Which the new firm has chosen to make me the company’s training officer, and it was thought that my ability to function in that task might be augmented by going through the TOPGUN adversary course, a necessarily abbreviated version of the full-length version intended to provide the adversary instructor with the requisite wherewithal to provide good training to the fleet. Having learned what new things have come about in the last 13 years, I am intended to go forth and preach the gospel according to.
Many years after I graduated from the US Naval Academy, having already become a commissioned officer, I would nevertheless get a bit of a tremor in my legs when the chapel roof hove into view. It was the first and most prominent landmark announcing the nearing eminence of Bancroft Hall, Mother B as it was known to us, the asylum wherein the inmates inflicted all sorts of terrors upon one another, all in the name of God, country and the naval service. Indeed, the first involuntary response to seeing that dome break the skyline would be to check my wristwatch, if only to confirm that I was not late to one or another evolution. Time, tide and formation waiting for no man, they say. Not if it were ever so.
Walking up to the Fleet Training Building today at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center brought a similar echo to my heart. It was, and is, the kind of place that calls for your A game. I didn’t check my watch so much as check my ego at the door. Just like I did every day, thirteen-odd years ago. Two dozen of the Navy and Marine Corps finest fighter and strike fighter pilots used to walk those halls back in the day. They still do, although the names have changed, and they have grown inexplicably more young than I ever was.
Lee Travino once said, that “The older I get, the better I used to be.” Maybe that’s true in the PGA, but it doesn’t take much exposure to the latest generation to hold the flame to realize that maybe I was never all that good.
Some things have changed, of course. The staff get to wear wrist watches now when giving their lectures, which was verboten back in my day. You didn’t want the students attention to drift, wondering whether that was a real Rolex on your arm, or whether it was something you’d picked up for 200 baht in some steamy bazaar in Thailand. Not that anyone would ever do that. And by the way, don’t ever get one wet, is my recommendation to you. Doesn’t matter what it says on the face about “Water Resistant to 33 meters”.
Don’t ask me how I know.
It all started at 0700, which is only a half an hour past oh-dark thirty, for us Navy types (90 minutes past for Our Beloved Corps, and a full two-hours before the national guard and reserves show up, followed by the Air Force). Which was plenty early for your correspondent, that being the earliest he’d shown up for anything since, well: Forever. Or 2003, at least.
The lecture began in the customary TOPGUN way, which is to say it was preceded by rock music played over the classroom speakers at a volume calculated to render intramural discussions with the person to ones left or right well nigh impossible. When the clock had ticked the hour, he gradually faded the music to black, establishing himself as the person in charge of the noise. Stunned nearly to stupefaction, we obediently read his lips as his voice warred with the ringing in our ears. When asked, we gave him ours.
Like any intro brief, the first hour was dedicated to trivia: Here are your textbooks, study these pages, this is where you park, any questions? No. Then on to the meat.
Hizzoner was the 1v1 Air Combat subject matter expert, and he walked us through both offensive and defensive basic fighter maneuvers over the course of four hours. The physics of flight cannot much have changed since 1998, but the descriptions and techniques have evolved. The clever lads who spend their lives attempting reach aerial combat perfection via asymptotic approaches have been busy over the intervening years, and I found myself nodding appreciatively in places, pursing my lips in others, and wishing I could match the guys I used to serve with against their distant replacements in an alumni cage match, because they were stone killers to a man and I’ve never flown against better. And, more than anything else, wishing I was 30 in an FA-18 again, rather than 50 in a Kfir.
But to everything is a time, and to each a purpose.
Walked out to the car to check my cell phone for messages and emails, having left things at home in a less than perfect state of equilibrium. Two young petty officers met me coming the other way, the first – in the best traditions of the naval service – bracing for to salute the aged warrior before her wearing familiar gold wings, but without any visible badge of rank. The second – in the much more customary way – finding something on the distant horizon to rivet his attention, thereby gaining plausible deniability for failure to render what might, or might not have been, customary honors due my rank, or absence thereof. It’s not the first time I’ve been faced with this transparent dodge, and every generation attempts it. But it was the first time I’d truly earned it, as well as the first time I let it slide. I saw the first petty officer at lunch, and she asked me, “Sir, what are you?” I had to reply that I was only a contractor, never to fret, thinking to myself that the truth of it is, I just don’t know. One of those ghosts perhaps that comes out this time of year, hovering between one world and the next.
