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Sentimental Journey for you pilots

A Very Sentimental Journey. This is a letter from modern day military aviator who flies a modern plane across country and makes contact with a man and a plane of an earlier time. I found it well written and interesting. I think you will, too.

Dear Family and Friends,

So, it’s the end of the fiscal year and everyone is trying to spend all their money and fly off all their flight hours before the 30th. Every fiscal year units throughout the military carefully husband all of their resources and plan to expend them so that you “just run out” right at the end of the year. So, September is usually a pretty good month for flying. In one of those classic “military-isms” you either use it or lose it, whether it be travel funds, training ordnance, fuel, or flight hours.

I got a call from one of my former students who now is a pilot over at Strike Fighter Squadron THIRTY FOUR (VFA-34) last Wednesday afternoon. He asked me, “Can you fly a jet out to Reno tomorrow?” Let me think, do I want to fly a Hornet all the way across country and get a healthy per diem check for the effort… YYYYYEEEEESSS!!! There was one catch, I had to go all the way down to Jacksonville, Florida, to the Naval Aviation Depot and pick up the jet. So, an hour later I had my Southwest ticket and orders in hand along with my flight gear and a small ditty bag for clothes and shaving gear.

I started the next day at 0430 and drove to Norfolk International Airport and caught the 0710 flight to Jacksonville. It was a short and enjoyable flight, and I made it to the Depot at Cecil Field about 1030. The jet had just come out of modification and had all of the new “whiz-bang” gadgets in it for navigation. It also was one of the last F/A-18C’s to come off the production line and had the updated -402 EPE’s (Enhanced Performance Engines) installed. The -402’s give an extra 2000-pounds of thrust in full afterburner for a total of 36,000-pounds of thrust. Add to that the fact the plane had all of the external tanks and suspension equipment “slicked off” and a new coat of paint, my 35,000-pound airplane was a hot rod, indeed.

My first take off from Cecil really watered my eyes. I’m used to a much heavier jet with less thrust and a lot more drag. A normal take off run usually extends about 3500 to 4000 feet, but this jet hopped into the air before I hit the 2000-foot marker! Once the gear and flaps were up the plane climbed “like a raped ape” at over 20,000 feet per minute. The “Will-E Coyote on the Rocket Skates” reference comes to mind. I had to climb to 43,000 feet to get above a tropical storm in the Louisiana/Mississippi area, and once at altitude I put the throttles up to the Military-Power (non-afterburning) stops to see how fast I could get the plane. A normal Hornet won’t go faster than about .95 Mach in mil-power, but this thing would easily have “super-cruised” above Mach 1.0 if I didn’t throttle back. I kept .95 Mach on the jet while only putting 88% power on each engine.

I stopped in Waco, Texas, to have lunch with Dad and a few other FedEx people he was working with out there. No matter how old I get, nor how many times he sees me get out of a jet, he still looks at me with the same proud, satisfied smile: the same one from when I first rode my bike without training wheels, or graduated high school, or got married. I took off an hour later and headed off to Phoenix for my second fuel stop.

I decided to take a tour of the Sierras on my way in to NAS Fallon, Nevada. My route took me just east of Death Valley, up the spine of the Eastern Sierras, down through Coaldale and Walker Lake, and finally ending up near Hazen, just off I-80. I had flown that route dozens of times before when I was back in Miramar. I smiled a bit as I delighted in hopping over ridgelines and swooping low over empty desert highways at five hundred knots. The jet was so nimble and light on the controls that it seemed to respond more to control pressures than control movements. I could tell my low-level skills were not nearly as good as they used to be, but they were coming back fast.

