The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Ken Tatum

Aircraft flown: B-1, F-117, T-38

In this episode, Ken Tatum shares his extensive experience flying the B-1, F-117, and T-38 in the Air Force, including combat stories from the War in Kosovo, emergency situations, and transitioning to civilian aviation. Discover the technical differences, flying insights, and personal reflections from a seasoned pilot.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

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 Ken Tatum. Ken has more than 4,000 hours flying in the Air Force in the B-1, the F-117, and the T-38. He spent 28 years in the Air Force, including a good bit of time at Air University. He's also flown in the civilian world, and we're going to talk about that as well. Ken, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Thanks, everyone. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Absolutely. In the Air Force, uh you flew quite a bit in the B-1 and also the F-117. In fact, I think you're one of only about 25 pilots or so that actually have a thousand hours in the F-117. Can you tell us a little bit about those two airplanes? How are they similar? How are they different? Try to put us in the cockpit, if you will, of each one.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

You know, they're both great airplanes. Uh I I remember I was actually uh I think I was still in the sheet. Mace Carpenter was our DO and we we did a wess up at uh Mountain Home where you go up and drop bombs and and and they check and make sure the bombs actually function correctly. But but I remember Mace, uh, we we ran into some B-1 guys at the club that night, and he sort of put me on the spot and said, Okay, you know, Todd, Tater, which airplane do you do you like better? They're both fantastic airplanes, and yeah, they both drop bombs, so in the macro sense, you know, they're very similar, but such wildly different airplanes. I think I turned to him and said, Well, I said, obviously the F-117 is my combat airplane, and of course I would end up later commanding in the in a F-117. So it probably has a deeper place in my heart, but I remember at the moment I said, Well, the B-1's a lot harder. And he kind of looked at me and he went, What? Well, I go, I want you to think about this. I go, you know, you got a you know, a four, five hundred thousand-pound airplane, depending on fuel and bombs. You've got another pilot, you've got two weapon systems officers in the back, offensive and defensive. You know, you're in the air. I mean, gosh, a vanilla sortie was six or eight hours just training. Uh, I've flown almost 24 hours uh at one time in the thing. You know, in the F-117, everything you do is you. You're flying the airplane, you're uh working the um, you know, the infrared bombing system, you're tracking the bomb, you do it right, it's you, you do it wrong, it's you. Whereas in the B-1, it's really all about, especially when you move over to the left seat and you're the aircraft commander, how do you use that crew uh the most effective and efficient way possible? Let everybody do their job, uh, and then let everybody help everybody else do their job. So flying the airplane is easy. Uh, it's employing the airplane that is always the hard part. But you know, the B-1 really flies so much like a T-38. I've got tons of T-38 time. I was very, very fortunate. You know, when I was in the B-1 as co-pilots, we had a T-38. In the F-117, of course, we didn't have any two-seaters, so we you know instructed and evaluated from a chase plane in the T-38. I was an instructor at Columbus in the T-38. So the T-38 is actually probably my favorite airplane that I've ever found. I just love it. I've flown every every variation, every model. Uh love it. But the T30, uh, the B-1 flies very much like the T-38. Probably the hardest thing about the B1 is to not over G it. Because when you bring the wings back, it's you know, it's a 3G airplane or whatever, you know, to two and a half uh you know G limit. It was so easy down low when you're doing 600, 650 knots, just to easily put three or four Gs on the airplane and over G it. But uh man, that thing flies really nice down low. I mean, it's like you know, it's like sitting in a big F-150 going down the interstate. Really, really nice. And of course, you know, that was back in the earlier days when we did a lot of train following, you know, a lot of low-level operations. You know, the the airplane got very much away from that sort of uh roll, if you will, moved up higher, especially when they got their J Dams and stuff on board. But uh but the airplane flies wonderfully. The F-117, as you well know, I mean it it flies like an airplane, kind of, for the most part, you know. Uh very it'll pull six and a half G's, but not for very long. Your entire job, the cockpit, the way everything's laid out, is all about employing those laser guided bombs or those J DAMs, you know, that we you know got later down the road.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

