The Flyboy Podcast: Guest John "JZ" Zink

Aircraft flown: F-4, Harrier, A-7, F-117

In this episode, Colonel John W. Zink shares his extensive experience flying fighters, including the F-117, Harrier, and F-4, and discusses the differences between flying with the RAF and US Air Force, his combat missions during the Vietnam era, and the unveiling of the stealth fighter at Nellis AFB in 1990.

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 Colonel John W. Zink, U.S. Air Force retired call sign, Jay-Z. Jay-Z is a career fighter pilot and bandit number 214. He's flown the F-117, the A-7. He's also got 1,900 hours in the F-4, to include as an IP, training Luftwaffe air crew at George Air Force Base. Also, he flew the Harrier with the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom. And as part of his training there, he had to learn to fly both the Hunter and the Sikorsky helicopter. He's got 3,750 flight hours. All of them, except in pilot training, are in fighters. So Jay-Z, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Nice to be here, Never.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So, Jay-Z, with all those airplanes that you've flown, I'd like to know two things. First of all, can you put us in the cockpit of the Harrier versus the F-4 and explain to everybody a little bit uh the differences between those two? And then I'd like to follow that up talking a little bit about the differences between flying with the Royal Air Force and flying with the U.S. Air Force.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Differences between the F-4 and the Harrier markedly different. For one thing, you were sitting on top of the Pegasus engine in the Harrier GR3, the model I flew, and it was F-4 was noisy, but the Harrier was much noisier, especially when you were hovering in the vertical mode. F4, very fast. Harrier, high subsonic. We usually cruised at 420 knots with mid-flap. Altitude-wise, Harrier would get up there with its turbofan engine and just a really interesting, totally, totally different experience. F4, lead sled, could carry most any payload. Harrier, not so much. It had very short legs, only had 6,600 pounds of fuel on board.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Only 6,600 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yes, a typical mission was probably about 0.7 in USAF terminology. It was designed to be forward deployed back in the days when there were threats from the Soviet bloc in the Fulda Gap specifically. There were squadrons in Germany called RAFG, Royal Air Force Germany, that were permanently forward deployed and worked out of the field. We would deploy from RAF Wittering UK over there and basically work out of the bases they had left to be in the field. F-4, well, you needed a runway for the F-4. Harrier, you did not need a runway. A short grass strip would work just fine, or any kind of pad where you could do a vertical landing. And those were the, I guess, biggest differences in those two beasts.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

So I'm curious. I remember an F-4 pilot telling me once upon a time, this is it goes to the question of fuel consumption. He said if you took off in the F-4 and left it in full afterburner, you would run out of gas in eight minutes. That's correct. And I'm curious on the Harrier, is the fuel consumption significantly higher when you're hovering as opposed to flying straight and level?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Absolutely. Great question. When you're flying straight and level, you've got the air going over the wing. So you get thrust out of the engine, but air over the wing, you're flying through the air normally. If you're doing something the Brits called an unnatural act, which is stopping a jet in the air, the total thrust, either 20, 19,500, or if you use water injection, over 20,000 pounds of thrust, 100% of that's depending on that Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine. And it was quite an experience. I experienced nothing like it, which is kind of why we alluded earlier to get used to stopping in the air. Again, an unnatural act, certainly in the F4, we had a lead-in in a helicopter, the Sikorsky whirlwind, where you in fact did stop in the air and then you would do vertical landings. So it was very, very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

So I've got a few hours uh flying helicopters. How how much is uh landing the harrier in that sort of a hovering mode? How much is it like flying a helicopter when you do that?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

