The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Ryan Cherry

Aircraft flown: AH-1W  and AH-1Z

Ryan Cherry, a retired Marine Cobra pilot with four combat deployments to Iraq, shares his journey, insights into flying attack helicopters, and lessons learned from both training and combat missions. Discover the realities of military life, combat flying, and the lessons that shaped his career.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 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 Ryan Cherry. Ryan is a retired Marine Cobra pilot, colonel in the Marine Corps. He has almost 3,000 hours in the AH-1 whiskey and the AH-1 Zulu Cobra. He's been stationed all over the world, from Hawaii to Germany and a bunch of places in between. He's deployed over seven times, including four combat deployments to Iraq. So, Ryan, welcome to the podcast. David, thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So, what was the first moment you knew you wanted to be a pilot?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

So I was uh I'm the son of a Marine. My my dad was uh enlisted in the in the Marine Corps when um the Vietnam draft was on. He spent some time in Vietnam, came back after his active duty time, and spent the rest of 24 years in the reserves. So, as the youngest of three boys, I just wanted to be like my dad. He was a crew chief in Huey Helicopters in a reserve unit in Massachusetts. And I sat in the back of the aircraft on the line. I watched aircraft flying around for my younger years, and as I grew older, I knew I wanted to be a Marine. And then once I was in college and starting the process, one of the first things I said to the officer selection officer when I when I met him was, how do I be a cobra pilot? And then my my adventure began. So I was the son of a crew chief of Huey's, and then was blessed to not only be able to become a Marine, but get a contract to go to flight school and do well enough in flight school to get my first choice, which was AH1 whiskies on the West Coast of Camp Pendleton.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

What's it like in the cockpit of a Cobra? Can you put us in the cockpit? Give us a sense of what you're seeing, what you're doing, how you see the world, the battlefield.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

An AH-1 is an attack helicopter, so we don't carry anything but ordnance and a pilot and a gunner, both of which can fly interchangeably, front seat, back seat. Great visibility from about your shoulder length all the way up and over, very little visibility behind you, and you can't see down. There's no chin bubble to look down through your feet like many helicopters do. When I was a kid, um, and even as I already had seen aircraft, sometimes you think of the cockpit of an airplane, a military airplane, you think it's going to be spacious and cushioned and really high tech. No, that's that's not what the AH1 whiskey was. Uh I'm 6'3, so I'm very tall. And in the front seat of a Cobra, I'm just on the edge of fitting in. And in a hard landing or a crash, um, there's parts of the control panel that would would seriously damage my my right knee. It's it's very tight. Um, you kind of crawl in and fold yourself in and and and get in the seat, and then to get out, you got to kind of do a reverse where you get old and you pull your leg up and throw it over the edge. So it's definitely a tight fit. But new and old age one whiskey and Zulu Cobra is a little bit different, but the the pilot in the front seat is typically the gunner and has control over the missiles and the gun typically. Um, so oftentimes you're in the front and you're doing the majority of the shooting, at least for the whiskey model, and then the pilot is in the back with a much more standard stick in between their legs collective on the left-hand side. The whiskey had the glass gauges, uh, a lot of analog technology, and then the Zulu had all under glass and and uh better engines, longer flight. But in the Cobra, your visibility up and around isn't isn't amazing. And the sensors really allow you to reach out and see the battlefield in a way that you can't do with your eyes or anything else. So uh it's a it's really an awesome aircraft to fly. It's very agile. And the key to the whiskey in the Zulu, the Cobra, is that it's about as wide as my shoulders are, uh, which means that when you're pointed at the enemy, their ability to engage you is is only a few feet wide, which makes you more survivable. So once you put the nose on them, uh, and if if a shootoff starts, you're much more uh likely to survive than if you're in a wider body aircraft like uh 60 or a Huey or one of our one of our transport helicopters.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Tell me about your first flight in the fleet.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So that's that's an interesting one. So um I checked into my first flight school training squadron on September 11, 2001. So the world had changed by the time I was uh I was actually flying. I was through all the ground school for flight school. The day I was supposed to check into my my VT squadron was 9-11. So the world was different and we knew something was going to be uh changing. A couple years later, 2003, June of 2003, I graduated from our fleet replacement squadron, the training squadron we learned to fly the Cobra's. Me and two of my buddies, we finished one day with a training squadron. We got on a plane and we flew to Kuwait from California to join our squadron already deployed to Kuwait and flying missions in Iraq. One of the more challenging things to do as a Marine pilot is to join an HMLA. But to join an HMLA, a Cobra Huey squadron in combat is even more challenging because of the level of uh expectations that the fleet marine corps has for you. Can you tell us what an HMLA is? Okay, so HMLA is helicopter marine light attack. That is the nomenclature, the the name naming convention for a composite squadron of AH1s and UH1s, attack and utility. The Marine Corps flies them together uh and almost always deploys and often flies in flights of Cobras and Hueys, depending on the mission set. So my first flight was taking off with my the signer I had, a poor guy, uh had to fly with me straight out of the replacement squadron, no, no training X's in the fleet. And we flew out of Kuwait and up into Iraq for six days. I was, you know, hair blown back, hair wasn't nearly as long as it is now, hair blown back in the cockpit, really trying to keep up and do the best I can. But it was a learning experience that I learned as fast as I could. And I really uh I loved the individual I was flying with, uh, his call signed his trigger. Uh, and and he, as I became more senior, and I thought back to how I would have felt if I were him to be in that situation in Iraq in the early days of the of the Iraq war in OAF-1, to be flying with a boot who has no experience in the fleet, and now we are crossing from Kuwait, flying into Iraq and conducting missions up there was uh was really an interesting start to my Marine Corps fleet career.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Tell us some of the things that Trigger did that enabled you to succeed.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, he was patient and he he was a really good teacher. He had already had time in Afghanistan. Uh this was his second combat deployment. Uh, he was a very even keeled individual. He really helped me either before the flights or during the flight. If I didn't know where I needed to be with my fingers and my thumbs and have the maps right, he was very patient with me and and did what all good instructors should be doing. And he he taught me along the way uh without without browbeating me, like some others may have in other circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