You mentioned the combat experiences in the F-117. Take us to that experience and share some of your stories uh in the F-117.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Sure, absolutely. Man, it was a very interesting. I I know uh uh Thad Darger, the other B-1 to F-117 pilot in the Air Force, there's only two of us. He sort of told his story about going back and forth because his uh his wife Danielle was pregnant at the time. Well, I kind of had a very similar story in that my wife at the time was actually eight months pregnant, and so I didn't get to deploy with the squadron when they had first gone. Although I had actually gone over, you know, we in the year prior to Allied Force, uh, I was in the mission planning cell, and as you know, the F-117 was so mission planning intensive. Uh, and so I actually deployed several times in civilian clothes on the way over there to get things set up, uh, which is really interesting because you know, if you think about how things are post-9-11 in the airports uh and everything, but I remember walking in with a big black box with a lock on it, with a letter from let's just say something very high up of the government that said, You cannot open this box, you cannot this box, you cannot look at this box, don't even blink at this box, you know, kind of a thing. And we walked in and through airports completely unscathed, you know, to to make sure we got our mission planning stuff over there. But my wife had our firstborn, Kenneth, who actually just got married uh here about a month ago, and I was gosh, it was like maybe day two or day three. We had just gotten home from the hospital. The phone rings, uh, and it's uh Colonel Salada, the ninth uh fighter squadron commander, and said, Hey, uh, you know, Todd, I just wanted to check on you, see how mama's doing, how's the baby doing? And I remember thinking to myself, man, my fellow squadron commander is calling me up to check on me. How great is this guy? And after I said, Oh, sir, everything's great, he goes, Okay, that's good. You have an airplane ticket and you're leaving tomorrow morning. And uh I was like, oh wow, and my wife's sitting there looking at me, and I'm on the phone and she's talking to some neighbors. So I hang it up and I'm like, hey, you know, I I've got to leave tomorrow. Uh and so, you know, I left with a four-day old uh son, you know, got over there, the war had just kicked off. They were flying two goes a night, and so the mission planning was really intensive. And so, to be quite honest, that's why they wanted me over there. It wasn't so much for the flying skills, but uh, but as soon as I got over there, I checked in with the commander, you know, he said, Hey, I know you're trash from the travel, go straight to sleep. I wake up, and that was the night that we lost the airplane. And so my very first uh night in the mission planning cell was actually trying to plan missions to go bomb the wreckage of the F-117. Uh, and as we kept getting different coordinates for where it was or wasn't, you know, and we of course ended up not doing that. But uh the next night, I actually was able to get in an airplane, get on a sortie, go out there, and and we weathered that night. And man, it was just such an emotional event, if you will. But a couple nights later, I got to fly my first sortie. My first target was going after um, let's just say, part of the system that was involved in the shoot down of our airplane. Um, and so I can remember, you know, going to the tanker, you know, which of course was probably the hardest part of the sorty, right? You know, trying to find the tankers without a radar at night, everybody's got their lights off. Um, you you get your gas, you know, all the way to the brim, uh, you pop off, you stealth up the airplane, and you go to your hold, and and man, things get quiet really quick. Yeah, all you're doing is just checking that timing over and over and over to make sure you push plus or minus a few seconds. Uh go under, you know, go into enemy territory, and then all of a sudden you start seeing the surface of the air missiles come up, and you just start, you know, there goes one, and there goes one. And I just remember thinking, you know, gosh, I've got a this, you know, at this point, I've got a one-week old at home, my firstborn. Right as I show up, we lost an airplane, all that kind of stuff. And you really just start thinking to yourself, man, I hope the physicists were right. Obviously, Desert Storm, the airplane did fantastic, and the airplane is fantastic, right? The designers, the engineers, uh, our maintainers that keep the low observe, you know, all the low observable stuff going on the airplane. But I just remember thinking, you know, hey, my hands are in all these other people, and it's just my job to put it on one target. Yeah. And uh, you know, you go in, man, man. I remember the humidity was awful over there, so the infrared was really tough to see. Uh you're really gaining and leveling up, so you can pick up a target. Mine was really kind of a dirt target, it was a bunker, if you will. And so you're going in and you know you're dropping a GBU27, uh, you know, designed specifically for the F-117 uh back in the days, and you track it and you're watching the timer and you're making sure that pipper stays right there, and you see it go to zero, and for about a half a second, I was like, I missed. I missed it. And in that microsecond, you're trying to figure out what you did wrong. Uh, and the reason, of course, is it's it's you know, it's a it's a bunch of penetrator, just going down into the bunker, right? And so it took about a half a second, three-quarters of a second or so, and all of a sudden you see a bunch of blasts going out the sides. And so obviously it was the pressure going out of the vents uh of the bunker. And then my second target was like a GBU-10 dropped on a bridge span when we were trying to knock out a bunch of the bridges. And I I just remember leaving after that, you know, and uh just thinking, man, I would say probably nobody wants to go to war, right? You know, we go to war for our nation, you know, to to defend ourselves and our allies, and and of course, you know, what was going on over there with uh Milosevich and the ethnic cleansing and all the stuff, you know, the US felt like it needed to step in. But but I just remember thinking, finally in my career, I've done what I raised my right hand to do. Um, I didn't necessarily want to put my life on the line thinking about my my one week old, but that's that's what we're here to do, and I did it. And you know, thank goodness for you know, not just the designers of the F-117 and the maintainers, but you know, the F-15s overhead, the F-16 CJs launching harms, react for us, uh the search and rescue folks that obviously have just done a or you know, special forces folks that had done an awesome job, you know, uh uh recovering uh sugar d just a few nights before. So I to say I was pumped and excited uh is is the understatement of the century.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

