It’s funny the way that things associate in your mind. I’ve been flying a little bit these days, all under visual meteorological conditions, since practically the only instruments kept up to snuff in the Vargas we fly are the altimeter and airspeed indicators. Not like the little planes were ever intended for instrument flight.
I’ve been flying the odd instrument approach on my laptop, dreaming of someday flying hither and yon despite the occasional puff of cloud or veil of mist. And heading to work today on the bike I was faced with the kind of fog an FA-18 pilot would silently fume at, knowing that his odds of breaking the surly decreased with each passing moment. It brought so many things back.
Riding a motorcycle in traffic is as close to flying as a man can get without actually strapping on a plane – your sense of being a part of a machine and operating it on the margins is very similar to flying at low level in a fighter because the wise rider – like the fighter pilot – is constantly aware of his environment in the way an automobile driver does not ordinarily need to be. There are no coffee cups to sip from, no emails or text messages to check, no NPR reporters to shout at when driving a bike. You are entirely in the moment.
Flying is like that.
They break you into instrument flying gradually in flight training. Simulators all the way through of course, and plenty of time “under the bag” in basic and advanced jets, but you don’t get your solo “cloud card” in the actual airplane until fairly late in the process. Relatively early in the advanced training syllabus, but some 230 hours into a rigorous and winnowing process for all that.
Private pilots are free to auger in at their discretion – the Navy expects that every man will do his duty and bring the fracking airplane back.
Aircraft instrumentation is broken down into three categories: Control, power, and performance. The control group consists chiefly of an attitude display of some sort – gyros indicating pitch and bank in most aircraft, while power instruments display engine parameters: Throttle setting, RPM, exhaust gas temperature, oil pressure, and fuel flow. Performance instruments synthesize the contributions of the previous two: Airspeed, altitude, rate of descent.
The instrument pilot in up and away flight will spend most of his time on the attitude gyro, scanning his performance instruments alternately before coming home to the gyro again. If you keep the wings level, the compass shouldn’t wander much, and if you set the proper nose attitude airspeed, altitude and rate of descent tend to take care of themselves, given the proper power setting. Attitude is everything, both in life and in instrument flight. The attitude gyro in most military aircraft is divided between gray (sky) and black (ground). Gray is good, black is bad. Nose attitude controls airspeed, power controls rate of descent.
When you’re flying formation in bad weather you give it all over to God, however. Or to your flight lead, at least. Who might as well be God. He owns the whole ball of wax; attitude, airspeed, altitude. There’s scant opportunity to dart your head away from the lead to glance at your instruments when you’re clagging around in the serious goo – the most immediate danger is a mid-air collision, and a mid-air is always the wingman’s fault. You stay on your lead’s wing as though your life depends upon it, because it does. Match his nose attitude and bank angle, airspeed control becomes a matter of nose-to-tail. The marriage that’s lasted 50 years probably has a little less trust in it than the relationship between a wingman and a man he might have met for the first time an hour or so ago, at least when he’s leading you through the clouds.
Today’s fog reminded me of one hop I had with a Marine captain called “Spud” way back in the way back when. It was an intercept hop – a lead in for air combat maneuvering – and the home drome was socked in from eight hundred feet to 35,000 on the way to the operating area. We made a formation take off from the field, I had a moment or two to get the airplane cleaned up and stabilized, then- poof! – we were in it for thirty minutes at least. Which can seem like an eternity, when you’re flying wing and admitting discomfort is considered a critical weakness. Weird weather, perfect visibility to fifty feet away, but no reference at all to the world beyond that. I felt like I was flying formation on an airplane painted on a gray canvas. It was surreal.
Your inner ear messes with you in that kind of weather. You can end up feeling like you’re upside down, with every synapse screaming at you to level the wings and climb! It’s called vertigo, and the antidote is trust. Complete, self-abnegating trust. Giving it all over.
I broke out of the weather over the coast feeling like a prisoner escaping from jail, spent another thirty minutes performing high speed radar intercepts and then it was time to head back into the clag. Another 30 minutes lining the wingtip missile launcher up on my flight lead’s ejection seat head box, squaring off the exhaust pipes to lock myself into proper parade position. Matching every move he made. Entirely in the moment. It was nerve wracking, but eventually he coordinated separate ground controlled approaches – thankfully while we were still above 2000 feet. I broke away when he kissed me off, leveled off as he descended and was never so happy to once again be master of my own fate.
It doesn’t always go smoothly of course. When I was in basic jets a kid ahead of me in advanced was flying on the wing of his lead in some really nasty stuff. Locked in position, doing the best he could. Shortly after take-off, the lead spent a little too much time looking over his shoulder, making sure that his student was staying in position. He was out of trim I guess, but whatever the reason, he let his airplane roll into a “unusual attitude”, even as the wingie stayed locked in formation.
