort, yet still be a fun machine to fly. It was a useful way to introduce my aero engineering students to the basics of flight test, without having to incur the exorbitant costs of a more sophisticated machine.

As my logbooks slowly filled with a variety of aircraft, looking back I was struck with the thought that as I gained in experience the differences seemed smaller. The aircraft were, after all, just machines. It was fascinating to see how engineers and designers had solved different problems. But the aircraft themselves were just contrivances of metal, wood, fabric and composites. They were tools to do a specific job.

It’s the pilots who make the difference. Pilots as a breed tend to be rather matter-of -fact. They fly for a profession and sometimes look askance at the notion that anyone would think their way of life out of the ordinary. But listen sometimes to test pilots, bush pilots or instructors as they let drop some nugget of experience. I’m still learning. I’m indebted to those military and civilian pilots with whom I’ve shared cockpits around the world.
In particular I thank former US.Navy Test pilot Joel Premselaar. Joel started his career being catapulted in a floatplane from the deck of a battleship, and rounded off his military career flying some rather hairy test hops in Navy jets. Now there is a story. Joel took the time to show me how to really fly a Bonanza. Some of the tricks are not in the book, but as aids to survival, they are good ones.
As one who now spends his working life designing aircraft that will be around for many years, I have asked myself where the future may lead us.

What next? The aircraft designed by competing teams are now very similar in behavior, with handling qualities determined by the computers of their fly-by-wire control systems, rather than the idiosyncrasies of aerodynamics which drove former generations of designers and flight test engineers wild with exasperation. Aircraft shapes are changing dramatically. Powerplants are more powerful and more reliable. The areas of the unknown are shrinking in aircraft design.
But pilot physiology is still very much the same, and it is a fact that the pilots cannot take as much g-force as the aircraft. So the emphasis is changing in that field and unmanned vehicles will be increasingly popular on the military side at least. Pilots must now master complex systems rather than the techniques of stick and rudder as in former days.

But the challenges are still there in different forms. Flying of itself is a series of challenges. First solo, gaining the various ratings and advancing to more complex machines are all rewarding. Flying a Piper Cub down to a crosswind landing is just as challenging as scorching across the landscape at a significant fraction of the speed of sound.
I have had an enjoyable opportunity to sample a wide variety of flying machines. All of them unique in their way, from jets to sailplanes.
Vintage airplanes and warbirds are again different, nostalgic and in their own way just as challenging to fly as more modern machines…
But that, as they say, is another story.

Chapter 29: Practice Makes Perfect

Perfection in the air. The six-ship formation of the Blue Angels at El Toro MCAS. The two-seater F/A-18 flown by the author the previous month is in the slot position.

As the orange ball of the sun heaved itself over the mountains to the east of the Imperial Valley in southern California, the first rays of the sun sparkled from canopies and polished metal skin. On the flight line six blue and gold Hornet jets were lined up precisely in a row. I had arrived here early at NAS El Centro, the winter training quarters for the Blue Angels jet demonstration team of the US Navy, but the day had started hours previously for the team, with the crew chiefs beginning with a 4.30am inspection of their jets. By six o’clock the Blue Angel leader, Commander Gil Rud was already briefing the six-man team in their unpretentious wooden building.

Dawn had arrived this crisp March morning in 1988 with a cloudless sky and unlimited visibility. All was going according to plan. The good winter weather and clear airspace was the raison d’être for the Blue Angels moving here from their base at Pensacola in Florida every year for their winter training.
As briefing finished, on the ramp three Navy crewmen stationed themselves at parade-ground readiness with each plane, two at the wingtips and the crew-chief at the nose. In front of Hornet #1, the leader’s plane, the pilots lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in their blue flight suits. Lock-stepped together they marched off to their aircraft. On reaching his own jet each pilot saluted his crew chief, turned out of line, briskly climbed the ladder and swung into his cockpit. With the clock ticking, and all pilots now aboard, in a burst of rising sound the engines were started and in an intricately choreographed and synchronized ballet, each crew chief semaphored the control surface movements of his ship. It was impressive. Every Blue Angel practice was like this, treated as if a crowd of thousands was watching. This day the audience was smaller, consisting of the rest of the detachment, maybe thirty people, but their critical gaze promised no respite for any minor shortcomings.

On an unseen signal the chocks were pulled simultaneously and with a burst of engine power Commander Rud’s Hornet, identified by the stylized #1 on the verticals, pulled away, turning right onto the taxiway. Immediately #2 started rolling and then #3 and #4,the remaining pair of the diamond four, and lastly the two solo aircraft, #5 and #6, followed in pairs to the head of the runway.

Team leader Commander Rud starts to taxi with the next Hornet close behind. The Blue Angel aircraft, despite their glossy blue and gold paint, retain their operational capability, but have a smoke tank in place of the internal cannon.

At 0800 hours the diamond four were airborne, sending waves of sound crackling across the field and the surrounding agricultural countryside. A moment later the two solo aircraft lifted off the runway. This was a practice session for the whole team; pilots, groundcrew and the team narrator. While the narrator went into his patter over the public address system, the diamond formation thundered in from our left, changed formation into trail during a roll, then exited to our right.

The lone two-seater, Hornet #7 is tucked into the center of the formation during a six-ship pass in front of the crowd. On a cloudy day such as this the Blue Angels have to adapt their display to ensure that they stay clear of the clouds during the vertical maneuvers.

"And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, look to your right to see the 4-ship diamond of the Blue Angels running in."

For the next forty minutes the Blue Angels practiced their display over the field, sometimes with the six-ship formation, or alternating their passes between the diamond of four, then the solo aircraft. Maybe twenty individual maneuvers. Then they went through it again. The pressure was on with a vengeance as it was only a matter of days before the display season started. The performance looked good to me. But here in the blue skies over El Centro the team was honing their performance to perfection, practicing over and over again.

The Diamond Four pass in front of the crowd. The two wingman are concentrating on maintaining their position relative to Lead, while the slot pilot also keeps an eye out for the well-being of the other aircraft.

But I was not at El Centro just to watch the Blue Angels fly. On this occasion I had been invited to fly in one of the Hornets. It was a rare privilege. This was the first time a British aviation writer had flown with the Blue Angels.

Before the team practice had finished I was kitted out with a blue flight suit and gold helmet, then briefed on ejection seat operation. The building shook as the final bomb-burst maneuver sent one Hornet blasting straight overhead our roof.

The jets landed individually. Back on the ramp their arrival was treated as a display by all concerned. Once again the ground crew actions were synchronized with no visible signs of communication. In a synchronized sequence the pilots removed their helmets, donned their uniform caps, swung out of their cockpits and climbed down their respective ladders as one man.
I was waiting in the maintenance office, crammed into the tiny room with the six crew chiefs, when the pilots entered. There was tension in the air. If all went well, I would fly in the spare aircraft, #7, the lone two-seater, before the next full team performance scheduled for 1100 hours. A major snag in any of the team’s aircraft at this stage would require #7 to be substituted and my ride would be postponed.

To my relief, there were no major snags, although #4 –Donnie Cochran- complained of a failing radio to his female crew chief. This provoked a flurry of activity, with radio boxes scheduled to be rapidly replaced.
Meanwhile team leader Gil Rud was discussing with his #2 the effect of a low level wind shear during the display just completed. Apparently on one of the tricky cross-over maneuvers , with each aircraft assigned to a precise altitude, the wind difference between 200 feet and 600 feet altitude had been enough to affect the split-second timing, although not enough for the result to be apparent to an outsider.

I met the pilots in the four-ship diamond. Commander Gil Rud joined the Blue Angels in November 1985 and took the team through the transition from the A-4 to the vastly more sophisticated Hornet. His wingman in Hornet#2 was Captain Kevin Lauver, a Marine Pilot and a former Harrier (AV-8) driver, in his first year with the team. Left Wing was flown by Lieutenant commander Mark Ziegler, who previously flew Hornets with the East coast Hornet training squadron VFA-106. Slot man, in the #4 ship, was Donnie Cochran, a former F-14 pilot and veteran Blue Angel, who flew left wing in the last A-4 season before transitioning to the Hornet in 1987.

For this season Lieutenant Wayne Molnar was lead solo. Lieutenant Cliff Skelton was opposing solo. The team’s narrator, and my pilot in #7 for this sortie, would be Lieutenant Doug McClain.

Assignment to the Blue Angels was extremely competitive, although selection did not require previous Hornet experience. Pilots were normally assigned to the Blue Angels for two years, but when the team transitioned to the Hornet, after thirteen years with the A-4, some pilots stayed on to ease the transition. These pilots were now entering their third season.

Since joining the team in October and November, the new pilots had qualified on the Hornet and at this point in time now had about 200 hours each in the aircraft. Their training started simply enough, using two airplanes in formation at altitude. Progressively, altitudes were decreased and more aircraft brought into the formation. It was now March and two weeks before the first display of the season. By now about 150 flights had been completed. The display program was daunting, with a total of seventy-five displays scheduled between April and October. It was a grueling existence, with the team on the road for 300 days during the year.

