Flight School: An Assignment You Can't Refuse

ELGIN AIR FORCE BASE, Florida, Feb. 16, 2008 — -- I was at peace with the idea of my first ride on a fighter jet. Actually, I was a little excited … until the public affairs officer at Eglin Air Force Base casually mentioned over the phone that as long as I liked roller coasters I'd have no problem in an F-16.

I hate roller coasters.

Yet there I was one recent Monday morning at the Medical Center at Eglin Air Force Base, near Pensacola, Fla., perched on the end of an examining bed as my ears and throat were probed by flight surgeon Maj. Bob Mishra, also known as "Hittin."

Hittin's pep talk did not begin well.

"More than half the people get sick," Hittin told me in a disarmingly clinical voice. "Just make sure you get a couple of airsickness bags." He couldn't resist a little flourish.

"These bags are made by the lowest bidder, so you want to get two of them."

Thanks, Doc.

"And you want to double-bag it and you want to put it somewhere where you can get it," he added. "What you want to do is you want to be sure you know how to drop the oxygen mask and you can grab that bag and use it if you have to."

Dropping the clinical veneer for just a moment, he added, "We hope that you don't ever have to."

That made two of us.

'You Are the Rock'

So began a very long day of intense preflight training. I remember being fascinated, excited and occasionally a bit anxious, but mostly I remember being overwhelmed as information was hurled at me faster than, well, Mach 1.2, the speed at which I would be traveling shortly after sunrise the next morning.

"You are going to notice there is a big vent that is going to be blasting cold air into the jet," said Hittin as he listed the things I could do to avoid — or try to avoid — puking at the speed of sound. "So what you can do is turn that thing on and try to get it on to your face. The cold air on your face will help you feel better."

So would keeping my eyes out of the cockpit and on the horizon. So would a swig of water. Finally, he counseled pure oxygen, urging me to listen carefully when my instructor showed me how to switch my oxygen regulator to 100 percent.

"When you get some nice clean clear oxygen in your lungs that will make you feel better as well."

But then we got back to where we began. "If all else fails you are going to have a barf bag handy."

But then I learned that the real demon in all this is gravitational force, or as they like to call it here, G force.

"Now the way that G forces work is pretty simple," said Hittin as he began a high school physics lesson. "If you think about tying a rock to a string and swinging it around — you are the rock."

Uh, right.

"And if you can think of yourself sitting down while that force is going on, what is happening is centrifugal force is pushing the blood from here [pointing to his head] down [he points to his legs] and if you don't have enough blood here [head] you can pass out and lose consciousness."

He then told me how the anti-gravity G suit I'd be wearing would inflate to push the blood back up from legs. And how I needed to clench my leg and stomach muscles to give it a little help. And how I needed to do some fast, shallow breathing.

He made it sound so simple.

Then with the stroke of a pen he signed a piece of paper: my 10-42, Air Force lingo for a medical clearance form.

I was not even airborne and I was starting to lose consciousness as I strained to retain all the information being thrown at me. Little did I know, this was just the beginning.

Emergency Egress Procedures

In another building on the sprawling base I was ushered into a room called Life Support. It's a concept I wholly endorsed, although I was not yet sure what it meant. Inside Life Support I met "Fig," aka Master Sgt. Mikel Figuero, my enthusiastic instructor. Fig would spend several hours showing me all the perils of a fighter jet ride and the easy-as-pie, 1-zillion-step process I would have to follow to make sure none of those perils made me perish.

I liked Fig — he was patient and good-humored. I had only one moment of doubt — when I asked him how many times he'd been up in a fighter jet.

"None, sir," he told me. "But I'd sure like to."

Hmm. I've been embedded with the Army, the Marines, the Navy and the Air Force, and I have a pretty good understanding of RHIP — Rank Has Its Privileges. But wouldn't it make sense to let the guy who trains newbies like me to ride in an F-16 actually ride in an F-16? Just asking.

First, I got fitted into my flight suit, boots, helmet, G suit and safety vest. As I looked in the mirror I couldn't help thinking for just a moment: "Move over Tom Cruise. There's a new Top Gun in town."

Fig quickly brought me down to earth.