Over the course of the afternoon we were treated to more rock music, interspersed by four hours of indoctrination about threat missiles of various and divers kinds. About which, I regret to say, not much can here be shared. At all. The instructor was once again sharp, intelligent and well-prepared. The students were, well: Students. From various parts of the warfare center for the most part. Some were exceptional, some average. Some seemed put upon to be there. Pearls before swine, and so on.
We got out at 1630, and I went to celebrate Halloween at the O’Club, dressed as a fighter pilot.
Bad idea, it had already been done.
Ever have those dreams where one is back in HS (why always HS and not college I’ll never know) and walking into a math or physics test and suddenly realize that you haven’t studied because you haven’t been in school for twenty years, but your trapped in the dream and have to do well anyway? Somehow Lex’s post reminds me of those dreams. I always solved my dilemma by waking up in a mild panic. Lex, otoh, has to persevere and not only remember old tricks but learn new ones. As they say in slogging through solving problems using differential equations: “Plug and Chug.”
* “you’re”
never back in HS, but about a year after I crashed an burned at Rucker, I dreamed I was back in flight school with the Chief TAC Officer in my face telling me they weren’t going to let me off so easily this time.
That was the strangest dream I’ve ever had.
VX –
Would that be like the time your teacher mother got loaded with an eighth grade math class and you had to review the text before answering, despite having calculus of various sorts, many integrals, transforms both LaPlace and Fourier and an engineering degree behind you?
Or having your freshman in HS niece ask how to solve a simple algebra one problem, then spending a half hour or so relearning all that stuff you forgot from 40+ years before? Solved it. It would never do to destroy the aura of genius after all. *snork* *snork*
Lex,
I am a long time reader, first time poster. I am in town for an Air Wing Fallon. I hope to see you at the club one of these nights.
As long as you didn’t break in to a rousing rendition of “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” then it’s all good.
I believe it was the USAAF which used to say, “If you are younger than 18, you are too rash to be a fighter pilot; If you are older than 25, you are too prudent to be a fighter pilot.”
I mind the car-driving insurance business. When I was young, I had to pay horrendous rates. I knew that once I turned 25, the rates would decrease, but I vowed not to slow down and drive sensibly, just because I was 25.
Funny thing. Sure enough, I did slow down and drive more sensibly, about the time I turned 25.
JTG: One of the benefits of managing to get old is that there’s precious little left for you to learn the hard way
My Mom, when she was young, used to specialize in dating fighter pilots, but only those of the Dutch East Indies Air Force.
(There were
a bunch of them training in Mississippi at that time,)
Being a sensible woman, she married a steady guy, no fighter pilot, my Dad, and that’s how I came to happen.
One of my fave Fallon memories is playing rugby in a BOQ room with an empty Chivas bottle. Or eating early on Election Night ’78 to get over to the Club – since TVs in the rooms weren’t in the MILCON budget in those unenlightened days. The object of my visual lust? To see the projected tightly fought presidential election, since I wanted so badly to rid ourselves of the USNA graduate that occupied the Oval Office – he of 21% inflation and 4% military raises, he of me helping my troops fill out the food stamps apps, whose ASD Personnel said that if we didn’t like it, we cold vote with our feet. Little did I know that being on PST, by the time I finished dinner, we already had a projected new Pres.
For twenty years after that, I couldn’t walk in the Fallon Club without thoughts of that night.
Scott,
I want to know who you voted for President in 1978…. considering the election wasn’t for another two years.