The Blue Angels proudly boasted that they had never had to cancel a display through a mechanical failure. On the road they were largely self-sufficient and traveled with ”Fat Albert” a C-130 transport which carried the ground crew and support equipment. Six Hornets normally were assigned to the team, with one aircraft kept as a spare and plugged into a ground power Unit, Inertial Navigation Unit aligned and ready to go.
A runway alert van carried a back-up crew of specialist technicians, in the event of anything going wrong between the ramp and the runway. Nothing was left to chance. On the road, many individuals had multiple jobs. It was a professional and motivated atmosphere, one which combined professionalism with showmanship to form the high-visibility point of the Navy’s recruiting effort.

I met Doug McClain, a former A-6 pilot who flew the two-seat F/A-18B Hornet #7 in addition to his task of team narrator. We walked out to our Hornet for an 0930 engine start. Our Hornet #7 stood at the end of the flightline. This aircraft, painted in glossy dark blue and gold, looked considerably slicker than the regular matt-gray Hornet which I had flown at NAS Lemoore.
Despite the fancy paintwork, the Blue Angel aircraft retained their normal fit of avionics and their radar. The only major modification was that a smoke-generating system was now mounted in the nose, replacing the standard 20mm cannon and ammunition tanks.

Climbing the ladder pivoted out of the portside LEX I lowered myself into the rear cockpit, strapping into the Martin-Baker ejection seat. The first thing I noticed was that the harness was modified to provide greater restraint during violent maneuvers. Donning the gold helmet, trademark of the Blue Angels, I tightened my harness straps while Doug McClain climbed straight into the front seat, strapped in and started the APU.

This was another departure from the norm. Blue Angel pilots did not preflight their aircraft in the display environment. The crew chief for each aircraft bore the total responsibility for his machine. This trust was reflected by McClain’s actions.

There was one more feature unique to Blue Angel operations. All my previous jet flying had been done wearing a g-suit to combat the effects of the high-g maneuvers. But not today. Despite the high performance of the Hornet, the Blue Angel pilots did not wear g-suits. Consequently the pilots kept themselves in superb physical condition to counter the effects of the repeated high-g maneuvers. They lifted weights, ran for miles, all were superb athletes. Flying twice every morning during winter training , the pilots kept their afternoons free for physical conditioning. This should have been a warning for this largely desk-bound writer, who only flew aerobatics at weekends…

The Star Wars cockpit of the Hornet came to life as the APU brought the electrics on line. At exactly 0930 a calm female voice started incongruously to recite the various audio warnings in my earphones: “Left engine fire…APU fire…”
The digital fuel counter down by my left knee confirmed that we had 9,800lbs of JP-5 jet fuel on board. We mutually checked in on the intercom. No oxygen masks would be needed during our low-level mission, so we would use the lighter boom microphones.

As the right engine lit and whined up to sixty-three percent the three Multi-Function Displays in my cockpit came alive. I noticed that one display showed that we had a 7g limit on the aircraft at our fuel weight. Then the Built-in Test sequence for the flight controls started. Progress through the automatic test was shown on both left and right screens in concert with much thumping from behind me as the computer drove the various control surfaces automatically through their full ranges in a predetermined sequence. The flight controls checked out OK.
My displays changed as McClain selected a pre-takeoff checklist on the left hand display. Navigational information was on the center display. Even our total weight of 34,300lb was displayed.

“Hands In?” asked McClain, and I tucked my elbows in as the big bubble canopy sighed down, then slid forward and locked. A burst of power got us moving, with nosewheel steering helping us to negotiate the sharp turns on the taxiway.

At the head of the runway we lined up. McClain received permission from the tower for a Maximum Performance takeoff. Hearing this, warning bells started to go off in my head. I watched the twin throttles go forward for a power check. As the digital rpm gauges spun up to eighty-five per cent the nose dipped under the thrust of the two F404 engines. My displays changed again as McClain switched displays so that his HUD information was now repeated on my left screen.
I could hear my own breathing loud in my earphones. One last look around the cockpit. No warning lights and everything seemed in order. McClain released the brakes and pushed the throttles forward into the afterburner range. Our gauges showed both nozzles opening and then both burners lit.
“Blowers look OK,” said McClain laconically.
There was a rumble behind me and an inexorable acceleration pushed me hard against the seatback. My eyes were fixed on the rapidly changing and green glowing numbers of the HUD repeater as thirty-two thousand pounds of thrust made the Hornet accelerate down the runway like a drag racer.

We were barely a thousand feet down the runway when 130 knots appeared on the HUD and a slight backward movement on the stick got us airborne. As the gear retracted and the gear doors snapped shut, McClain held the Hornet down and the speed really started to wind up. As the end of the runway flashed beneath we were accelerating through three hundred and fifty knots.
“Here we go,” said McClain and pulled back on the stick. Braced in anticipation against the g-force, I nevertheless felt my cheeks sag, my helmet dramatically get heavier and my peripheral vision started to fade. As the grayness progressively reduced my vision I strained against the g-force, concentrating on the HUD to see 5g as we continued pulling to the vertical.

As the Hornet rocketed upwards, my normal vision returned as the g-force reduced.”Look over your shoulder,” said McClain. I twisted round and looked past the twin tails to see the plan view of the El Centro runways receding at a dizzying rate. Still climbing vertically, McClain rolled the Hornet ninety degrees to the right and pulled through to inverted. Passing through five thousand feet we came out of burner, rolled upright and then banked hard left to exit the pattern, heading for the desert range near Superstition Mountain where the practice aerobatic area was located.

Only then did I remember to breathe again.

Visibility was excellent from the rear seat. We were flying in a cloudless blue sky with mountains rimming the horizon. As the irrigated agricultural areas and the runways of El Centro receded behind the tails of the Hornet, I looked around. The blue expanse of the Salton Sea lay off to the north, while below was a lunar landscape of sandy desert and raw rock. Only moments later we were overhead our practice display area. There was little to set it apart from the miles of featureless and rugged desert surrounding us. Just an ersatz runway scraped out across the dirt while an orange-painted trailer acted as show center.

Just to warm up, Doug McClain did a couple of aileron rolls, then invited me to try the same maneuver. No sweat, I thought, I’d done this before in the Hornet. As my hand moved the stick a couple of inches to the right the horizon whirled. The Hornet slammed into the roll much faster than I had anticipated. Too late I remembered that this Hornet was not encumbered with a heavy centerline fuel tank to slow the roll rate. By the time I centralized the stick we had rotated through 360 degrees and were more or less upright again.
I licked my lips, gently held the stick between thumb and forefinger and tried a gentler approach. Aileron rolls through 360 degrees to left and right to start with. Then I progressed to four-point and eight-point rolls, rapidly becoming attuned to the sensitivity of the hydraulic flight control system. By now we were nearing the edge of our reserved airspace and I pulled into a 4g turn to reverse our course. Lack of a g-suit was bearable, now that I was flying the Hornet , rather than a passenger, although straining against the prolonged application of g-forces as we completed the course reversal was proving more fatiguing than I had anticipated.
“ I’ll show you how we normally fly a display,” said McClain.” We have a 35lb downspring that we hook into the pitch control system. This takes out any slop and gives more margin for trimming in inverted flight.”
As he connected the spring into the system, the stick tried to move forward and bury itself in the panel. So I had to pull back against that 35 lb force just to stay in level flight. It was not too bad at first as I tried more rolls and wingovers. But over the next few minutes, as I constantly maneuvered between 3 and 4 g just to keep within our proscribed airspace, the physical effort just to keep the Hornet turning was noticeably increased. McClain said drily, ”Blue Angel pilots develop strong right arms.”
As McClain had said, the inverted capability of the Hornet was now even better. When I rolled the Hornet upside down, if I released the back pressure the aircraft even tended to climb. All Blue Angel Hornets had been modified to have forty-five seconds of inverted capability. If fuel pressure dropped, a warning light would give a five-second warning of impending flameout. (This was small comfort to me. One solo pilot the previous year had been forced to eject when he cut the margin too close and both engines quit on him during practice over this exact spot.)
Not wishing to see if the light worked, I tried a couple of shorter inverted runs, just long enough to show me that the Hornet handled well while inverted

My modified harness included a lap belt, thigh restraints, shoulder straps and a chest strap. When all was snugged down correctly, even prolonged inverted flight was not uncomfortable.

This was fun.

Eventually I rolled back upright, then immediately had to bank into another steep turn as we approached the limits of our airspace, marked by another range of mountains. By this time it was becoming a chore to be constantly pulling back against the 35lb of nose-down trim in addition to the normal stick force of maybe twenty pounds required during each 4g course reversal. Despite my positioning the air vents to blow cold air on me, perspiration was running down into my eyes and my right arm was on fire. Finally McClain took pity on me, unhitched the spring and we reverted back to the standard pitch control system for some vertical maneuvers.

I started with a half Cuban eight, a half loop followed by a descending roll. Maintaining my correct line on the way up was complicated in the Hornet because the wings were way behind the cockpit, so my normal cues of lining up the wing with the horizon were absent. On the other hand, with no propeller scything the air out front there was no torque to pull the nose off line. Momentarily weightless, I floated over the top, pointed the nose downhill and rolled out as the desert started to expand towards us.

Next came a loop. Attempting to hit the recommended ten AoA on the HUD and pulling up into the sun, I found the pitch control was sensitive and overshot to 5g during the pull-up. But the Hornet was forgiving and again we floated over the top, whistling down the far side of the loop without fuss.

