The Flyboy Podcast: Guest David "Goose" Gossett

Aircraft flown: T-37, F15E, F-117, T-38, and C-208A

In this episode, pilot and retired Air Force Colonel David Gossett shares his journey from a farm in Kentucky to flying fighter jets like the F-15E and stealth aircraft like the F-117. He discusses his military missions, transition to commercial flying, and insights on aviation careers.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

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 David Gossett, callsign Goose. He has flown the T-37, the F-15E, the F-117, the T-38, and the C-208 Caravan. He has more than 4,000 flying hours in the Air Force, retired as a colonel and commanded at the squadron and group level. After he left the Air Force, uh he has gone on to fly with Southwest Airlines. He is a captain there. Goose, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Uh thank you, Never. I appreciate you uh having me on today.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Let me ask you, how many hours do you have flying for the Airlines?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Oh gosh, I've been flying for Southwest for about 13 years now as a captain. I'm uh I've lost track of how many hours I've flown. I've been all over the country.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

I'll bet. Well, obviously, you know, you've had a career both on the military and the civilian side flying. So let me ask you, when did you first know you wanted to become a pilot?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Well, I worked myself through college. I went to the University of Louisville, uh, attended ROTC and got gained a commission in the Air Force. But before that, I was a sophomore, no direction of what I wanted to do with my life. And I was working on the horse farms in LaGrange, Kentucky, out on the tractor, spreading horse manure, and I just took a pause to reflect one day in the field, and I thought to myself, what do I want to do with my life? At the time I was getting a chemistry degree. And at that very moment that I said that, two F-4 phantoms from the Kentucky Guard flew right over my head, low and fast, and I thought to myself, I think that's what I want to do. And I think it was providential. Next day I got in my Jeep, went down to the University of Louisville, OTC, talked to Captain Campbell there, the uh Commandant of Cadets, and he explained to me the process of becoming an Air Force pilot. I remember the pamphlet there, and it said the pamphlet said, Be the elite of the Air Force, be a pilot or navigator. And that's what I wanted to do. And from that day forward, that's what I set my my aspirations out to do, my goals.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

I love the image of being out there on the farm spreading horse manure in the F-Works flyover.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

That's amazing. I went off and got my private palace license, which then was pretty affordable, I guess, relative to the day. I mean, it was $25 an hour, probably about $35 with an instructor. I guess kids are paying $200 an hour right now for private pilots. And off I went, got my private palace license while I was getting my college degree and worked R OTC and then worked at uh Kroger in the winter and UPS, sort in boxes, and saved my money and did what I had to do to reach my goal.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And so when you were getting your private pilot's license, do you have any uh particular memories of flying? Did you ever uh did everything just go hunky-dory or did you get lost?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

No, no, of course I got lost. And it was on my solo cross-country, but I do remember my instructor, nicest man that I uh I I remember, mentor, uh teaching me how to fly. And I was going on my way on my solo to Evansville, Indiana, and I did not know where I was.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So what did you do?

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Uh I remembered his advice, look for the water towers with the towns. So I started circling these little towns and looking for water towers, and I found the town Evansville written on there, and then I tracked where the airport was in relation to the tower and finally made it over there where I needed to be. But I did not get lost on the way home.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Very good, very good. That's that's that's a that's a clever trick. I haven't heard that one before.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

However, it was a little bit of panic going on at that time, I rem I do recall.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Panic and flying do tend to go hand in hand. They go hand in hand. Indeed, indeed. Well, so let's uh let's fast forward uh literally to a much faster airplane, uh the F-15E. Tell us about your experience uh flying the uh strike eagle and what's it like to be in the cockpit and what's the mission like?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

I remember my very first ride in the F-15E. I was a f I was a first assignment instructor pilot, T-37's advanced Air Force Base. Uh went to IFF, down in Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, and then off to the F-15E. I went. Introduction to fighter fundamentals, uh, where they fly the AT-38, which is a souped up T-38 with a HUD, and teach you basic fighter maneuvers, bombing, so forth. Went off to Seymour Johnson. I remember walking out to the F-15E for the very first time and seeing that that plane and how massive it was. The wingspan that's the size of a tennis court, climbing up into it, just sitting so high after sitting so low in the T-38 and the T-37. And then taking off for the first time the sheer power of the plane just pushed you back into the seat. And it was a lot of plane to control, but it was just so easy to control because it was just built around just being easy to fly. You it you really learned to employ the plane.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