The lead was lucky to have an instructor-under-training in his back seat. Less personally invested in the student’s performance perhaps, the back seater came back into the cockpit in time to see the attitude gyro filling up with black – the lower half of the display. The ground half. The altimeter was unwinding, the airspeed increasing.
He wrestled the flight controls from the front seat pilot, leveled the wings, levered the nose back towards the horizon. Sensing the building g-forces, he pulled the throttle to idle and deployed the speedbrakes to minimize the radius of turn. The radar altimeter went off, still set for 200 feet. The spinning altimeter started to unwind more slowly, paused. Started to wind back up again. The backseater closed the speedbrakes and advanced the throttle again. Once safely recovered, the two of them looked back on their right wing. Saw nothing there at all. I never asked them what that felt like. There are some things you don’t want to know.
The student never had a chance. I suspect that when the lead disappeared suddenly in the goo, he tried desperately for the critical moment to find him again, because staying in formation was the one thread tying him to the world that we know. None of the instruments could have made any sense, the sound of the radar altimeter going off could not be processed in a world literally turned upside down. And then the darkness fell.
You trust because you have to, because there are no other choices.
The instructor pilot went to the fleet. His backseater qualified as an instructor pilot in time.
Everyone agreed that it was a lovely service. The missing man formation was especially well flown.
It’s funny the way things associate in your mind.
“I felt like I was flying formation on an airplane painted on a gray canvas. It was surreal.”
Yes. That’s it! Very good Lex. Thanks for capturing it. Fine piece.
b2
Geez Louise (family friendly version)
You really do deserve that drink. Actually, at the moment, after reading that … so do I!
You could see ALL of Lead’s jet?
We used to line up the Star and Bar on the nose of the Hoover with the intake red triangle on the big blunt end of the TF-34 to make a horizontal ice cream cone. Made for an easy sight picture for parade. Of course, having the ice cream portion of the picture dissolve in a milky white mist of water vapor tends to suck the seat pan into your nether regions.*
*First leg of TRANSLANT 1986, somewhere between Jacksonville and Bermuda, still in the climb to cruising altitude.
Eh, you yahoos should try herding 54 tanks and Bradleys through a smokescreen while your driver has his hatch shut. And try to avoid all the crunchies running around.
I sold a B727-200F charter in 1993. The route was CVG – NAS Norfolk (NGU) to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (MUGM) and back to CVG. We departed CVG for NGU at 0600 local ferrying the airplane into position for the 4 hour revenue leg to Cuba. The trip from Norfolk to Guantanamo was routine except for the modified visual left downwind approach to MUGM’s runway 10. It is a very tight left turn over the hill and inside the perimeter fence. The Captain had flown P-3′s here and said no sweat. I had never done steep turns at 300ft AGL before in a B727.
We unloaded and ferried back to CVG with a planned arrival about 2000 local. We descended towards CVG from cruise altitude into a solid undercast and planned on a minimums approach. Ceiling was 400 ft with a half mile visibility, 28 degrees F, snow and light winds out of the southwest. On the approach to home plate, flying in landing config inside the outermarker in IMC with the strobes on (mistake), the horizontal snow combined with being awake for 19 hours, three legs flown, a sunrise and sunset and a feeling of a mission nearly complete, the First Officer (flying pilot) suddenly and without warning said, ” I have vertigo, you have the airplane.” At this pronouncement, he released the flight controls.
Not good!
The captain in the left seat, grabbed the yoke and continued the approach……we all had vertigo. I was never so glad to see the runway out of the goo.
After a review by his peers, the F.O. got a permanent job teaching ground school.
Sounds to me that the only viable option the kid had once he lost lead was to leave his jet to gravity and take the nylon elevator. How was that briefed before the hop?
So it’s 7:50am EST on Wednesday and I now have enough adrenaline pumping thru me to last me the rest of the week!
As always Lex, your way with words is astounding.
Isn’t that vertigo effect what happened to JFK, Jr.?
I was on the CNATRA CQ det as an LSO at Key West during mishap overhead the field, and I’m pretty sure it was during that same det (may have been the one a month before it) an A-4 instructor led a four plane with 3 newbie chicks into the inadvertent goo coming home from the boat, but only 2 chicks came out.
“Captain, if you will take that ship out of that 30 degrees AOB, I will land now”, says the intrepid aviator, right ear firmly planted on his right shoulder.
Yep, Kris — that is what got young JFK, and why the Navy spends so much time and energy on instrument training. Discipline, currency and experience are the only things that can defeat the lies your inner ears are telling you.
Wow. This is why I come back here. Well done.