Once we were straight and level, McClain said,” I’ll show you a minimum radius loop, It’s an eye-watering experience in this aircraft.” He accelerated to four hundred and fifty knots as we approached show center. Anticipating what was coming I braced for the onset of the g-force. As the orange trailer slid below the nose, the stick came right back in my lap. Concentrating my vision on the g-meter I read 7.3 before the lights went out. I could still hear my loud breathing and feel the aircraft buffeting, but it was only as g reduced fractionally as we slowed inverted at the top of the loop that my vision suddenly returned, with the instrument panel appearing in monochrome for an instant, then flashing back into full color, just as McClain asked solicitously, ”Still with me?” I grunted out an affirmative, but then my vision went completely at 7g again in the pull-out, not returning completely until we pulled out into level flight. Eye-watering, you bet. The pitch capability of the Hornet was awesome, with the diameter of the loop around 3,500 feet.

McClain then handed the Hornet back to me and we accelerated back to 450 knots to set up for a maximum rate climb. “ We might go supersonic on this one,” said McClain conversationally. The area was clear and I rolled over the vertical and headed down towards the desert and show center. McClain took the controls as we descended and we really started motoring as the throttles went all the way forward. The GE F404s were impressive, showing no signs of distress during all of our drastic maneuvers.

We arrived at show center, pulling up into the vertical in a 5g pullup in buffet and slight wing rock. As the nose reached the zenith, momentarily we both saw the rate of climb peak on the display at 51,200 ft/min. The desert dropped rapidly away below us. Still in this exhilarating vertical climb, McClain rolled the aircraft through 360 degrees, then pulled to inverted at 15,000 feet to complete our aerobatic session. As we rolled upright I took the controls again, glad of the respite and to have a breather as we cruised leisurely over the southern end of the Salton Sea.

The high technology used in these modern fighters was a mixed blessing. One problem was that the Hornet, with its quiet cockpit and auto-trim capability of the computerized flight control system, lacked the speed cues taken for granted by previous generations of pilots. So the pilot had to rely on his instruments, particularly the HUD. I started letting down using the HUD, leveled at 7,500 feet, then reversed course towards El Centro while McClain demonstrated the radar by picking up targets of aircraft in the pattern. We stepped down to 3,500 feet and Lieutenant McClain took us back into the pattern for a 7.3g break from over 500 knots. That was another eye-watering experience.

We landed, taxied back and shut down. As soon as we had climbed out of the cockpit, Hornet #7 was refueled. An hour later, with the radios on #4 still sick, Hornet #7 became the slot aircraft for the second team display of the day. The four-ship diamond this time did a spectacular formation “burner loop” on takeoff before vanishing over the desert to the practice area.

With the high thrust-to-weight ratio of the Hornet, and the exceptional low-speed handling characteristics, new maneuvers were constantly being introduced into the display. Opposing solo Cliff Skelton was at this time perfecting a low-speed and heart-stopping ”tail walk” across the field…

The spectacular "Tail Walk" by the Opposing Solo has the Hornet passing in front of the crowd at a mere 120 knots and lots of noise from the F 404 engines.

I next saw the team in action a month later, when the Blue Angels gave a display at El Toro MCAS. The performance in front of the crowd was slick and precise. The Hornets looked lethal. It looked tremendously impressive. Unseen, but equally impressive from my point of view, was the insight into the many hours of practice that had preceded it.

Chapter 28: Biplane Reprise

The Stearman biplane had enough struts, wires and exposed engine parts to provoke a wave of nostalgia in onlookers and pilots alike. Once the engine was fired up and the wooden propeller was turning, the rumbling sound of the radial engine came echoing back between the lines of T-hangars on the field.

Chino, in Southern California, is another of those magic airports which exist, like Aladdin’s cave, for the delight of the soul. Among the hangars on any weekend one could find a range of P-51 Mustangs, a Swedish Draken supersonic jet fighter, a Korean-war vintage F-86 Sabre, and all kinds of strange and expensive aircraft. However the majority of pilots at Chino flew aircraft more suited to average wallets.

A clearing mist shrouded the perimeter of the field as a Stearman biplane was pulled out of the hangar. A silver N2S-5, this 220HP version was in complete contrast to the sophisticated jets I had been flying. Pre-flighting this biplane was necessarily a leisurely affair. The fabric-covered wings and empennage looked OK. All the wires and struts looked secure. The engine was the most complex item. One by one I checked the exposed plug leads on the radial engine. Then it was time to check the oil. Hangar lore said that if a radial engine was dripping oil, it was OK. The time to worry was when the ground underneath the engine was dry. As I looked at the state of the oil-spattered concrete under the Stearman we cwertainly seemed to have a sufficiency of oil. Nevertheless I climbed up on the port main wheel, unscrewed the oil filler cap and pulled out the dipstick. With nearly four gallons indicated, the oil level was sufficient. I jumped back down off the wheel.

As this was the first flight of the day I had to laboriously turn the wooden propeller through eighteen blades to clear the oil from the lower cylinders. Then I gave five strokes of the pump on the left hand cowling to prime the engine.

I swung back up onto the wing root walkway and carefully climbed into the cockpit, being careful of the fabric on the wings and fuselage sides while sliding into the leather-rimmed rear cockpit. Once my feet were on the floorboards, I wriggled down into the seat and carefully went through the ritual of donning the parachute and then the seat harness. It was a simple but roomy cockpit, designed to accept the bulkiest trainee pilot wearing heavy winter flight gear.

My hands and eyes worked together as I reacquainted myself with this simpler and older form of levitation. Checking from left to right around the cockpit, I set the trim lever down to the left of my seat to the takeoff position. On the power quadrant the throttle was closed and the mixture lever set to rich. The gust lock lever, further forward, was disengaged and the fuel was ON. Now I moved my attention to the instrument panel. Magnetos were OFF, altimeter and engine instruments were OK, with the familiar old E2B compass floating serenely behind its glass window. The radio on the right–hand cockpit wall was the only concession to the modern-day world of aviation. As I checked round the cockpit I was becoming aware of the unique smell of leather, dope and fabric unique to old aircraft. It was indeed a different age of flying.

One last look round to make sure we were clear to start, and I was ready to go. Flipping the master switch on, I cracked the throttle open a touch and pulled the stick back into my lap. With brakes set, I was clear to start. I turned the starter key and a rising wail assailed my ears as the inertia starter began to wind up. When the flywheel had reached maximum speed and was really screaming, I pulled the starting T-handle on the right side of the panel.

The big wooden prop kicked over. There was a coughing roar from the engine and a blast of blue-gray smoke belched out of the big exhaust collector stack on the right side of the engine.
As I checked that oil temperature and pressure were rising, the big radial engine settled down into a steady grumbling roar. It was time to check with the tower and then taxi out to the runway. We started between two lines of T-hangars and cautiously made our way out to the taxiway. Ground movement in this taildragger required lots of weaving to see past the nose, requiring much footwork on the brakes to maintain some semblance of visibility of the taxiway. I slowly made my way out to the main taxiway, slotting in between a P-51 Mustang and an SBD Dauntless from the Planes of Fame Museum further up the field.

I had a momentary feeling of déjà vue. It was an eerie sensation as I realized that momentarily there were only 1940s era military aircraft in sight. Perhaps I was in a time warp, the first step into the twilight zone…

Dragging myself back to the task in hand, I ruddered the Stearman into the run-up area, ran up the engine against the brakes and checked the magnetos and the carburetor heat. As usual I muttered imprecations against the designer who hid the carburetor heat control in the lower recesses of the fuselage; it required a good stretch to reach the carburetor heat lever, and it was easier from the front cockpit than the rear.

By the time I had finished, the Mustang was howling past on his takeoff. I switched to tower frequency and got clearance to takeoff, did a final check that the stick and rudder were free and moved their control surfaces correctly, released the brakes and rumbled out onto the runway.

Lining up as best I could because of the atrocious forward visibility from the back seat, and making sure I kept my feet off the brakes, I gently opened the throttle. The idling propeller vanished in a blur and a wave of sound erupted from the exhaust. The Stearman needed right rudder to keep straight. I eased the stick forward. Once the tail came up, visibility improved dramatically. There was a tremendous racket from the open exhaust. The wind wailing round the struts and flying wires added to the cacophony of sound as the Stearman decided to fly and lifted off the runway.

Once airborne, the Stearman climbed slowly into the sky, taking me back to an older era of aviation in the thirties and forties. This biplane trainer would be the aircraft that taught many of the pilots who would go on to fly the fighters and bombers of the US Army Air Corps and the Navy during the Second World War.

A glance at the airspeed indicator showed that we now had 70 mph, enough to start a climb. I throttled back slightly and slowly the Stearman climbed above the haze layer. It was crystal clear up here, with the San Gabriel mountains forming an impressive backdrop to the North as I lazily circled. It was summer , and the air was warm even with the torrent of air rushing past my cheeks. It was great fun. Navigating by following the roads and railroad tracks, I headed south to Lake Mathews, turning over the mirror-like lake.

Three dots in the distance slowly crept closer. Three of the T-34 Mentors from March Air Force Base, practicing their formation flying. The formation passed safely overhead and I continued on my slow perambulation round the lake. Another minute and it was a different situation. The

P-51D Mustang appeared over the lake, circling above me and obviously ready for some fast maneuvering.

