The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Greg "GT" Gonyea

Aircraft flown: F-4, O-2, F-15, F-117

Join us as Greg Gonyea, a seasoned fighter pilot with over 5,000 hours in the F-4, O-2, F-15, and F-117, shares his incredible experiences as the squadron commander of the 416th Ghost Riders during Desert Storm. Discover the insights, challenges, and lessons learned from a true combat aviation expert.

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 Greg GT Gagnier. Greg has over 5,000 flying hours in the F-4, the O2, the F-15, and the F-117. He is Bandit 329, and most interesting of all, he was the squadron commander of the 416th Ghost Riders during Desert Storm. So, GT, welcome to the Flyboy Podcast. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. What was the moment you first knew you wanted to be a pilot?

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Okay, I was in high school, and I had a cousin that went to the Air Force Academy. And I grew I was the oldest of seven children, and my father was a barber. So we were not financially able. I did a lot, got a lot of scholarships and stuff, but I thought it'd be really cool to go to the Air Force Academy, and being a fighter pilot would be the coolest job ever. And I was right. And that was it. I was a junior in high school.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

So how many different types of airplanes have you flown?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Well, the 37, 38, the F-4. From the F-4, I got$500 in the F-4, and at the time it was post-Vietnam, so they needed fighter pilots to become FAC trainers, the Ford Air Controller trainers. And I was selected. So I went down to Patrick. First of all, I've never had a bad assignment. And so I went down to Patrick, became an O2 instructor, did that, and then from there, because I was an O2 instructor for like four years, I was the number one on the Air Force assignment list. And they said, We got one airplane at every base. Where do you want to go? And what did you say? I said, I want to go to an F-15 at Langley. Okay. So I went and got an F-15 at Langley, flew there, went to Korea, went back to Langley on the IG team, and from there my career progressed, and I ended up in the F-117.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

So the O-2 and the F-15 are about as different as airplanes. Oh, absolutely. Could you give our listeners a sense of, you know, put us in the cockpit of the O-2, what's it like, and then put us in the cockpit of the F-15 for comparison?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Well, the O-2 was a civilian type airplane. It was a pusher puller with the yoke, and the F-15 was like the highest performance airplane at the time. But you know what? The basic piloting skills and the basic knowledge required, the basic organizational pattern of your brain were the same. Learning how to fly the F-15 was a challenge, but I'd flown the F-4. Honestly, learning to taxi it was harder than learning to fly it, because it was where the gear was, the nose gear was at and the steering and stuff. But it was it was just a much different, but it was a tremendous, tremendous growth, tremendous experience. And flying the F-15, F-15 was the best airplane I've ever flown. It was just a tremendous thrill to fly it every day.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Now, when you went to the uh F-117, was the program still uh classified or had the initial release been been done?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

It had initially been released. Okay, I was the executive to the tech vice commander, the three-star. So I knew about the program and I was involved in a lot of the briefings. I went and took notes and all that stuff for him. For I had three different tech vice commanders I was executive officers for. So I was very familiar with the basic program. And I was offered the opportunity to become a squadron commander at Holliman in a T-38 or to go to the black jet in the desert. And my concept was that I'm a fighter pilot. If there's ever going to be a conflict, the stealth is the one that's going to go. I want to do that. I want to be there. So I went to Tonopah. And guess what? Iraq invaded Kuwait and we went. And so it was it was kind of a transition moment that made me realize that to me that was a good decision. Now I like Talaman, don't get me wrong, but it was the right place for me to be at the right time.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

So when Iraq invaded Kuwait, pretty quickly they sent the first squadron of F 117s over to Kamis Mouche. But your squadron went a little bit later, uh, around Thanksgiving, as I recall. You're right, yes. And so tell me about the dynamic in the squadron while you were waiting from August until November. Are they going to send us? Are they not? The time this all occurred, we got a new wing commander.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