I has a sort of similar “election night” experience in ’68, Scott. I had just returned from the flight back from DaNang on leave from my 1st tour spending the election night at the home of one of my best friends in N.O. and a few days R&R before heading home to Illinois and my parents. The election remained in doubt late into the night and, finally, exhausted from the long flight, etc., I went to bed to awake the next morn to find over coffee with Bob’s mother that Nixon had won. “The Republic is saved!” I thought to myself.. Little did I know what a long, winding, emotional and political/cultural roller-coaster of a road we were about to embark upon..
Oops, must have been the ’80 cruise work ups in the same sqd. How could I forget the pleasure of flight hour budgets that led to more in-port days in a quarter than at-sea days on our ’79 cruise? Thanks, Jimmah!
Sorry, Jeff – when you get old that crap will all run together for you, too.
Sorta reminds me of the Faux Vonnegut commencement address closing line,
For everyone that tracks these things… Yes, I know that was a hoax. But it was still funny.
Which reminds me of a real phone call Nokia tech support once received:
Caller: Hypothetically, if some idiot jumped into the pool with a cell phone in their pocket, would the phone be ruined?
Support: Hypothetically, if the phone were turned on, yes, the idiot would have ruined the phone.
Polite folks won’t ask who the idiot was.
no no, I actually couldn’t find my new cell phone until I was folding laundry and found it in the pocket of my jeans. Worked great. 3 years later it still works great.
Damn that’s a good phone.
Oh, and don’t ever buy a Patek Philippe watch. Baron von Muellenheim, the senior survivor of Schlachtschiff Bismarck, had a watch from those guys which was guarnteed waterproof, shockproof, and everthing-proof.
It stopped at about the time he jumped overboard.
Oh wow, I almost had to light a cigarette after reading that. …and I’ve never smoked anything in my life.
Lex, I just read a book by David Barenek called “TOPGUN Days”, which I bought when he was signing books at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C, last month. He was an instructor at TOPGUN when it was still at Miramar. He details the preparation for every lecture and the expectations of the training staff that you alluded to in this story. Very impressive!!! Your story made me relive the book.
“Lee Travino once said, that “The older I get, the better I used to be.” Maybe that’s true in the PGA, but it doesn’t take much exposure to the latest generation to hold the flame to realize that maybe I was never all that good.”
I believe that, like the self-convinced ability to drive a car, ride a motorcycle, or solve the world’s economic problems after a pizza and a couple of beers, this too can be attributed to age and experience.
When we’re young we don’t quite realize how wide the gaps in our knowledge are. As we age and become experienced, we realize how little we actually know. This is when we learn humility.
I’ve since learned to walk softly and speak little when among giants, lest they find me an annoyance to stamp upon or belittle publicly. When I am the giant, I take the same path — there is no use in stomping on or belittling somebody just to serve my ego, and having an advantage upon them later may prove useful.
As P.J. O’Rourke once opined, “Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut.”
– Max
Lex, your line about being one of those ghosts, “hovering between one world and the next”, was sooo good. Thanks.
EXACTLY Busbob! I really should have quoted that line in my comment, above. I guess it’s what lead me to the riff on the “dream-like state” vibes that Lex’s post gave me by his description of his feelings about his somewhat indefinable school status that made him feel like one “hovering between one world and the next.” A great post and one that I could really almost palpably, physically, “feel.” As you say, “sooo good.!”
*No coffee yet…”…led me to the riff..”
VX – Who wins in a battle of wits?
Coffee or Barbancourt?
Well, when I put the Barbancourt in my coffee it’s a dead heat. Everyone must have prizes!
Hey, please take it easy on us drunkards! If it weren’t for ethyl hydroxide, we’d have to depend on doctor drugs.
Y’all know where that ends, with Prozac-assisted killing sprees.
Lex, if it is any comfort, after my return to Fallon for “GeezerGUN” (a.k.a. “Senior Officers Course”) at TOPGUN, I went back a couple of years later for SLATS Refresher, to be the better enabled to teach Those Whose Shoes Are Black about schwacking bad guys and putting warheads on foreheads. My class was so young, I had to ask one of the Chiefs if they had permission slips from their parents. He allowed that those attending these things did tend towards the youngish side of things. Hmmm, didn’t seem that way when I was a JO.
