The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Brian Bishop

Jets flown: T-37 and F-16

Join us as Major General Brian Bishop shares his incredible flying career, from military jets to civilian aerobatics, and offers valuable advice for aspiring pilots. Discover memorable missions, the experience of flying the F-16, and behind-the-scenes insights into the Thunderbirds team.

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 Major General Brian Bishop. Brian has 5,500 hours of flight time in both military and civilian aircraft, including 1,400 hours in the T-37 and 2,700 flight hours in the F-16. He commanded the Air Force Thunderbirds from 1997 to 2000, and he and I met right after that at the War College in 2000, each of us coming off assignments as squadron commanders. Brian went on to uh command the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at uh joint base Balad in Iraq from 2009 to 10. We'll talk about some of those combat experiences in a few minutes. His last assignment was as the commandant of the Air War College in 2015. Brian, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Never it's always good to see you. It's been too long.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Brian, tell me, what is your favorite flying memory?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

You know, I think the Thunderbirds, as you mentioned, had gave us some opportunities to do things that you wouldn't normally get to do. And one of the things that we tried to do as we went to and from air shows is to find national landmarks that we could use for a photo mission and use it for our public affairs products.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Like flying over Mount Rushmore, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Exactly, exactly. And I was always on the search for a national monument that you looked at and you went, I know what that is, but I don't, I can't, I can't tell. You know, Mount Rushmore, you can say, oh, that's Mount Rushmore. But I was always looking for something that was a little bit different. And so two missions, two photo missions, and we did all the coordination with air traffic and the National Park Service and stuff, but one was over the Grand Tetons. It was just simply spectacular. It was one of those amazing clear blue days. Another one was we took off out of Great Bend, Kansas, and caught a tanker up over somewhere over Seattle and drug up to uh Alaska. And we were going to Anchorage to do an air show there at Elmendorf. And but we coordinated a photo mission to fly over Denali. It was stupidly beautiful, and you could see all the hikers on the trail going up the up the mountain. And you know, it was just one of those days where you went, you know, I nobody gets to do this kind of stuff. And it was really, really, really fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

So when did you know you first wanted to be a pilot?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

My mom would tell you about the third grade. There's a picture of me on like a pedal, like it's kind of like a tricycle thing, but it's really it, it's a jet, but it pedals. And since then, I can remember that I've always wanted to fly. My dad flew us in a Sesta 172 down to from Mathor Air Force Base down to Disneyland when I was very young. I don't specifically remember that flight, but I see the pictures of it. And I think that was about the time when I it I started to really want to learn how to fly. And then as I got into high school and got old enough, fortunately my dad had an aero commander LARC, and I was able to get my pilot's license right before I got into the academy. It was really, really kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

When I first met you, you had a long easy. You were flying on weekends.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

It was it was a cozy, uh, which is a four-place long easy. You're you're exactly right. It's you know, it's the airplane, the long easy is the airplane John Denver died in. No one ever knows what a cozy is, but I say, Do you know what airplane John Denver died in? They go, Yes, I go, it's like it's like that. But yeah, I had a great airplane for that. Um, and I was flying trying to get out of out of Maxwell Air Force Base on the weekends when I could, and uh, you know, just flying around and just love that little airplane. I like the experimental market a lot. I think there's a lot of things that you can do in the experiments with the experimental airplanes that uh make them really super.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

And could you actually take four adults in that? I've flown a lot of civilian planes with four seats, but they only had you know useful load for about two and a half people.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Well, I think two was about it. I mean, yes, I had a back seat for two people, but I couldn't sit in the back seat. And it was really me and somebody else and some of our baggage. Uh, you know, like in a long easy, they say it's it's you in a bag or you, a friend, a speedo and a credit card. That's about all you can carry.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Let's talk about the uh F-16. Put us in the cockpit. Give us a sense of what it's like to fly.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