So while you were flying down at Aviano, uh we were up at uh Spangdalam, Germany, taking the long way around Hungary to get to get to Serbia. So I know you've flown in Germany, and I understand uh you had a very significant moment in Germany in the B-1. Can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, uh I I I I I sure will. It was probably my most interesting uh emergency that I had. Hey, the B-1 had quite a few emergencies, but uh, you know, most of them were pretty low-level, shut down an engine, this, you know, that, or another.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

But it has four engines, right? It does.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

It has four four engines. You know, it's so loud on takeoff. We used to call it the Diamond Formation, you know, talking about the the Thunderbirds, you know, four ship diamond, uh, same engines essentially on the F-16, the early F-16s. But uh my squadron was deployed over to Fairford, uh, England for about a month. Uh and I was actually on a crew that was uh we were slated to do the 50th anniversary flyby of D-Day, uh, Normandy Beach. So really cool honor. Um, it turns out that we were weathered out that day, and uh the weather was so awful that you know the French had said they would be the only ones to fly. Uh, I think the Brits rolled in behind them, uh, but uh but but but we didn't get to fly. It was a B-1 with an F-15 on each wing, but we had practiced that numerous times. But anyway, we were deployed over to England and we were doing a low level, uh sort of in the lowlands, uh if you will, and uh you know, wings back, you know, 600-650 miles per hour, uh, dropper bombs, and it was very typical in the B-1 as long as you had the airspace to do it, is you would just pull the nose way up, 30, 40 degrees nose high, just trade that uh airspeed for altitude. Uh and then we each had a wing sweep, a wing wing sweep lever on the side, and so you would move the wings forward as you started slowing down uh from 67 and a half uh degrees back, which you might recognize that the wing sweep from the F-117, but uh that's all the way back, and then we move them up to 25 degrees, which was sort of our cruise. And so the aircraft commander was flying, and the source I'm running checklists, I'm talking on the radios, and I just I I kind of happened to look up, and we had uh strip tapes in the in the B-1 uh versus round dials, and I I kind of looked at it and something just didn't quite look right, and like the AOA and the airspeed, something just didn't make sense. And I looked down at the wind sweep uh indicator and it showed the wings were all the way back, and so I quickly looked out the window and I couldn't see anything, and I said, Hey, your wings are still back, and he and he was like, No, they're not, and he you know, sort of you know, uh referenced the handle, and I was like, No, they're still back. And so we pushed over and got our airspeed and accelerated back up and uh said, Oh wow, okay, that's kind of interesting. We knew of one time it had happened before where the B1 had got its wings stuck back at 55 degrees, so not quite all the way back. And we all knew the story, and they had gone out to Palmdale or Edwards Air Force Base and landed on the lake bed out there because obviously wings back, no flaps, super fast speed. So we uh got leveled off, got everything under control, and so he said, Hey, why don't you run the checklist? Because we had an alternate wing sweep checklist. So I remember the checklist was about three steps. Uh and it was, you know, reach down, go to the alternate wing sweep, you know, move it forward, stop it where you want it, and nothing happened. And so we're like, and then like the last step is referred to the landing charts for the wing sweep, you know, wing sweep stuck back.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

And could you tell how far back they were stuck?