The controls, of course, are different, but the art of doing it the same. In fact, the very first trip in the whirlwind, I had a French instructor pilot, Patrice. He took off, went into this huge area, I mean a huge field, and explained pitch collective and all that, and said, your job is to keep the helicopter within the confines of this field. I couldn't do it. I was going left, I was going right, and everything. After instruction, the graduation exercise was you had to land, vertical landing helicopter, in a U-shaped field. So you would uh transition from forward flight toward the hover, check out the wind and so forth, and make a vertical landing in there. So if you could avoid the trees, you passed a course.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I passed a course. So let's uh talk a little bit about the differences between flying with the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force, sort of culturally. How were they different?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Culturally different, it's kind of funny. I'll combine a couple things here. Before I left the U.S. to go to the RAF, I asked if I could go to the language school in Monterey to learn proper English, and they said, of course not, it's all the same. Well, when I went to the RAF, my first flight was part of United Kingdom Orientation course. So I flew about three trips, sorties in American language, in the backseat of a hawk. So we took off, did the entire mission, I knew exactly what was going on, and I understood about three words. The terminology was hard to understand at first, items on the aircraft were different, landing gear was an undercarriage, and so forth. Also, low flying in the U.S. Air Force when I was flying the Phantom, off ranges, we were restricted to 500 feet AGL above the ground level. And I remember flying in Florida at 500 feet, we thought we were really low. Well, RAF was 250 feet. I'd never flown at 250 feet, and the youngsters out of their basic flying school learned how to fly at 250 feet from day one. So when I went to the Hunter to start my conversion, it really opened my eyes to be able to fly at 250 feet. That carried over later on to the Harrier. Even the the basic course is divided, uh the course is divided into two parts. One, learn how to fly the harrier. Number two, weapons employment. Well, learning to fly the harrier with all the gizmos speeds and everything at 250 feet AGL and navigating from initial point to targets, be it reconnaissance or attack, was really a handful, and the most junior RAF pilot had a huge advantage over me. It took me a while to get up to speed.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Let's go back and talk about some of your time flying. Uh I mentioned in the intro that you had trained uh Luftwaffe pilots. I'm not sure that many people realize that for uh decades we have had German Air Force pilots training with their own squadrons in the United States. And I had a chance to see that at Holoman with the uh with the German tornados. Could you tell us a little bit about what it was like to train German pilots? Uh, because that's another got to be another cultural uh difference.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Not only was it a cultural difference in the Phantom, but I had just come from the Royal Air Force speaking the Queen's English. I transitioned at Homestead back to an F4D Delta model. My instructor was a major from the Royal New Zealand Air Force. We flew the first basion, came back, and he said, Well, your flying's all right, but we have to work on your English. I said, What do you mean? He said, You sound like a Brit. So having re-qualified me for the T course and then the instructor course, so on to George, to the Luftwaffe, having just been on the squadron with the RAF, was really interesting. It was obviously front seaters and back seaters. They went through the Euro NATO jet pilot training program at Shepherd, or NJEPs, first. I was uh flight commander of C flight, had a class of ten students, five front seat, five backseat. And although I'd been to Germany and my family's from Germany, last name Zink, very German, uh is getting used to some of the language that uh Germans were using. Now they had to have a basic English fluency to number one go to pilot training, and number two, go to F4 training. They also had a cadre of Luftwaffe instructors there. Anyway, it it turned out to be really an outstanding experience because they would have a C-160 Transol, twins and turboprop come in, uh replenish their beer supply and so forth. So if you got to know the German instructors and I was an instructor, it worked out really well.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

How do the Germans fly differently than the Brits or the Americans?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Well, uh, these were folks right out of pilot training, and when I flew at the RAF, these folks were not generally right out of pilot training, so they were more experienced to begin with. I would say, at least if I could compare two American pilots out of UPT undergraduate pilot training, it was basically the same. They had to, they were very selective who went to Shepard. And if you completed the course there, which was very demanding, then they went on to the Phantom. If they didn't do so well, they would go on to the Alpha Jet. So we had some very good hands people. We only sent, I believe, one person back while I was there to uh Germany. It was called the Lufthansa Reversal if they didn't finish the course. And the dreaded thing was then they would go to maybe a C-160 Transall or the Alpha Jet. But they were very good, very good pilots.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Let's go back in time even further because uh I know you uh actually have some uh combat time in Southeast Asia. I understand that you were flying the F-4 there uh during both the fall of Saigon and later during the Maya Guez incident. Can you share those combat experiences with us, please?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