I fell in love with the F-16 when I was when it first came out and I was pretty young. Um, I just thought it was a sexy airplane. It's one of the first airplanes, I believe, that was actually human factors were actually taken into account so that things like the checklist flow and where switches were put, and you know, the the t tilting back of the seat makes it with the translateral G's and stuff. It to me was just it was an airplane that you wore like a glove, you know. I've been able to sit in an F-15 and and I know those pilots love that airplane, but the cockpit is just ginormous to me. I I just like the feel of the F-16. It kind of wraps itself around you, and then having the bubble canopy so you don't have any hindrances in what you're looking at. It's it's just a wonderful, wonderful airplane to fly.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

So you've flown both military and civilian um planes. So tell me about your first solo in a civilian aircraft and then in a military aircraft.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So my first solo in a civilian aircraft was in high school in my dad's Aero Commander Lark. I was going to high school in Minot, North Dakota. It was a winter time. My dad is cheap enough that he's not going to buy or spend money for a hangar. So the plane is parked out on some grass, off a taxiway. I have to get out there about two hours before my instructor and shovel out the front of the aircraft so that you know you can actually taxi it out. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm, warm-ish day in North Dakota. But my instructor and I went out, uh, I think he was a tech sergeant in the Air Force, was also an uh civilian instructor. We went around the pattern a few times, and next thing you know, he's telling me he's getting out of the airplane and off I go. For a 16-year-old kid, that was a pretty eye-opening experience. And then I think with every first solo, you know, you start hearing these things in the airplane, you'd be wondering what's going on behind you. And, you know, uh, as a T-37 first assignment instructor pilot, that's what I always told my students before I jumped out. He said, Okay, you're gonna hear this going on behind you. That's because I'm not talking to you, and all that is is a hydraulic accumulator doing what it's supposed to do. I think my first solo in a military aircraft, I'll use an F-16 as my first solo for a military aircraft, even though uh the T-37 probably is truly the first solo. What I remember is I was at Luke Air Force Base, and we were taking off closer to the evening. My instructors chasing me in another airplane, and this huge thunderstorm is starting to build out over the you know the Gila Band down by Gila Bend and over the Barry Goldwater Range.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

In Phoenix at Luke Air Force Base?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Correct, in Phoenix, yes. The sun is setting, you're starting to get that that colorful afterglow reflecting on the clouds. And I look out there and I see this beautiful F-16C model, clean, no, no, no tanks on it, nothing. And I look at that, I go, man, that looks so cool. And then I realize I look like that. I'm looking at my instructor and I go, I I look like that. That is so cool. I'm such a happy camper.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, first solos are you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

They're special.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

They are although as I think about my my first night solos, both in the T-38 and the F-117, I lost an engine on both of those sorts. And both solos.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

So there's there's somebody's telling you something that never well I survived.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

That's the good news. So did the jet. Uh I mentioned a moment ago that you were deployed to Iraq as the commander there, the 332nd Expeditionary Wing. Was that your first time flying in combat?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Actually, no. I flew in combat during Operation Southern Watch shortly after the Gulf War. My squadron, I was at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina. Two squadrons left. My squadron stayed at Shaw. We turned some airplanes from Hill, uh, which is in Utah. They stopped at Shaw and we sent them over. Uh later on after the war was over, I was working for the numbered Air Force commander, the ninth Air Force Commander, and he and I had to go over there, and he was qualified in the airplane. So while I was there with him, I was able to fly some combat missions in uh Operation Southern Watch. So that predates uh OIF.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Well, tell us about some of your more memorable combat missions, the ones that stand out to you in sort of high relief, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Being the wing commander in Joint Base Ballad was an amazing experience because you had 30,000 people there. We had all services represented, all the three-letter agencies, all the special ops guys. We had Iraqi civilians and contractors and third country national. I mean, it was amazing. So I was able to fly there, and I flew generally twice a week. I remember flying with Yogi Levitt, who was a squadron commander. He and I were gonna go out, and I would I when I first got there, I was just flying as a wingman initially for about the first couple, three weeks. And then uh Yogi takes me out and he's gonna check me out as a flight lead with his squadron. You know, that was one of those missions where it just like everything was going wrong the way you wanted it to, the way you didn't want it to. So I I went to my airplane, started it, it broke, ran to a spare, he's taxiing. We're trying to make sure that we get to the vault time, start the second one, finally get out there, get off a little bit late, join him. We get up there late, then we get, you know, moved over to a tick, uh, to a troops in contact.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Troops in contact, yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