I felt like a minnow, with a hungry shark circling overhead in the water. This was not the place to be. Eyes scanning the sky and craning my neck round to keep track of this speeding fighter, I decided to clear the area for a few minutes and head South in the direction of Lake Elsinore. It was well that I did, as the big fighter appeared high over my shoulder, inverted and in the middle of a beautiful slow roll. Ah well….
After a few minute’s sightseeing it was time to head back to Chino. As I banked round onto the downwind leg a black speck appeared in front of the biplane, one of the ubiquitous hawks that abound in this area. He refused to budge at the approach of this noisy interloper, but just continued circling in a thermal. Flight feathers outspread, the hawk ignored me, so I jinked to the right, evaded the hawk and came back to the correct heading.

My simple downwind checks complete, I frowned as a voice intruded into my small world. It was the tower, warning me that the Mustang was coming back into the pattern. I searched the sky to my right. There he was, speeding along, a silhouette of his plan view visible as he was already in the break for a right-hand pattern. The Stearman continued to rumble downwind.

The Mustang, now gear down, was lining up for a final approach to runway 21, which intersected runway 25 which I would be using. I came round onto final approach with the ASI needle quivering on seventy…don’t crowd the Mustang…I started gently S-turning, aiming to let the Mustang get well in front. I peered past the clattering engine and the exposed cylinders to see the Mustang crossing a mile ahead of me. Now that the runway was clear, I could bring the throttle back and start descending. That was enough. With the drag of those wires and struts, the Stearman would sink like a brick once the throttle came back.

Near the ground, flying the Stearman always started to get interesting. During the flare, the runway vanished behind the engine and peripheral vision came into play. Judging the instant to flare consistently was easier said than done. The Stearman could be a humbling machine and even very experienced pilots occasionally had trouble landing the beast.

As the speed dropped, it went quiet as the biplane floated over the runway. I brought the stick right back into my lap and the Stearman quit flying, with a squeak of tires. Working hard on the rudder pedals to keep the biplane heading straight, I kept the stick back to force the tail down and keep some directional control. I had to remind myself not to touch the brakes. A forceful application would flip the Stearman on its nose in the twinkling of an eye. The speed eventually dropped to walking pace, and I gently turned off the runway and taxied back to the hangar.
Flying the Stearman was an unabashed nostalgic return to the earlier age of flying. This open-cockpit aviating was a delight and completely different from the complex disciplines of jet flying.

Chapter 27: The Ultimate War Machine

Marine fighter pilot Rich Karwowski flew the author in this Hornet, callsign RAIDER 55, on a sortie which demonstrated both the fighter and attack capabilities of this supersonic aircraft.

High over the desert, the MiG 21 was a silver delta-winged shape framed in the softly glowing green symbols of my Head-Up Display. In the cockpit of the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet I armed a Sparrow missile. The display changed modes as the radar locked on. A SHOOT command flashed on the HUD and I pressed the trigger on the stick. The missile whooshed away, a smoke-trail arrowing out after the distant MiG. Five seconds later the MiG silently exploded in a ball of flame, and a trail of dark smoke arced towards the ground.

Turning back on course for my target, an industrial complex well into enemy territory, I made a single switch selection which brought up the attack displays. Through the HUD the target came into view, my weapons system already indicating the spot where the bombs would hit. I checked that the bombs were armed and ready to drop before I rolled into a steep dive attack from ten thousand feet. At three thousand feet the HUD commanded weapon release and I pulled out less than one thousand feet above the ground, accelerating away over the desert to Mach 0.9 to exit the target area at low level and high speed to evade the defenses. Behind me with unerring accuracy the bombs erupted in the center of the target.

Climbing up to altitude, I reselected my displays for the air-to-air mode. With MiGs in the area, I turned, the hunter looking for his prey.

High overhead there was a flash of sunlight on wings as another MiG rolled in to the attack. Catching the flash of light in my peripheral vision I pulled the Hornet into a hard turn to the left. Overshooting, the MiG shot across my bows.

Momentarily losing sight of the MiG, I pulled harder, the Hornet protesting and buffeting while I craned to look over my shoulder to reacquire the MiG. Pulling harder still, and my vision started dimming under the effect of the high g-forces as I hovered on the edge of a black-out. Using stick and rudders I rolled the Hornet quickly from side to side to find the deadly MiG. There was still no sight of the enemy fighter and with a growing dread I realized that he must be in the blind spot at my six o’clock. The hunter was now the hunted.

This thought was punctuated by the deafening and unearthly sound of cannon fire as the MiG blasted the Hornet and everything went black.

There was an innocuous click and the lights came back on.” Don’t feel so bad about it,” said Captain Bob Knoy, standing by the side of the simulator cockpit,” that’s about average for a non-fighter pilot the first time. We start off with an easy target for our pilots who have just started to fly the Hornet. As their Air combat maneuvering (ACM) training progresses, we introduce them to more difficult targets. Our computer is programmed with five levels of difficulty. The one that shot you down was a Level Five maneuvering target, the most difficult. Level Five is Top Gun standard.”

I climbed shakily out of the cockpit. We were perched on a platform inside one of the forty-foot diameter domes of the Weapons Tactics Trainer at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, in California. Although the computer had now frozen the action, it was still an extremely realistic scene projected on the inner face of the dome. The computer-derived Mig now flew formation with the Hornet against the blue sky, with the desert landscape, rimmed by a jagged mountain range, some two miles beneath us.

There was a lot to learn about the Hornet. The Hornet was a sophisticated dual-role supersonic fighter attack aircraft. In mastering the complex weapons systems of the F/A-18, the Navy and Marine pilots underwent comprehensive combat training in this simulator without the necessity of actual flight operations and the expenditure of fuel and the very expensive missiles. ACM could also be practiced without risk to aircraft or pilot.

Giving the pilot actual experience of the mission or task in the simulator, before he had to do it in the air, proved a tremendous advantage. Marine pilots who had not flown the Hornet for fourteen days were required to fly the simulator before they flew the aircraft again. Hornet pilot could operate all the necessary systems from switches and buttons on the stick and throttles. This awesome capability required a manual dexterity which had been described as more appropriate to a clarinet player than to a fighter jock. There was no disputing that the training was intensive.

Talking to the Marine Hornet pilots, I asked them how they liked the aircraft. They just grinned. The nearest I got to an answer was from one crew-cut Marine pilot who said firmly,” No one has traded a Hornet in yet.”
But you could see it in their eyes. To a man, they all had Hornet fever.

This attitude was understandable. Pilots jealously defend their favorite aircraft. I was no different in that respect. At weekends for fun I was flying a Pitts Special. This pugnacious, cocky biplane had a snarling 260HP engine which would try to swing the aircraft off the runway at the slightest provocation. The Pitts had character. It sat on the ramp, barrel-chested and resplendent in its red,white and blue paint scheme, daring you to fly it. But once in the air it was a magical machine. The controls were feather-light, so sensitive that a thought was enough to send you twisting and turning through space. The Pitts had a special place in my affections.
I had flown a variety of aircraft, ranging from seaplanes to jets, from vintage biplanes to warbirds. But there was one aircraft I dearly wanted to fly. It was the hottest ship in the US inventory - the F/A-18 Hornet.

One day, the phone rang. It was the Pentagon.”Would you like to fly a Hornet?”
Would a fish like to swim?
This was the first time a non-military British pilot had been given the opportunity to fly the Hornet.

In order to experience the Hornet at first hand, I was invited by the Department of the Navy to visit NAS Lemoore, near Fresno. Strike Fighter Squadron 125, the west coast training squadron for Hornets, was a unique organization, operating under a dual command structure with personnel split between Navy and Marines. The duality was complete. The aircraft had NAVY stenciled on the right side of the fuselage, MARINES on the left.

There was one snag. Before being permitted near this aircraft, I was put through a baptism of fire worthy of the Marquis de Sade. Try swimming a couple of lengths of an Olympic-sized pool wearing forty pounds of waterlogged flight gear. My instructor had forbidden me to inflate my life preserver. As my flight boots filled with water and my life flashed before my eyes, I began to wonder why I had volunteered.

Next on the list was a trip in the high-altitude chamber. A rubber glove, tied at the wrist, hung on a string from the ceiling of the chamber. At sea level the glove was flaccid. Breathing through an oxygen mask I sat on a bench in the chamber with other pilots on their refresher training. As air was pumped out, the atmosphere in the chamber became as thin as the air found at the summit of Mount Everest. The air airside the glove had expanded and the glove was now bulging. Our instructor, evilly twirling his mustache, then instructed us to “Take off your masks.” This was to expose us to the various effects of hypoxia, which rapidly degraded our abilities for constructive thinking, and caused various symptoms in different individuals. My subsequent observation that our instructor also had horns and a tail was no doubt a result of the hallucinations common to victims of hypoxia.

To dispel any doubts that this was a serious business, I was then given a ride on an ejection-seat rig which blasted me and the seat upwards on a rail, out of a dummy fuselage. Rubbing an aching neck, I consoled myself with the thought that those who happened to survive this course of refined torture were actually allowed to fly in the Hornet.

Kitted out in flight suit, life preserver and g-suit, I waddled out to the ramp at NAS Lemoore early on a hot summer morning to make my first acquaintance with the Hornet. My pilot was Captain Rich “Ski” Karwowski, USMC , who it turned out as we briefed before the flight, also flew a Pitts Special in his off-duty life.

