The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Jeff Carr

Aircraft flown: F-4, F-104, and T-41

Learn about the extraordinary flying experiences and insights of Jeff Carr, a veteran of the US Air Force with over 40 years in aviation. Discover the challenges and excitement of flying iconic aircraft like the F-4 Phantom and the F-104 Starfighter.

 In the world of aviation, few experiences can compare to the thrill of flying high-performance jets. In this podcast, we delve into the fascinating stories and insights shared by Jeff Carr, a distinguished pilot with over 40 years of service in the US Air Force. From the intricacies of flying the F-4 Phantom and F-104 Starfighter, to flying in Europe, Jeff’s journey is filled with remarkable moments that highlight the challenges and joys of being a pilot.

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 Jeff Carr. Jeff served over 40 years in the U.S. Air Force, 28 years on active duty, and 12 years as a civilian. He's got a variety of flying and uh rated staff positions that he's held over the years. He's got more than 2,200 hours flying, primarily the F-4 Phantom and the F-104 Starfighter. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Thank you nevermore. Appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

The primary planes you've flown are the F-4 and the F-104. Can you s uh put us in the cockpit and give us a sense of what each of those airplanes are like when you're flying?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

The uh the F-4, I I really loved the model we flew at Rammstein. We had brand new jets right off the assembly line, uh SLADE, leading edge slats, soft wing, uh Tizio target identification system, electro optical, TV in the left wing route, and APX-80, the combat tree, uh, airborne interrogator, all that really, really cool stuff for our mission. And it was air defense, which I really liked. Uh sit 24-hour alert, Zulu, horn goes off, and off you go. I liked having a whistle. I really did. A good crew uh was just amazing what we could accomplish uh together. The 104, what I liked was uh it's an honest airplane. If if you're if you're gonna get lackadaisical, it will remind you it it could hurt your feelings if you're not careful. We're at Luke. I'm finished with my F4 assignment from Rammstein to Luke. I'm there at the Fighting 69th, that was the squadron, and we were set attached to the 2nd German Air Force. So the sister squadron was the admin for the German students, and then there's fighting 69th, the U.S. I'm in iPUG, instructor pilot upgrade, and I walk in for my flight. I'm looking at the uh the grease board and uh landing time for one of the jets was crashed. So I looked up and I said, Hey, what's going on? Hey, it crashed. Ops officer sitting over there, just kind of casual. One guy's reading the Wall Street Journal. The duty desk uh NCO is just kind of going about, so I'm looking at these guys and I look how often does this happen?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

A very good question.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Actually, it's the first place I was ever running around where airplanes did not come back. Crew got out fine, the two pilots got out fine. The German student thought it was the greatest thing he'd ever done. Hopping out of an airplane. Uh what had happened was they were doing 500-knot pops on the East Tac out there uh at uh near Gila Bin. 550 knot pull-up, full afterburner as they're going up to drop a bomb at 500 knots, and throttle cable broke, shut the engine off. Off you go.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

That'll do it. That'll do it. The uh F-104 is known as the zipper. I assume for its speed. I I gather it doesn't have long legs, though. Is that is that true?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, that too. The uh and the speed, I would always anything less than 400 knots was kind of slow for it. It just needed to go fast. Yeah. It it it really was very comfortable going fast. Uh down on the uh South Tech, uh chasing a um A6, yeah, uh Navy airplane, and uh added up to almost 700 knots on the on the deck. Just you know, nothing to it. I just like going fast. The two tip tanks and not much internal, uh, I think 12,000 pounds total. And yeah, so you're gonna get an hour 1.1, maybe 1.2, depends on what you're doing. I was uh chasing uh Italians and Turkish pilots around their skies uh on the Tacabal team tactical evaluation team for NATO. All of them had missions that needed somebody to come and evaluate them, and I was the guy. So those you could get maybe 1.3 or 4 if it was a low level for a strike mission.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

You mentioned that uh air defense was the mission for the F-4 when you were at Rammstein. The F-104, what was your mission there?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