We tried to find the tanker, the tanker was in the right place. We, you know, it was just one of those missions where you just sat there and went, I can't believe that it is not going as smooth as it should be going. But it's it's what flying is about. It's problem solving, it's it's figuring these things out. And it ends up that on this particular mission, you know, we were called in for a troops in contact situation. They found the the soldiers on the ground found some storage bunkers that were booby chop wired. And so we were asked to to essentially take out the bunkers. Fortunately, it was not in the middle of the city. Fortunately, you know, everything worked fine from a weapons standpoint. No one was no casualties from a friendly standpoint. But it was one of those missions that you just sit there and go, man, I can't believe we just did all of that. And you can you walk out of it and you use this sense of sigh of relief. And I went to Yogi afterwards and I said, I wish you could have taken that and made that a Form 8 check ride, because that would have been a neat write-up to have on your Form 8.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Indeed. So, what was um the missions that you flew in Iraq? Give us a sense of what they were like because every mission over there in 2008, 2009 was at the height of the war. And so if you would give us a sense of like the the flow of a mission, you know, when you would take off, what you would do and and how they how they were run, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah, typically you'd come in brief. The briefing was pretty standard. You could get through the briefing pretty quickly because the missions we were flying weren't hugely varied. Usually what we were doing is we were assigned to go out somewhere into some grid pattern and search for bad guys. You're looking through a targeting pod. I I liken it to walking down a sidewalk, taking one square of the sidewalk, holding a straw to your eye, and now looking for the ant that's crawling across the sidewalk, but not just any ant, it's the ant with the broken antenna, right? So it's it's very specific what you're trying to find. You could brief it, you talk about it, you're flying with the same people most of the time, so there's a pretty good understanding of what you know your flight lead wanted you to do, et cetera, or what I wanted the wingman to do. Usually you'd hit the tanker on the way out there, uh, and then we would set up in the grid and just start searching. And we were searching in marketplaces, we were following convoys. I remember they had the first free elections there in Iraq, and so we were really worried about insurgents doing stuff at polling places. So we were searching around polling places and orbiting at about 15 to 70,000 feet overhead. Um, and then you're, of course, you're you're watching, you you could do in separate ops, so you're doing you're on your own ops. So I was at an altitude, I would deconflict with my from my wingman, we would be searching at different places. You have to worry about fuel, so you're sending your wingman to the tanker by himself, or you're going to the tanker by yourself. Every now and then you'll get a call from one of the Ford Air controllers that they've got something going on down on the ground and they want a show of force. So then the two of you would drop down and you know, essentially do a low pass at, you know, pretty fast speeds and full afterburner to make some noise. And then you'd probably tank three, maybe four times, and then you'd kind of come back and head back. And, you know, obviously the most important thing for us was to make sure we made it to our voltime on time and that we were there to to protect any ground forces that were operating in the area, and then and do that successfully. And if we were asked to or had to employ ordinance, then do that with the most efficient and best means possible in coordination with the CAC and the FAC and everybody else that we got down on the ground.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Combined air operations center and the forward air controller. Yes. And uh voltime, I haven't heard that expression in in a minute. Vulnerability time. That's your time on target, your your time when you're supposed to be in that grid pattern, correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Correct. And you know, we took a lot of pride in supporting the Army to make sure that when you're if your vol time started, say it, call it 1300 local, you wanted to be there, if not a couple minutes before, you wanted to be there on time for sure. And making contact with the Ford Air controller on the ground and making sure that they knew that you're up there. And because, you know, we were there to to make sure that uh the guys on the ground could do their job.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So what is your coolest flying memory?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