The Lemoore ramp was crowded with single-seat and two-seat Hornets and I was struck by the lack of ground equipment round each aircraft. Engine start was accomplished by an Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) built into each Hornet, thereby eliminating the clutter of power generating equipment necessary to launch previous generations of tactical jets. A pair of ground crew personnel was sufficient to launch each F/A-18.

The Hornet was a wicked looking aircraft, with the leading edge extensions giving a sinister hooded look to the aircraft when seen from head-on. The lethal M-61 Vulcan cannon was mounted just in front of the cockpit. While Captain Karwowski pre-flighted our F/A-18B, I climbed up the integral ladder on the port side, walked back along the portside leading edge extension and climbed down into the rear cockpit. Our female crew chief assisted me in strapping into the Martin-Baker ejection seat. My four-point torso harness was connected, then the leg restraints to the seat, g-suit hose connection, and lastly the oxygen and intercom connections. Conscious that I was sitting on a rocket-powered ejection seat which would blast me out of the aircraft in case of serious trouble, I made sure that my kneepad was well clear of the actuating handle at the front of the seat.

I reviewed my notes from the briefing. We were about to embark on a two-ship training mission. Our callsign was RAIDER 55, while RAIDER 58 was a single-seat F/A-18 flown by Captain Ron “Buzz” Berlie, Canadian Armed Forces, on an exchange posting with the US Navy. We would take off as a pair, fly in formation to our practice airspace, and then split to complete our individual tasks before rejoining and heading back to base.

Once strapped in, I took stock of the spacious rear cockpit. The rear instrument panel was equipped with three multi-function displays (MFDs) The HUD display seen by the front-seat pilot was repeated on my left MFD, with a navigational display on my center MFD and a pre-start checklist on the right hand display.

Once Captain Karwowski was aboard, the ladder was folded away into the underside of the LEX and the left engine was started. The digital engine instruments wound up and a pre-flight controls menu appeared on my right-hand MFD. Once the second engine was running, the aircraft went through an automatic flight controls test sequence, with much thumping and shaking from the control surfaces. Spreading our hands outside the canopy rails, away from all the switches, we waited while our crew chief gave a final check of the underside of our aircraft. RAIDER 58 checked in on the radio, and once we were given the all-clear from our crew chief, RAIDER 58 pulled out of his parking slot and taxied across in front of us. We taxied out, following RAIDER 58 to the head of the 13,500 foot runway.
Pre-takeoff checks complete, canopy down and locked, we pulled close to RAIDER 58 on his right hand side. Buzz would be leading us for a military power takeoff as a pair. As our engines spooled up, Karwowski held us on the brakes, then at a nod of the helmet from the other cockpit, brakes were released and the two Hornets accelerated down the runway together . At 145 knots we rotated, lifted off and the ungainly gear folded away. We climbed in formation, banking eastwards towards the spine of the Sierra Nevada.

En route to our working area, we are wingman to RAIDER 58, a single-seat Hornet flown by Captain Buzz Berlie, a Canadian pilot on an exchange posting with the U.S. Navy

We widened out into battle formation and Rich gave me control of the Hornet. Let me digress a bit here. In battle formation, the idea is to keep far enough apart to cover the other pilot’s six o’clock to make sure no bandits can bounce him. So we were a few hundred feet apart as I settled down and got used to the highly sensitive hydraulically powered flight controls of the Hornet. It was almost as sensitive as the Pitts. But there the similarity ended. Instead of 260HP and an 1600lb aircraft, our Hornet was loaded to the gills with internal fuel and an external tank. It weighed in currently at around 34,000lb The twin throttles I was holding with my left hand controlled a pair of general Electric F 404 turbofans whose maximum thrust translated to something over fifty thousand horsepower in afterburner when the aircraft was traveling at supersonic speed. We were not using all that power by any means, but I rapidly realized that the inertias and throttle response were a little different from those I was used to. They were certainly not the same as the average light aircraft. After a few exploratory curves and switchbacks I managed to keep us in the same piece of sky as RAIDER 58.

We neared the spectacular backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains, still snow-covered on this summer day despite the 100F heat back at Lemoore. It was an awesome view on this cloudless day and the visibility from the rear seat of the Hornet was outstanding under the bubble canopy. I handed control back to Rich and looked down into the cockpit to check my oxygen.
I looked up, startled, when a shadow fell across my cockpit.
There’s formation flying, and there’s formation flying. This was formation flying.
This was the way the Blue Angels performed. This was regular military close formation flying. At this point the other Hornet was seemingly welded just off our left side with the wingtip and its Sidewinder missile rail a couple of feet above our cockpit, so close that I could count the rivets in the missile rail which was almost near enough to touch.
Our two Hornets zipped around the snow-covered summit of Mount Whitney while in the background a female voice warned, “Altitude, altitude” as the mountain ridges rose towards us. This audio warning was one piece of the Star Wars gadgetry in the Hornet. Driven by the radar altimeter, this device warned of rising ground beneath us.

RAIDER 58 leads our two-ship formation of Hornets over the Sierra Nevada mountains near Mount Whitney.

Now RAIDER 58 broke hard left and floated off into the distance to complete his own airwork, while we headed east for Panamint Valley, a huge dry lakebed to the east of the Sierra Nevada, rimmed by saw-toothed mountains.

Rich handed the Hornet controls back to me and we were cleared by ATC to climb to 30,000 feet. I climbed initially at a constant airspeed, showing a 6,000ft/min climb on the HUD, then switched to a Mach number profile.

Once at altitude, I leveled out to assess the low speed handling. Rich brought up the controls display on the right hand MFD in both cockpit. I retarded both throttles. As the Hornet slowed, the flaps were in AUTO mode and the display showed the leading edge flaps inching down, while the trailing edge flaps remained up. Unlocking my shoulder harness and twisting round to see behind me, I could see the leading edge flaps now fully down on the wing some feet behind me.
As I monitored the HUD repeater indications, I was steadily bringing the power up as the drag increased. Angle of attack was increasing. As speed dropped through 150 knots we entered buffet which got progressively heavier until the Sidewinder rails at our wingtips were visibly shaking. I continued slowing the Hornet to 120 knots. This gave an impressive thirty degree nose up pitch angle. Both throttles were now forward to Military Power and yet we were gradually descending because the induced drag was so high.
At this point Rich said,” See what lateral control is like…without using rudder”
Did I hear correctly? In over twenty years of flying I had learned, and then in turn taught others that in slow flight you always use the rudder. Never use aileron near the stall, lest you provoke a stall on one wing and roll yourself inverted.
“Without using rudder?”
“Sure”
I gingerly moved the stick to the left. The left wing went smoothly down to forty-five degrees, then stopped as I centralized the stick. We were still flying, although the ride was uncomfortable, like riding an unsprung cart over a washboard road. I moved the stick to the right. Obediently the Hornet reversed its bank and we turned to the right.

I was in awe. Any other aircraft from an earlier generation of tactical jets would have been spinning wildly by now. “Look at your controls display” Rich said. I looked down at the controls display and remembered from our briefing. The Hornet of course had a fly-by-wire digital flight control system. Built into this was a spin protection system. At low speeds any aileron input was automatically washed out. As the display now showed, as I rolled back to the left again, the horizontal stabilators, moving differentially, the leading edge flaps and the vertical rudders were all moving to roll the aircraft, while the ailerons remained at neutral. Turning round to look at the wing, I watched all the surfaces move in concert as I moved the stick. It was a humbling experience to realize that the computers could fly better than any human pilot under this flight condition.

Captain Karwowski took control and we descended to 19,000 feet to demonstrate some Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM). First came a Horizontal Scissors, to force an opponent to overshoot. Starting from 150 knots in afterburner, Rich pulled the nose up to sixty degrees, we came out of burner and the stick went fully forward as the throttles slammed back to flight idle. A negative alpha warning tone sounded in my headset. My feet tried to float off the rudder pedals as we arced over the top at no more than ninety knots.

In contrast to earlier aircraft the Hornet had no restrictions on throttle movement. The rugged F404s responded well to this harsh treatment. By now our sudden stop in mid-air would have caused our imaginary opponent to overshoot in front of us.

At 140 knots we commenced a Split-S, lighting afterburners and rolling inverted, pulling full aft stick to pull back into level flight at the same speed but a mere couple of thousand feet lower and on a reciprocal heading. Not many opponents could follow that.
Next we performed a high-g evasive maneuver. With an imaginary bogie at our seven o’clock, both afterburners were lit and we snapped into a steep left turn, rapidly pulling to 6.6g (the limit allowed by the flight computer for our present weight to prevent overstressing the aircraft) This was the first move in an out-of plane maneuver to get us away from the danger area in front of the bandit’s nose. The pitch rate was impressive. My g-suit inflated cruelly, and I now weighed over half a ton. It felt as if I had been jumped on by an elephant. Immediate application of bottom rudder started our nose slicing down towards the lakebed floor, and then a continuing pull brought our nose up above the horizon, to a point where our imaginary target would still be floundering along, wondering where we had gone. This ability of the Hornet to swap ends rapidly was disconcerting to any adversary and had caused embarrassment on a number of occasions when other types of aircraft had attempted ACM against Hornets for the first time.
In the space of about five grueling minutes we covered the complete gamut of Air Combat Maneuvering between ninety knots and 400 knots.

