The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Chip Setnor

Aircraft Flown: F-15, F-117, A-7 

Transcript

David Moore (00:05)

Welcome to the Flyboy podcast where we bring you just one thing, cool flying stories. I'm your host David Moore and today I'll be talking with Mike Chip Setnor. Chip is a command pilot with more than 2,400 flight hours and 250 combat hours piloting the F-15 Eagle, the F-117 Nighthawk and the A-7 Corsair. He is Bandit 217, meaning he was the 68th Air Force pilot to fly the Black Jet. Back in the day,

He was briefly in the original I unit and then became one of the initial cadre for the second F-117 squadron called Z unit. with that Chip, welcome to the Flyboy podcast. You've flown both the F-15 and the F-117. How are the missions of those two airplanes different and what did you like most about flying each of them?

Chip (00:58)

Okay, well that's going to take the entire half hour that we had planned to talk. So I'll just get started. back then it was the 15A, the early version in the ⁓ mantra from MacDonald Douglas who built it was not a pound for air to ground. So it was just purely air to air dog fighting.

Then to switch over to the A7 and the F117 where it's virtually nothing but ground attack. The missions were wildly different. The F15 being a turn and burn fighter and more thrust than you could possibly use as opposed to the F-117 which was just get in there quiet, nobody knows you're there, deliver two extremely precise weapons and get out of dodge before they even knew you cut them loose. So wildly different missions, but both incredibly gratifying.

David Moore (01:54)

What was your favorite thing about flying the F-15?

Chip (01:58)

The F-15 was just so responsive which was remarkable because you come out of pilot training having flown the T-37 and the T-38 which are both very small aircraft and then suddenly climb into what they call the flying tennis court and still stand it on its tail and accelerate going straight up pulling 9 G's and a fabulous roll rate. It was just...awesome flying that airplane. It was just a joy getting into it every time you saddled up.

David Moore (02:35)

I flew the A-10 and the F-117. And the A-10 didn't have the thrust that the 15 did, but it was certainly, you know, turn on a dime and it was just hand flying the whole time. It was just a blast. ⁓ And by comparison, you know,

Chip (02:48)

Well, and honestly, if I had had, if somebody had said you get to have one more type before you hang up the Spurs, it would have been the A-10. What an incredible mission. And especially with a guy like me who's got a son who's a Marine, all of a sudden those guys love you guys, us. They'd say, you're too damn high. You're not doing us any good. And all of a sudden, never mind. Here comes the BERT. We're ready for the GAU-8 to come in and save us all.

Yeah, incredible mission.

David Moore (03:20)

You and I share a bit of very interesting history in that we both had the opportunity to command the 8th Fighter Squadron Black Sheep.

Chip (03:30)

We

David Moore (03:30)

I think you were two commanders before me. think Gary Woltering followed you and then I followed Gary G. Man.

Chip (03:38)

⁓ Roles followed me and then G-Man then you. Yeah. And thank you for pointing out that I'm older than you. That's really nice. However, I still have some brown I noticed.

David Moore (03:41)

And then G-man, okay. I got it, got it.

I do not, not a bit, unfortunately.

So tell me, as you think back to being commander of the Eighth Fighter Squadron, is there anything that stands out to you as a moment you particularly cherish and relive?

Chip (04:09)

⁓

 The experience of... You okay?

David Moore (04:12)

I'll give you a minute to think about it. I'll tell you mine.

Mine was, I screwed up one day up at the range had my fangs out. We went in and we weathered out on the range, but we'd done a long route to get there. so we were like close on gas. And I was like, by God, we're going to get below this cloud deck. I was the squadron commander and

My wingman wasn't going to say anything. So we do an orbit to come back in, lower altitude, attack the target. We're coming off, get a couple of shacks. We're feeling great, heading back to the base. And all of a sudden, the winds have shifted. So instead of being able to come in and land north to south, we got to go all the way around the base and come back. And by that point, we're like low on gas. And so I've got to declare, min fuel coming back in.