You know, I've had some really incredible experiences. We talked a little bit about the Thunderbirds. That was there were some amazing times there. But I think I'm gonna flip this one to civilian flying. During my Thunderbird time, I was very, very fortunate to be able to become friends with some of the most amazing aerobatic pilots in the world, the Mike Gullians, the Sean D. Tuckers, and the you know, Rob Hollands of the world, in flying a little extra plus plus or minus 10G airplane, um, tumble that airplane, end over end, ass over tea kettle, and being able to fly with some of the absolute best in the aerobatic industry was a thrill like no other.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

And is this because you were going to all of these air shows and these other performers were there? And so you got a chance to know them and an opportunity to fly with them on occasion?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Not while I was on the team. I got to know them when I was on the team, but we were not allowed to fly with them on the team. I didn't allow my officers to fly in Warbirds, even though they were given opportunities. We signed a statement when you're on the team that said you would not do any high-risk activities. So, like rollerblading, skiing, you know, all that kind of all that fun stuff that you want to do. You know, and when you think about it, you don't want to be out rollerblading and then take a digger somewhere and now you can't do the demonstration. If number two gets injured or gets sick, we can still fly the demonstration without number two. But if number one gets sick or gets injured, the demonstration's canceled. So there's no one else qualified to uh to lead the demo. So, but flying with these civilian performers, I got to do that after the team. And that was, and I got to know them better after the team. And we had a group that would go skiing in Vale and Beaver Creek every every winter. We'd be like 13, 14 years in a row. It was just so much fun. I liken it to like being in a circus because all the performers get together and they're like a family, but they're only together when they're at the air show. And so it's uh it's kind of like going to a circus, and you you got all your performers come together and then they they sit down and we have a great time, tell all kinds of stories. Yes, 10% truth, um, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

That's the rule. It's got to be 10% true at least.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Which usually only means there I was, and then the rest of it can go wherever else.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Well, let well let's go. There you were. You you mentioned flying with these aerobatic demonstration pilots later. Was there a uh particularly cool sortie that you recall doing that?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

I really started to understand it better when I flew with Rob Holland. Uh Rob Holland has unfortunately passed away in an accident at Langley Air Force Base before an air show a little over a year ago. But he was flying at a friend's private airport in outside of Cushado, Louisiana. And he invited me to come down there and he's practicing for his demonstration. Our friends there have a two-seat extra 300L. And so Rob put me in the airplane and actually qualified me in the airplane and checked me out in the airplane, which is, if if you know what an extra is, it's it is a German build, it is a fun little carbon fiber. Man, you can fly that thing. It's it's I I flew it like it was an F-16. And, you know, Rob taught me a little, I don't, I won't, I will never say that I know how to tumble an airplane, but he taught me a little bit about tumbling. He taught me a lot about aerodynamics, stalls, spins, what the prop does to a spin if you if you accelerate the power, you know, how does this how what does the pitch picture look like? Uh that week spending with him, we probably flew, he flew a couple times a day in his practice, and then he flew with me at least once, sometimes twice a day in the extra. And that was just a very special time. And to fly with a a man like Rob Holland, who was a, I believe, seven-time consecutive four-minute freestyle uh aerobatic champion, which is I don't know anything ever been done before. Seven in a row.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Well, let's talk about the Thunderbirds. Can you give us an idea of what it's like both to fly as a Thunderbird? And also what is it like to lead the team?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