I got my squadron in Iraq invaded Kuwait three weekends in a row. Wow. So the new wing commander, who had been banned at 150, hadn't flown the airplane in 10 or 12 years, but he was sent to sent to Saudi Arabia to set up and coordinate with Saudi government and all that stuff. And the other squadron commander went with him because he had a clue what he was doing. I had a squadron like a week. They're not going to send me. First of all, I was a moron about how to run a squadron and all that at the time. So they went over there and I stayed behind. And we practiced training missions that the other squadron in Saudi Arabia were asking about. Hey, try this, try that, do this, do that, to see if they would work. Because they could not do it in the combat zone or over Saudi Arabia. We could do it in Tonapah, but nobody saw us in Tonoba. You could do whatever we wanted, essentially, flying-wise, because there was nothing there. So we would go and practice and tell you, you know what? That doesn't work. Or this works great or whatever. And we tried to do that and perfect their tactics. And then in November, we were sent to Saudi Arabia because we knew something was going to go on. So all the stealths except for the training squadron went to Saudi Arabia. And then later on, just as the war started, they sent even the training squadron to Saudi Arabia. And the stealths from that squadron were integrated into my squadron, mainly because I had more hangar space.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So can I ask you a question? Without getting into anything classified, could you give us an example of what were the things that the other squadron that was deployed forward asked you to look into to see if it might work or might not?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Altitudes going in different altitudes, different speeds. It was mainly altitude related and tactics related. And we tried them all, and you know how the Nellis ranges were set up. We could coordinate with the Nellis Ranges and go, what do you guys think? Monitor us, tell us what you think. And we figured out that what we were doing already was probably the best that we could do as far as tactics-wise. And it proved it proved truthful in Desert Storm.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

So you get to Saudi Arabia, you've got your team there. How many how many pilots, how many maintenance personnel uh did you have when you were there on the ground?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Okay, I think my squadron had, depending, when we when the the training squadron came, we had like I think twenty-four. Twenty-four pilots? Yeah. I and the maintenance I think was about two hundred.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Well, can you give us a sense of the lead up then to that first night of Desert Storm? Tell us a little bit how you came into theater, got ready, knowing that there was probably going to be a conflict.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Well, we flew practice missions up to the Saudi border and trolled the Saudi or the Iraqi border and trolled the border to see if they responded. And Kamis Mushat was about two and a half hours, two hours. So those are pretty long missions in and of themselves. So we go up there, troll, do targets on the way home, simulated, because the desert was very similar to Tonapah. It's hot, everything's hot. So finding targets and differentiating them when there's adobe type buildings and brick buildings and whatever, and the ground is that hot made it a challenging target to find. I mean, you're familiar with the infrared. I don't know. The stealth was probably different when you flew it. They had new systems, I think. But it was it was challenging. So we wanted to get used to that because we knew that's the environment we were going into.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Can you put us in the briefing room as you're talking to your pilots before that first mission, and then take us on that first mission with you?

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Well, first of all, the first briefing, the biggest comment was, man, I hope this stealth shit works. Because we didn't know. That was it. My squadron was doing the second wave, the 415th, which I think became the seventh at Holoman. The ninth. Maybe it was okay, the ninth. Yeah. They were in Saudi Arabia first, and they had been there since August, roughly. So they earned the right to be first. I totally agreed with that. So I led my squadron, had the whole second wave, and I was the leader, obviously, the first one. And so we we went off in first of all, the weather in Saudi Arabia was the crappiest it had been in like 48 years. The biggest thunderstorms, and it was we lost more sorties to weather as far as combat and stuff than we did for any other reason. So we take off, we have to find the tanker, get on the tanker, we're on the tanker for a couple hours. We go up the border, go into a holding pattern, get gas, and then when our time comes, we disappear. We go across the border, turn everything off, as you know, do the stealth check, and then start cruising. Saudi is kind of like Arizona, where there's a city and then nothing. A city and then nothing. That's the way Iraq was. There was really not a lot of stuff. And I'm cruising in at a relatively higher altitude, and I'm looking at my map. I don't know if you guys did the same thing. We use a lot of maps and pictures. So I'm looking at my map and I see this whole cauldron of bullets. And I'm going, holy shit, there must be some F-111s bombing the crap out of some airfield. And I didn't see an airfield on my map. I unfolded my map and said, holy shit, that's Baghdad. That's where I'm going. I don't know how an aircraft airplane can fly through that and make it out. And that's what I told you earlier. I can hear all the airplane clinking and clanking and doing that stuff, and figuring, oh man, I my airplane's, I think it's breaking up. I've never heard those songs before. I don't know about you, but I flew with earplugs because the airplane was so noisy. And and so I'm descending into Baghdad, and I'm coming down, and it's clinking and clanking, and I'm realizing that shit, I can't turn around. I'm the commander. This is something we also talked about. It's peaceful, peacetime versus wartime commander. I'm the commander. I cannot turn around. Because if I come back and somebody's husband is shot down, I'm sorry. I could not face it. So I came down to my first target, and the velocity vector, I'm looking at the velocity vector for my first target, and all I see is tracers. Holy shit. So I lowered my seat. So I couldn't see it anymore. I said, I'm going. And it turned, I think, just before the tracers. I wasn't I couldn't see it. Found the target, and I had a a target, which was the IP for the second target. And my second target was Saddam Hussein's compound, which was a quadrangle, locked on, and the weather was shaky, but it happened to be clear at that section, locked on to the building. And then with the walls of the quadrangle, I had to aim it long, and then when the bomb dropped, I had to bring it down so the bomb would fall in steeper so it wouldn't hit the wall of the building.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