It turned out that platform, it was built as an interceptor. Go up, shoot the shoot the bad guy bombers, come back down, reload, go up and do it again. Uh it turned into an excellent low-level strike platform. Uh, strike in NATO words means it's a nuclear uh carrier. So at Luke, the F-104 training program concentrated heavy on low levels, I mean down to the second. At Luke, the German Air Force specifically wanted exact timing all the way to weapon impact on the range. They're doing it all in Ernagan, I guess. And unlike the US, where we like six digits, 420, 480, divide by six, that's pretty easy. Germans flew low levels at 450. So there was another twist in there.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Math in public is always dangerous. When you're going 450 knots. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

450 was the uh was the speed they wanted instead of nothing divisible by six. So the the uh so you get real good at figuring out, okay, bomb time of fall, you back it out, back it up, back it out, you're all the way, then you're on the runway, waiting for the magic secondhand to start your your run.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

So what's the coolest thing you've ever done in an airplane?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Uh I was uh I was in the front seat. Back seat was an IP, a very uh flexible IP. We were on our way from Ramste.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Flexible, a flexible instructor pilot. I like it. And what kind of airplane?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

F-4E, leading edge slats, prime airplane, just an unbelievably cool machine to fly. So this is September 1976. I'm still essentially a wingman. I'm a I'm a lieutenant. The IP says, uh, hey, we're going from Rammstein to Zaragoza, Spain. We're gonna be down there for six weeks, dropping bombs, shooting the gun, shooting the dark, and all that. I'm gonna moon the lead. So we're over France, moon over France, and he he starts to un unhook on everything. We're in a three-ship, so the flight lead, I'm on his right wing, and uh we back off a little bit so he can't see what's going on, and he strips down, I mean stripped down, put the helmet back on, and inverted himself in the ejection seat and got a pressed ham against the canopy, which was cold. I said, Okay, I'm driving up now. I'm getting I'm now I'm pulling line abreast with flight lead. The number three guy says, Lead, you got a red eye, right three o'clock. Helly ho.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

I am so glad that the statute of limitations for mooning your your wingman has long since passed. I can honestly say I've never heard anybody tell a story like that. Um I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

We were laughing our asses off, uh and all of the major players are still with us. So hiding the names was was just hey, uh I think that's best. There was a moon over France in broad daylight.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Okay. Okay. So what um I'm I'm nervous to ask the next question. What what was what's the worst weather you've ever flown through to land an airplane?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Uh several times in Germany or in Europe, you know, just call it Europe, but Germany in particular. Uh here's the one that that still astonishes me today. Uh it was 22 December 76. We launched from Rammstein. It was clear, it was beautiful. And you can see to the west, it's like a very quite large, extremely huge blanket coming across. That doesn't look good. You can see it actually moving. Why they let us launch, I'll never know. So we're doing our thing, and then we get the recall. Gotta come back. Well, we come back, the daggum thing is over the runway. The visibility is no good, so we divert to Memmigan. This is three days before Christmas. So we land at Memmingan. My flight lead was our former squadron commander and the recently promoted chief of USAF Stanabal standardization evaluation. He wasn't going to stay at Memmingan that night. He said, guys, we're going again. It's really nice in Mimigan as we get going farther west. It is really still, it's what it's closed. Rammstein was closed. Han, there not one base was available. The SOF gave me a ration of stuff, uh, change frequencies to ask, you know, hey, can you guys give me a special weather observation? You know who I'm with, right? Right? Who said you could launch? Uh you know who I'm with, right? Back to Memmikan we go, we spend the night. Next day it's walks off. Uh indefinite ceiling, zero anything, zero viz for fog. It was it was walks off.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

I remember that acronym in in uh pilot training. They said, yeah, when it's walks off, you walks off to the club because you're not flying.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