And the way we did the briefings then, you had like a first go and a second go. This was during the summertime. And so we were two day goes and I went into the mission brief for the second go and I say, hey guys, I got to tell you, I really messed up today and here's what happened. so watch out, watch your gas and so forth. And we came out of the brief and ⁓ the wing commander, Bill Lake was there and he pulled me aside and he said, do you know what you just did?

You gave every pilot in your squadron permission to admit when they messed something up. Good job. And he walked out. So, and it was unintentional and yet fortuitous. So, how about you?

Chip (05:36)

Yep, good for you. Good for Bill Lake, too.

⁓

Well, you know, when you were talking about that, it took me back to a Holloman story, not the black sheep. But I was flying F-15s at Holloman in the 49th and you were talking about the weather changing on you in a hurry. one day there only two birds out of Holloman that are airborne, me and my wingman. We're up north Trinity just doing BFM mission.

It is an utterly brilliant blue cloudless day and I get an emergency call on guard for a weather recall. And I'm going, okay, somebody's got this on tape. They're getting this wrong. What are you guys talking about? And it was coming from the Holloman Tower and I called them up and I said, what are you talking about? And they said, look at the white sands. And I look off to the west.

And there is one of those Haboobs, the sandstorms. And you can literally see this wall of dirt moving toward Holloman. And so I go ahead and I put my wingman out in front of me. And I said, stay below the mach but we're coming for a straight in to what is it, 1-6, I think. And I said, keep it below the mach, slow down, configure, you know, three to five miles before.

and land straight out and clear the active as quick as you can. So my wingman gets in there and he touches down and gets halfway down the runway and he disappears. And now I'm coming in right behind him and I called him up and said, confirm you're clear of the active. He said, yeah, I'm clear. I'm very relieved. And I get over the overrun and the runway disappears. And I look over the left.

canopy rail and I can see the white lines going by me and I land. So my story about a weather incident is the worst weather I ever landed in was on a clear in a million day. And it was actually so bad. We both had to stop. We cleared the active and stopped and waited for about 10 minutes until we could see well enough to go back to the flight line. Yeah.

David Moore (08:04)

Wow, that's impressive.

Chip (08:05)

And I didn't want to divert either.

David Moore (08:09)

That's impressive.

I never saw a sandstorm like that out at Holloman, but with white sand sitting right there, I can just imagine it coming across.

Chip (08:15)

No.

Yeah, yeah, it was the weirdest thing I ever saw, weather-wise you would ask me when we were talking earlier about ⁓ bad weather incidents. had been hit by lightning twice, once in 15, while I was refueling over Saudi Arabia with live missiles wall to wall. And then the other time was at night out at Tonopah.

David Moore (08:23)

Well, yeah, sure.

Chip (08:42)

and I was the weather ship, in other words the sacrificial lamb going out to see if it was okay. And ⁓ I'm giving the PIREP I'm calling squadron ops, talking to the guys and I'm saying, no, it's really bad, we're gonna cancel tonight. And all of a sudden I get hit by this bolt of lightning that's just holy mackerel, brightest thing I've ever seen. Well, I go in and I land and I debrief, well, I get out of the plane.

and my crew chief is over at the right wing tip and there's about a half dollar sized hole blown through all of the carbon fibers and it's just frayed out and all that. And I go walking into the squadron building and all the pilots are standing around the duty desk because they're not going to go fly and they just spontaneously burst into laughter. And I'm going, what's so damn funny? They said, well, your PIREP was wonderful. was.

Okay, we're gonna cancel, it's really bad, and then the string of the most violent epithets we've ever heard. And I don't remember saying them, but I'm sure I did, so yeah. Weather, it's not our friend.

David Moore (09:49)

Wow. That sounds like the sort of thing that ⁓ may have given rise to a call sign. ⁓ 

Chip (09:57)

No, you know, I've always been Chip. The Black Sheep tagged me with Pappy. I think that was G-Man that came up with that. Because of course the Marine Corps Black Sheep Squadron had Pappy Boyington. And so, and since I was so incredibly ancient, that's what they tagged me with. But yeah.

David Moore (09:59)

No.