We've all known those instructors. Tell us about your first low light level flight on NVGs, and you'll have to explain what that means uh for those who may not have worn night vision goggles before.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

We we break the phases of the moon up into two major um parts. There's highlight level, meaning there is a moon in the sky, whether it's a little sliver or a full moon, or there's no moon, and the only light that you're gonna see when you're flying on your night vision goggles is coming from the stars or from some sort of illumination on the ground. A lot of times people like to say that night vision goggles turn night into day. That isn't true, but it's the goggles are really good. On a highlight level full moon, no clouds, night, goggles are very good at allowing you to see the world around you through the through the optics. On a very dark and cloudy low light level night, the night vision goggles are working as hard as they can to pull the image from the space around you, but it's hard to see, and then you start getting um scintillation in the goggles, where it's it the green uh color that's coming into your eyes starts kind of getting specks all over the place. And your your ability to make out and have depth, make make out the scene around you and have depth perception really starts to deteriorate. So it becomes much more challenging when you're flying low light level. In the fleet replacement squadron, we did highlight level training, but we didn't do any flights lowlight level, meaning no moon. So this is trigger again. So my eye goes straight to Kuwait. I'm flying in Iraq. We're navigating along the border of Iran and Iraq, and it's low light level, and I've never flown on goggles lowlight before, and I'm navigating with trigger along the border of Iraq and Iran, trying to keep us from flying on the wrong side of the border. And it was successful, but it was definitely stressful. Uh, he took care of, he was flying, so I wasn't like I was not struggling to fly at the time, but I was struggling to see the world around me and correlate it with the map. We didn't have moving maps in the cockpit at the time. So it was definitely a challenging experience and and a first for for me to be able to check that box that my first flight with no moon on goggles in a cobra was uh trying not to cross over into uh another uh country and with what's happening today. Certainly didn't want to find ourselves on on that side of the border.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

So two questions. One, how low were you flying at night on that border run? Two, you said you were holding a map. How was the map illuminated if you're you don't have any light? That's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So we were flying between three to five hundred feet, uh maybe lower at times on the border. Uh and at that point, it you know it starts to get some terrain in that part of the Iraq-Iran border. So to answer your question for the map, uh oftentimes we would have a small green light on our boom mic called a lip light, so we would use that. And then we'd also have small pen lights in the cockpit so you could shine it down, and then your goggles are in front of you and you're looking underneath your goggles at the map uh so you can look out and look down at the same time to maintain train avoidance, other aircraft, enemy, whatever it might be. But it is, you know, sometimes you're kind of doing one of these with chameleon eyes, one out, one down, trying to make sure you're uh you're keeping your your signer and you're the commander of the aircraft and the the leader of the flight in the right space.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