It was my initial assignment after qualifying at McDill Air Force Base in the F-4D, and by the way, learning to fly in the D model, whereas your angle attack got higher, eventually you didn't use ailerons. You wanted to turn, you use rudder. So it's kind of like flying a biplane, if you will. That translation very well to the 13th TAC Fighter Squadron at Udorn, where we had D models, we had uh hard wing E-models, that is, no slats. So flying those aircraft, it really helped out. Also, flying in the weather at Vance, where I got my wings, flying in the weather or around it at McDill really helped out in Thailand because there was a lot of weather. And yes, in April 1975, we were tasked to support the night before the fall of Saigon. So we took off from Udorn. We had a two-and-two load of uh CBU cluster bomb units and Mark 82 snake eye or high drag type things. We orbited just to the east of Saigon. You can see the incoming artillery from the northwest into Saigon, where we're not required to expend any ordnance. So we actually landed at Uban in uh eastern Thailand, spent the night, and it was kind of funny. The rumor was that they thought the F-4s had returned to Uban as the previous fighter wing had gone away, and allegedly several tailor shops opened up thinking the Americans were back.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

With the arrival of your of your force?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

With the arrival of the F-4. We spent the night, went back to Udorn, and then in May received word that the Cambodians had seized the container ship SS Mayaguez off the coast of Cambodia. So we launched a four-ship, uh, our squadron commander was leading, I was number two day one, no action there. However, my leader said, Jay-Z, remain high. I'm gonna make a high speed pass across Kotang Island. He did, when we landed back at Udorn, the intelligence was there were no people on the islands with small arms or anything. Well, he'd taken a round and his left variable ramp just behind the cockpit. If it had been just a little bit further, it would have hit the squadron commander. So he called the chief of intelligence out to the flight line at Udorn and said, What do you think that is? So they updated the intelligence. Next day we took off, uh, air refueled over Cambodia, went down, orbited near uh Kotang Island. Numbers three and four got low on fuel and returned back to Udorn via tanker. We remained there and our Guadron Commander Lead was very savvy. He sensed that something was going to happen. So we got down to our bingo fuel for having ordnance on board. Then he remained a little bit longer, so I started checking the fuel gauges. Then we got down to the point where it was almost time to get rid of the munitions if you didn't drop them for your clean diversion. This would be to Utapal. Well, guess what? We got called up. The Marines were pinned down on the island. Leader went in first using uh paved spike with two Mark 84 LGBs, uh, dropped their munitions, came back off. They had a pod malfunction, and they said, Jay-Z, you're gonna have to go in direct, meaning manual dive bomb, 45 degree. So we rolled in, dropped two Mark 84, direct hit, by the way, on the island, and then we recovered emergency fuel to Utapau. As we got closer, the leader called up and said, whatever, uh Dallas, it was Dallas flight. Dallas flight, emergency fuel, and they said, Roger, your number three or four emergency fuel in the pattern. So we were tapping gauges when we landed and really sweating bullets, but it worked out okay. So we recycled at uh Utapau, uh, flew back clean, and when we landed at Udorn, the crew chiefs called the weapons people over because no longer did we have two Mark 84 2,000-pound bombs on board, they were gone, and so there was a lot of cheering and people were really pumped up and stoked.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

After these experiences, you went on to fly the F-117. Can you tell us a little bit about how you were recruited into the F-117 world? Did you know what you were going to be going to do? How did how did they tell you? And what was it like when you first saw the airplane? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Ah, what a great question. I was back at George Air Force Base as an instructor for the Luftwaffe. Uh, in fact, I was in the tower as supervisor of flying, and a phone call came in. I guess they tracked me down via the squadron, and said, You are to be interviewed at X time at base operations on a particular day. Click. So on that day, at that time, I went to base ops, looked all around, Mitsubishi MU-2 landed with civilian markings on it, taxied up, a colonel walked in, and I can't remember if it was Colonel Allen or whom. So this would have been uh early in 1985, when the base ops uh closed the door and said, Okay, we're interested in having you fly the A7 for advanced avionics testing on the Nellis Ranges, it's a matter of national interest. All I knew it was a 4450th tactical group. You don't have to decide right now, that's all I can tell you, and I wasn't here. End of interview.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Truthfully.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