So I'm going to give a visual depiction from the side. So if this is the wall, you didn't want the bomb coming in like this, hitting the wall, so you had to bring it in across the top and then drop it down. So you had to aim long and then once the bomb released, slew the aiming cursor back toward the target.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

That's exactly the way I had to do it. And it's funny because that first mission was a competition between me and one of my captains for the top gun in the squadron. And my first bomb didn't work out as well. But that was a competition for the top gun in the squadron. And he won. He won. Kleinybob was we called him, but he won. And then I don't know who has ever said this, the biggest thrill is coming off target and getting the hell out of there. And that's exactly correct. Boom. You know, they hit the throttle and climb on out. That was that was fantastic. And then come home.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, I think it was Winston Churchill who said there's nothing uh more exhilarating than being shot at without effect. Shot out and shot at and locked and missed.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Yeah, that was yeah, that's exactly what it was. Because there were bullets flying, SAMs flying. And there's some things we learned in that sortie about turn times and you know, going to the long extended turns. Because as you know, the stealth, the flat bottom, it's great if you're driving over somebody. But when you turn, you're a barn door. Well, I got shot at in that barn door stage and missed. Three Sams came by. Left, right, left, right. And the magic coating on the stealth absorbed the radar from the missiles and they didn't go off. I mean, I felt that.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

It scared the shit out of me. So can you tell uh our listeners what does it look like when you see uh a Sam? How do you see it? What is what are you seeing? Is it the rocket motor? Tell us what it looks like. You know what?

SPEAKER_02 15:06

I didn't s just whoosh whoosh whoosh. There are three that went by and I didn't see them really. I just thought it's a little flame going, and it rocked me. That's all there was to it. I mean, it went so fast that and I was busy concentrating on what I had to do that I basically missed the whole sequence of events. It just scared the crap out of me. And I had to take a couple seconds and gather my wits and said, okay, move on. You know, maybe I don't know, three to five seconds. I don't know. But it was just, it just it was scary. But I was still, honestly, I was more concerned about what if my guys didn't come back. My greatest accomplishment in my career is bringing all my bullish home.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

And they all came home. So a lot of people remember Desert Storm as like a hundred-hour war. That's what they say. And of course we're a 43-day war. Exactly. The air war prior to that ground war went on for 40 days before any of the ground troops crossed the line in the western desert. So can you tell us a little bit about that? 40 days is a sustained air campaign, and you guys were going at it night after night. How did you keep everybody motivated, focused, and on task? I didn't have to. I didn't have to.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

They were motivated. They were focused, did a great job. We kept they kept jacking up the number of sorties we needed to fly, the number of planes we had to put in the air. The maintenance guys did a great, great job. The intel guys did a great, great job. And at the end, we were flying so many sorties that the mission planning cell couldn't keep up. They had to figure one route and two airplanes that flew it, fly it, and then he split and hit the target. The last couple, I don't know, last ten nights of the war, it's funny because the guy I lost a top gun to, Kleinybob, and I were flying a mission together. And we were flying at night. He's 400 feet below me. And at the IP we split, and then we head to the Target. And the Target was the headquarters of the party, bath party. And I look over at him, I see he's got this tremendous tail of tracers behind his airplane, probably six or eight hundred feet. They're shooting at the noise. And we come in and that my tape that night, we still use VHS tapes. I don't know what they use when you were flying it. We had VHS tapes. I go in and we look in my squadron looked at all the tapes together every night. So we're looking at my tape and you see the bombs, you see two airplanes go this way, two airplanes go this way, and two airplanes go this way. So we're eight of us are hitting the same target at the same time. Deconflicted. And we come off the target and go to the tanker, and he and I come back and debrief. And I mean, kind Bob, that was so cool. You had a you were at a Rooster Taylor Praisles like it was fabulous. It was beautiful. He goes, I was gonna tell you the same thing. It was an interesting scenario. And none of us got shot down. And we totaled that target. And that was the last night of the war. So it was over then. But it was, yeah, eight of us hit the target at the same time within less than two seconds. Our timing was pretty much perfect. Because the kind of the rule was if you couldn't hit it within two seconds, you went home. If you were too fast, and the winds at the time were like 150 at times. At altitude? At altitude. So if you're dropping the high altitude bomb, you had to really watch your speed. Well, low altitude bomb too, but but you know, if you're doing you got 150 mile an hour difference, dropping or trying to get in and hit the time exactly this way and hitting the time exactly this way, you're doing like 300 mile an hour difference, airspeed.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