(and my first post with my iPhone)
You have a way of captivating with words, Lex. I was only going to check out your site for a minute before a meeting, started reading this, and was 10 minutes late. Fantastic material. I really admire the sense of tenderness and compassion I get when I read your posts on tragedies; I suppose having had to deal with a fair number of them over the years tends to breed that, but still.
Thanks,
XBradTC, So I take it you were a battalion/squadron CO…my hats off to you… but don’t expect any recognition from these Gomers…because none will be forthcoming…
but as for me, a former DAT, (no strike that, once a DAT always a DAT eh?) , AOB Ft.Knox, Ky.-1966 I did experience the singular terror and mind boggling confusion of a company size night exercise through eighteen inches, more or less, of fine range road Ft. Knox talcum like dust… long story short …I volunteered for SF shortly thereafter. Best
There was a consultant to my company who just happened to be breveted into the top System Safety job at NASA when that guy left for greener pastures.
Two weeks before Challenger blew up.
Yeah, some things you don’t want to ask about.
GE06, the standard brief for lost wingman in IMC is to take a 30 degree cut away. In this case, had he flown the procedures, he probably would have placed himself in an irrecoverable position that low to the ground.
And I think that the cognitive dissonance of seeing all that black on the gyro probably froze him in place. Sometimes it’s just not your day.
Oh, and by the way, I’ve always found a great deal to admire in tanks and such. They give good secondaries.
Nothing like army aviation of course. Class by itself.
Taxi1,
I had previously flew with the SNA we lost in Key West in the 4 plane, He was #4 and on departure. Great stick, had almost finished NFO training when he was awarded an aviator slot. He had done the ACM phase and only needed to complete CQ to earn his Wings of Gold. Will only say he was taken down a bad road as bad as the SNA Lex describes. Many of us added a wee bit to our formation briefs after that. The missing man looked good, family was proud and the Navy awarded his family his Wings of Gold (both Aviator and NFO)
Lex — Don’t know if this banner ad will continue to show up, but it just might be the thing if you find yourself “in that nostalgia rage” for your Hornet. Looks a little simpler than the guy building the Cubi Cat 2.0 at Kingsville, but almost as très chic .
Lex, Re your comment # 15 above…see the last line of my comment #12 above. Best
XBrad: you tried to avoid the crunchies? huh. hmm. i might have to try that next time.
try popping across a newly laid AVLB while firing M2 from the cupola and waving the ground guide engineers out the way in a smokescreen with a reclining buttoned up driver… crunchies = guideposts.
Snake: funny thing is this… humping the M60 mg thru Jungle School one summer is what sent me on the path to Fort Knox instead.
Kentucky clay beats grabbing a mitt full of tree spines any day.
Thanks for the great story Captain.
You’re way beyond this, but I think one of the things about learning to fly IFR is it makes you a much better VFR pilot. For civilian flying you have to really make sure you stay current on the instrument work to be able to fly hard IFR, which I personally couldn’t do right now.
Not on a league with flying a fighter through the clouds, but one of my most satisfying flights took place almost 30 years ago. I had been training towards my instrument rating, but never actually been in true conditions yet. Took off with my instructor out of Reno, climbed about 1000 feet into a solid overcast and never saw anything but clouds again until 200 AGL and about a 1/4 mile at Sacramento Metro. I had my hand on the throttle to make the missed approach when we broke out with the runway numbers right in front of me.
Things like that make you know the procedures really do work.
Hate to be morbid, but how often do infantry men actually get run over by tanks? It doesn’t seem like a right of way issue you’d ever want to contest.
“Riding a motorcycle in traffic is as close to flying as a man can get without actually strapping on a plane …”
Taken from (Ben Saunders) my mentor’s website is the following quote:
“Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds…”
Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington
Pre-wheelchair, I used to ride… a lot. In three years I put over 33,000 miles on a motorcycle. The yearly average is just 3,000. This while working full time as a cop.
The feeling of freedom and control, at the same time, is simply amazing.
~Paul
Re: Tanks etc.
Let me quote a light infantry company First Sergeant friend of mine who spent part of ’05 and ’06 in an Armored Tasks Force in Ar Ramadi: “When we went outside the wire with tanks, no pucker factor. When we went outside the wire without tanks you couldn’t drive a ten-penny nail up there with a sledgehammer.”
The ordinance delivery services of the you birdmen are well appreciated but if you happen to be on the ground for any reason there is nothing like 70 tons of steel and sex appeal to intimidate and end the arguement in your favor.
RE: Lex comment #14,
Ouch. Sort of like being dead the minute your gear left the pavement. Get your point about the cognative dissonance. God wanted him that day.