My head was spinning. I went back to the squadron. Ironically, I talked to uh Klaus Klausa, who's another bandit.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

I Klaus was my instructor when I went through initial academic training at high school years later.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Well, I first knew him way back, good heavens, in uh Homestead, I guess, when I came back from the RAF 1982. Anyway, I went to him, he was our ops officer, 20th Tech Fighter Squadron, and said, I got this interview about going to the 4450th flying A7s, and in all honesty, kind of looked down the A7s, what's that all about? I'm flying a phantom, go away. He said, No, talk to our squadron commander. I did. He said, I think you need to go talk to the wing commander. So I made an appointment, walked in, saluted uh Colonel Tim Griffith, and said, Sir, I need to ask you a question. I had this interview with the 4450th Tactical Group, flying 87s, advanced avionic testing, Nellis Ranges, what should I do, sir? He looked me in the eye and he said, Two words. Take it. So armed with that total lack of knowledge, I then said, okay, I guess I'm going to do this. And I went to Tucson, 162nd uh fighter group down there, outstanding guard unit, checked out in the A7, no idea what was going on. And to answer your question and first finding out what you're really going to do, one weekend during that training in Tucson, the tactic group sent down a beat super King Air, Soviet markings, of course, Air Force people, flew us to Nellis, into famous building 878, where I would later be the A7 Squadron Commander, walked down the hallway into a vault. I'd never been in a SCIF or a vault before, closed the door, and they showed something that looked like Star Wars, the F-117. They turned around and said, This is what you're gonna be flying. Total silence, stunned. Went back to Tucson to complete the A7 training, scratching my head, you know, what is this all about? Completed that, and then also before the stealth, we went at that time to Luke Air Force Base, where you got a front seat ride in the Eagle, where allegedly, if you flew the Eagle on a approach with the flaps up, it would simulate something they didn't know about, but the F-117. So Tucson didn't know what was going on, Luke didn't know what was going on. In fact, all of Nellis, except our unit, had no clue what was going on, finished the A7 checkout then, as mentioned, F-15 ride, local checkout in the A7, actually at Nellis, White World, and then F-117.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

So can you tell us a little bit about your first flight in the F-117?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

It's really interesting because you had a single-seat aircraft. Fortunately, I'd flown the Harrier, that was single seat, and the A7, that was single seat. However, there were no T two-seat models whatsoever. So you flew actually a very, very nice simulator. And that got you prepared for the first flight. I'm not sure what all I can actually say, never about my first flight, but uh let's just say it was a lot like the simulator, and I I guess I have to leave it at that.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Okay. So I've written a novel about the F-117. Which and one of the things that I have said in there, which got cleared by DOD, by the way, uh when it went through security review, was that back in the day, and you can tell me if this sounds familiar or not, because they didn't want uh the Russians, uh the Soviets of the time to see the thing, that they would look for open time periods when they knew there were no satellites flying overhead. And they would start up in the hangar, taxi out, and take off right there, and you'd have your chase plane already airborne ready to join on you, and then you'd go out and do your business. And when you came back, you had to time it the same way.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