So the Thunderbirds is an experience like no other because you don't understand the mission. You may think you understand the mission, but you don't. And then also the vast majority of your Air Force leadership doesn't understand the mission either. And so it comes as a commander, it comes with some unique challenges to be able to communicate with your leadership. You know, the Thunderbird Commander leader reports directly to the 57th Wing Commander, who reports to the Air Warfare Center commander, who reports to Comac. So it's it's a very short chain. And if everything goes right, that's good. If one little thing goes wrong, you may be getting a call from the four-star pretty quickly. You could be making a big problem for the four-star with if something happened on the team during one of your performances or something like that. Flying on the team is it's an amazing bonding experience because not only do you have the 12 officers to include yourself, but you've got about 130 enlisted people that work directly for you. And you have some career fields that you would not have normally in a normal fighter squadron or a gray jet squadron. We had public affairs, I had finance, I had training, I had several other mainly enlisted career fields that I would not have had had I not been uh Thunderbird commander leader. They would have been in the wing, but they wouldn't have been under my direct command. And so you're spending almost 300 days a year on the road with those men and women. You're spending more time with the team members than you are uh your own family. People ask about how do you train to get there? Well, you start doing loops and rolls at 5,000 feet, and then you go down to 2,000 feet, and then you bring it down to 1,000 feet, and anything below 2,000 feet has to be filmed. And I think I did 10,000 loops and 10,000 rolls before we started putting any of the um demonstration together. Because when you look at the demo, it's really a set of loops and rolls or a combination of the two. The trust that you build with your wingman is like no other, because in different formations you're flying 18 inches apart, 18 inches wingtip to canopy, and that's like that's the length of your forearm. And I could tell when the wingmen were in position because they would move my airplane around. So when we go from a trail formation to the diamond formation, my left wing would be would come up, I go, two's in, my right wing would come up, three's in, and then the tail would come up, I go, and then four go, four's in. It's amazing to see how they can push you around a little bit. It's it's quite an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

You mentioned a minute ago not being able to do high-risk activities like skiing and rollerblading and that sort of thing. I've never seen the Thunderbirds fly with one of the pilots not able to fly that day. But can you do it or or can uh like can the right wing swap and fly on the left wing side? Or are they pretty much mated to a specific position throughout the demonstration season?

SPEAKER_00 20:42

So during my time on the season, we were not allowed to swap the wingman around. So if you had if the right wingman got sick, for instance, then you would fly the mini, what we call the mini boomerang. So you were one, two, and four, and then the solos would join on, and the right solo would actually join onto my wing instead of the right wingman's wing. So it looked a little odd. The delta looked a little bit odd. Now the team has worked with through their regulations and some things where they can actually move people around a little bit. They don't do it a lot, so it's not like you're gonna throw the right wing into the slot necessarily, but you could, if you needed to, put the slot pilot up on the right wing if the right wingman got got sick. And so now you're flying the mini Vic instead of the mini boomerang.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Is the slot position more difficult to fly than the wing positions or just a different set of references?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

So I will tell you the most difficult position to fly is the lead. And the reason is that you have five people trusting you on your wing with everything that you do. And everything you do, you telegraph to them and you talk to them on the radio. And so when you turn and go to left turn, it goes, you get on the radio and go left turn, and you don't start the turn, the turn on the L of left, you start it on the T of turn. And you need to do it the same way every time. Because if you think about when you drive your car and you come up to a stoplight, if you knew when everybody in front of you was going to step on the accelerator and you knew they were going to push the accelerator. Already this much, as soon as the light turns green, you could all accelerate and stay that close. But it ends up being a snake, right? So we can't do that. We don't want to be the snake because if you're on the far outside wing on the left or right for solos, it gets a little tricky. You've flown four-ship up initial and a four-ship echelon, and number three is their number two is a little going. It kind of ripples down the snake. We don't we don't really like that. Now that doesn't mean that flying the wing positions are not difficult. It is extremely difficult because you do a lot of things differently. You use a lot more rudder, you use a lot more opposite aileron because we want to keep the wings flat. So we want it to look like a flat plate. And if you get rolling and you roll and I roll too fast, then what happens is the wingmen have to cup, which means they they kind of come up like this a little bit. And that's not what we're looking for in the demonstration. So I wouldn't say the slot pilot is any worse than the win on the wing. What I liked about riding in the slot position when I was able to do that with the previous commander leader was you get the view of the whole demonstration. You get to see everybody. And so generally a slot pilot has got the best situational awareness of the other wingman, where the left wingman you're looking at right, the right wingman, you're just kind of looking left.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

So is there one particular air show that you look back on most fondly?