So give us an idea. What would a typical mission be in the F-15E as compared to other airplanes?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Well, the F-15E was an air-to-air and an air-to-ground uh fighter. At the time when I first entered into the uh F-15E, there was a lot of F-War Phantom uh guys coming in, F-111 guys. So air-to-air was a focus, but it wasn't air-to-ground was the true focus of the plane. And then as time evolved in 3-1, our regulations got uh reworked. We really concentrated on a lot of the F-15C models mission of air to air, where the front seater would run the radar and the back seater and the back seater would just run the air-to-ground radar and so forth and keep the systems tight because we didn't have integrated GPS. We did uh four ring laser gyros. So that was really an important factor when you were doing an air-to-ground mission, keeping that system tight so your bombs get on target on time and where they need to be. But a typical mission in the F-15E, for example, uh I remember my very first red flag. Rob Krauss, Pluto Krauss, and I were flying. We were brand spanking new to the F-15E. I was already uh mission qualified, and I was with the 336 Fighter Squadron. We deployed out to Red Flag, and we were excited because this is our very first time of deploying in this plane and testing our skills. Everybody was holding in the in the uh push point. The F-15Cs would push out ahead of us, so they were probably high altitude, line abreast. You could see them all contrails perfectly lined up as they're going out pressing the air war. About two to three minutes later, uh the F-16s would go out to take care of all the seed problems.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Suppression of enemy air defenses.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

That's correct. They would shoot uh pet shots, which were non-tracking shots, uh, to where they thought coordinates were, and then they would, you know, if they get lit up by the surface air missiles, they would triangulate and figure out where those were coming from and shoot into them. And then the F-15Es would go. So I remember listening on the radios. I was a wingman, barely holding on by my fingernails. Rob Krause was in my backseat, barely holding on by his fingernails. He was running the radar at the time, because that's how it was, you know, for the air-to-air portion. The WISO would run the radar and you would just fly the plane and hang on with formation and be ready to take the shot when needed. So our job at that time was pushing out at medium altitude between 15, 19,000 feet, cleaning up any kind of spitters that got through the wall of eagles, so any kind of red air that that they didn't kill and that got through the wall, then we would clean up and pick them off as they came through. And then at a certain point, we would drop down at low altitude, so we'd roll inverted, about probably, you know, 40 to 50 degrees nose low, going super fast, get in there, go low altitude, hugging the dirt, probably about 500 feet off the deck, about anywhere from 540 ground speed to 600 ground speed, uh cruising on in there with our bombs. And then we'd come off target, do a maybe a pop delivery, deploy our munitions, and then we would be just hauling ass out of there. We would be going about above the mock, down low altitude, and it's just a lot of fun. But at that time, I remember getting overwhelmed as we clean up the spitters because I looked at my radar and I'm like, what in the heck is going on here? This this big blob. I've never seen anything like it in training when we were training at Seymour Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

A big blob on your radar?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

It was just a just a whole bunch of targets on your radar. And it was just like who's who? And being a new guy, I was just overwhelmed. I was task saturated. And I was just, again, just hanging on, just following my flight lead, being a good wingman. I just knew how to get my bombs on target. But it was just a great learning experience. And by the end of the red flag, that was my very first sortie at the red flag, just being overwhelmed. Red flag is meant to be a building block approach. It's supposed to start off easy. I thought it was hard, and then you end up uh where you're in tune with everything, in tune with how to fight an air war, uh, how to handle those situations that that's thrown at you. And the scenarios were built that way and and is really a great training scenario. Uh, very well done by the Air Force.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So you went from the F-FE on to fly the F-117 Nighthawk. Tell us about how those airplanes are similar and how they're different.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Well, I remember I was I went to the Marine Corps Command Staff College. Um, General Golfein, he was my group commander at Mountain Home and the Strike Eagle. I was his assistant chief of Stan of Wal there. He was brand new, and I remember giving him a backseat ride in the F-15E. And I thought the guy was amazing because he knew everything. He he studied up. He was ready to do, we were doing an AGM 130 sortie. He knew everything about how to do all the hotests in the backseat. He was the perfect whizo. So I remember at Mountain Home in June of 2003, I got selected to go to Marine Corps Command and Staff College. And General Golfing called me in, Colonel Golfing at the time, he was my group commander, called me in and said, Hey, you're going to Marine Corps. Hoo ah. I was like, all right. So off I go in 2003. I graduated from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in 2004. Mountain Home used to be a composite wing. And the composite wing was F-15Es, F-16 CJs, uh, F-15Cs, KC-135s, and B-1s. And it was a great concept. Everybody trained together, everybody deployed together. Well, Bullet Arco was the B-1 squadron commander, which I knew, who I knew at Mountain Home, called me up after I was graduating from Marine Corps Command Staff College and said, Hey Goose, how'd you like to come work at the Pentagon? And I thought, gosh, Pentagon? No, I'd rather fly. Of course, everybody wants to fly. No one wants to do a staff job. So I said, sir, I say I really appreciate that opportunity. But it was a great opportunity, but my path was I wanted to fly. And Ron Buckley from the fighter porch at AFPC and Randolph Air Force Base, where they gave out all the assignments, called me up and goes, How would you like to fly a goose? And this is the same day that Bullet Arco called me. And I said, Sure, I'd love to fly. And I said, What am I going to fly? Go back to the F-15E. He goes, No, let's go to the F-117. We need some slots there. We have some we need bodies for slots there. And so I said, Sure, man, the F-117, that's that's historic. I'd love to fly that plane. And off I went to go fly the F-117. But once I got into the F-117, I started flying. It just flew just like an eagle. The feel of it was like an eagle. It was all built around mission planning, you know, evading the warning systems, the SAM systems, and that's what stealth was all about. Didn't the manu it wasn't about maneuverability.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah, I was talking to uh Matt McKean the other day, and he talked about how during his tenure they actually changed some of the tasking approach for the F-117, less pre-planned and more dynamic targeting, let's say, almost close air support style, where you would take off, get your target, and then uh proceed from there. So fascinating to see how the not just the plane's capabilities evolved, but the application of the plane evolved.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