You've used the term the signer. Is that like the aircraft commander and a co-pilot relationship? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

So absolutely. So unlike uh um, you know, single-piloted aircraft that that many fly in the in the tactical world, the the Cobra are two pilots, and so one person is always the signer or the aircraft commander. They're responsible for everything that happens with the aircraft, from the aircraft, and they're in charge. And and so what's unique to crewed uh aviation as well is there are times when the signer may be a junior officer that's flying with a co-pilot who is a senior officer. And there's a very unique dynamic that comes along with that, and we work it out very well. Aircraft commander is in charge, and they are the person who is running that aircraft or that flight that day.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

And there's I would say that relationship is absolutely true in the Air Force as well. Whoever the aircraft commander is, they're ultimately responsible regardless of the rank of the other person. So, Ryan, what is your favorite flying memory?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

So I'll I'll give you I'll give you two. And both are are one was early on in my career, and the the other one I would say happened multiple times. So a lot of times we talk about when you're getting ready for a flight, we chairfly, right? So you sit down in a chair and you go through all of the things that you would do on a flight. You go through the communications, what you're gonna say, what you're gonna hear back, you go through where you're flying from and to, airspeeds, altitudes. You even think about where your fingers are gonna go on buttons as far as what weapons you're gonna shoot and the timing. So you chairfly all of these things for I I did it for all my missions. When I was a signer, when I was instructor, when I was a student, you prepare for the mission so that way you have thought through many of the challenges that when something goes different, you've already thought through the hard parts that you knew of, so you have a lot enough brain power left to adjust and and and focus on something new. So as a student learning to fly the cobra before my first flight in Iraq, I thought about what it was gonna feel like to shoot the gun, the 20 millimeter cannon that's uh on the at the feet of the co-pilot in the front of the cobra. I thought about how that flight was gonna go so many times. I chairflew it, I wanted to get it right, I studied everything I needed to study. And I, as I chairflew, I thought about what I thought was everything, but there was one key thing I was that was missing from that flight. And it was really like a uh a moment where I felt like I was really now doing what I'd wanted to do for so long. So we had a range, it was called the the whiskey range at Camp Pendleton. There was a large white rock that was like the basic flight ordinance delivery where you just come in at a specific altitude and you do all the basic maneuvers of shooting without any tactical play, and you try to hit the white rock. So I'm trying to get the buttons right, I don't want to get cleared to shoot and not not fire the weapon right. And I I did it all right, but when I pulled the trigger, the one thing I was missing was the sense of smell that came along with the first time I shot the gun. I'd been on the range so many times. I know the smell of gunpowder. And some when on the range, sometimes, you know, all the things that happen, you get a shell hits you in the neck from the guy down the way. But there's a sense of smell that I hadn't thought through. And I remember when I pulled the trigger and the and the gun's going off and the rounds are landing, and then I got that that breath of gunpowder up through the cockpit. I was like, I have arrived. This is finally what I've been trying to do for so long. And it was such a small thing and not something I talked to anybody about back then because you're a young pilot didn't tell you to shut up. But for me, that truly was a moment where I will never forget it. Just the feeling of it was the heat and the sweat and the sun coming through the cockpit. But then the smell, I was like, oh, and and every time I shot after that, there was there was always that little moment of like, okay, yeah, this is real. This is this is what we do, this is what we signed up for. So that's one. And the second of my favorite memories is I think this probably happens with many people in all fields, but certainly happens with those that serve in the military, aviation or not. We lose sight of how amazing and awesome the opportunities that we're given and the things that we do that most people in the world would only dream of become basic everyday things for us. And it's easy to lose sight of the fact of how amazing the opportunities we have and the technology that's around us, and just things that people would pay millions of dollars to do, we get paid to do. So oftentimes in my career, whether I was the most junior pilot in a flight of four cobras, or whether I was the signer, the aircraft commander, leading a flight of more than four, of five, of ten, whatever it was, of taxiing, hover taxiing out to the to the edge of the runway, the whole short line, and then looking back, kicking the tail out to kind of look back at the rest of the flight. And there were there were multiple times this has happened. I'd I'd see other cobra helicopters in my flight three to five feet off the ground, just hovering. I'd be like, that's awesome. And then I would I would have this joy of how cool it is for what they're doing. And then I realized I'm doing the exact same thing they're doing. And there's like, it's almost like a childish joy that we lose as we get older. That I always try to bring out in conversation with people that when it's hard, when you're tired, when life gets challenging, when the military starts really weighing down on you, remember how awesome the opportunity is for the things that you do. Because even something as simple as hoveling a Cobra helicopter, whole short line of Camp Pendleton, getting ready to take off in a flight of two or four, or whatever it might be, how blessed are we? How awesome is it to have the opportunity to do things that people could never imagine doing in their whole lives. And you have to appreciate those moments because otherwise, it's just like you feel like you're being pushed into the ground with all of the responsibilities that come along with doing the stuff that's not just the fun Cobra helicopter stuff. So those are my those are two of my favorite memories uh of of flying.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Uh those are great ones. And it's so funny. You mentioned the uh the smell of the uh gunpowder. Uh I was talking to Cliff Lotta the other day, and he mentions the same thing about the first time he fired the gun in the A-10, that smell of uh cordite uh in the cockpit. Oh my gosh, I miss that so much. I I I miss it. It was uh formative for me. You talked a moment ago about the joy of flying. Let's look at the other end of the spectrum for a second. There's nothing more important and more stressful that we do in the military aviation branches than flying in combat. Tell us about some of your most memorable experiences flying in Iraq in combat.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