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Uh the indicator was showing 67 and a half all the way back.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Like all the way back.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Um, and so we were pretty confident they had just gotten you know uh stuck all the way back. And so so I I got the airplane, we started to coordinate it for tankers, you know, we started calling back to our command post there in England, having big conversations. Um, you know, a lot of interesting things happened, you know, in the next you know, couple of hours. Like we go to get gas, and I'm like, hey man, we know we need like we need like 375, 380 knots. And they're like, our boom limit's 350. And I was like, I guess 349 knots, right? And so we learned how to take gas, you know. We sort of laughed and said that you know, maybe this is kind of what the SR-71 was like, right? You know, the SR71 going as slow as it could and takers fast. Probably not that extreme, but you know, we were we were flying sort of you know, 350 knots, was kind of slow with the wings back, and kept getting gas. And you know, there was this big long conversation about well, do we fly all the way back to the United States through the night? You know, we'd already been on a four or five, six-hour mission, uh, didn't really have any food, would probably run out of water, go through the night cycle, all to get out to Edwards uh to land the airplane. And so, you know, we had run the landing numbers a bunch, and you know, we had asked for some help about you know where the longest runways were. And um, if I remember right, the longest runway was actually in France. It was, but they came back and said, Hey, that's kind of like their Tonopah, their dream land. Uh, you're you're not going there. And so uh Ramstein, you know, ended up being you know the longest runway. And we ran the numbers and ran them, and you know, it showed that we you know we could go land there, and that's what the decision was made. And so we started working our way there, and we said, Hey, let's you know, let's fly a practice approach, see what this thing's even like. Uh, of course, the aircraft commander uh um uh Jim Damski was flying. We're coming in, and I'm like, Well, what if you fly a perfect approach? I mean, what if it looks great? Are you sure you are you sure you want to go around? And so we started talking about all that. I was c I was talking to the Ramstein Command Post, and I I asked them where their bailout area was, and they were like, What's that? We're like, you know, we'll re eject out of an airplane if you need to. And they're like, Yeah, we don't have one of those, you know. And so you're like, uh oh, okay. And so you know, guess we're gonna land. But uh Jim comes in and flies a great approach and and and we land, and we had talked about okay, as soon as we touch down, my job as the as the right seater, the co-pilot, the FO was to call out airspeeds and distances remaining so that we had a pretty good gauge. Because we know we had talked about you know the option of punching out, you know, if we were not gonna you know be slow at the end of the runway, uh, all that type of stuff. And so we land, he touches down, does a great job, and I look up for the first runway remaining marker, and there's nothing. There were no runway remaining markers on the runway. Sometimes we missed that in the note. Uh literally, and we are hauling our touchdown speed was 262 knots.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

262 knots.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

262 knots was our planned touchdown speed, and you know, he put he pretty much the B1 was kind of a fly it down and land anyway. It was kind of a you know barely flare airplane, so it actually worked out really well. But uh man, I looked down and we weren't doing anything, and I was like, you need to brake now. And he's like, My feet are on the floor, and so I put my feet on the brakes. Sure enough, they were all the way down on the floor, and so we, you know, the first 50, 60, 70 knots was really, really slow. But once we got you know in into the high 100s, you could tell we were starting to de-accelerate and slowed. And you know, we felt like we stopped, you know, and definitely in the last thousand feet, if you will. Um, you know, very, very, very interesting. And so we're we had egressed out of the airplane, and the B-1 was known, you know, we always watched the brakes on the B-1 anyway after landing. Uh the B-1 actually in the back had what was called a SITS computer CITS. It actually, I forget what that central integrated something or another, who knows what. But uh it is actually the same system that came off the space shuttle. Um, and so it was a way to go in with hex codes and and check out different systems in the airplane. It only had three lines. We used to always laugh because anytime you wanted to check a fourth engine or something like that, you know, we had to they had to do something different. Because the space shuttle, of course, only had three engines, that's why they did that. But anyway, we aggressed out of the airplane. Well, we knew the brakes were gonna get really hot uh, you know, 15-20 minutes after, and sure enough, uh they got super smoking hot. We blew like six of the eight main tires. Uh the temperature got so hot that it actually busted uh our 4,000 psi hydraulic line, uh, and we had a big fireball coming out of the back of the airplane. I'm actually this isn't the best picture in the world, but uh you know this kind of shows a little bit. You can see the wings are back, uh the you know, the spoilers did come up a little bit uh landing, and the fire is just starting coming out the back end, and that fire kept going no matter what the trucks did, until of course we we we ran out of hydraulic fluid. And uh that was that was very, very interesting. And so we they uh they manually cranked the wings forward the next day when they realized they couldn't quickly fix it. You know, when you know what when did that occur in my life? I think about the the you know the D-Day anniversary, but when we walked into the squadron, uh sort of the bar area to talk to everybody, I'll never forget on the big screen TV everybody was watching a white Bronco drive very slowly on the streets of LA. And we're like, what's going on? And they're like, they're after OJ Simpson, and we're like, What? But uh it only happened, you know, a day or two before that. But uh very, very interesting emergency. We actually did get a call. I I I laugh about the space shuttle. We actually got a call from NASA uh a week or two later because they wanted to talk to us about our tires and how they did and the brakes and stuff, because the space shuttle apparently continuously has issues with uh you know keeping the treads on the tires.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

There was another B-1 emergency that uh Thad was talking about, Pyote 70. Uh am I correct that you were flying that night?