You are not flying. Now it's 23 December. Somebody's got to sit alert again, too, because there are about half a dozen of us. Five airplanes, I think, so I had about 10 people. All I cared about was my flight lead and my jet, and whatever he said do, I was gonna go go do. But there were several of us there. Phone, phone, phone, phone. Okay, we're launching. So we had full tanks, full everything. It was zero to thirty thousand feet. Never saw the sun. Knew where it was, but that was about it. We're flying in milk, just plain milk. We get over. Tanks are now empty. Uh drop tanks are are now empty. We had to burn those off, obviously. Put their nine-level GCA guy on, uh, ground control approach, precision approach radar, and uh special weather observation. 300 feet in a mile. It was a hundred and a quarter if it was anything. It was it was terrible. It I didn't see the runway until the running rabbits uh were right under me. If we had to divert, I had no idea where we would go because no one else is gonna do a special weather observation. Soon as we all touched down, last jet, Ramstein Your base is closed. Two days before Christmas, 1976. We got back, and that was the worst weather I'd ever seen until I was flying out of Rimini, uh, Italy. Uh the World Two Squadron.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Uh we'd done uh two sorties that day, second sorties coming back. The weather, the weather just decided it was just gonna keep coming down. Before we took off, I knew there were no lights on the runway. Uh they were all being maintained. There were something, there was some construction going on, no lights, not even the rotating beacon on the tower, no threshold, no taxiway, no no lights anywhere. And the precision approach radar was out. So it was only a non-precision approach, meaning you get your vectors, you get an altitude, good luck finding the runway with that. Good luck prevail. That was really bad weather, but I knew where Rimini was, I knew it was at sea level, and I knew I wasn't gonna be below sea level. So yeah, I drove in at decision height.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Okay. Which is about a hundred feet in the air.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

About like that.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah, about like that. And uh anyway, I landed.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Since we have already seen a moon over France, uh, I guess I should ask, is there ever, assuming the statute of limitations has run out, is there ever a time maybe you've flown someplace you shouldn't have or flown lower than you should have?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Oh yeah, yeah. Uh a couple times, once, flying the F-4. We were at first in Feldbruck, outside of Munich. It's one of my favorite uh cross countries. We go to First E go into Munich. So we're at First E and uh the WISO calls up whoever. It was one of the uh air defense ground uh radar sites. There were three of them that we really liked. Uh this one was Cold Track, Straw Basket, and Sweet Apple. They were all German. And he wanted the castle tour, so we took a castle tour, uh, saw all the ones from uh Crazy Ludwig, uh so Lake Kimsey, Linderhof, and Neuschwanstein, the fairy tale castle. Drove around, turn your squawk off, got it, okay. Off we went. It was really, really nifty. When we recovered again at first eight gas step and then went home. Uh the other one was courtesy of the Italian Air Force because the Air Force Regulation 6016 did not apply. I was not flying a U.S. Air Force airplane. And the Italian guy I was with, there were two of us that were chase pilots in uh in the southern region. He was an Italian colonel out of uh Vicenza, 5th ATF, 58 Allied Tactical Air Force. And we would join up every time there was a tack of owl. And so I flew with him a lot, or he would fly with somebody and I'd be chasing somebody else. So we're at Camary, which is near uh Verona, more or less. And he says, You wanna take a hop? I said, Sure. So it was just him and me, and uh we flew through the Alps, through uh Switzerland, did a one uh 360 around the Matterhorn. They were skiing still at the time, went into the French uh National Park, Mont Blanc, came back around, and then we're on the deck, and he's palavering in Italian, and I could tell something's coming. I can't make out everything he's saying, because that wasn't that fluent, but we're low and we're going really fast. So I'm tucking it in, and I realized he's talking to a tower, and I look out the front, and I'm eye level with the tower at Malpensa Airport, that is the Milano airport. We split the tower. By the time we got down, we split the tower. I'm going, wow, this is amazing. So yeah, uh statute of limitations for whatever reason does not apply to the U.S. It whatever the Italians might have done, we landed, had a big laugh. I wrote, I actually grabbed the map and drew it out exactly where we were and the date. If that was a phenomenal run. My next one uh was the last flight I ever took, uh, 28 April 1988. That was going to be my last flight. I knew it, you know, you're 104, two tours in a 104. Your old light lead says, What do you want to do? I said, I don't want to go any higher than low. Okay. Where do you want to go? I said, Well, I want there were three of us, uh, and I knew all these guys because I flew with them fairly often. Off we go. Uh, we cruised the southern coast of Italy, all the way down, hit the islands, Ischia and Capri.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Oh, beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah, oh gosh. Sorento down the Amalfi coast all the way and then back up and around, and then my real target was at 12 o'clock. So he's palaverin. I have no idea where he's saying we're going, but we were going straight to Air South. Allied Forces Southern Europe compound was in Bagnoli. Big white buildings. Uh that's where the four-star US Navy Admiral was, and then also commander of Allied Forces Southern Europe. So he was in his building, the Air South building was uh commanded by a US three-star general who I also knew. He knew me because I'm the only guy flying airplanes in the entire command. I was the only guy with a with a rated slot to fly. The flight they asked me, says, which window? I told him the general's on the second floor, and the window would be about here, and that's where we aimed. It was we were screaming, screaming, and we were low. So we come back around, and I'm just again, I'm following. Okay, man, that was really cool. I'm ready. I'm I'm done. He brings us all the way back around. We slow down, we drop the gear and the flaps and the landing lights. So the first pass, you can't hear us coming. Just like any other jet. If you're coming really fast, you don't know it's there until it's on you. Now we're coming in, we're making a lot of noise because we're, you know, down slow. Guys are looking out the window and say, Oh god, there they come again. Guys had dropped their coffee, dropped whatever they were doing, and the second pass, the general comes out and says, What is going on? Is there a holiday or something? The OSI Office of Special Investigations guy, who we also knew, says, Ah, Jeff's just saying goodbye. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was all right.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