In this apparently limitless blue bowl above the desert, there was a lot of jet traffic. Now a pair of targets appeared on the scope and we locked onto them with our APG-65 Radar. As they came closer, I got a visual on a pair of smoke trails, then the pair of grey Marine F-4 Phantoms as they slid across the jagged mountain backdrop below. We would have splashed them both.
So far I had seen the F/A-18 Hornet in its F(Fighter) role. How about the A (Attack)?
We dropped down towards the edge of Panamint Valley, skirting the outer rim of the mountains surrounding the valley. Again that “Altitude...Altitude” warning sounded in our ears. Rich switched the radar to the ground mapping mode and the radar began to paint the rising ground in front of us. A notch in the lunar landscape in front of us was Rainbow Canyon, a sinuous sheer-sided valley which ran down to the lakebed. We entered the canyon, descending below the rim for maximum cover. At 400 knots and pulling 3g round each convolution of the river we whistled down the canyon. The ride inside the Hornet was impressively quiet and smooth. In mere seconds we descended the length of the canyon, emerging 1,000 feet above the dry lakebed into Panamint Valley itself, maintaining altitude by radar altimeter. We were now loitering at 200 knots and looking for trouble, multi-mode radar searching for targets on the ground.
Throttles now went forward to the Military Power detent and we accelerated effortlessly to 300 knots before going into afterburner. We continued to accelerate, with a growing whine from the canopy above 500 knots. My digital airspeed flickered up to 600 knots, the cockpit still uncannily quiet as the desert blurred past outside at over a thousand feet a second.
To prevent us going supersonic and decimating the jackrabbit population with our shock wave, Rich pulled the nose up and, sitting on the twin arrows of flame crackling from our jetpipes, we soared up and over into a giant loop, coming back to Military Power and topping out inverted at 24,000 feet.
We were still fat with fuel, with ten minutes before we were due to rendezvous with RAIDER 58 for the homeward flight. Rich rolled us out from inverted, raised his gloved hands from the stick and throttles and said, “OK, it’s your airplane.”
What do you do when you are given control of eighteen million dollars worth of fighting machine? First of all you gingerly take hold of the button-encrusted stick with your right hand. Secondly your left hand wraps around the pair of hefty throttles. Thirdly, I must admit, under your oxygen mask, you start grinning. Walter Mitty never had it so good.
So here I was, sitting under a bubble canopy under a cloudless deep blue sky, while on my instrument panel three green displays give a good imitation of a Star Wars control room whilst monitoring our progress. The left hand display showed as a repeater of the pilot’s HUD display, with airspeed, altitude and g, together with a few other flight parameters. On the right hand scope our radar was busy painting airborne targets, in anticipation of meeting up with RAIDER 58. On the central MFD the navigation display pinpointed our position with uncanny accuracy over Panamint Valley. I confirmed this by looking westwards to see the Sierra Nevada stretching majestically to the horizon off our left wing as we headed north. With the shoulder harness unlocked I could turn round and see the twin verticals some feet behind me. The sky was empty.
I hesitated, then asked, “Anything I shouldn’t do?”
Older jets were hedged around with airspeed and g-force limitations. Rich shrugged, then shook his helmet.”Just fly it like a Pitts”
The statement was not as casual as it appeared. The Hornet’s computer-driven flight controls included a sophisticated g-limiting system which would back off on the controls if an over-zealous pilot tried to pull round a corner too hard. This could otherwise bend the airplane. Even so, Hornet pilots were very aware of blacking themselves out as the aircraft could then take more gs than the pilots.
I started with a few basic aerobatic maneuvers. An Immelmann first, initiated from 350 knots. I pushed both throttles forward through the detent at Military Power and through into full afterburner. There was a dull rumble from somewhere behind me and a strong shove in my back as the afterburners lit. I hauled the stick back, intending to keep the pull-up in the loop to 4g, but the Hornet was so responsive that I overdid it, with the g-meter reading an accusing 5.4g on the display. My g-suit inflated hard, squeezing my thighs and abdomen. Floating over the top of the loop, as the horizon slid down under the nose I pushed forward until we were in level flight, then moved the stick sideways, rolling out from inverted to complete the Immelmann turn.
The controls were certainly light and precise.
Rich said,” Want to try a split S?”
For the Split S I slowed to 140 knots, heading south, then selected full afterburner and rolled inverted, pulling the stick full aft to get the nose pitching down at this low speed. The HUD repeater display showed me that we were now snow-ploughing through the air, forcing the wing through the air at thirty-five degrees to the relative airflow even though the nose was pointing straight down towards the salt flats of Panamint Valley. Our lift was increased by the vortices being produced by the Leading Edge Extensions. As we fell like a rock towards the desert the engine’s thrust balanced the tremendous drag. An audio warning beeped in my ears…don’t pull any harder. The whole aircraft was buffeting in protest and the speed remained uncannily stabilized at 140 knots.

Unbelievably, to one used to previous generation jets which used miles of airspace to carry out a maneuver, as we hammered round into level flight, heading north again, our Hornet was only 2,000 feet lower than when we started. It was an awesome display of the capability of the aircraft. In a classic dogfight even the Red Baron would have had trouble following that maneuver. Coming out of afterburner, we continued accelerating to 400 knots in an uncannily quiet cockpit, with only the green digits on the HUD confirming the increasing speed.
I pushed the stick a couple of inches over to the left and playfully rolled the Sierras around us. Once we were level again I tried a full deflection roll, banging the stick over until it hit my knee. The Hornet zipped round with alacrity at over 200 degrees/second. Control was precise and instantaneous. As I centered the stick we flipped back into level flight. Rich’s helmet vanished behind his seat headrest, and reappeared on the other side. In this aircraft the roll rate was limited by the neck-snapping acceleration on the unfortunate crew.

I tried wingovers and reversals between 300 and 150 knots. These were just plain fun as we wheeled and soared above the mountains. It was only when the g-suit inflated that I realized that I was pulling nearly 4g during this effortless series of maneuvers. A single-handed pull at 300 knots gave an effortless 6g. Low-speed handling was remarkable. Behavior was viceless and the handling was more appropriate to a light aircraft like the Pitts than a heavy tactical jet.
All too soon it was time to go back to work.
We locked up the radar on a head-on target at twenty-eight miles. A minute or so later I picked up the target visually as it flashed down our right hand side some two thousand feet below. It was a Hornet. Gray-painted and with smokeless engines, the Hornet was much more difficult to acquire visually than the F-4s.

Then our radar picked up RAIDER 58. I was flying at 20,000 feet heading northwest over the Sierras when RAIDER 58 closed with us and slid into close formation on our right side. Engaging the ALTITUDE HOLD mode of the autopilot lowered my workload as I tried the various radar modes. The radar controls on the throttle made it simple to vary the search elevation of the radar and to move the cursor on the screen. As I switched from air-to-air mode to air-to- ground mode, the ground –mapping capability of the APG-65 radar built up a picture of Fresno. Individual buildings and roads could be seen. I could zoom and freeze the radar picture at will. It was far superior to earlier generations of radar.
Meanwhile our navigation system was indicating the direction for us to steer to head back to base at Lemoore. We let down with RAIDER 58 on our wing for an overhead break over the field for our individual landings.

Following normal Navy practice, all landings at Lemoore, for Hornets and A-7s, were done as simulated carrier landings. Rich Karwowski followed the meatball of the mirror landing sight down to a purposely firm touchdown on the carrier deck painted on the runway before spooling up the engines to get us airborne again. We cleaned up and climbed to the downwind leg. Once established on downwind, Rich went momentarily to full afterburner as a graphic demonstration of the amazing acceleration at light weight. My helmet slammed back against the headrest as we accelerated like a dragster up to three hundred and fifty knots. Before we rocketed out of state he cut afterburner, extended the airbrake, then flaps and gear to bring the Hornet round on final approach. Rock steady on approach we touched down for a short landing with anti-skid brake system cycling, speed brake still raised, stick back to fully deflect the stabilators to maximize aerodynamic braking.

The Hornet was typical of the latest generation of all-weather attack aircraft, but additionally was a hell of a fighter, often flying from the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. The Hornet’s flying qualities were exceptional, the capability of the weapons system was awesome. It was the ultimate war machine.

An F-18B Hornet on the crowded ramp at NAS Lemoore. Wings folded to save space on the cramped carrier deck, the F-18B is still able to carry a full load of stores and external tanks. The second seat replaces one fuel cell, but the two-seat Hornet retains all the warfighting abilities of the single-seat aircraft.

Chapter 26: Electric Jet

The versatility of the F-16 is shown by this F-16D of the Edwards Test fleet. The mission flown by the author was in an F-16B with a clean aircraft carrying only Sidewinders on the wingtips. 87-0392 has two external tanks, HARM, AMRAAM and Sidewinder missiles, and a targeting pod on the inlet. Lockheed Martin

At 40,000 feet the sky was impossibly blue as our F-16B headed south over the Mojave Desert. The view from under the bubble canopy was awesome. We were arrowing across the sky, a snow-white condensation trail marking our track across the heavens. Off to our right the snow-capped Sierra Nevada marked the backbone of California. In front lay the expanse of the Mojave Desert, backed by the San Gabriel mountains. Nearer to hand, dotted about the desert, lay the dry lakebeds used as emergency landing sites back in the rocket flying days of the X-research craft.

Close below under our nose were Cuddeback and Harper Dry Lakes. Further away lay the expanses of Rosamond and Rogers Dry Lakes, the latter bordered by the cluster of tiny dots of the huge hangars at Edwards AFB, where we had taken off less than an hour previously.