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, yes, yeah. Yeah, I heard you do give uh the podcast with Thad, and I think you were talking about, you know, uh this dangerous business we do as uh flyers, uh, and the fact that uh, you know, sometimes people lose their life doing this. You know, aviation is inherently an incredibly safe business, especially on the civilian side. You know, in the military, uh I would argue it's just as safe. It just happens that the military puts itself in more precarious situations uh by the nature of what our job is, right? I mean, you know as well as I do that uh operational risk management matrices and are you red, green, or yellow today. I mean, we really took that pretty seriously, but just the basic nature of what we did was a dangerous business. And so, yeah, the first uh airplane loss and fellow pilot uh or fellow aircrew loss that I had was that same one that Thad talked about, and it was Pilot 7-0. And uh, so there were two lines that night in our B-1 squadron, and I was on one of the airplanes flying. We were doing what was called a double low level. So you go fly a low level, typically a mountainous terrain on one, and then you go fly like a uh a uh non-mountainous terrain in another one. It was a location we also had like uh electronic countermeasure places where the backs eaters could get some work, you know, looking at threat uh codes and stuff, if you will. And so we took off that night and we were sort of we were doing the opposite. So one was going to one, one was going to the other, then we were gonna talk to each other about the weather as we passed uh somewhere between Texas and you know, and uh the middle of the U.S. And we never talked to the folks that night. Uh we went and flew both of our low levels and did everything. And I remember I, you know, gosh, we would fly till one, two, three, three o'clock in the morning. I mean, quiet hours wasn't a thing in the early 90s, uh, uh, I swear. But as the as the co-pilot, I really didn't have any a whole lot of duties after we landed, like uh like the the Wizos and the AC did. But I saw I was the first one walking in the squadron, and I'll never forget this moment where I look down the hallway and our squadron commander is standing there looking at the scheduling board. And I'm just uh I think I was a brand new first lieutenant at the time. And I looked at him and he looked at me, and of course I'm like, oh man, am I in trouble? You know, and immediately what a lieutenant. So he he looks at the schedule, he looks back at me, and I was like, hey sir, everything okay? And he goes, Yeah, Tater, Tater, everything's okay. Yeah, you guys just, you know, you guys go home and get some good rest. Of course, what I didn't know at the time was that we had lost the other airplane that night. Well, we we did our quick debrief. I went home and uh my phone rang the next morning and it was my dad. And he goes, Hey, I'm just checking to make sure you're okay. And I'm like, Yeah. He goes, Well, your mom pulled off the side of the interstate because she heard we lost a V1 crash in Texas last night. I'm like, no, Dad, I don't know what she's talking about. You know, I kind of hung up the phone on him because I was tired. And a few minutes later, one of my scholar mates called and said, Hey, you know, Ken. I go, yeah. He goes, Okay, it wasn't you. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And sure enough, you know, that was when I actually consciously realized that we had actually lost an airplane. And uh, I know Thad talks about it in his podcast, but they were they were down in the mountainous terrain doing night terrain following where the airplane would you know fly all automatically by itself, 200 feet off the ground, you know, as low as 200. We typically only did 500 in the mountains. Um, it would do it in the weather, didn't care nighttime. Um, and uh we would fly down this ridgeline. And unfortunately, they either intentionally turned into it, which we would do sometimes just to make the train following work, or accidentally. And uh what would happen is the B-1 would go into an automatic fly-up mode where it would fly away from the ground. And your job as the pilot was to do two things. One was to roll wings level, and two was to add the power. Uh, and then the airplane would do uh, you know, a 2G pitch up or whatever if it would to up to 20 degrees nose high, and then your third job was to toggle off the fly-up, you know, so that you could just climb away from the ground. And what we know is for some reason um they toggled off the flyup a little early and actually flew the airplane into the into the mountain, if you will. There are some different thoughts uh about it, you know. Like I said, it was a long time ago, but uh you know, we also had a min mock that we had to fly at in the B-1. And the the whole point was you had to be at a min speed so that when you got that fly up, the airplane had enough energy to actually uh pull the Gull away from the ground. But if you were flying really close to that mock, the airplane would burble almost like a stall. And so the thought was maybe that uh one of the pilots thought they were stalling and sort of started pushing over. But uh but that lot, you know, that that was the first night. I mean, I I knew Zen and Paul and Tim and uh Scott really, really well. It was our squadron. And uh as a matter of fact, on a on a side and very sad note, I was I was actually at one of the family's houses when the doorbell rang the next night and I opened it, and it was the you know the three Air Force officers standing in their service dress. And so I've actually seen that firsthand uh you know, the impact of what that really feels like.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Was that when they were first learning the family?