"My job is to teach you emergency egress procedures, meaning how to get out of the aircraft," he said. "And what to do if something goes wrong. Just basic scenarios that you would do in the back seat. We are not asking you to do too much. The pilot is going to do everything for you for the most part, but you need to know where some of the handles are, what to look for, what not to touch."

He explained the function of a boggling array of buckles and straps that each have a critical function. Different combinations may have to be unfastened in different emergencies.

Then I got to practice wearing my oxygen mask.

"If at any time you need to remove this mask, always remember to remove the right-hand side," said Fig

"Its all about knowing how to throw up properly," I observed fatalistically.

"Exactly," said Fig as I searched his face for a hint of a sadistic smile. "You don't want it to get on yourself and not enjoy the flight."

He offered some helpful breakfast suggestions: "Eat something light, maybe oatmeal and a banana." Why? "Because it tastes good going down and it tastes the same way coming up." He smiled.

Then he showed me what might best be described as the Air Force Blooper Reel. In any other circumstance the videos of air crews ejecting from moving jets would be kind of cool. But when the scenarios being described could include you, they take on a whole different dimension.

"He went up, banked it and couldn't make it back," said Fig as he narrated a video of a pilot being ejected from his aircraft at very high speed. "The main reason we show this is not to scare you but to show you that the system actually works."

Fig explained that the ejector seat would abandon me after about five seconds. It did not take me long to realize that if I did have to eject at 20,000 feet I'd be a human cannon ball hurtling through the air.

I clambered into the cockpit simulator and slid into the very tight seat. I was surrounded by a dizzying array of fake buttons and screens, wondering how I could possibly avoid knocking into a few of them.

Suddenly, Fig closed the canopy over my head and began talking to me through the two-way radio. He drew my attention to a big yellow handle between my knees. Yank it hard and the canopy flies off the cockpit, he told me, then I would fly out. The ejector seat.

"You're not even going to touch this," said Fig reassuringly as he pointed to the yellow handle. My pilot would send us both skyward if things got really bad. But … if things get really, really bad, I'd have to eject myself and the pilot.

"If you pull it toward you, don't look at it," said Fig. "Grab the handle, sit back and then pull. And when you pull, keep those elbows in, because if you keep them out you might hit something, you might hurt yourself. And then continue holding the handle."

I suddenly imagined myself careening through the skies, desperately clutching that yellow handle."There's not a lot of margin for error in all this is there?" I observed with that keen reporter's eye for the glaringly obvious.

"There's not," said Fig, "not when you're talking about air speed and how fast you're going to eject out of that seat."

Moments later, I found myself hanging like a piñata from the ceiling — parachute instruction.

I quickly learned that the parachute doesn't deploy until 14,000 feet, which means that if I eject at a higher altitude I would have a heart-stopping plunge until the parachute kicked in. Fig showed me a number of slides illustrating what can go wrong when the parachute deploys. He tried to teach me an intricate (and intimidating) series of steps intended to unravel twisted cords or an improperly deployed chute. There are a lot of worst-case scenarios. There was a staggering amount of information to absorb.

"And the emergency chute if this fails?" I asked, comforting myself with the notion that a fail-safe backup would come to my rescue.

"Ah," said Fig, pausing for effect, "you don't have a backup."

If I didn't gulp, I certainly felt like I did.

The last lesson from Fig: how to (try to) land safely in a parachute.

"It doesn't matter how heavy you are or how light you are," he said in a very serious voice. "If you land the right way you are going to walk out of it. If you land the wrong way you are probably going to break something."

There are scenarios for landing in power lines (make yourself thin, don't try to get yourself down); trees (use your hands to cover your jugular); in water (your life vest should inflate by itself, and if not pull the cords).

With that, I was ready. Or as ready as I was going to be.

The Flight

After a light dinner I was surprised to find that I slept remarkably soundly. The alarm was set for 4 a.m. By 5 a.m. I was on base and getting dressed for the flight. Next to me was Col. Bill "Thunder" Thornton, who would be piloting the F-16 I would soon be riding in. A veteran pilot and senior test pilot, Thunder oozed calm and confidence. I had been warned about cocky young pilots who thrill at giving newbies like me a biscuit-tossing induction. Thunder showed no signs of such evil intent.