I think that was a time when they were trying to um possibly do away with the F-117. Uh and I believe that was 08.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

2008 was the official retirement, yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Aaron Ross Powell So I know they were kind of concentrating more on just not traditional, go to the target area, plan your stealth mission, uh look at your dimpies within the target area, hit those, and everybody leaves. That's correct. So now they were looking at more dynamic targeting, instantaneous, close air support, possibly targeting, where you get in there and and hit your target when a task drops. Uh so I thought that was very interesting time. And they were trying to show, I think, the viability of the plane to try to keep it keep it on board as long as possible. And it did have a lot of viability still left in it. It was a beautiful plane, and it was just a very capable aircraft.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

And it's still flying to this day. And it's still flying to this day. And not doing quite the same thing, but still flying.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

As you remember when we did our um stealth reunion last time, which we have another one coming up uh next year. We do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I think there was like three, maybe four. There were six of the dark nights there with us.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Of the dark nights there. I thought to myself, man, those guys look really young. But they're still flying the F-117 around and keeping some alive, which is wonderful to see.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

So I'd like you to take us to Afghanistan. You had a chance to command over there. Tell us about the missions. Tell us about uh your team over there.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Oh gosh, I had a wonderful team. I was at the Pentagon. It's inevitable you're if you're gonna stay in the Air Force, you're gonna you're gonna hit the five-sided puzzle house at one point. And I did. I was on the joint staff working in uh as chief of negotiations there and on the J-5, which was a great job. It was a great learning experience, and I I got the notification that I made the group commander's list. And I was just over the moon, very just very humble that that the Air Force selected me to go on and command. So next thing I know, I get a uh notification on the list that I'm going over to Afghanistan. Job over there was going to be the A thirty eighth Air Expeditionary Advisory Group commander. And where was that based? At Shindan Air Base in Afghanistan. And Shindan is about 70 miles from the Iranian border and about probably 100 miles south of Herat. So it's just right there on the uh that's out on the western side of the country.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