So um I there's there's many, many memories. I think I have just shy of uh of 800 hours of red time. So just shy of 800 hours in combat. I think it's like 799.9, like really just shy of 800, like if only, right? The the story I'll I'll call out is is I can sitting here talking to you if I if I really try. I can I'm inside the cockpit of the story I'm about to say. Uh, and this is a story of a day I did not shoot, and thank God I did not. An HMLA, a Cobra Huey squadron in uh in an Iraq or Afghanistan scenario, we've we fly a lot of different mission sets. We fly general support missions where we're going out for a pre-planned mission support of Marines on the ground. And you may or may not end up shooting on those days. Um there are there are missions where you're on an alert crew and you're waiting for a tick, which called a troops in contact, meaning Marines, soldiers, whomever is friendly on the ground is actively in a firefight and they need close air support now. So you sprint to the airplane, you strap in, you go and you get overhead and you provide close air support, you provide uh eyes in the sky, you scare them away, is what often happened is that the the bad guys in Iraq would hear skids come in their way, the covers and the Hueys, and they would just drop their weapons or they'd they'd go to ground because they knew if they were still shooting, when the helicopter showed up, they were gonna die. And so just stopping the firefight is sometimes all they the Marines needed or the soldiers needed to stay alive or accomplish their mission. Sometimes we shoot, sometimes we don't shoot. One of the very important missions we did as well was Kazavak Escort or Casualty Evacuation Escort. So what typically happens is there's an assault support airplane, air aircraft, a helicopter that carries people and carries medics on board. And their job is to take off from wherever you're based and either go from an already established medical facility to another one, or you go out to a Ford operating base, or you go out into the field. There's a firefight that has just happened, a friendly person, marine, soldier, whomever, is injured and they need to get to medical care right away. We would send, typically, you'd send a single transport helicopter with a single attack helicopter as escort and fire support for that helicopter who's who's rescuing people and saving lives. On this one particular day, I was flying out of Alta Katam in Iraq. I was on the Kazakh Chase line. I was the lead guy to go. So we take off and we were chasing a CH-46, going from Alta Katam to Camp Fallujah, a short flight. At this point in time in Iraq, we were transitioning between flying low level and flying a medium level, medium altitude uh tactics for a number of reasons I won't get into. But the distance between those two bases was was close enough that we weren't going to climb to our medium altitude, we're going to stay low. So we were about 300 feet and you know, watching out for wires and towers everywhere. I was in the back seat, I had a young co-pilot flying with me. And I'm the six the 46 was going as fast as it could. We're trying to keep up, keep up. So I'm watching the uh transport helicopter off my right hand side. And this is a daytime mission. So out of my left hand side, I see movement running along a berm in between two wadies. And so I note it, it's kind of far away, but it's it's almost coming across the path that we're at. So I'm still flying, I'm looking, I'm just making sure, like, hey, what's going on? And so four individuals are running full speed, and then at one point in time they stop, and then the lead individual is holding something and starts tracking my aircraft through the sky. That's hostile intent. So it's time for me to defend the 46 and myself the way we're supposed to. So I turn the aircraft as hard as I possibly can. I don't see anything co-pilot, I don't see anything 46. I turn the aircraft, I yank it around, put my nose on the target. I'm already armed. My rocket reticle, which is in my heads-up display, is set to the distance at which I shoot my rockets from this distance. And I was right about to press the red button, which shoots rockets off, and the individual drops what they were holding. And in the end, the individual was a teenage kid holding a stick that he was pretending to be a gun as he was tracking me through the sky. And I was less than a second away from doing something that legally I would not have been in trouble for, but morally I would have taken with me for the rest of my life. And I thank God every day that that situation happened the way it did, because I'm not sure how I would have responded to something like that. I would have done the right thing because somebody was actively tracking me with what I thought was a weapon, but it was because a kid, a teenager, was being stupid or being brazen or whatever you want to call them, thought it was a good idea, and thinking maybe I would never see him. Now, I'm assuming that child and his friends probably never did that again because of what they saw my aircraft do and how close I came to them. But that was though that was a formative moment for me where I think a lot of us who have seen combat, whether we like to admit it or not, certainly have challenges we deal with after combat, whether you call it PTSD or whatever else you want to say. We all have things. That we carry with us forward for the rest of our lives on the ground and in the air, I can put that thing, that memory down in a good way. Because if I if it went differently, I don't think I ever would have put that memory away. And I don't know how I would have responded. So that's a that's a story uh from combat where I was fortunate to have enough time and space to make a decision that I don't have to carry with me. And to be honest, I still I still carry it in a really, really heavy way, just because I know how close I was to making a decision that that was uh life or death.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