That was exceedingly accurate. And I ended up being an instructor uh for the 117, also uh chasing in the A7, so I did a lot of that. In fact, as an instructor in the 117, I didn't get a lot of flight time because we had to yield to the availability for the students to get their flight time. If there was a T9C window in between where we could get even.4 flying as instructors, that's what we did.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Now I don't know if you guys did chase pickups in uh with the A7s, but We did later on when I learned to fly the one seventeen at Holliman, we had T thirty eight chase planes. And the instructor would do a chase pickup, so they would get airborne and then come around and tell you when to release brakes. And so as you're cruising down the runway, right as you get airborne, a T thirty-eight comes along and joins up on your wing. And my instructor was Brian Knight, who eventually I had taught BK uh to fly the A-10 years before, and then payback, of course, later on. He taught me to fly the 117. I'm sure he enjoyed that. But he gave me a uh chance to ride in his uh backcockpit in the T-38 on one of these chase pickups with the 117. And I loved his uh instruction to me before we took off. He said, okay, I have just one request when I do the chase pickup. Don't bail out. And I'm thinking, what on earth? What is he talking about? And of course, you get up into the you know the landing pattern of the T30. And normally, you know, you're coming off the perch, you know, slowing, configured, and all this kind of stuff. And he's coming off the perch, you know, clean, uh coming around the final turn, accelerating to, you know, about 200 knots, let's say. To meet the 117. And you're diving at the ground, coming down to about 50 feet over the ground. So I in retrospect, I understood exactly what he meant. Because it does look like, what on earth are we doing? We're diving at the ground at high speed? What's going on?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

And perhaps even more so in the A7, because in the 38 it was cleaner, you could go faster, you had afterburners if you needed. Not so the A7. So we would keep the speed up if we need to modulate speed and so forth. We used the massive air brake on the A7 to perfect the rendezvous, the chase pickup with the F-117.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

What's the closest call you've ever had in an airplane?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Not many. There were a couple. One basically was with a two-times German student. We'd talked about that before. We were on a low level out of George, going to uh Superior Valley Range, flying where we're going to cross Interstate 40, and people had called out traffic, and it was a California Highway Patrol plane headed, I guess, toward Las Vegas. We came over the hill, down. I said, Do you see them? Do you see them? No reply. One potato, two potato. I took the airplane, uh, pulled up, roll inverted. We went right over the top of a CHP plane. So that was pretty close. The other time, again, a German student, not a lot of time in the F-4, but he had been having problems. We used to call it roll slide attacks, where one F-4 would be going along, and from your position, you would go ahead and try to take basically a snapshot or a quick shot on the other aircraft, of course, without hitting it, and then go over the top.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Important safety tip.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Yeah, yeah, very important. In the back seat of the F-4, uh, the visibility was not good at all for landing for anything, because you had the variable ramp to your left side and so forth. So we're at a right-hand turn. He called in for the roll slide attack. I could sense a pause. I said, Do you see him? Do you see him? Nothing. I took the airplane, uh, pulled up, top rudder right over the top. We went right over the top of the other F-4. That young man flew, according to the Luftwaffe, that was the shortest flight. I think we averaged a 0.3 because after that we flew back to base and landed. And that is a young man who went home. He froze.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

So you've mentioned with the different types of airplanes you've flown. Back to the fuel question. Air refueling. Uh have you uh refueled both probe and drogue? And if so, what's the difference between the two? And can you sort of describe it for uh uh folks who may not be familiar with air refueling?

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Right. Uh the A7, F-170, and F-4 all use the United States Air Force standard currently, or at least when I flew it, they may have uh probe and drogue now available, where the boom was on the back part at that time of a KC-135 for becoming an IP at Eglin. I actually refueled off a KC-97 and never would know what that is. That's a four-engine prop where they had to go downhill, and the F-4 was high angle attack, really sporty. So, yes, I had three US Air Force aircraft off the boom. The RAF was probe and drogue. Normally the harrier didn't fly with the probe on board. When they did, it was kind of wild. It strapped on to the top of the left intake of the harrier. And what I was told was don't look at that because you'll have a tendency to roll to the left as you're going forward to refuel. We refueled off a Victor tanker. It's part of the V series in the REF. And what they said was you aligned yourself on the inside, normally of the left flap of the Victor, and then you carefully drove straight forward until you felt the contact, which was interesting. It came in to be a good experience. They needed a pilot to fly with a group of harriers from RAF Wittering, UK, to Cold Lake, Alberta for Maple Flag. Not many of those people had flown over the ocean. I had in the F-4 multiple refuelings, so I was just selected to fly the aircraft. We took off from Whitering, UK, met up with Victor Tankers, they led us across, landed at uh Goose Bay, Labrador, middle of absolutely nowhere. Cold, uh, we went smelt fishing on the ice, had a great time. From there, then with the tankers, we flew on to Cold Lake. So, yes, I've done both Probe and Drogue and the basic boom. I I think in my retrospect it was much easier on the boom because they had what was called director likes. And if you would look at those as a reference up down fore and aft, or in the F-4, if you ran your seat up and used a canopy bow, placed it over the two inboard engines, a KC-135, you had a green light the whole time.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