So uh how how far from Kandahar? That's down there on the southern side, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah, it was about the southeast side. So uh, you know, it was it was probably a good flight time, about two-hour flight for in the caravan, which goes about 160 miles an hour. But I remember General Goldfing called me up. He was the absent commander at the time, two-star at the time. And he goes, hey goose, I got this opportunity for you. Great. Is it gonna be flying? Am I gonna fly? He goes, Yes, you're gonna fly too. You're gonna fly the caravan. I got the caravan. And he goes, Yeah, the caravan. You're gonna you're gonna be uh heading up the um Afghan training, pilot training. Uh it is a wonderful opportunity. I got there, uh John Hochek, he was the commander before, and he had just gotten planes to arrive. Uh he was building the Afghan base. Shindan Air Base was about 5,000 acres, had 11 miles of fence line. There was a Russian PKM machine gun every 300 feet and a guard tower on that fence line. It was a 9,000-foot runway north to south. The Afghan base was on the east side. US 4A, United States Army Forces, Afghanistan, they were on the west side. There was a cab battalion of helicopters, Chinooks, Apaches, Blackhawks, on the west side, along with mine clearing, uh, CIA was over there as well. And then on the east side was the Afghan base that we were building. And our whole role there as the group commander was to build that Afghan base to make it like a real Air Force base and train those Afghans to run that Air Force base as a real Air Force base, and at the same time conduct pilot training. Now the Afghans they would send their their best that they had, and we had on that east side also embedded a defense language institute from Monterey that would come in, and they would they would instruct our young Afghans to get them up to IKO standard for an English score of 80%. And once they reached that that milestone of 80% on their English, then we would send them to introduction to flight screening. So I had six 182s with Garmin 1000s, I had 1420 caravans with Garmin 1000s, I had six MD-530 helicopters, just like you see on Magnum PI, TC flew on Magnum PI, and I had seven MI-17 Russian helicopters. It was a very interesting dynamic, you know, trying to teach the Afghans. So we had the maintenance group, we had the um support group, mission support group, we had the operations groups, just like mirroring our our Air Force brackets. And then we were meant, and then I would mentor the wing commander and try to, and then we had lieutenant colonels, the maintenance lieutenant colonel, he was a seasoned or a graduate squadron commander mentoring the group commanders.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

And so your boss there was an Afghan wing commander, and you were mentoring him, you said?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

I was his advisor. Uh General Shamsella was the last one. They had Colonel Soleil before him. So I would mentor those guys on how to be a wing commander. I was do I was triple hatted. I was I was the air expeditionary group commander, but I was also the senior airfield advisor running the airfield, and I was also the base commander supporting the Army's mission on the other side, as well as the Italian mission, Task Force Center, who was in charge of RC West, protecting RC West and that ring road out to the west of Afghanistan. So it was a it was a busy job, but I had a year to do it, and I had nothing else to do.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

So while you're deployed, yes, you're while you're deployed.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

The Afghans, what I noticed, the young ones, we uh put through and I gave the last check ride to the uh last uh or to the only female fixed wing pilot in Afghanistan, Neophora Romani. And she's actually in the United States now, down in Florida. Uh she um basically got sought asylum when she went to C 130 training here over in the United States and was able to seek asylum and get asylum, which is great. But what I noticed is the energy of the Afghans, the hope that they had, the young people, um, and the motivation they had to get the mission accomplished. And they would start off as just like we do, in introduction of um flight screening, and then uh then they would go to phase one just like pilot training in the 182, and then they would graduate from that phase one training or phase two training, uh, and they would go either fixed wing or rotary wing. And if they went rotary wing, they would go to the MD-530 helicopter and learn rotary, and the Army uh folks from Fort Ruckard would come and instruct those Afghans. If they went fixed wing, then our Air Force contractors as well as our Air Force pilots would instruct them in the 208 caravan. And we had six caravans totally dedicated to training, and eight caravans totally dedicated to operational use. So those eight caravans for operational use, uh, we would fly missions to Kabul, to Kandahar, to Majash Sharif, to Harat, Farah, all the little small airfields, and we'd deliver cargo to the Afghans, or we'd haul people around uh other Afghans and maybe to Shindan to Kabul and uh have get some R and R for them and then get them back. But once the Afghans got their wings, they would they would fly with our our military pilots, they would fly these missions in the operational realm. And toward the end, we were working with um Marsock, Marine Special Operations Command, and we had some Navy SEALs that were mentoring Afghan commandos, and we would take them out and drop them off in the middle of nowhere. They go do their thing and then they would come, we'd go back and pick them up and they'd come on back. So it was really uh interesting dynamic.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Let's jump to a completely different kind of flying. When you left the Air Force, you went to fly with Southwest Airlines. Tell us about what it's like to fly passengers on the civilian side after all these years in the military flying weapons delivery sorties.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Oh gosh. Well, you're you still have a mission and you're you're trying to get that mission accomplished, and you're trying to get them trying to leave that gate on time, and you're trying to get the passengers where they need to be on time. That's your mission. Uh and I will say it's um it's very straightforward. You have your iPad and everything's delivered to your iPad. The dispatcher gives all your mission planning to you. Uh you just load it up in the computer. As the captain, you're the orchestrator. You're just trying to make sure everybody gets on board. If there's any problems with the plane, you get maintenance out there, or you get a what they call a men equipment listing, an MEL to it, and you write it up. But I will say there it is a very different dynamic working with passengers than it is with buy yourself in a plane, delivering weapons. It's fun. I call it my old man plane, and uh, you know, I don't pull G's anymore, but I I ask the flight attendant for a cup of coffee and I get a cup of coffee. If I need to use the restroom, I don't have to go in a pital pack. I get up and I go use the restroom. Yeah. So uh it's a nice way of life. I think the thing I miss in the civilian sector is the camaraderie. And I think a lot of Air Force, even Navy guys that you talk to, they all say the same thing. You miss going out flying your fighter, you miss going out doing that mission, dropping those bombs, doing that air-to-air, your flight suits soaking wet from sweat, and you got the salt stains on the back, and you're going into that bar, getting that nice frosty beer, and uh maybe smoking a cigar or two with your buddies and talking about the good old days. And that's that's what uh I think you miss most in the civilian sector than what you had in the military sector.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Do you get the opportunity to fly with the same team on a regular basis, or is it always back to that question of camaraderie? You know, in a in a fighter squadron, you know, you're gonna be flying with the same group of folks day in and day out. How is it in the airlines? Uh do you fly with the same team?