That's tough. That's tough. So I have a I have a question I want to ask you. And let me give you a little bit of background before I ask the question. So as I as I mentioned to you earlier, I have written a novel about the uh the F-117. The title of the novel, by the way, is Have Blue Sky, and it's going to be published on Veterans Day this year, 2026. Well, let me know, and I will definitely get one. I hope so. I hope so. One of the characters is a female reporter who covers the uh Ross Mulhair crash outside Bakersfield in 1986, becomes obsessed with the airplane, and then she will later go to uh Camise, where she will embed with the F-117 squadron, and um and she interviews my fictional squadron commander in the in the book. And she as part of her interview, she asks him a question. And so I want to ask you the same question now, in real life, that I had the reporter ask it in a fictional setting. Here's the question What's the biggest difference between leading a squadron in peacetime and wartime?

SPEAKER_02 20:44

You know, I think I kind of covered that on my first mission. My concern that if I turn around, what can I tell the wife if her husband gets shot?

unknown 20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

And I turned around. I couldn't do it. In peacetime, you don't have that quandary. You have to worry about admin, you have to worry about paperwork, you have to worry about OERs and all that kind of stuff. In combat, you have to worry about bringing your boys home. And the maintenance guys and the crew chiefs. They I've got some funny crew chief stories later, but Oh, we can go to one now if you like. I went back to Camise after Desert Storm. I had to stay at the end when the other squadron went home. And they went to all the parades and all that shit, and we were stuck in Saudi Arabia. That's fine. But then I came home at the end of end of June. They came home, I think, in March, early March. But I came home at the end of June, was there for six months, and had to go back to Saudi Arabia to be the detachment commander.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Because they kept F 117s in Saudi after the war, and most people don't know that.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

For years. But I was only there from well, I was supposed to be for there from January March and I was there from January to May. But I had a crew chief then called Gina. Gina was about 6'2, and she was not a dainty flower. She was she's a weightlifter and all and she she was delightful. But we were downtown, we happened to be downtown, or going to one of the local stores or something, and um the Saudis, I don't remember what they were called, the the religious police.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

The morality police, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yeah, and they walked around whack people, and we just we weren't together. We just I just happened to see her and we're at the same place at the same time. And the the morality police came up to her and started smacking her. I don't know why. And she picked him up and slammed him against the wall and gave him a big kiss. And threw him down and says, Don't you ever try that again, type thing. And it he ran away, he he was a little guy anyway, but yeah, she she was an example because there were like five crew chiefs and stuff hanging out together at the at this place. Because at that time we could we could go downtown and stuff. I used to go downtown and buy carrots because I rode horses there. They had a great stable. And for my free time, I would ride their horses just to decompress. And so I'd go try to feed them because the Saudis didn't geld their horses, and they're mainly designed for kids, and the kids didn't ride the stallions, so they made me ride them. It was it was just a just a great opportunity for me. So I'd go feed all these horses carrots, so they'd be hind to me when I went and tried to ride them. So what's the worst weather you've ever landed in? Okay, I flew F-4s in Alaska, my first assignment, and that's the worst. Well, there's yeah, that's the worst weather I've flown in, was Alaska. My minimums were a hundred and a quarter, and we pressed them a lot. But the F4s had a hook. I probably landed hook eighty to a hundred landings in a row to stay on the runway. Approach end or departure end? Approach end. Now, I will admit this. I got scrambled out of Galena, Alaska. Galena, Alaska has a runway that's shorter than the F-4 minimum length runway. And we took off with live missiles, we were on alert and chased Rush, actually chased Russians, and were told we could punch our tanks, which is just unheard of. You just didn't punch tanks. All of a sudden, this was calm out. Um, the first time I was a I was a plans guy, and so I knew about these procedures, so I briefed my flight. I was a wingman, and uh I briefed the flight lead and said, here's what's gotta go on, and we didn't communicate. And they said you can punch the tanks. And went, holy shit, this has got to be serious. So we punched the tanks off our F4s.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

And and so people understand that's so you can pull more Gs, but you're also getting rid of your extra. You're getting rid of drag. Yeah, getting rid of drag. Okay?