So we know flying can be a dangerous business even in peacetime. Are there any friends you've lost that you'd like to remember and share with us today?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yes, there are definitely friends over the course of years. One specifically to start stands out in mine, uh 1977 red flag. His name was uh Phil Wilson, backseater. I'd flown with him many times. I wasn't flying that day. Phil was flying on a mission, and I actually took him to base operations, dropped him off, and he was walking toward base ops, and for some reason I said, Phil, be careful. He turned around and looked at me and said, I will. Unbeknownst to me was his wife was on the way from Florida to Las Vegas. They were planning um a get-together. As I was proceeding to the hotel to uh meet his wife, got a phone call and they said, You need to contact the squadron. I contacted the squadron and they said the airplane that Phil and the front seater named Dave had gone down. So as it turned out, we had uh the colonel, we had a chaplain, and one other person with the squadron and myself, and had to go in the room, actually at McCarran Airport at that point in time, take the wife into the room, have her sit down, look her in the eye, and tell her she'd lost her husband. That was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my career. Uh that wasn't the only person lost. Uh my squadron commander, F-117, outstanding person, A7 F4, Med Bowman, 1986, I had requested to go back into Las Vegas for the weekend. And he gave me a privilege to do so, so he remained there. Unbeknownst to me, he had a heart attack and passed away. So although it wasn't related to flying, that really cut deep. And during the F-117 program, I think we lost a total of five people while I was in the unit. Two were flying mishaps where the pilots were killed. We had uh person killed in a civilian plane accident, a person killed in full chemical gear when a um fire truck accidentally backed over them. So when I married my wife, and this would be a good point to go back, how I dated my wife when the stealth was black world, that that actually is quite a good story. When we had the wedding, in fact, at the base chapel at Nellis Air Force Base, for many people, including myself, that is the first time at any service that it was other than a very, very sad affair.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

All right. Well, I guess I have to ask the question how do you date a woman when you're flying the F-117 and it's still in the black world?