In the front seat of the diminutive jet fighter was John Fergione, Chief of Flight Operations at Edwards AFB for Lockheed Martin, builders of the F-16. Now, with the throttle eased forward to the Military Power detent, we were accelerating. It was still quiet in the cockpit and uncannily smooth. Cabin altitude was 15,000 feet and the doll’s eye of my oxygen flow indicator blinked rhythmically in time with my breathing. The ACES II ejection seat in the F-16 was reclined thirty degrees. Primarily designed that way to increase the g-tolerance of the pilot, the result was a very relaxing posture, unlike more upright seats in other jets I had flown.

At Mach .86 there was a barely perceptible shudder as the airflow started to go supersonic over our wings. We watched our Machmeters creep upwards. At Mach .98 my Machmeter needle hesitated as the airflow piling up in front of the aircraft increased the drag. Fergione eased the nose down a fraction. We continued to watch the instruments intently. At 39,000 feet and Mach .95 the altimeter needle quivered, swung crazily and settled down again as the shockwave eased back over the static ports. Simultaneously the Machmeter swung up to Mach 1.05. It was an event marked only by its lack of drama.

We were supersonic, still in dry power, and the F-16 was not even breathing hard. If the throttle was fully forward, at the full afterburner position, the F-16 could zip out to better than Mach 2.0 but naturally would gulp fuel at a horrendous rate in the process of doing so.

I could not help thinking that it was only a few decades ago that Chuck Yeager had gone supersonic for the first time in the Bell X-1 in this very same patch of sky. In those days it needed a B-29 mother ship, a gaggle of chase planes, rocket power and a big step into the unknown to accomplish supersonic flight. We had just done it in a routine manner.

We continued descending, accelerating to Mach 1.2 as we neared the lower edge of our reserved airspace. Fergione throttled back into subsonic flight for me to fly a few maneuvers. By now our double boom from the shockwaves was heading off towards Edwards to rattle the windows and the hangar doors, just as similar sonic booms had cracked across the field periodically before we took off.

Another assignment had sent me on this visit to the F-16 Combined Test Force at Edwards. Operated, as the title implied, by a mix of USAF and contractor personnel, the CTF had given me an opportunity to fly on a mission which would take us through the low-level route north of Edwards before climbing up to the supersonic corridor for a brief look at supersonic flight. Then I would be given an opportunity to look at the handling of the F-16. This was the newest fighter operated by the US Air Force. It was a rare privilege to fly this fighter.

After I was fitted out with flight gear in the flight equipment section, (with the technician taking great care in lacing and tweaking the g-suit to fit my legs and lower body like the proverbial glove, and selecting and testing my oxygen mask and helmet) we had walked out to our gray-painted F-16B parked on the bustling flightline outside the CTF. The ramp was crowded with single-and two-seat F-16s. Some F-16s were tasked with testing of LANTIRN pods on low-level night missions. Another F-16, spin chute cantilevered out on a tubular framework behind the tail, was busy with high angle-of-attack investigations. Others were scheduled for performance testing with the new F-110 engine.

Our callsign today would be ZOOM 76. While John Fergione pre-flighted the ship I climbed the ladder and slid into the rear cockpit. Pushing my feet forward in the tunnels to the rudder pedals, I connected up the sidestraps, lap strap and chest strap linking me to the ACES II ejection seat. Then I carefully checked that the vitally important g-suit was correctly plugged in. As I donned my helmet and mask, Fergione climbed into the front seat. Leaning forward I adjusted my rudder pedals and got ready for business.

The canopy, a single-piece made of a three-quarter inch thick monolithic polycarbonate transparency, for bird strike resistance, sighed down and locked. On the F-16 the conventional windscreen and canopy were combined, eliminating the usual canopy bow which obstructed the forward view on earlier fighters. The resulting visibility was superb. There was a price to pay. Fergione had briefed that if we had to eject, I would go first, and my ejection would start a sequence which would eject the canopy, myself, then Fergione, in that order. I resolved not to eject unless things really looked serious.

The canopy rails were low down to either side, further improving the view. The hefty throttle, with multiple switches, was on the left hand cockpit wall, while the sidestick was on the right hand wall.

Our Jet Fuel Starter (JFS) whistled into life. At twenty-five percent rpm the engine lit up with a rumble, with the generator coming on line a few seconds later. The Inertial Navigation System (INS) was aligning as we checked our caution lights around both cockpits. The INS held up to ten waypoints, gave our present position, presented steering information on the Head Up Display (HUD) and also calculated the wind speed and direction. It was certainly better than following railroad tracks.

The F-16 was an unstable fly-by-wire aircraft, known as the Electric Jet to its pilots. Consequently an exhaustive flight controls automatic checkout was necessary before we could fly. We were still waiting for the INS to align when over the radio Edwards Tower cleared ZOOM 76 for the AMBER route for the low-level portion of our mission.

In the rear cockpit I had in addition to the normal flight instruments and CRT incorporating a moving map display, a HUD repeater which could be switched to show the radar display. This was currently showing a green-tinted video picture of the outside world, namely the hangar and the groundcrew walking on the ramp. I fiddled with the controls of this display. By the time I had adjusted the brightness to my liking, the INS platform was aligned and we were ready to go.

We taxied out and I checked my g-suit by pushing a button at the rear of the left hand console. The suit inflated, putting my legs and abdomen in a vice-like grip until I released the button. There was no doubt that the suit was working. With the tremendous agility of this fighter, F-16 pilots could lose consciousness if the g-suit became disconnected during hard maneuvers and the g-suit was an essential part of keeping the pilot away from the deadly occurrence of g-LOC (g-Induced loss of consciousness.)

Our groundcrew had by now piled into a van and had followed us out to the head of the runway, where they scurried about under the craft, checking the security of panels and giving us a final visual check. With a final thumbs up from the crew chief, we contacted Edwards Tower and ZOOM 76 was cleared onto the runway for takeoff. We armed our seats. I reminded myself of the numbers that Fergione had quoted at the briefing. We were loaded with just over 5,000lbs of fuel. This put our takeoff weight at around 23,000lb. Our F-100 engine provided 25,000lbs of thrust, enough to launch us vertically. This promised to be a spectacular takeoff.

Brakes could not hold the F-16 above eighty per cent rpm because the anti-skid system would automatically release. So Fergione set the throttle to eighty per cent and as the engine wound up he released the brakes. We started accelerating down the runway and as he advanced the throttle to military power, the rpm swung up to 100 per cent.
“We have five stages of burner. You can feel them all,” Fergione said conversationally, advancing the throttle smoothly into the afterburner range. “The last one is the biggest.”
As we accelerated, my helmet was forced back against the headrest and there was a jolt as each of the five stages of afterburner lit-up in sequence:
…three
…four
…five
There was no mistaking that last one.

With all that thrust we were by now accelerating like an arrow from a bow. Before we had reached the first thousand-foot marker board at the side of the runway we were rotating at 120 knots, with the wheels off the ground at 135 knots. The gear retracted and by the end of the 15,000 ft runway the airspeed was climbing through 450 knots. It was a breathtaking start to the flight.

We came out of afterburner and climbed towards twenty thousand feet at 450 knots. I took control of the aircraft and started getting used to the sidestick control of the F-16. Some time earlier I had flown the variable-stability Learjet rigged to simulate an early F-16 flight control system. That system had been actuated by force sensors alone. With no feedback from any motion of the stick, I had found it difficult to fly precisely. Other pilots had reported the same experience. But now, in the real F-16 the sidestick on the right hand console gave me about a quarter of an inch of movement, although primarily still a force-sensing device. It was surprisingly natural. An armrest supported my right forearm. Use of a sidestick certainly freed up a lot of panel space in front of the pilot. The cockpit was small but adequate, almost like the Grob sailplane, although price and performance of this aircraft were multiplied many times over that of the Grob.

I cautiously tried out gentle turns to left and right, getting used to the sensitive flight controls, then leveled off at twenty thousand feet as we headed north-west over Mojave and Tehachapi, into the mountains. Now it was time to descend, and Fergione took control and we spiraled down in a 4g turn, my g-suit squeezing, to enter the south end of the Amber low level route. At 420 knots we headed north, our clear visors down on our helmets to guard against possible bird strikes. Initially we headed north over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada which rose to 8,000 feet ahead of us.

The ride was smooth and the ground streamed past below. Lake Isabella slid past to our right. On the HUD Repeater I was intently watching my display. A pitch ladder occupied center screen, with speed presented on the left hand side. Our heading of 350 degrees was lower on the display with altitude indicated on the right. A circular symbol on the HUD showed the position of our next waypoint. Most importantly, at the moment, the velocity vector symbol, showing our projected flight path, was perched just over the next saw-toothed ridge.

As we flew north the wooded ridges in turn flashed past just underneath us. We reached our first waypoint, a cluster of radio towers on a ridge. The waypoint symbol on the display slid off to the right, pointing to the next waypoint. Our right wing went down and we banked hard to the right until the symbol centered again in the HUD. The ride was still smooth and we were now up to 440 knots. As we headed north the ground was rising. Signs of civilization were restricted to the occasional dirt road. Patches of snow were visible beneath the trees. The ridges, running east to west , became steeper and more and more spectacular as we hurdled over each one.