 That's right. ⁓

Chip (10:22)

We all get call signs for doing something really smart or really stupid.

David Moore (10:27)

is there an in-flight emergency that ⁓ stands out in your memory, more significant than that?

Chip (10:34)

I actually had one and it turned out to be, you just you handle it by the book. But we had this absolutely fabulous crew chief when I was a F-15 instructor at Luke. And this guy had had some hard times and he was given an incentive flight. And he shows up and he has a list written out of every aerobatic maneuver known to man.

And he says, you know, his wife is with him. They sat in the debrief with my wingman who also had a crew chief. And ⁓ he said, I'd really like to fly each and every one of these. And I said, that's going to make me puke if I do all of these. OK, we'll try. But if you start getting sick, I don't make people get sick in my airplane. I'm going to knock it off. Well, I was flying with Russ Masters. Great guy was my wingman.

And we take off, vertical takeoff out of Holloman, get right to the areas. say, okay, we're going to do pitch out and rejoin first. I start the turn. Russ starts his turn. I'm looking over my left shoulder at him during the rejoin and he says, hey, lead, you're on fire. And suddenly I hear in my headset going engine fire, right? Engine fires. Didn't even go to overheat.

 and I look and the temp spikes through a thousand centigrade and I shut the engine down, discharge the bottle and the engine locks, seizes up and boy I just all of sudden get, the blade had crept out and hit the casing so it's frozen and I've got this dead face of an F-100 engine. So we fly back and the crew chief's great, he's just maintaining his cool. We come in and land and fire department's there, my squadron commander.

David Moore (12:00)

Wow.

Chip (12:20)

one of the best men I've ever known, Jim Clue. He comes up says, okay, number one, what happened? I tell him. And then number two, he says, how much time did he get pointing at the crew chief? And I said, he got about 20 minutes. he said, there's a B model, spare, go take it and give him a good ride. That was Jim Clue. I'd follow that guy anywhere. ⁓ And so we take off, we go and fly. 

David Moore (12:42)

Yeah.

Chip (12:47)

We get out to the area and this kind of goes into what, you know, cool things you get to do in the airplane too. And not only did we fly each one of those maneuvers, but I was hands off. I know I shouldn't say this. I told the crew chief, you're flying them. I'll talk you through them all. And he got, he got bragging rights. He, swore he wasn't going to get sick. A couple of times he went cold mic, so I couldn't hear him. But I'd ask him, are you okay? And I'd get.

I'd get this, you know, in the rear view mirror. But he had bragging rights. When we landed, he got to tell his wife and everybody from then on, I flew all of these myself in an F-15. So yeah, that was a terrible emergency that worked out pretty good. I got two rides, pretty cool. Yeah.

David Moore (13:21)

Wow.

Worked out okay. Yeah, that's great.

 you've got quite a bit of time in combat. I want to ask two questions One, want to ask about, tell me about your very first combat sortie. Because those are always, it's something unusual, you don't know what to expect and you're diving in and my gosh, am I going to make it out of this?

Chip (13:57)

Yeah.

David Moore (14:00)

⁓ So I want you to tell me about your first combat sortie but then if there's another one that particularly stands out as memorable, I'd love to hear about that as well. 

Chip (14:10)

Yeah, the first one, not all that glamorous because my first combat sortie I was working for Dave Deptula, the real genius behind the Gulf War, Gulf War one. And ⁓ I went up with the Saudi AWACS guys as the senior American on board. So that was my first combat one. We didn't even cross into Iraq, but that's the one that logged as the first combat time.

David Moore (14:18)

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Chip (14:38)

But then I got to fly a few F-15 sorties ⁓ in two other F-15 tours that I had over in the Middle East. And then finally, as the group commander for the 363rd Expeditionary Group out of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi, that's where I got the bulk of the combat time. And if you're asking about one mission that stands out in particular, yes, I've got one. It was a night mission.