SPEAKER_01 24:45

That's a really good question. Um at Southwest, when I I'm on year 13 now, it's hard to believe it's already been that long, but time does fly. When I first started, it was not unusual to stick with the whole crew throughout the whole pairing, which is a three-day, maybe a four-day pairing, or maybe a two-day pairing. You know, it wasn't uncommon to go out and have a little bit of camaraderie. You know, you all meet down for dinner, and uh the captain would usually buy drinks for everyone or go back up to your room, get get all settled in and get ready for the next day. Uh nowadays it's just such a different dynamic. It's and and what I mean by that, this it's such a complicated way to schedule moving bodies around. You might be flying with one guy, and then all of a sudden the weather hits in a certain area, and then scheduling calls, and you get rerouted, and you have to go report to another gate to fly, and now you're with another another F first officer. Or uh you're with another crew. And flight attendants and pilots nowadays, they're all it's a totally different scenario. They might be going, um, they'll get off the plane in one station, get on another plane, and you and your FO, first officer, might go somewhere else. And but you usually, as a as a first officer and a captain, will stay together the whole time unless there is a reroute. And if that reroute does happen, Southwest does a great job getting that those two pilots back together toward the end of the pairing to get them back to their domicile together. That's how it works nowadays. So camaraderie, usually too, overnights sometimes are um are short. So really all you have time to do is if you're lucky, go get go get a um go to the gym, get a good workout, get a shower, get a bite to eat, get back up to your room, go to bed, because you're gonna get up early in the morning again.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

So, Goose, I've got one more question for you. When you're talking to young people and they tell you that they want to grow up to be a pilot, what do you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Absolutely. It's one of the best jobs in the world. It really is. Um it was funny you mentioned that because my first officer and I who flew together the other day, uh, we happened to fly strike eagles together. He was a he was a weapon systems officer at uh Mountain Home Air Force Base, uh Steve Whistler, Chester. Great guy. He was a brand spanking new weapon systems officer at Mountain Home when I got there, and we flew together a lot there. Well, he gets a pilot training slot, goes off, flies F-16s. But we were talking about that and what a great life it is. A great life in the fact that what we got to experience in the Air Force, and now what we're getting to experience now in the airline industry. And uh I just think it's a wonderful life. You know, there's nothing like flying. And I always tell young people there's a path. There's a path for you. It might be the Air Force, it might be the civilian way uh to get to where you need to be flying, but there's always a way to do it. I knew there was always a way uh to get to what I needed to do to achieve my goals. And my way was to get my private pilot's license. And then all the pieces fell together. And that's why I try to tell young people too is don't try to reinvent the wheel. There's always someone out there that has taken that path. Uh, if you want to be a doctor, go find a doctor. They've already been down that path, so just follow in their footsteps. And if you want to be a lawyer, do the same thing. Follow in those people's footsteps. If you want to be a pilot, look to see how that person achieved those goals and follow their footsteps because that path has already been laid for them. All they have to do is have the desire to want to do it.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Indeed. Well, thanks, Goose. It's uh great to have you on the podcast. I really appreciate you joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Well, I I appreciate you having me, and uh I've seen some old friends on your podcast, and it's been great hearing them speak and uh wish you the best.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

It was really good seeing you. You too. You've been listening to the Fly Boy 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 fulfilled that mission today. New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find all our previous episodes on our website, the Flyboypodcast.com. Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.