I envy you attending this course almost as much as I do your getting a job flying a Kfir.
I retired in 1994, before which I was an Air Force EWO in F-4G and EF-111A airplanes. I really loved the whole EW game, and was privileged two fly the two machines best suited to it that were ever made. (No offense to your Prowler and Growler guys, but really old and slow or fast and short legged is no way to go through life).
The Air Force left most of the EW business shortly after I did.
I walked out the gate vowing to never study war no more, and have kept that vow these 17 years.
Still, I wonder sometimes what the EW game is like these days.
Do they still think ‘stealth’ is the be-all and end-all of EW?
Is it really possible to use cell phone technology to make a multi-static radar that can see any ‘stealth’ airplane ever made or ever to be made?
Or has the availability of almost limitless processor power and cheap gigabytes of memory made jammers so smart as to render any radar useless?
I wonder about these things, and would really like a peek behind the scenes to see how the EW game is played these days.
Jim,
Seek, and ye shall find, my brother: http://www.crows.org/
I think our host has it slucky in this regard at Fallon FA-18 advanced school for boys and girls. Think about it. He joined the navy and flew FA-18 right out of college and oh sure, he did some time in DACT flying weird pointy things but today at Fallon they are still teaching the young and old how to fly the FA-18. That’s practical. Not like my old surface line stuff where not one of the 5 different classes I served on remains in the USN’s service and most were scrapped used as targets a decade ago.
If I had the mad computer skills I’d post the link to the Monty Python sketch which must exist with the British drill sergeant telling the class on hand to hand combat, “ttthaats PLAANNINGG!”
The slucky bit may now occur. Isn’t that thing getting to be a little long in the tooth? I never bothered much with SAM or AAM headology since frankly nobody important does care about them but I did dwell on the SSM and ATG missile stuff. I find that once again I prefer to not know anything at all about the afternoon training session. Probably some boring old training on some boring old missiles boring in on targets in the same old way. Snoozer.
VX, it’s funny you mention that re:dreams, as in recent years I’ve been noticing a parallel but sort of opposite effect.
Rather than dreams placing me in the “forgot his duck” (Far Side reference) unprepared in public embarrassed state, I’ve been getting odd dreams during times of stress at work.
When my current job is (as is frequent these days) about an 8/10 on the stress & uncertainty scale, I find myself dreaming of my end-of-high-school working days, when I was working in a crafts warehouse, sacking plaster and running packaging machinery. It was for me a near-stressless period in my life, where I knew everything I needed to know to do what I had to, there were virtually no surprises, no subordinates, and nothing about the job followed me home at night.
When work stress reaches 9/10, I find myself dreaming of being back in the latter part of my tour in the Corps, which though far from stress-free did have the great charm of knowing absolutely one’s place and role within the Universe, and knowing with certainty that you were equal to the challenging tasks at hand by the very nature of being responsible for them; a competent cog in a well-oiled and highly refined machine.
At 10/10, I find my dreaming mind escaping back to MCRD. Maximal stress, minimal reassurance… but an environment so carefully crafted to ensure that you jumped in the direction desired when poked that, once you truly realized how things worked, you understood that it was possible to falter due to lack of strength (be it physical or emotional) but it was impossible to not know what was expected of you at any instant in the day.
Looked at from the outside, the idea that being back in the calculated Hell of Boot could be felt palpably as an emotional relief is startling, even to me… but when your stress arises from uncertainty, even the certainty of the damned can look feel a feature rather than a bug.
Which is to say, in a longish way, I fully get where you are coming from, and also Lex, with his “And, more than anything else, wishing I was 30 in an FA-18 again, rather than 50 in a Kfir.”
Thanks! Even old shoes can enjoy this stuff.
One hopes that the equilibrium at home is not too far disturbed from steady-state.