What prompted my question was I recalled reading a “There I Was” article in a USAF pub by a guy who flew F-102s in the 1960′s. The gist of it was he was #2 in a two ship and lost contact with lead in the soup and because he had bad vertigo he punched out. Both he and the jet landed in a cornfield somewhere in the midwest. He walked away.
Gotta forward that link to SN#2. Wish I could see his face.
RetRsvMike, Re your comment #20 above…My time,in the way back, was well before the M-2 and the reclining buttoned up tank driver ( … the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank…Lex Babes) …but the essentials were the same and going to RVN then was a lock on given…going as part of a Tank/Cav unit… primarily road bound in that terrain… ummm …I thought big permanent bulls-eye on my butt …the alternative ( at least for a callow 01 DAT Gomer of 25) volunteer for the sneeky-petes/snake eaters…great training, top people, fun travel and adventure, unique,babe magnet, headgear…whats not to like ? Well obviously it all worked out…and the rest is history.
Re the M-60 mg…I feel your pain Brother. I carried that mother humper in various training scenarios and it did tend focus the mind. In RVN the M-60 was just to heavy for our little brown brothers to carry…we used the BAR instead but even that weapon, in the hands of the locals, could led to some unintended comical situations… Best
(in the original version of the story it was actually an M60A1 AOS with an M85 in the cupola and trying to avoid shooting the back of the searchlight; but the “AVLB, smoke and ground guides” part was accurate… but nobody except you and i would ever understand that kind of predicament anymore)
Dammit Lex. I had just managed to force that image from my mind’s eye…and now it’s back. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.
Really.
Well, the only scenario that I could come up with that even comes close was leading a convoy through the Udairi Range in Kuwait one night. The dusty white dirt road that paralleled the berm all but vanished at night, and clouds and blackout drive lights effectively canceled out much of the benefits of my night vision goggles. Ended up juggling a map on my lap, a red-lens flashlight, a GPS held outside the window, and my goggles to ensure that we didn’t inadvertently take some goat trail that would head us over the nearby Iraqi border. Took us most of the night to make the 50km night move as I recall, and that included having to dig out a couple of our howitzers that’d gotten stuck in some loose sand that blew into one of the gaps in the berm sometime after I’d conducted the leader’s recon earlier that day.
Good times. Good times.
Re the motorcycle. Lordy Yes.
It had been almost 30 years since my last one-picked up a thumper this spring and cannot believe how great it is to be back on a bike.
Lex, your story reminded me of a nearly abbreviated trip from NASNI to Mugu back in the mid-80′s. Riding as crew in the back of an HH-1K we left under Spec VFR with a ceiling of about 300′. No biggie for us…we’d done it a bunch of times. 300′ went to 200′ so we adjusted accordingly, then went down to 150′, and again the pros up front adjusted…no big gig. Picture 150′ just off the shoreline, passing the pier at Huntington Beach, and the lid as gooey as it gets.
About 5 minutes north of the pier we go into the goo for about a 6 count; heartrate jumps up about 10-15 beats/min. We break out…heartrate goes back to normal…5 minutes later back in the goo at 100′…7 potato, 8 potato, 9 potato…uh, sir, you know, I’m getting a bit uncomfortable with us not seeing anything. Anything we can do about that? (Army at Los Al wasn’t too far north and they quite often flew a recip course to ours).
At that point the HAC says “Yeah, okay, we’re IMC and I’m on the gauges”. He starts a left 180 and about the time we roll out we go back to VMC…and I look over and notice we’re down to 50′. Left seat says ‘Pull up’…no response…’Pull up’ (a bit louder)…no response and descending through 25′ at 110IAS…’PULL UP!’…Okay, that got his attention. The crew chief and I happened to glance over at each other and extend our legs forward, so as not have our legs crushed when the seats compressed at impact.
Fortunately, no one collected any insurance money and no one had to think up nice stuff to say about us…but it was really damned close.
No fooling…my first thought was ‘We just about became subject matter for an article in Approach Magazine’. Had we survived the impact, the swim to the beach in February water would have been a most delightful mile.
After that we contacted Coast Approach, who had the unmitigated gall to make us climb to 4000′ (nose bleed for a helo) to do the IFR thing.
Thanks for bringing back the memory, Lex…you know…associations and all….Hah!
Lex,
You’re a fine writer, but it brings back too many bad memories for me–like the time something like that ALMOST happened to me as a #2 on a x-country in T-38s in UPT. Such stories simply underline the fact that when flying hi-performance aircraft, whether it be in tng or combat, the old saying is oh so true: “Some days you get the Bear…….”
Just caught a story on the news about the ultimate instrument landing … An RAF pilot talked down a pilot who lost his sight midflight from a stroke.