So are there any stories you wish you could erase from your logbook?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

So there's one. Uh, and this isn't this is not a combat story. So but I'd recently returned from Iraq. I I was sent home to go to the Marine Corps' MOTS 1, Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron. Our our WTI is is the equivalent of top gun for the Marine Corps. A lot of people are gonna be mad at me for saying that because they don't like it when I say that. But it's our high-end school that takes our our very talented young pilots and puts them through a course of instruction that that makes them be the leaders in the squadron, the training officers and and the best tactical instructors we can have. So I departed from Iraq a little bit early on one of my deployments to get back to uh to get back to Southern California and get out to to Yuma, Arizona for the class. And there's one flight where um you launch out in a flight of five AH-1 whiskeys. Each aircraft doesn't have an instructor pilot and a student, it's student on student. So all the students in the class are flying together. And there's a hybrid, a safety aircraft, where one of the instructors from the course are in there, and they're like um a puppet um uh master uh controlling where everything's going, what's happening. But on this flight, you don't know what's going to happen for the duration of the flight. You're given initial uh tasking and you start and throughout the entirety of the flight, which is five or more hours long, you're retasked to do most every mission inside the Cobra portfolio from close air support to deep air support to uh defensive air combat maneuvering where you dogfight with helicopters and jets. They actually had a hind helicopter at the class that would pop up over hilltops and you'd you'd fight them. And you never know what's gonna happen. You get jumped by F-5s. It's it it is uh so fun to do, but just a helmet fire for everybody who's the students that are trying to get through. One of the mission sets we just launched out of we landed to get gas. It's called a FARP aforward arming and refueling point. We got gas, we got ordinance. They reshuffle who's in charge, like what students leading the flight. And we're flying into one of the ranges. It was called Mount Barrow in 2507 South in Yuma, Arizona. And um, it's a dirt runway surrounded by mountainous train all around, so it's in a little bit of a bowl. And funny, I talked about Trigger before. Trigger comes back again in the story. I should call him before this podcast launches. He was an instructor on the ground acting as the safety guy on the ground. He was the forward air controller, trained man who knew how to call in uh close air support, but he was acting as a non-qualified JTAC, meaning he was pretending to be a random Lance Corporal who saw the forward air controller get shot, picked up the radio, knew he needed uh air support, and was talking to the pilots for the first time. So he was pretending to be like a southern boy from the, you know, from you know Tennessee or whatever you want to call it. So he's using an accent and he's frantic and he's saying, you know, I need you to do this, I need you to do this, really making us drive towards making bad decisions, right? He's trying to make us pull the information out of him that we need to do it safely, but amping up and oh, push, push, push, push, just like in combat, if a Lance Corporal needed fires now, he's probably not going to use the right terms and do it just right. Long lead up to what I wish I could remove. So mind you, I'm three weeks from combat. My brain has not clicked back to civilian life, normal training just yet. That's an excuse that I own. I'm not making an excuse. This is just the situation that put me in this place. The first run-in to make the attack, I was dashed to the lead aircraft. The lead aircraft was struggling in this scenario. They got a couple rockets off on the first pass, and then a smoky Sam shot up in the air, which is uh a training um piece of equipment that shoots a projectile a couple hundred feet in the air, and it gives a corkscrew smoke signal like some man fired shoulder-fired uh uh missiles that are heat seeking.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Think of a think of a super firework that has a long visible trail in daytime.