It was the first time I flew with Nog's night vision goggles into combat and the Iraqis were still shooting at us when we were doing the operation in Southern Watch, sorties, and we got tired of it. And so ⁓ Mike Snodgrass's guys out of ⁓ Kuwait launched a strike against the AAA sites down by Basra and

My guys were the air to air guys. We went up and we had, I think it was 12 Eagles up standing between the airfields in northern Iraq and the guys down in Basra.

So we fly this mission and with the NOGs down, I'm well to the west away from the strike because we're sitting there waiting to see if any of the Iraqis are going to come and try and play with us. And seeing explosions at night is not new to me, but seeing them through night vision goggles is spectacular because you just see the definition of things flying up in the air and blowing up and all that.

David Moore (16:08)

Wow.

So what does it look like when you see the explosion on the nogs?

Chip (16:21)

When you see, when you're looking through the nogs, you're not just seeing the like you would at night with no nogs, an explosion and it would be a flash of light and the flash of light goes away and that's it. You might see a subsequent fire on the ground. With nogs, you're looking thermally at things or low light and it's blowing stuff up and you're actually watching stuff go up into the atmosphere and taking a very long time to come back to ground.

So it's pretty spectacular. But after watching all of this, now snog guys all headed back to base. We're going to stay up there for a while, see if any of the Iraqi pilots are going to try to do anything about it. I wind up kicking a four ship back, four ship back. Now I've got a four ship, I kick a two ship back. And so it's me and my wingmen. And we're going to stay up there as the last two.

And it's getting pretty boring. We're just doing counter rotating caps. And I've got a dedicated tanker waiting for us and a dedicated AWACS. And AWACS keeps telling me picture clean. There's nobody there. And all of a sudden I look up with the nogs and I see a guy steady light coming over my head. And I didn't know whether to key the mic or hit the master arm switch. And I keyed the mic and said, 

dragnet confirmed picture clean and they said, yeah, nobody out there, you're clean. And it dawns on me, it's a satellite that I'm looking at that's still lit up by the sun below the horizon. And that night I saw about four or five different satellites through the night vision goggles, because they really do show up well. And I thought it just seemed kind of profound that here I go looking at the very worst men can do to men.

even when it's necessary, to looking up and seeing that which we aspire to. And it was just, I don't want to get too philosophical, but it kind of hit me as, yeah, this is kind of impressive. yeah. Well, and that, ⁓ and with the help of Jeremiah Weed, I have been philosophical on more occasion than I care to count, so.

David Moore (18:28)

It's okay to be philosophical on a combat sortie, so please.

⁓ Jeremiah weed is a terrible poison. ⁓ There are much better forms of poison out there, I've got to say.

Chip (18:43)

By the way, I got into a conversation with the Snacko. I had a ⁓ sergeant whose house burned down just a while back and he lost everything. And I called up the black sheep Snacko. Currently I said, hey, can you help me out? He lost all of his memorabilia. What do you guys got? I sent him a bunch of stuff. ⁓ But the Snacko was telling me I have contacted the guys who own the patent.

for Jeremiah Weed, because they quit making it and I'm trying to get a license to have another batch made and we'll sell it to fighter pilots for a fortune. Terrible.

David Moore (19:35)

my, ⁓ my. Well,

let me ask you a question. With all the different planes you've flown, have you ever come close to ejecting, to the point where you were reaching for the handles thinking, is this the moment?

Chip (19:52)

⁓ One night in the 117 and for folks that don't know that might be listening, all three of you, I'm sure you'll get a bigger audience than that. The F-117 is completely negatively stable. Yeah, there you go. Completely negatively stable, meaning like if an airplane loses all electrical, most of them will just glide all the way to the crash. The F-117, not so. It had four fly-by-wire quadruped flight controls.

computers if they didn't make adjustments at a rate of about a hundred times per second to keep the plane in level flight or whatever attitude you wanted the plane would do what was called we call the shrug where it would pitch up and then just fall like a sheet of plywood no tendency to recover so losing those was kind of a big deal and one night I was flying north of Las Vegas

and all of sudden I get the Master Caution and one of my flight control computers fails. That's okay, I got three more. And about two minutes later I get another one. Second flight control computer has failed. I'd never even heard of that happening to anybody before. So I'm looking at, okay there's Vegas, Tonopah is up there, and that place which shall not be named is over there, and which one...

do I go to and I was actually a little bit closer to Tonapah on it so okay press on home and I kept the others that's the only one I can think of where I was actively saying okay I've got this step this step in the step and then I'm gonna pull the handles because if you get into that everybody saw the film of Brian Knight when his wing came off he came on it and you realize the second you lose ⁓ control of the airplane

David Moore (21:37)

yeah.