That was my last flight in that when did you know you first wanted to be a pilot?

SPEAKER_01 17:15

It's amazing. Uh I was born at Las Vegas Air Force Base. Later on they called it Nellis. Uh my first three assignments in the Air Force were at bases I had already been. Willie, uh elementary school, Ramstein, junior high school, George, Air Force Base, Victorville, California, high school. Jets always. My dad was a fighter pilot. Uh and uh when we were in the ROTC program, summer summer training, summer camp, whatever you want to call it, uh his squadron sponsored us to come from March Air Force Base to have a day on an active base. So I'm that's my dad. Hey, oh yeah, he's doing this, and they're that's where I live. 24 California Court. That's that's we lived on base. Now the question is, you know, when did you at first? It was always airplanes, always jet engine, especially during the war, uh night runs. You'd hear the hear them uh borsite the guns and uh running engines at night. It it was just always there. Dad had already been to Vietnam and uh 66, and it was one day when I said, I'm gonna sign up for the ROTC program at San Diego. That was only a two-year program, so there was no freshman sophomore, none of that. He went to the six-week field training. And uh when I told him, I said, that's what I want to do, he goes, go do something better. I wanted I I burst out laughing. I said, You gotta be kidding me. You got a lifestyle, I want. Us guys, my us four four guys at George, uh, all our dads were F-4 pilots, they were all F-4 instructors, and uh, we would listen to the stories. We'd hang out around the club if we could to see what it just it was just kind of I want that's what I want to do. That's what I want to be. At the time, then when I got on active duty, got commissioned, got to Willie, okay, great. That's where I used to live, right there. George, Air Force Base, okay, got on base, that's where I used to live right there. The squadron I learned how to fly the F-4 was my dad's old squadron. I've been building several times. And it was just one of those, you know, that it was all the hard wings, F-4, C's, D's, and E's. So he had to know what airplane do we have today and what do I have to do to start it. Uh, but as as far as the ramp was covered with F-4s, and I was flying my dad's, I I compared our Form 5s, our flight, flight uh, flight forms, whatever. He flew that jet then, I flew that jet then. Same tail, same everything. And then uh uh he had deployed to uh uh Southeast Asia, Udorn in 66 with the 435th TAC Fighter Squadron, the War Eagles. When I got re-blued, uh leaving the um Air Force Academy, I had been flying the T-41, the dreaded Mescalero, and uh they wanted me to get re-blued before I went and flew the F-104 again in Italy. They sent me to Holoman, the AT-38 Squadron. There was, strangely enough, the 435th TAC Fighter Training Squadron. Same exact squadron. We had, they had the scrapbook, and I'm looking at it, and I thought, oh yeah, there's me. I'm 16 years old, there's my dad, there's me. And the squadron guys were going, wow. I'm going, you're saying wow, I'm saying wow. The parallels were uncanny. Uh it was, did I wake up one day as a kid and say, Oh yeah, I want to do that? It just was always there.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Always there. So if there's one sortie you could fly again, either because it was so perfect, or because there was something you wanted to change to make it go differently, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Uh if I had to narrow it down to one sortie, uh, that would be the next to the last. Uh the 27th of April, 1988, I went into the squadron uh and I said, I want an airplane and I just want to have the area. They said, Okay. And if you read the the poem High Flight, I flew that. Just I let the airplane take me where I wanted to go. I wanted to enjoy the machine. It you