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Wow, it was really interesting. So this is how could I forget the date? Never, December 6, uh, 1986. I'd just been qualified August 26, 86, in the stealth. So I was actually flying it and so forth. I was sitting at home and a friend of mine said, I was going to go with my brother to this Christmas party at a librarian's parents' house. Well, I heard that and I thought, forget about it. He said, But my brother cancel. I need for you to go. I said, I I really don't want to go. He said, I will buy dinner for you at TGI Fridays. I said, you know, being a fighter pilot, I'm in. So we went to this party and had been there a while, librarian parents' house. You can kind of get the atmosphere in there. We're going, okay, we are out of here. Let's go to T GI's. Just that moment, truthfully, turns the corner, Benny Douglas, B-I-N-N-I-E. I looked at her and was well awestruck. I introduced myself. She introduced herself, and I thought, okay, how can I do this? Because I'd really like to talk to this lady. So I said, uh, may I ask your status? And she said, My status? What are you talking about? I said, as in marital status. And she had the shocked look on her face and said, Well, I'm a widow. And I said, Oh, good. Meaning it is available. Well, I was in the death spiral at that point in time. I said, I didn't mean it that way. My name's John Zank, and her friend said, Well, are you an astronaut? I said, No, I'm just a fighter pilot. I fly A7s upbringing jet Nellis, blah, blah, blah, the standard deal. Anyway, after all this crash and burn stuff, I did say, Would it be possible to get your phone number so I could give you a call? She actually gave me her phone number. What I didn't know was her friend told her, if this guy doesn't call you in three days, forget it. He's not going to call you. Well, I went back to Tonopah. I had flown a mission in the A7, just landed. It was day number three. At that point, you couldn't make random phone calls from Tonopah Test Range, TTR. You had to go through the command post Alpha. So I'm in maintenance debrief. I said, guys, I really need to make a phone call. Can you patch me through to Alpha? They did. I said, could you guys call this number for me, please? Well, she was actually home. And I got through. I'm against all odds, and I said, Hi, I'd like to see you this weekend if it's remotely possible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we started dating from December of 1986 until April 21st, 1990, when the stealth was unveiled at Nellis, and I planned at, oh, by the way. I turned to her, I said, that is what I have been doing. That's how that transpired. It was amazing. She's still with me, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Never she's still with you, that's awesome. Yes. That's awesome. So that that unveiling on the 21st of April 1990, uh Ray Charles told her about that in a in a previous episode. So you had brought her out, and you couldn't say, even though they had, you know, released the blurry photograph in 1988 of the plane. You couldn't tell her at that point what you were doing. So she didn't know until Okay, so when did you tell her? As it's flying overhead or after it lands? What what was the moment you chose to say that's what I've been doing?

SPEAKER_01 35:39

The two aircraft turned on to initial, going to be landing to the south, and I had written the narrative that the guy was doing. And they said, ladies and gentlemen, if you look up to the northwest, you'll see two stealth fighter aircraft, blah, blah, blah. I turned around, looked at her, and I said, That is what I've been doing. And so that's how that all transpired. What's not known is, and I don't know if you know this, how many aircraft do you think we had at Nellis that day, F-117s?

SPEAKER_00 36:13

I don't know, how many? Two, I assume.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

There were three. The weather was supposed to be bad. So it was decided the night before that we would fly an airplane into Nellis Air Force Base. Klaus Klausa, by the way, was that pilot. So we used to have this divert plan, Spark Divert, where you could go certain places, certain people were read in, and we exercised it that night. And I was down at Nellis watching all this unfold. Klaus Klausa flew in, we went through the deal, dimming the lights, so whatever. Not even Aviation Week picked up on the fact that there was another F-117. So after the ceremony, when the planes were going to depart, guess what? There were three F-117s out there for departure.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Hmm. And did anybody say, hey, wait a minute, how did these things multiply? They did not. So, Jay-Z, I have just one more question for you. As you look back at this amazing career, flying fighters, what was your single most memorable sortie?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Whoa. I couldn't name just one. I could name just a couple. I would say supporting the Miaguez, 2 Mark 84 LGBs was outstanding.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Laser guided bombs.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

That was outstanding. Well, flying the first time in the stealth, that was amazing. Having seen it, being entrusted to fly a $42.6 million airplane that I realized at taxpayers owned it every time I flew it. And then flying the Harrier overall, but one time we had a visit from the Duchess of Gloucester to RF Whitering. We were at lunch with our squadron commander. I was there as the American. And the Duchess looked at me and she said, I didn't know we had any Americans here in the RAF. I said, Yes, Duchess, we've had Americans here since 1949. In fact, the first person on the exchange name should ring a bell, Major Robin Oles, number one fighter squadron. So when I met Robin Oles one time, I said, We have something in common. He kind of looked at me with a furrowed brow, you know, what can this possibly be? I said, We were both on number one fighter squadron. So that was super. Anyway, after meeting the Duchess, there was going to be a brief air display of the Harrier Vertica takeoff landing and all that stuff. They selected me, so after that I did the display for the Duchess.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

That's a pretty cool flight.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Any minute behind the stick of a fighter, an attack aircraft is precious. I loved every second of every flight.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Well, Jay-Z, thanks so much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

My honor and thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

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 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!