Monthly Archives: September 2007

An OC-504-68 colleague recent sent to our email group this Sports Illustrated piece about flying in the backseat of the Navy’s retired F-14 Tomcat fighter bomber. It reminded me of my own, less than macho encounter with the Air Force’s retired F-4 Phantom fighter bomber.

I flew backseat in the Phantom (which I had called in for air support a time or two in Vietnam) in 1980, as part of a series of newspaper reports on the Texas guard. I was very lucky to have an old hillbilly, a regular Air Force lieutenant colonel from West Virginia, as my pilot in the front-seat. He was impressed that I had been in the infantry, for whom he had flown close air support. But he probably shouldn’t have been impressed. Take-off was okay, even exciting. But I soon found that my body couldn’t stand the 2-3 Gs of the normal turns, as we flew out of the traffic pattern at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio.

We were headed to a bombing range in South Texas for some practice bombing runs. The thought of that–which included a 4-5 G rapid climb called a "pop-up," the top of which added an inverted roll before a swoop back down to see if the bomb had hit the big target–added to the sweat that was pouring down my back and chest and the panic in my brain each time we jinked a little, to the right or left, at 400 mph.

To shorten an excruciating story, the LTC graciously agreed to skip the bombing run and take me back to Kelly. He only–jokingly I think–asked me promise not to write anything bad about him. I swore. Anything to get back on the ground. I didn’t puke, but only by a supreme effort. Just the memory of that day still makes me nauseated. When we landed and the crew chief had climbed up to unhook me so I could get out, he surpressed a grin while assuring me that even pilots hated riding in the claustrophobic back seat.