Waypoint 2 was a Forestry Service observation post. I looked down to see a lonely cabin located on a beetling crag, reached by a tortuous path etched across the face of the bluff.
Looking forward again I became aware of the snow-covered bulk of Mount Whitney off to our left. The mountains were rugged up here in the Sierras. We were heading north-east when turbulence started to buffet the plane. It was a washboard type of roughness, not the usual isolated jolts of convective heating. It felt as if the wind was rising. We climbed a few hundred feet but found no relief from the hard-edged jolting.

Between two ridges off to our right, Owens Lake slid into view. Stained red and white by the minerals in the water, it had the look of a surrealistic painting. The turbulence was getting worse and I was alternately jolted hard against my straps, and then back into the seat. It was difficult to breathe under these conditions.

Our flight planned path now led us down across the Owens Valley itself, with the sheer wall of mountains looming off our left wingtip. We could see that the weather was deteriorating to the north where a series of lenticular clouds barred the valley ahead of us. This celestial staircase climbed to maybe thirty thousand feet today and was the fabled Sierra Wave which was so useful for sailplanes to reach those extreme altitudes. The rotor system associated with the mountain lee waves was the cause of the turbulence that was battering us today. In between jolts I could not help thinking ” If only I was in a sailplane today…” But of course this day was reserved for more serious business.

We overflew our next waypoint, then banked hard right, now heading east across the valley towards the opposite sheer mountain wall. As a last veil of cloud drifted back above us the turbulence was suddenly switched off. Still heading for the wall of rock looming in front, Fergione pulled back on the stick, the nose came up and the velocity vector on my display rose to hover over the mountain ridge. Climbing more than a mile in a few seconds, we crested the ridge at ten thousand feet, banked right and flashed down the barren eastern slopes into Saline Valley.
As the F-16 dropped two miles in a few seconds my ears started complaining until I held my nose through the oxygen mask, blew hard and equalized the pressure. Leveling just over the dry lakebed we headed south with our shadow speeding just off to my left across the scrub-covered plain. Glaring white patches of dry lakebed flashed past and we climbed slightly to avoid a jagged outcrop of rock barring our path. Then we pitched down, and I floated against my straps momentarily, before we bottomed out, now hugging the lakebed and heading for our target.
It was an exhilarating ride. Operationally, this low altitude and high speed minimized exposure to enemy defenses, but the unremitting concentration of even keeping track of our position was very exhausting.

At the southern end of the valley this lunar landscape ended in another wall of mountains. We bored on until the rock wall was high above us, then Fergione smoothly pulled the nose up and we easily outclimbed the rising ground as the jagged ridges rose beneath us. Seconds later, our trajectory peaking at 7,000 feet, we flashed across the desolate ridge and plunged down into Panamint Valley.

I recognized this place, This is where I had flown with the Wild Weasels. Yes, there was the solitary road snaking across the awesome immensity of the dry plain, coming from Death Valley across the mountains to the East. Moments after we flashed across the road a glaring white lakebed blurred beneath our nose. It was incongruously quiet in the cockpit. Then a dirt road flashed diagonally beneath us. I caught a glimpse of a white RV trailing a plume of dust behind him. It was too bad. At this speed we were barely a second behind our noise. The driver might with luck have seen us in his rear-view mirror, giving him a split-second warning, before the thunderclap of sound hit him…

Three miles to the target. I could see it coming up on the HUD, under the target cross. There…in a split second, my mind recorded images…a cluster of buildings…a radar dish revolving…parked cars around the radar station…then we were fleeing across the valley floor, trailing our banner of sound.

At the southern end of Panamint Valley, we again were heading straight for the mountains, but this time Fergione pulled the nose of the F-16 up and kept it pointing towards the vertical. The F-16 stood on its tail and kept climbing out of the low-level corridor, aiming for 40,000 feet and our supersonic run.

Once our supersonic run was complete, remembering that the F-16 was a fighter after all, I took control of the jet while we searched for targets. Reaching forward I switched my display from HUD to RADAR mode. Our radar was sensitive enough to pick up trucks on the Antelope Valley freeway. However as we looked for aircraft targets our respective screens remained blank for a moment. Then our ATC controller warned us of two aircraft heading for us. We searched with the radar, varying the elevation of the beam using a throttle-mounted switch.

Suddenly, there they were, two targets coming towards us, head-on but lower than our F-16. The computer-generated targets had symbols showing aspect angle and target speed. Moments later we had a visual on them, a pair of white F-4 Phantoms from the test fleet at Edwards, maneuvering in their own block of airspace beneath us. Our Sidewinder missiles would easily have destroyed these bogies, or we could have gone after them with our built-in 20mm cannon in our left wing root. We pulled round after them. In the sun and ten thousand feet higher than the Phantoms we were in a perfect position for a bounce, but we reluctantly had to let them go on their way.

Decelerating and letting down to 15,000 feet enabled us to look at the low-speed handling of the F-16. Throttled back, I used the throttle-mounted speedbrake switch and we slowed to two hundred knots. I cleaned up and we continued slowing initially to 180 knots. I was watching intently the altitude and the angle of attack. By 130 knots we were at twenty units angle of attack. At 100 knots the nose was pointing skywards with much of the lift coming from the leading edge extensions either side of the cockpit. At this unusual flight condition we were definitely in the hands of the flight computer, another reason for the soubriquet of “Electric Jet” Above fifteen units of AoA the computer limited our roll rate. No matter how hard I pulled back on the side-stick, the F-16 was limited to a maximum of twenty-five AoA. Pushing the rudder pedals at this flight condition had no effect as the rudder was automatically phased out at high AoA to prevent the F-16 departing in yaw and entering a spin. Fergione then demonstrated the roll control at low speed by accelerating to 150 knots, then rolling the F-16 through 360 degrees with no problems. I was impressed.

Then he handed control of the aircraft back to me. We accelerated to a more normal fighting speed of 350 knots. I started with an aileron roll to the left. Light pressure on the sidestick got us rolling smoothly to the left. I reversed the pressure and the roll stopped after one complete revolution. Then I repeated the roll to the right. My first attempt at rolling using a sidestick gave a noticeable difference in feel between left and right rolls, like the difference between forehand and backhand in tennis. It felt very unnatural to me at first. The F-16 flight control system was set up for full control deflection in roll using only a 17lb force. With only wrist action available, that was a reasonable figure.

Progressing to four and eight-point rolls, I was now getting used to the sidestick, although the harmony between the light roll forces and heavier pitch forces took a little getting used to.
Next came a loop, where I pulled 4g in a huge arc, topping out at 25,000 feet. This was sheer fun and the F-16 was not even working hard. Hard turns were similarly easy, giving tremendous agility and the ability to reverse direction in an instant. My g-suit was constantly inflating and deflating. However I slackened off on my pull when I saw Fergione’s helmet start to slide down behind his headrest, warning me that the g was getting too high. I could easily have pulled to the 9g limit with a 25 lb pull and the F-16 would not have complained.

We were now heading eastbound and were down to our BINGO fuel of 1,200lbs, so to reverse direction I pulled up into an Immelmann turn, pulling an easy 4.5g, until the horizon floated back down to the nose, rolling out from inverted on a westerly heading for Edwards.
“ZOOM 76. Continue your descent. We have a B-1B climbing out towards you. One o’clock at three miles” said the controller. I continued letting down towards Edwards and the distinctive white landmark of Rogers Dry Lake, getting a visual sighting on the dark arrow-like shape of the huge bomber, already two thousand feet above us as it sailed past. I leveled at pattern altitude some fifteen hundred feet over the high desert.

We overflew the dry lakebed, offset to the right of the main 22 runway and I entered the break at 300 knots, throttled back and airbrakes out, turning through 180 degrees to level out on the downwind leg. Fergione took over for a touch-and-go landing.
Three green lights winked on the panel as the gear locked down.

The F-16 curved round in a steep descending turn onto finals. As we came round onto final approach it became apparent that there was a strong crosswind from the right. We were crabbed slightly against the crosswind down final approach, then without fuss we were down, although the narrow-track gear meant that judicious use of aileron and rudder was needed to keep straight in the crosswind.

We had briefed for a touch-and-go and so the throttle went forward to the Military Power detent and the F-16 leaped off the ground again. The red light in the gear handle winked out as the doors closed. Fergione curved us round in a tight turn over South Base, setting us up for our final landing.

Gear down, we started on our descending turn on finals. Then something unexpected. The MASTER CAUTION light on the coaming started to flash and the audio warning sounded.
“That’s the forward fuel,” said Fergione,” It’s normal at these fuel states.” I glanced down. Sure enough the FORWARD FUEL light on the right hand console was illuminated, showing that we were down to 250lb in the forward tank group.

In deference to the gusty conditions, Fergione flew the approach at eleven units AoA, rather faster than the thirteen units of AoA in the flight manual. He explained that the thirteen unit approach equated to a speed of 133 knots at this fuel weight but could result in a certain amount of wallowing on the approach in gusty conditions. This approach worked as advertised. We touched and Fergione kept the nose up for aerodynamic braking throughout our landing run until the speed dropped down to eighty knots.

The F-16 was an impressive fighter in a small package. Smaller by far than the huge F-15 Eagle, it could give a very good account of itself and had amassed an amazing number of kills in combat. For myself, it was a very productive and enjoyable flight, one which had shown to good effect the latest fighter in US Air Force service.