SPEAKER_00 24:51

I had actually been there uh ever since, shortly thereafter. You know, that day a bunch of us went over there to the different families. Yeah. Uh Paul was single, and uh uh but uh and I know uh Thad talks a lot about Paul from his time at the academy in the jump team. Uh matter of fact, Paul was gonna try to get me to go up to the academy actually to do their jet their summer jump program. Uh I was really looking forward to that. He was starting to get me to do the exercises so that I could actually pass. But I was actually one of several folks that were at the house that had been with them all day long, just you know, feeding information, being a conduit, being a liaison. And I just happened to be the person that answered the door when our squadron commander or flight dog, Lula Chaplain, uh, showed up. I actually lost a uh one of my students when I was an IP at Columbus. Um I actually, you know, useless trivia knowledge, I actually was an instructor for the very last UPT class in the Air Force. So the straight undergraduate pilot training that you and I grew up with, T-37s, T-38s, everybody did the same thing. And so uh Columbus Air Force Base was the last to go to SUPT, the specialized undergraduate, where they would, you know, track fighter bomber to T-38s and heavies to T-1s. But we actually graduated uh um with that last class, and I was going to the F-117, and so I had to go to fighter lead in, and I went to fighter lead-in with a bunch of my students, and I made really good friends with uh Lieutenant Potter, Callsign Sherman, um, and he was going to the uh Albuquerque, the Taco Guard, to fly F-16s, and he and I had uh talked an awful lot about uh he was going to teach me how to you know do truck fishing up there in in New Mexico. Um and I was sitting home one day watching the news uh when they said an F-16 had crashed, oddly enough on the Red Rio Range. So it was actually on our range up there uh and uh and I was like, well, gosh, I only know one person up there, and sure enough, they showed his picture, you know, Lieutenant Potter, and I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. And he was on a night mission qual training and just you know drove it into the dirt, and I, you know, I never learned the details to it, and you know, really kind of unimportant, but uh he was a great pilot, right? And this is just another great example, just like the B-1 crew, they were all great at what they did. It's just sometimes we get in an inherently dangerous situation and something happens that uh doesn't break the uh the chain of events, and we uh we end up with people who either get hurt or in this case lose their lives.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