I begrudgingly acknowledged the “BINGO” and “FUEL LO” lights and landed the jet in Fallon to turn it over to the squadron. I was expecting to fly back commercial air a few days later, but the squadron asked me if I could stay through the weekend to fly yet another jet back to Oceana… WHAT LUCK! Additionally, I’d be able to see the Reno Air Races and visit family and friends for a few days.
The Air Races were kind of depressing as there were several fatal crashes this year… a very strange anomaly in a normally safe endeavor. However, I got to walk the pit and see all the old fighters: Corsairs, Mustangs, Bearcats, Furys. I even got to climb all over GLACIER GIRL, a P-38 Lightning rescued from under a Greenland ice field more than a decade ago and restored to flying status. The P-38 was the same type of plane Great Uncle Will was killed in back in 1944. To see it’s cockpit and compare it with the F-18 I fly, I was struck by the similarities: small, cramped spaces; bubble canopy; and the musty, sweet smell. I also noted the differences: control yoke vice stick; poor downward visibility; no ejection seat.

On Tuesday I took Aircraft 404 (BuNo 165208) from Fallon back to Oceana. My first stop was Amarillo, Texas. The flight was beautiful and took me across Nevada, into Southern Utah, across Lake Powell, past Four Corners, tickled the southwest tip of Colorado, above Tucumcari, New Mexico, and finally into the flat plain of the Texas Panhandle: a place one observer noted “is so flat you can look out West and see the back of your head.”

I came in for the break at Amarillo, but two Air Force T-38 trainers from Vance AFB took a little too long getting off the runway ahead of me and forced me to go around. I landed a few minutes later and taxied up to the FBO for gas. As I rolled up to the ramp and began to shut the plane down I noticed a familiar, glimmering sight on the other end of tarmac: a B-17 Flying Fortress.

The blue-striped tail, shimmering silver skin, and the chin turret immediately identified this plan as the B-17G based at Falcon Field, Arizona. I had taken a tour of this same plane in 1985 while in fourth grade living in Scottsdale. I remember the air show to which Mom and Dad had taken us kids, and how Dad had pointed out where the pilots and crew members had worked. I was a plane fanatic by then, but I had never been inside a “warbird” before then. I was struck by how thin the metal skin was and how little protection it afforded the crew from the elements and the enemy. I also remembered that it took ten men a full eight hours to fly a few hundred miles to drop 4000-pounds of bombs that may only be accurate to within a few hundred yards of the target.

As I prepared to get back into my Hornet and depart for Pensacola I considered my jet: my warbird. One pilot can now fly five times faster and carry two to three times the bomb load and drop EVERY bomb within a few FEET of the target. However, much like I maintain a deep respect for the people who had to go to war sixty years ago, I, too, honor the weapons with which they fought it. I went over to the B-17 and struck up a conversation with one of the mechanics. He had been a gunner on B-17s in Europe. He didn’t mention it, but his hat had two things embroidered on the side: 381st BG / Schweinfurt. I knew about the Schweinfurt-Regensberg mission, but I looked it up when I got home: the 381st sent 20 B-17’s on a daylight mission against German factories in August, 1943… 9 of them never came back. Daylight missions were extremely dangerous: the long contrails the bombers pulled across the sky made them easy targets for German anti-aircraft crews; the long distances involved meant Allied fighters couldn’t protect the lumbering bombers from German fighter planes. The Schweinfurt-Regensberg mission was fictionalized in the movie TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH, but the real mission claimed 60 of the 376 bombers sent out: that’s 600 men in one day in case you were counting.

I invited the crewman over to see inside my jet. In one of those “circle of life” moments I helped steady his aging legs as he went up the boarding ladder and let him rest on the canopy sill. I tried to explain all of the computer screens, buttons, and switches, but I could tell he wasn’t really listening. It was all over his head, but he smiled nonetheless, and nodded approvingly as I pointed out the details of the modern-day fighter. After helping him down the ladder I shook his hand and said good-bye. He patted me on the back and “thanked me for my service.” I gave him a salute and thanked him for his. Then we went our separate ways: he back to his non-flush riveted, radial-engined bomber and me to my composite fuselaged, fly-by-wire fighter jet. It’s strange to me that two separate paths can have a common terminus, but they do.

I blasted off a few minutes later and dipped my wing to the proud, polished bomber and its crew. As I arced out to the east and climbed through 17,000 feet I could look back over my left shoulder and still see that glistening, silver plane… incongruous and bright against the smaller, sleeker, and painted civilian airliners and private planes. Then I laughed back some tears as I remember the plane’s nickname:

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

Love to all,
Guy