know, every other mission you do, you got something you're trying to do. You go to the range, you're gonna go do air-to-air, you're gonna do something that you're you're focused on the mission, not the this was just pure love of flying an airplane that took me wherever I I didn't even think it was as beautiful. If you could have put orchestra music to it, you'd have cried. It was that wonderful. I did two things, uh F The tanks well I went down to Rocorrasso, looked around the ski area first, the tanks burned out. It was just me. If I had a thought, my hand made it go. It just and then before I left, uh got on one end of the area. Again, I owned all of southern Italy. There was nobody there. The air defense grounded NADG, NATO Air Defense Grounded Environment, the radar guys were watching. I closed my eyes, I got the airplane going as fast as I could make it go, and I was doing aileron rolls until I could feel the nose had gone back down. I just wanted to feel flight. And then RTB uh returned to base because I knew that was going to be my last. This was a this was a freedom mission. Like I can't. How often does somebody throw you the keys and say go out and have a good time? Yeah, if I could keep that one, I would. There were several low levels, obviously. There were places in Germany I'd I uh I would do almost like a tour guide. You go around Bastone, we had a uh combat air patrol area that would go act literally anchor over Bastone and I'd regale them with the uh battered bastards of Bastone defense during the bulge. Uh because as a kid, my dad took me to all these spots. Uh we were there, we went to every uh military cemetery in Europe. I did that with my son when uh when we came along, and then uh DaCow. Uh US Air Force, the only guy who loved it more than me was my father.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

That's a great family tradition for sure. So I have just one more question. How important is being a pilot to your sense of identity?

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Uh Air Force officer. When guys were getting out, and there I served along with several cycles of guys punching, going airlines, doing whatever. For me, what do you miss? Uh well, I missed the flying. Yeah, you can't get away from that, but that just happens. And I miss the squadron. What does that mean? The the people I've got to be with, work with, serve with. Phenomenal. Uh and the duds, you kind of go, eh, yeah, okay, fine. But I'm looking around, I go, these guys are amazing. And I'm here. This is amazing. That happened all the way up to my very last day as a civil servant. I could not believe who I got to work with, or be with, or support, or hey, they even know my name? Wow. Yeah, uh so the importance was if I didn't have wings, I wouldn't have had any of that other stuff happen ever. So without wings, uh nothing would have happened. Nothing, no, it would have my civ my civilian work was because I had wings. The Air Force converted a whole bunch of slots, civil service slots, rated staff program management. What does that mean? Yeah, you rated staff. Weren't you rated staff before? Yeah, yeah. In a uniform, actually, now kind of doing the same thing. Without the wings, none of the above would happen. And how it happened as I fly west, I'm gonna thank God for clearing my flight path and also covering my six, because oh man.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Indeed. Indeed.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Well, Jeff, thank you so much for uh being on the podcast today. It's been wonderful to have you on.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Thanks. Air Force Blue for Life.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

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. Hopefully, 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 sorting, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.