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yes, 100%. That's that's a perfect example. Thank you for that. So it pops up and we pull off like we're supposed to. Okay, man pad shot, we're gonna push back, we're gonna re-engage. Well, we made a mistake. We came back in from the same piece of sky, so bad guys knew where we were. They'd already shot us once. You want to move, you want to do something different so you don't repeat the same thing. We didn't do that. That wasn't my mistake, my mistake is coming. I'd seen where the first rocket impacts from the first attack went. The first time we're back in again. I saw where those were. Um I'm trying to get this non-qualified JTAX talk on to where we're going. I pick another target set, a tank halt that's in the middle of the objective area, and I'm doing all the basic maneuvering of the aircraft. I'm slowing down, pushing the nose over, setting my collective 40%. I'm arming the aircraft, I'm ready to shoot. We have clearance of fire, Smoky Sam comes up again, and it was just a little bit to the east. We're going north to south, so a little bit to my left, Smoky Sam pops up. I jinxed five degrees, shot six rockets, and pulled off. I shot the I shot Smoky Sam. So, where this is bad is there's two types of Smoky Sams. One is like remote controlled from far away, push a button, and way, way, way down the way, the Smoky Sam shoots. I didn't know that going in. Two, it's wire guided. It's got about 100 yards of wire from a human holding the remote that shoots the smokey Sam off. This was wire guided. My rockets were straight and clear, and they shot right at what I was aiming at. But that those Marines were well within the safety zone that we should be shooting rockets. So trigger comes over the radio, abort, abort, abort. Not breaking character. Abort, abort, abort means whatever you're doing stopping, stop. Like if you're about to fire, don't fire. If you're fired, stop firing. Pull off everything else. And my blood ran cold. I couldn't feel my fingertips. I'm just trying to make, I don't know what just happened, but I knew I just shot and I got an abort. And so I think I'm in this mishap chain that's about to happen where something gets somebody gets hurt or killed. So I I paused for a minute. I came over the radio and I said, Trigger, this is bleeder, it's my call sign. Those were my rockets. Is everybody okay? And he didn't break character. He said, I told you shoot the bad guys, don't shoot me. And I'm like, I'm I don't want to talk to my instructor about like with I want the J the non-qualified JTAC to go away. Like, trigger my instructor, come up and talk to me. And I'm like, I'm like, trigger, is everyone okay? He's like, Yeah, we're fine. You're just don't shoot us, shoot at the bad guys. So the play of the problem kept going. And we we keep I didn't, I didn't down the flight, I didn't get sent home. But once I knew that everybody was okay, now I started thinking about oh my, like the mistake I just made, how did I let that happen? I should never have done it. I'm like, am I gonna fail this flight? Are they gonna send me home for a safety violation? I didn't know what was coming in my future because that was my mistake. I can point, the only finger I can point anywhere was right at me, right? I made a mistake. Now, the rest of the people who were involved in this, they were pointing fingers at themselves as well because in in aviation, at least at least in naval aviation, I think in the Air Force as well, we talk about the Swiss cheese model. And if you think about like six pieces of Swiss cheese all kind of stacked up, like maybe an inch away from each other, and if all the holes align, you can you can have one line go right through all the holes of Swiss cheese to create a result at the back end. But if you can adjust one of those pieces of cheese, so one of those, one of those holes that were aligned is misaligned, you just stopped a mishap, right? You stopped a bad thing from happening. Everybody was looking at it in a way where they were looking how they could have prevented what had happened. And in the long run, I still take responsibility for everything I did. I owned up to my mistakes and I told my the instructors, I'm like, that was me. I aimed at it, I shot at it, my rockets weren't long, my walkers weren't left or right. I did the thing. If it's wrong, I'm wrong. But I I this is what I did. A bunch of people went to bat for me and and made sure that the commander of the of the Mods 1 understood what had happened, and I I was still going, I graduated the school, but what I took away from that was I briefed that to anybody who will listen from that point on, that I had made this mistake, never shoot the smoky Sam. It it it became a briefing point in all future classes. Although I learned a lot there, if I could remove that flight from my my memory, because I really came close to doing some some serious damage to people, and I have no justification. I can't I can't justify that anything I did was right in that in that action to pull the trigger, and I really I wish I could have those rockets back, and I I I just pulled off without without shooting at it.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Trying to put myself into the situation thinking about that transition from combat flying to training flying. We would say there are times when your fangs get out so far that they're knocking against the floor of the cockpit.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