Chip (21:44)

It is totally unforgiving and you're going to get hurt coming out. So, there you go.

David Moore (21:46)

Yeah, yeah, falling leaf mode, we called it. ⁓

Brian was actually, ⁓ Brian, I taught to fly the A-10 when he came out of pilot training. And then when I came back to the 117, he was my instructor. ⁓ Turnabout was fair play, if you will. And yeah, I was there the night that ⁓ he came back. ⁓ I think ⁓

Chip (22:00)

Really?

Ugh.

David Moore (22:16)

One of his squadron mates maybe Bull Dunham had gone down and pick him up on Monday night and brought him back to the house and and he told us you know what had happened that it felt like he had run into a wall in midair and He said, until he saw the video afterward He had no idea that the wing had broken off and he said, it's like a 10g turn instantaneous uncommanded and and plane pitches down and goes into falling leaf mode. And he stirred the stick to see if he had any control whatsoever. Nothing. And he sees the trees coming up on either side of him. And he says, okay, pulls the handles. And he said it was like a gigantic hand reached into the cockpit and just scooped them out. And he gets a chute like one swing of the chute ⁓ and he can feel the heat of the fireball as he lands, as he comes down from you know, right next door, he's about 100 feet away. And then he says, in cap it off I do the world's worst parachute landing fall in somebody's front yard.

Chip (23:22)

Feet ass head, yeah.

David Moore (23:24)

Yeah, and fascinating, talking to the folks after that accident, you they went back to check all those fasteners. you know, we remember we took the wings apart, in, you know, looked at the Brooklyn Bridge and each wing, the braces supporting them. And every single plane had every single fastener in place. It was just that one where they hadn't been installed correctly after it had gone in for heavy maintenance.

Chip (23:38)

Yeah.

I don't know if you remember, but right after I left ⁓ being the commander of the sheep, BK had volunteered, but he was over as our guy in Saudi staying at the Khobar Towers in Dahran. And he got hit by the blast when those... ⁓

David Moore (24:13)

I didn't know he was in he was actually in Khobar.

Chip (24:16)

Yep, he was in Khobar when it went off. yeah, BK's got more than his fair share of stories. And then of course the one about him bringing his dad's remains home. Remains home, that's another good one. You're going to have to link in the podcast for that. 

David Moore (24:25)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, was, dad was over in Vietnam and lost. Yeah, I had not heard if they had brought his remains home, but if they have, I'm so glad.

Chip (24:40)

Yeah, well, and BK flew them home. Or he flew them here in the States, because he was flying commercial. And it's a quick diversion, I may. Another one of our blood brothers, Mark Renelt, just got the remains of his father confirmed by the search teams in Laos. And ⁓ now is...

David Moore (24:43)

⁓

Yeah.

Chip (25:08)

there's going to be a ceremony obviously at Arlington for him and his mom and one of his siblings. it's something we can all be very proud of that we don't give up when it comes to bringing people home. So that's another good note.

David Moore (25:21)

Indeed.

Yeah.

And there's something about fathers as well. So when you talk to young people who say they're interested in serving in the military, what advice do you give them?