So have you ever come close to ejecting?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Other than the B-1 story, I told you where we too where we laughed about the command post. Oddly enough, the closest I have ever come to ejecting out of an airplane is on the one sortie that you would never in your life think that you would ever eject out of an airplane. I was on, I was a I was an instructor at uh in T-38s at Columbus, I was just telling you about. It was that same last class, um, and I was single at the time, so I loved to go cross-country. And so someone had asked me, you know, to go cross-country with a student, uh, and and he was a I think a middle of the road student, the best I remember. And and so we always tried the first couple of legs on the cross-country because the students had to sit in the back seat with the hood on, right? And so simulating instrument conditions, you know, just you know, the house of pain for them, if you will. So we would do these really we would do these really short legs and try to knock out as many of their instrument requirements as we could so that I could get in the back seat where I like to be, they could get in the front seat, you know. And so we were doing Columbus Air Force Base to McGee Tyson, uh, just up in Tennessee. And we had knocked out all kinds of instrument approaches. He had done really well. Um, he had done so well that you know we had enough gas. I was like, hey, why don't you come around for one more ILS? I go and let's do a manual version. All that really means is you're just flying off of raw data. The T-38 used to have a nice little crosshairs that you could select. Once you got lined up on final, and it would do a little wind correction, and you know, real easy, just you know, track the center line down the middle. But you know, we would make them and you could do a check ride that was manual, and so we he'd just had to look at the raw data. And he was working a little harder on the ILS, you know, he's working, he's doing okay, but he's working hard, and I could tell his cross checks, you know. You know, it's he's right at the edge, and we come down and we we were about to hit our decision height, and we we come through it, and you know, I've I very stupidly, I learned a lot as an instructor here. I very stupidly said, How's your altitude? Right, you know, very, very nice instructor comment. Um, and of course he looked down and saw he had blown through decision height, and so he was a little slow at the time, so he pulls back on the stick pretty aggressively, right? And so I was like, Rough rope. My my second fault is I said another really stupid thing. I was like, hey, watch your attitude. And so, of course, he saw his nose was really high, so then he shoved his nose all the way down. And so the next thing you know is you end up with we're about 100 feet off the ground, we're slow, we're 10 degrees nose low, uh, and all I can see is grass. I mean, it that's it's a windscreen full of grass. And so I like the afterburners, and I do everything that we'd learned in the T-38 about stall recovery, and we go down the side of that 10,000, 12,000 foot runway, you know, at 50 feet, um, just you know, just making sure we don't stall the airplane, uh, get her all cleaned up, come around. Uh, I land the airplane, and uh, of course, Tower asked us how we're doing somewhere on downwind, and I was like, We're great. Uh we land, and you know, I I think I was so messed up that I didn't even tell the student to take the hood off, right? I I think we're on rollout, you know, and I look at but I see you still got the hood off. Uh I can fill an awful form. But we you know we taxi back in and nobody's saying anything, and I we shut down and I was like, hey, look, I got the airplane, I got the forms, you go inside. Uh I think that's about the time you know my heart rate reached the peak of you know, what did I do there that put us in that situation? And I'll tell you the one thing I the one thing I remember is if I had wanted to eject, I'm not sure how I would have. Because I was so busy flying the airplane. Uh, you know, uh it you were just so busy, and it made me think that you can see how, and I know you did a lot of A10 time real close to the ground, right? So when you're close to the ground and you're trying to save that airplane, you know, how do you let go of the airplane to then pull the ejection handles? And of course the T-38 didn't have the best ejection seat either. And you know, I don't want to make it sound any worse than it was because after a couple seconds I was pretty confident, you know, that I was gonna be able to fly the airplane at enough altitude and airspeed to make it all work. But uh, you know, I I went in and I I looked at him, you know, I was like, you know, got him a soda and I said, okay, you want the bad news or the worst news, you know. And uh I said, well, hey, look, the bad news is you busted the, you know, for for the ILS. I go, the worst news is I busted as your instructor. Um, and then I proceeded to tell him everything that I did wrong, you know, from that point on and reassured him that none of that was his fault. Um and I really sat down and I went back and I talked to some other instructors about it. I was very honest, I told him exactly what happened. Um and what I really, really learned there is there are times to not make corrections at all and just take the airplane, right? Um, or if you're gonna make corrections, that you need to be very specific and not open-ended, you know, raise the nose five degrees, add power, you know, very, very directive. And so uh, I think I even told that story in my in my Delta airline interview, and I was like, hey, I I you know I have learned a lot as an instructor and a and a a fellow pilot sitting next to another pilot. So, like I said, not the sort of you would think, uh, but that's the closest I ever felt like I was gonna punch out of an airplane.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Uh so you mentioned uh the civilian flying. How did you find that transition to uh flying for the airlines? And uh any stories from uh from that experience you want to share?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Yeah, sure. Uh you know, my my adventure at the airlines was interesting. You know, I I I uh Chip Rice and I, a fellow A-10 years, you know, we decided to go get our ATP what in what would turn out to be the spring before 9-11 would happen. Um so we had a lot of folks getting out. I mean, gosh, I I've been to combat with the eighth fighter squatter in the stealth. I was an FTU instructor, flying, you know, dual instructor evaluator in the F-117 and T-38. I just decided life can get no better than this in the Air Force. It and to be quite honest, it never did. Yeah, um, I mean, I had a great Air Force career, there was a lot of great things, but life never got better than that senior captain, uh young major area. So I decided to get out and go to the airlines. But when 9-11 happened, uh, for a number of reasons, I decided to stick around and stay in. And so I like you said, I did about 28 years. I stuck around as a civilian doing doing some stuff for a couple of years, and then I decided, you know what, I've got to go fly airplanes. So I started flying around the flagpole. I actually had an interview with uh Sky West to go get recurrent. Uh and my interview was set for what would turn out to be the month that COVID hit.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Your timing, your timing may leave a little to be desired.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Yeah. Yeah. So I uh so I you know I called up the the airline and I was like, hey, I know you're never supposed to do this, but you know, I work for the government and I'm not gonna lie to my job. You know, they've asked us not to travel for a few weeks. I go, can I can I just push push off my interview a couple weeks until COVID ends? And they're like, oh yeah, no problem. COVID did not end anytime soon. And of course the airline shut down uh all its training hiring. So you know it was a it was it was a blessing in disguise that uh that I stuck around for a few more years. But uh but then a few years after that, a buddy called up, Russ Music, another A-10 guy, uh who was flying some part 135, and so I uh said, Hey, you want to go fly your airplanes? And I said, Yeah, tell me about it. And so they were flying Nexton 400s, which are like BE400s, just with different motors and uh and cockpit and stuff, which is an Air Force T-1 essentially. Um, and so I went and went for that company and they said, Hey, you'll spend four or five months in the right seat until you're comfortable, move to the left. Well, I spent like 10 days in the right seat. I moved over to the left seat. Um, and it was some great flying. I had some fantastic first officers. Uh that alone was very eye-opening. You know, in the Air Force, you know, we didn't do a whole lot of flying into fields at night without towers, um, you know, VFR, and so I I definitely had to learn a little bit of civilian flying going going on there. But after I got my 100 hours in the left seat, I applied the Delta and you know, thinking it would take six, nine, twelve months for them to call. And I got lucky and they called after a couple weeks and started the process. And so, but you know, Delta, and all I know is Delta, but it really reminds me so much of the military and the fact that their training program is so good. Um, standardization, I mean, you would think that I I want to say it in my area in the 7-1 in Atlanta, where there's about 350 captains and 350 first officers, I rarely see the same captain more than once. And so you're always you know climbing in the cockpit with a brand new person you've never flown with. But because you've all been through the training, it's absolutely seamless. Everybody knows their flows, their checklists, their procedures, just everything is the same. And if you happen to do something a little non-standard, usually the captain and the first officer will brief that. Uh, but probably you know, I think what you're getting at is what you know, what's different about the airlines, we never flew low visibility approaches in the Air Force. I think it just never happened. If it was below 501, you went to the bar, right? You know, you called it a day. Uh because you you couldn't go to the bottom of your ranges, you couldn't do anything, right? And so, of course, that's not true in the airlines. And so uh, you know, cat two and three approaches, you know, when you're flying down to all you need is the required visibility, and so a quarter mile visibility may be all that you need. And so on a cat two or three approach, when you're when you're bugging in 50 feet on the radar altimeter or 100 feet on the radar altimeter, and the airplane is auto-landing, I mean, doing everything by itself, comes in, lands, flares, pulls the power, it just incredibly yeah, you do it in the simulator a few times, you're like, yeah, that's kind of a neat trick. Um, and then you actually get out on the line and you're like, hey, it's it's a half mile visibility, no ceiling, and we're gonna do a cat three or cat two approach. And the first one I've saw of that were no kidding. I mean, you're yes, you're seeing the lights, you're seeing a threshold, you're seeing the required thing, and the captain has to do this, uh has to do the approach, and you know, I'm just monitoring the the systems on the inside, if you will, and then watching the airplane as you can literally barely see the touchdown zone flare, pull the power, and touch down and do it beautifully. It's pretty eye-opening. Uh, and I know that there are airplanes that'll go down even lower to zero, zero where you don't even have to see the runway, but uh, but pretty interesting operations. It really does remind me much of the military.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