That's good. Yeah. I was I was I was biting the cock floor of the cockpit. I was uh Your Your Fangs were out. And to be honest, there's um some of the instructors really came back to me and said, Ryan, you're an attack pilot. You were doing exactly what we trained you to do, which is true and nice to say to me, but no, no, I I shouldn't have done that, right? So that there was ownership around, but I always came back to if anybody's pointing fingers, I point them at me. And thank God everybody was safe. And to be honest, I think those Marines that got rained on by rocks so close to my rocket inpox, they probably tell that story was like the coolest thing that ever happened to them in their lives. Because I don't I don't know that they understand how how dangerous it was, at least maybe until after they were interviewed and talked to about like, hey, are you okay? What happened? So a great story to go around. And if I saved somebody making the same mistake again because I was able to relive it, then maybe I don't pull it from my blog book. But that's the one that um I really uh I really wish I had done better.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

I think you have given people a fascinating insight to what it is to be a combat pilot. So, Ryan, I understand that you have actually written a book about many of your experiences. Can you tell us about that? What one, what inspired you to write it and what's it about?

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Absolutely. So um my book is called Readback. For for many years, I've been keeping notes of the things that I learned in my career that I really wish I had known the answer to, been ready to experience before doing it firsthand. I did sometimes things really well, I did some things really poorly. The Smokey Sam story is in the book. That's that's one uh that I capture in my book. I would be working out, doing something, and I would have a memory, a lesson I learned popping in my head over years, and so I I kept I kept notes over time. And then about two years ago, spending too much time wasting my uh valuable time, and I decided that I was gonna take those lessons and and and turn it into a book. And to be honest, when I started writing the book, because I I was not an author, I didn't plan to be an author, my goal was if the only person who read my book was my son Joey and he learned something about me and saw inside my head, then I was gonna call it a success. So if the writing process turned into a manuscript that went nowhere other than the my son's desk, um then I was gonna count it as a victory. So I started writing uh 4 30 to 5 30 every morning, Monday through Friday. I I wasn't gonna allow my time writing to touch any time with my family. And I was still on active duty, I wasn't gonna allow my book to touch anything at work. And so I had about an hour a day, five days a week, where I started writing. And I was I was telling a story that teaches a lesson. Uh so I have 22 stories that teach a lesson throughout my book. Some of them are from Officer Candidate School, and some of them from staff officer time in UCOM or staff officer time at uh Marine Forces Pacific. The book is taking my military life and trying to help other people learn from my mistakes. And the people who read this could be service members, uh, they could be retirees looking to go in the military, or they could be any civilian person who's looking to learn some lessons from some people who've experienced some things. So the last paragraph or two of every chapter is the readback portion of the book. And it's a part where I tell a military story with a military lesson, and then the last paragraph or two, I summarize the lesson in civilian language. I take all the military speak out of it and I relate it to the fact that all of us, whether we served or not, we can learn from each other. And I think there's a lot of things that I learned along the way that people can can um put into their daily life. And uh just in case anybody's interested, this is my book, Readback. It is going to officially launch on May 5th. I've been fortunate enough to have some copies in hand, uh, and I've been signing some uh I've been signing some copies and shipping them off already to individuals who were interested in the book along the way or some folks on social media. But I'm excited because I I've been doing this for a little over two years. And for uh a kid from Rhode Island in Massachusetts who never thought he'd be an author, I'm about to publish a book for real. And I think that the stories I tell and the lessons I have are applicable to a lot of people. Whether you serve it or not, you'll you'll learn something from it. So I'm really proud of the book. I'm excited to see how how well it does once uh once it launches and and people get a chance to read it uh uh in a wider audience.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