Remembering the counsel from Hittin and Fig, I ate a few crackers, just so there'd be something in my stomach.

At 6 a.m. we sat in the briefing room with the other pilots and crew.

At 7 a.m. we headed to the airfield.

After one last run to the restroom I climbed up the ladder and plunked into the seat. The cockpit only mildly resembled yesterday's simulator. Now the buttons were real, the screens in front of me alive with data. With help from the crew chief I attached my oxygen mask, assorted cords and buckled in.

"Ready to go do this?" Thunder asked.

"Ready," I replied, adding a gung-ho "let's go for it."

I was surprised by the sense of calm I felt as we taxied to the runway, the other two aircraft on our mission just feet from our wings. Separated by just seconds, the three jets took off in formation. With our afterburners ignited, Thunder and I quickly tilted for the clear blue sky the moment we left the ground.

It was unlike any flight I'd ever experienced. I've been on military and civilian aircraft of all shapes and sizes, in Iraq, the Persian Gulf and on an aircraft carrier, but a fighter jet has its very own feel. Unlike conventional airplanes that you ride inside, in the F-16 you are sitting on top, and you can see in every direction. I tried to remember my training, obediently keeping my eyes on the horizon, but there was so much to see, so much to absorb, that it was difficult to stay focused.

"So how's it going back there," asked Thunder.

"It's great," I replied, "much better than I expected."

And it was. But not for much longer.

I was on this flight to watch a test of a new small bomb that has recently been developed by the Air Force. The three jets would make a practice "cold pass" before the leading jet dropped the bomb from a predetermined position while flying 700 miles an hour.

As we ended the cold pass we banked to the left. Suddenly I was overcome with a sensation unlike anything I'd felt before. It was as if King Kong had me in the palm of his hairy hand and he was trying to squeeze every ounce of blood out of me. I remember the G Suit squeezing my legs as the jet turned on its side. I remember struggling to find the horizon as everything around me went dark for an instant. I do not remember clenching my muscles or doing rapid, shallow breathing. I was too numbed by it all to have a clear head. It was probably nothing more than a few seconds, but it rattled me like nothing before.

As we leveled out. I could feel my stomach rebelling. I quickly yanked off my right glove and clambered to unfasten the right side of oxygen mask, while snatching one of the airsickness bags I'd stuffed into my G Suit. I switched off the audio on my microphone, to spare Thunder the sounds that were about to come.

It was nothing more than a hit of dry heaves.

"Did that turn kind of mess you up a little bit?" asked Thunder. I assured him I would be fine. "OK, sorry about that," he said. "We had to turn tight."

In a minute I regained my composure as we circled round for the real bomb drop. I watched intently as the F-15E on our right prepared for the moment.

"OK, we're three miles from release," crackled Thunder's voice over the radio. "You should be watching the bottom of his aircraft and the weapon should be coming off shortly."

"Ready," said a voice that I recognized was Maj. Verun "Stinger" Puri, the mission commander. "Pickle," he said, using the familiar code word for release, "weapon away."

I had a perfect view of the drop. It might have been too good. I was mesmerized by the bomb as it floated in the sky, then plunged toward earth. I strained to follow it till it disappeared from sight.

Then suddenly I was back in the palm of King Kong. This time I had the presence to clench my muscles and breathe rapidly. I did better, but I was still beaten. Again, I scrambled to unhitch my oxygen mask and readied the barf bag.

With a few hearty heaves I had been formally inducted.

I forgot to turn off my microphone. Thunder heard it all.

"Jeffrey you OK?" asked Thunder, clearly concerned by sudden silence. "Stick your thumb up if you can hear me!"

My thumb went up as he strained to look back. It might have been shaking a bit.

"OK, great," said the relieved pilot.

I was busy inhaling pure oxygen.

Thunder then took us for a spin over the Gulf of Mexico, where we broke the speed of sound, hitting Mach 1.2, or about 723 miles an hour. It was fast. But there was no hint of a sonic boom, nothing more than a very impressive, very awe-inspiring, bone-rattling ride on a rocket.

We had barely grazed three G's in my induction to gravitational force. Thunder wanted to know if I wanted to try six G's before we took the jet back to base. My head was still foggy.

"I think I'm good for today," I said.