SPEAKER_00 23:14

The Air Force Academy graduation, without a doubt. It is the most difficult air show you fly because you're orbiting up behind the rampart range and you want to take off with enough gas, but you don't know how fast they're going through the names. And so you're you're, you know, your operations officer's standing on the hill behind the press box trying to give you the best gouge you can, and so you're taking off when you can and have enough gas, because the solos are always always low on gas because they run around in afterburn a lot of time. But coming down the rampart range mountains, going through the saddle between two peaks, you can't see the the the uh you can't see Falcon Stadium. And so you don't know if you got it until you're on top of it. And when you're on top of it, it's too late to correct. And then the next thing you do, you go straight into the demonstration, the two solos pull out, the diamond goes straight up overhead and does the dime clover loop opener. And I look over the back of my head and look down on the feet on the green grass of the of Falcon Stadium and see all the brand new second lieutenants running around. It was such a moving experience. And it was like, oh, I got a demonstration to fly. Yeah, it is the hardest demo, but also I think my most memorable demo.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Harder because higher altitude, because you've got the range right there.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

All of that. High altitude, high density altitude. You got the Rampart Range of Mountains behind you. You can't see the stadium from for the run-in. You got the the road, the Academy Boulevard that runs out in front of the stadium there is not truly on the show line. So you get drawn off thinking that's the show line, you actually got to angle it a little bit. It's really hard to see the show center marker and the bombers marker. Yeah, it's it's just a difficult show to do. And my gosh, you know, what does everybody want? What does every mom and dad want on the front page of the Gazette Telegraph the day after uh the day after graduation? A picture of the Thunderbirds with all the hats in the air, right? So if you miss it, you're yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

That would be not good.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Brian, my last question for you today is when young people uh talk to you and say they're interested in becoming a pilot, what advice do you give them?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

The first thing I do is ask them why. Why do you want to be a pilot and what is it about aviation that interests you? And I think that's an important question for them to consider because then that determines to a greater extent of what kind of flying they want to do. Do they want to go to the military? Okay, well then that maybe mean jets or or helicopters or something, or you know, I really want to travel. Oh, that may mean corporate or commercial aviation, or you know, I just want to be a bush pilot in in in Alaska, or you know, you know, a young person may not know that much of it yet. But I the first thing I do is tell them, I ask them why. And then the second thing I tell them to do, especially if they haven't flown, is to go out and just get go to your local FBO, to your fixed base operator, in your local airport, and just go get a lesson or two and see if it's something that you like. I highly, highly, highly encourage young people, if they want to get into this. Another way to get into flying is through gliders. And I absolutely love flying gliders. It's cheaper, it's um it teaches you a lot more about flying. I think being a glider pilot makes you a better power pilot because you don't have the opportunity to do a go-around. Miss, you know, miss your landing and push the power up, but you just can't do that. So I think for especially in a uh glider, you can solo at 14. So younger people can actually get up there and um learn a lot more about flying through a glider program. And then if they want to continue it on later on, this is a really, really good time, as I think a lot of us know, because the airlines are about 600,000 pilots short for the next 10 or 15 years. People who are getting out and going through courses like Ambry Riddle or University of North Dakota or even Northwest Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan, where I taught for a couple years, there is great opportunity in the commercial and corporate aviation world right now for young men and women to get out there, cut their teeth on an airplane, and really get some good experience.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Never, it's always good to see you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

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