So, again, I have one more question for you. How important is being a pilot to your sense of identity?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Wow. You know, that is that is an interesting question. You know, at first in the Air Force, you think of yourself, and I know that we used to say it all the time, you're an officer first, then you're a pilot. Ah, whatever. You're a pilot. Uh that's exactly what we thought, right? Until all of a sudden you stop flying and then you start really taking on those leadership roles. And I know you were the you were the vice and then the commander at Holland. You get this, where flying becomes very secondary to what your job is. Um, but I remember when I retired from the Air Force, I was like, you know what? I loved it. I'm good. I don't need to be an Air Force officer anymore. Uh I'm I'm good to move on with my life. Um, but obviously I think I've already answered this question because after a couple of years, I started looking, you know, my driver's license, going, how old am I? Um I need to go fly airplanes. And so I think I'll be just fine the day I can't fly an airplane, but there is something about it that makes me, you know, I feel like I've dedicated my whole adult life to being, you know, an aviation professional. And so being able to do that, you know, at first it was for my country. Now it's it it's for the good of society, is a way to say it. And I'm not trying to overstate you know the job of an airline pilot, but we're there to provide a service, uh, and to do that safely is by far the most important thing that we do. And so um, I actually had to answer some interview questions for a high schooler on on aviation and being piloting, and and she made me really think about you know, what is the most important thing that a pilot does? Uh, and I've alluded to this along the way, but it's we are risk managers. Everything we do is about making sure that our airplane, our fellow crew members, our our uh passengers in an airline case are in a safe position. And then we do everything as pilots to make sure that we mitigate all that risk, eliminate that risk, and when we can't, we're prepared for you know that 99%, 1%, right? You know, you're bored 99% of the time, and 1%, you know, you're you're scared to death. And so I think it's a long way of saying, but I it is obviously very important to me as a professional. I feel like I've dedicated you know my whole life to it. I love contributing back in this case as an airliner, as an airline pilot. And I I hope one day, you know, if it wasn't so freaking expensive, I had I'd have my own airplane flying around. But uh, you know, I I can see me doing it until uh some examiner tells me I I'm done doing it for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Thank you, Ken, for uh sharing that and obviously heartfelt and strikes near and dear to my heart as well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

It does. Hey, hey, you know, we'll we flew together back at Holliman, and uh, you know, there's our you think about what's your best aviation story uh in your life, and they're really hard to come up with, but some of the best ones are a four-ship F-117 to the range with two live bombs on each side, and you're just going out there and you're just competing with your fellow pilots, you're you know making sure you sound good on the radios, you're making sure you deploy that bomb precisely, and most importantly, you come good, you know, you come back uh coming up initial looking good. And uh all that goes to this idea of professionalism and standardization and risk management and just being the best at what you can do. And I think it spills over into a lot of other aspects of our life. And for you, it happens to be a podcast, and so thanks so much for inviting me on here.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Thanks so much. You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab. The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've fulfilled that mission today. New episodes of the Flyboy Podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find all our all of our previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sorting, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.