Chip (25:41)

⁓ When I left the Pentagon, I was in the Pentagon on 9-11 and I was the senior planner for Joint National Security Council matters for Doc Fogelsohn at the time. Did all of that, did the deployment orders and then I said I'm going to go to ⁓ grab a ROTC job. And I took over the detachment at the University of Maryland and we had like 14 different colleges supplying students and every semester we would have the welcoming to the detachment if you sign up for both potential cadets and their parents if they were interested in coming. We'd get real good turnout. And invariably somebody would say something, what are you going to expect from my, you know, young 17, 18-year-old, 19-year-old? And I'd say, okay, well, let me tell you a story that a young man in World War II, graduated from high school, got selected for pilot training, ⁓ wound up checking out in P-40s and was then assigned to the first air commandos in the China, Burma, India theater. And he shows up at his assignment and the squadron commander looks at him and says, how much time in P-51s have you got? Because that's what we're flying. And the kid said, I've never flown a P-51, just P-40s.

and the commander said okay go on out, show you how to start it up, get a feel for it, fly it around the flagpole for an hour and come back because tomorrow morning you're going out strafing Japanese airfields so the next morning he gets up, number four in a four ship tail in Charlie, they get jumped by six Japanese zeros flight scatters, know what, P-51A you don't want to fight a zero and ⁓ so they get split up, he gets lost, flies the best heading he can think of, realizes he doesn't know where he is, but he looks down and on a grass strip he sees a bunch of British hurricane fighters sitting on the ground. So he lands there, asks for gas and directions. They were very generous with directions, but wouldn't give him any gas. They said, go hit this railroad, turn north about 90 miles, that's where your base is.

He does that, not knowing if he's got the gas to get there, lands about 45 minutes after the other members of his flight had landed. They all come running up, we thought, you know, the Japanese got you. Good on you for making it back. I'd look these parents in the eye and say, when he flew that mission, my dad was 19 years old. How much am I going to expect from...your potential cadets, just that much. And my commandant of cadets would just be furious with me. Boss, God damn it, you're scaring them off again. And invariably about a third of them suddenly remembered other appointments and they would take off never to be seen again. And I'd look at him and say, Shashi, I just saved you a ton of work because those were the ones we were going to have to get rid of. So if you're interested in service, think of how bad it can go.

David Moore (29:05)

Yeah.

Chip (29:05)

And by the way, as a footnote, that fighter pilot is now 101 years old and he's sitting out in the living room watching a track and field meet right now. ⁓ Dad wound up retiring as a major, 20 years of service in the Air Force, flew 51s, F-86s, whole bunch of fun stuff. And I'm very proud of my family. My wife was in for 26 years as a flight nurse and nurse anesthetist.

My son I mentioned, three tours as a Marine. My son-in-law was one of the third army old guard guys at Arlington and he had the toughest work of all, course, with all the funerals. ⁓Jan's dad, my wife's dad, 30 years in the army, was Colin Powell's first sergeant. It's just obvious that our family can't get decent jobs on the outside.

David Moore (29:45)

Yeah.

Chip (29:59)

we need to keep coming into the military. But that's kind of the message I would impart to just anybody that wants to come into the service. Greatest thing going.

David Moore (30:10)

That is amazing to hear and thank you. Thank you so much for sharing it. ⁓ Yes.

Chip (30:17)

Can I take one moment? ⁓

Art Weiermuller, pardon me, best commander ever, passed about three months ago. Here's to Art.

 and I wish he wouldn't make me drink that brown liquid. And if you want another good fighter pilot story about Art Weiermuller, he passed away, he was cremated. His favorite drink was Crown Royal. So the last time Jan and I saw him, we brought him this beautiful box in this, or a beautiful bottle in a beautiful case. That's what he's buried in, his ashes.

David Moore (30:57)

my.

Beautiful, Art was a lieutenant colonel when I was a second lieutenant out at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, learning to fly the A-10.

Chip (31:07)

Yeah.

That's the last pictures I've got with him is when we went out to where they've got the A7s on static and we took a bunch of pictures. He had a tough time, but yeah.

David Moore (31:23)

a nickel on the grass. Indeed, All right. Thank you, ⁓ not only for your service, Chip, but for your dad's as well. Amazing stories today. And I really, really appreciate it.

Chip (31:24)

Nickel on the ground, that's exactly right.

Hahaha

And most of them have the virtue of being almost true. So, it was a pleasure to talk with you, my brother.

David Moore (31:42)

There you go, there you go.

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