So where can they buy it? On Amazon?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Absolutely. Yeah. So it's uh it's right now it's up for pre-order on Amazon. My publisher, Amplified Publishing Group, is uh has it up for pre-order on their website, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Books a Million. So it's gonna be widely out for sale online. And then um as we as we launch the book, it'll be in in bookstores as well. So but the best place to get it, if you want to look and pre-order right now, is is Amazon, Ryan H. Eherry, and uh the book is called Readback. May 5th is uh is when they will start shipping out all the pre-orders. Hopefully there's gonna be a bunch. Uh, and then it'll be live for sale at that point in time um for anybody to buy.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

And as I recall, readback is also a technical military term when you are given instructions usually for in combat, going after a target, you read back to confirm you've got it right. Is that the origin of the term?

SPEAKER_01 36:45

You yeah, so uh you you nailed, and that that's really the the there's uh a couple layers to why I called it readback. Primarily, you you just talked about it. So the mandatory readback for close air support, which the mission set in the world for the military always changes, but we were very much close air support in the HMLA in my time in combat. There's very specific information when you get an attack brief that you read back to make sure that you know where the friendlies are, you know where the bad guys are, and you don't put the ordinance on the wrong target. So mandatory readback was here. Another reason why I call it readback is there's times when you're a staff officer and you're talking to your boss, whomever that might be, that your boss might be a captain, your boss might be a colonel or a general officer. There's times when you're being tasked with something where the conversation can meander, where everybody in the room isn't sure exactly which direction everybody's supposed to be stepping out in. So, a technique not only mine, I learned this from other people, a technique is to give a readback afterwards. And what I often would do with my bosses, if I was unsure, I would say, sir, let me read that back. I want to give you a readback on what I think you told me, make sure I'm not wasting your time because there's times with senior leaders where you may only see them once a week or once every week. And if you got it wrong and you're gonna wait two weeks to find out you got it wrong, you just have impacted the US government, the military service, the combatant command on their ability to do their job, or you put lives at risk, right? Depending on what level of the sphere, tactical, operational, strategic you are. So that's the second one. And then really, it is it's my readback on my career. So three levels of readback that work out to why I pick the name. And I'm reading back my career to anybody who is interested in what I what I learn and and wants to find a way to maybe learn a couple lessons through my mistakes or successes and be able to either sidestep that mistake or plow right through it and have a huge success uh without having to slow down. So that's that's my my intent in retirement from the military is to use the things I've learned to help others. And I think readback is a really good start for that process.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Fabulous. And you're gonna start with Joey. How old is Joey? Joey is 11. He's already read parts of the manuscript, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

He he absolutely has. So he got book number one that came off the presses. He has read back in hand, and he had copy number one of 240, which was the first run number of books I got sent to my house. So he's an amazing little man. Uh retiring here in his 11 years, he lived in seven places. So he is fully versed in the challenges of the military life and the um the difficulties of of having to start a new school, friends, and everything in between. Uh so we're happy to be settled and happy to be retired. And even though I think he misses the Marine dad, uh, he's been loving having me home, and I'm super happy that um I'm getting to spend that time with him.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Ryan, thanks so much for being with us today on the podcast. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Thanks, David. I really appreciate your time. And this is uh an excellent um podcast you have going. I think you're you're hitting on an amazing um topic of just talking about flying with pilots, and and I I've really enjoyed this, and I'm looking forward to to seeing uh your future podcasts as well.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

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 met that mission today. New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sorting, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.