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Yeah, it's mainly getting rid of your drag drag, I think. So he punched them somewhere over the Alaskan state, got rid of the tanks, and we're heading out and we take pictures and do all this stuff, and we pull in behind the Russian bombers, and they're their guns lower in the back. And I'm behind because the flight leads up close to the Russians, and so I arm up and the guns come back up. They shut them off. So he goes in and takes pictures because they want to see all the different antennas and all that kind of stuff. And then we do the other one, and then we start that we said, okay, we're getting long gas. We start coming home. Well, my air conditioning system failed and went to full cold. Well, it's October 31st or something like that in Alaska, so it's freaking freezing out, and we're up in the 30s trying to save gas, and my whole canopy froze over. I had a picture about a space about the size of a cigarette package in the front corner that I could see out. And I'm flying back to Galena with a minimum runway length, and weather's blown like stink, and it's it's not a hundred and a quarter, but it's about three hundred and a half, three hundred and a quarter mile, and it crosswinds are much more severe than we anticipated. And I land and get blown off the runway, not realizing how strong the weather was. Go off the side and go up the carrier or the barrier housing, and my nose gear hits block that holds a barrier together, and it knocks my nose tires off. I go back up over, land, and my nose gear breaks off. Now, the runway lights are going into my right engine as I go by. I get it back on the runway, but it's kind of going down the runway at a like a 30 degree angle or something. Keep it on the runway and stop in the runway. However, the flight lead still has to land. And we are low on gas. The flight lead does not have enough gas because I don't know if you're familiar with Alaska flying. There aren't any close runways. He would have to go to Fairbanks, and he doesn't have enough gas to get Fairbanks. So I told my backseater, hang on, Tom. His name was Tom Daniels, hang on, Tom. I'm gonna push this off the runway. And I was a I didn't know if the right engine would survive because if it had been trashed by these lights and all that kind of stuff, it may have blown up. I said, so hang on. So I pushed the power in, pushed it off, and pushed it into a Bureau of Land Management was also at the unit, and they had a big ditch. So I pushed it into the ditch, dropped it over the side of the runway. It's only like probably 10 feet off the runway, and the fire truck that was behind me, the fire chief came and he had a pickup truck with a camper on it. Well, I blew the camper off when I pushed the power up on the truck and went down the ditch, and then he comes and the there's like a foot of snow on the ground, maybe two feet, and so the tires, the brakes and stuff are hot because I was trying to keep it on the runway. And so they're steaming like crazy. Well, the fire department thinks the plane's on fire. So they come with a spray to start the stop the fire, and Tom Daniels, my back seater, gets sprayed all down. I jumped down over the nose and got out before he could because he was in the back. He can't do the same thing. It was just everybody was okay. And Junior, who was the that was his nickname, was a flight, came in and landed and took the cable in the opposite direction, and ended up his nose was less than six feet from the tail of my airplane when I dumped it over the side. That was probably my most exciting isn't the right term. Um my most the scariest.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Scariest landing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Yeah, I never landed and knocked the nose gear off before. But it was it worked.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

And so did the plane fly again? Were they able to fix it?

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Yes, they were able to fix it. I don't know how they got it out of there, but they were able to fix it. Uh it did fly again. I flew it again, its first mission after being repaired. Guys go, okay, if they fucked it up, buddy, you're you're you're responsible. But yeah, so but that was that was a scary. And I was I was a lieutenant then.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

I was a first lieutenant, wingman. So when you talk to young people who say they're interested in learning to fly, what advice do you give them?

SPEAKER_02 30:18

I think I I told you this possibly before, but I've had the greatest life for anybody. The best life. And it's an opportunity that you can't get anywhere else. Now I grew up in a relatively not poor family, but not emboldened family, but and I went to the Air Force Academy, as you can see. Went to the Air Force Academy, got my education for free, got my master's, went to pilot training, and had tremendous assignments. I never lived in a place I didn't like. Some were not as good as others, but I never lived in a place I didn't like. I mean, I lived in Korea, I spent a lot of time, I spent time in Saudi Arabia, I lived in Virginia, Florida, California, Texas. To me, it was a great life, and there's no better job than being a fighter pilot. My second best job is being retired. Second place to fly in jets.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Greg, thanks so much for uh joining us today and uh for being on the Flyboy Podcast. I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity. 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 I know we've fulfilled that mission today. New episodes of the Flyboy Podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.