I don’t get to read as regularly as I once did Lex (’tis to cry) but when you post this kind of stuff, I am nearly nose to the screen and my heart remembers why I love this place so much. Although it does disturb me somewhat to realize that I will soon be of your current age (and, come to think of it, am now probably of the age you were when I first came here and I wondered why you often referred to yourself as “an old man”).
All to say, great post. Thanks!
Does this count as “ground school?”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/video/breaking/chi-raw-video-polish-jumbo-jet-makes-wheels-up-landing-20111101,0,2174662.htmlstory
http://www.kcra.com/video/29649213/detail.html
That is one hell of a landing!
Oh, the rock music! Let me count the ways!
I will just say that I love everything about my church with the exception of its “music”. It is all loudly-electrically-amplified newage (rhymes with sewage) modern Christian copyrighted hippy chick music, sung by soloists who art it up to catch the attention of the female mind.
Many times I have offered to repair the sound system there, if somebody would just lend me a fire axe.
The Church got by just fine for 1900 years or so without electricity. Why is it so essential, now?
I must say I prefer a good old Welsh Methodist hymn like “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” to this hippy chick nonsense.
Besides, you can march to it. This is important to band nerds.
P.s. When I was a kid I did not have to wear ear protection in church.
I do now.
Heck, many Orthodox parishes still don’t use electric lights for evening services, just beeswax candles and olive oil lamps. And no instruments other than the human voice.
There is still one hymn used that even St. John Chrysostom called “ancient.”
You have me about ready to try it. There is an imposing Greek church not far from here. Do you reckon they’ll think I’m too ethnically strange
for them, being 100% Anglo, and thus might not fit in?
P.s. I remember that Admiral Zumwalt was married in an Orthodox ceremony, in which they hold crowns over the heads of both the he and the she. That is kinda neat. I am all for cool formal rituals.
Comes with the Autitude, I reckon.
Ah…the crowns are a Russian thing, the Greeks use wreaths. Same idea – “Crown them with Glory and Honor.”
Also, with the structure of the Liturgy, I can go to any Orthodox church in the world, except maybe Ethiopia and Eritrea, and except for the readings and special hymns for that day know what is being said. The form stays the same.
Which is why Lex should be required to wear a sword when we get our Dictator in place and Lex is hired as Fleet Admiral.
Swords are just cool. It would have to be a real one, of course, made of good steel, with correct weight, center of gravity, and radius of gyration, and with a shaving edge on it.
I mean, in the Dictator regime I envision, Lex might be required to Take Heads from time to time.
It all depends on the parish, quite frankly. Some are quite xenophobic. Other take anyone. A lot of older Greek parishes do have organs. In the 1920s through the 1940s they were trying to totally assimilate, including changing some of their praxis to fit in more – as well as buying former Catholic or Protestant churches rather than building their own.
I’ve been to Russian, Romanian, Greek, and mostly American parishes. Oh, and Bulgarian and Arab – both Jerusalem and Antiochian Patriarchates (the Arabs in my home parish split off, and of course formed two parishes under different jurisdictions). Been pretty much welcomed in all. The Romanians were a bit stand off-ish until after the Liturgy – even before it telling me pointedly that it was Romanian and that was the language that was used. Afterwards, when a few shots of home made slivovitz and home made wine, my wife and I were just like any member of the parish.
Now, this person is a professional singing in a studio, not all Orthodox parishes are blessed with singers like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHJY0T9RsQ&playnext=1&list=PLBDD06D2864F54F1D
But, that is the kind of music you can expect. If you are at all familiar with the pre-Vat II Roman Mass, the Orthodox Liturgy will be familiar. But, I would suggest hitting a Saturday Vespers service before you go to a Sunday Liturgy.
Such an evocative post Lex -not many have that gift. We surely do enjoy it.
One can picture Lex as the quiet student paying rapt attention to every word and gesture, taking notes and plotting tactics and strategy to employ them with his evil black “Adversary” hat on.
I think he just may be a bit competitive, and that wistful musing the other day about “Check six. It’s my sky too.” shows his motivation to kick some fleet butt….only to make them better, of course.
Whee! My comment above is awaiting moderation.