The Flyboy Podcast: Brett "Durden" Wells

Aircraft flown: F-16, F-117, 757 and 767

In this episode, Brett Wells shares his incredible journey from a young boy inspired by Star Wars and a Marine Harrier demo to becoming a seasoned fighter pilot and a FedEx captain. He recounts intense combat missions, close calls, and the lessons learned from a lifetime of flying at the edge.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

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 Brett Wells. But uh before we get started, you may have noticed that our intro music has changed. The reason is that Riverside, our podcasting platform, has just updated their editing software and their music library. Unfortunately, our previous intro music, which I really liked, is no longer available. So I'm trying out this new song. Send me an email and let me know if you like it or not. Now, more importantly, as I said a moment ago, I'll be talking today with Brett Wells, the call sign editor. Brett flew for 21 years in the Air Force, flying both fighters and trainers. He's flown the T-37, T-38, and the F-16, and the F-117. He's got about 700 hours in the T-38, 2,000 hours in the F-16, and 500 hours in the F-117. He's also flown for 14 years with FedEx and has about 3,000 hours in the 757 and the 767. So Brett, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Thank you very much. Um it's I appreciate being here. It's an honor.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

So what was the first moment you knew you wanted to be a pilot?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I was probably six or seven when my dad uh finally sat me down to watch Star Wars, and I was hooked. I'm like, I want to be an X-Wing pilot, I want to be a member of Rogue Squadron, I want to be Luke Skywalker, and he had to explain to my young brain that that uh was movie magic, and it didn't fathom to me. I could see it right there on the on the movie screen. But um maybe about a year later, I I grew up in a smaller town in Nebraska, and he took me up to the to the Offitt Air Force Base uh air show in Omaha, and I distinctly remember seeing uh the Marine Harrier demo uh hovering, and I was just like, holy smokes, can I do that? And he's like, That you can do. And so I was sold ever since. I was the strange bird that knew pretty much what I wanted to do since I was six years old and was singularly focused on getting into something that blew stuff up. I meet all these people that are in college and don't know what they want to do and just seem to stumble into fighter cockpits, but um I was the opposite of that. I I knew from a from a very young age that I wanted to shoot guns and draw bombs.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Tell us about your first solo.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

What was that like? You know, as I was 15, 16, saving up money, but I didn't have enough, and I said, you know, asked my parents if they would help me work on my private pilot's license, and to their credit, you know, again, we didn't have a ton of dough. Uh they did. Really small town with a tiny airport. I flew with a Nebraska state trooper, a great guy, huge individual, was uh on the governor's security detail. You know, back then, unfortunately, I've I've uh put on too many LBs, but you know, I was probably 160 pounds, and he had to be 250. And we were in this little rinky dink Cessna 150. So every time we got in it, uh also true story, like I used to have to sit on the yellow pages to see over the dash because I couldn't, I would tell him, I'm like, I can't see what I'm looking at. And he's like, What's your problem? You know, and because he's a monster of a man, and uh, you know, I could barely I couldn't even see the runway out the front. And the plane like tilted to the side when we taxied. Uh, you know, I was in there squished, and he's just a huge individual. And we're doing our thing and flying, and you know, I didn't really know how many hours you needed till you soloed. And and I still remember I was totally unprepared. My mom and dad were out, you know, not out there. Um, they were working, and he hadn't hinted at it. And we did a couple patterns, and he said, pull over here, and he got out, and I'm like, What is this guy doing? And he's like, You're ready. Go do three patterns and landings, you know, don't kill yourself. And that was it. That was my first solo.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

In the Air Force, you have the most time in the F-16. Yeah, put us in the cockpit. What's it like to fly?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

To me, I I always equated it to like a Corvette. The F-16 to me was a was a sports car. I got my first F-16 back seat ride when I was a cadet. I had previously done one the year prior in the backseat of a of an Eagle C model. Terrible experience in that nobody told me what to expect, so I ate a Whopper and Large Fry and we went out and did a high aspect ride for the for the people that are unfamiliar, you know, lying abreast a couple miles, very high speed turn-in, very high G. Uh, I did not know what was going on, uh, you know, barely staying alive, not passing out. Came back to the pattern, threw up my Whopper and Large Fry in the puke bag, called my dad, and I'm like, I think I've made terrible life choices because uh I just got my butt kicked, you know, and and took like a six-hour nap in the afternoon. But uh the the F-16 ride a year later went uh went much better. Uh it was just us doing a low level, and so that was my first taste of it. But uh it was like putting on a glove to answer your question. You'll hear F-16 guys say, you know, it wasn't you getting in the jet, it was like you putting the jet on yourself, you know, because you're out sticking out in front, bubble canopy, most of the jet was behind you, so you just kind of felt like you were on the end of a pencil, is kind of what everybody always talks about with the F-16, and I would say that was true. I was a uh human factors grad at the academy, so that kind of design interface always interested me a little bit, the man-machine interface, and of all the planes I flew and have flown, I I really, you know, I'm a little biased because the F-16 was kind of my first love, but I felt like it was um designed with a pilot in mind, you know, way back in the 70s. The buttons made sense, the the hand we call it the HOTAS hands-on throttle and stick interface, uh, where you can do the almost everything with never having to take your hands off the throttle and stick, um, just was well designed. The layout was well designed. Now it was squished when you started putting on uh, you know, a G-suit back in the early days, a combat edge, which was a vest that you put on your chest to help you in an air-to-air fight. Um, you know, your survival vest, if you put on a you know, a combat vest on on top of uh your normal just life preservers and stuff, it got squished. It started to get pretty squished. And when you started doing really long sorties, you know, where you were trying to also throw in, you know, a camel back with some with some Gatorade and a PB and J, uh, there was not a lot of room compared to as you know, the 117, you know, underneath the shoulders, you it was a little roomy down there. That was kind of nice, actually. But yeah, inside the 117, it's kind of like sitting in a teepee.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Move your head too much to the right or left, you can bang the uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Oh, I banged the MVGs off the sides of the off the glass many times in the 117. Well, I did in the F-16 too, but yeah, it was a great jet. Well designed, I thought, tons of power. Uh depending on the version you flew. The versions at Lou were Pratt and Whitney engines, they were in the hot in the summertime, you know, if you started throwing on bombs and fuel tanks, uh got pretty um pretty wimpy. But I mostly flew, you know, combat GE, combat jets with GE motors. Um my time in the guard in Ohio, they were big, we called them big mouth block 30s. The intake was bigger. I mean, it would down uh on the deck at sea level, full afterburner. Uh, you know, she would hold seven or eight G's. It would it would it would put your lights out, you know. If you were down low on a cold day, it would not decelerate, it would just keep on trucking in full afterburner. It was a lot of power.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

So you flew uh the F-16 in combat. Yeah. Tell us about some of your uh combat missions, some of the ones that stand out. Where were you? What did you do? And give us a sense.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

All my combat time I f I flew at night. Uh so our first round, um, we were supposed to be on night one uh of you know Iraqi freedom, Desert Storm 2, if you will. I was based in Italy. Uh and we were supposed to go out of Anserlik Air Base in northern Turkey. And the Turkish government did uh, if you're a um you know a nerd of the history of back then, did not end up letting combat aircraft fly out of there. It was only combat support. So our goal, our plan that we had been getting ready for for six months of night one, of you know, it was gonna be the big one, right? Um, got dashed. And we went there about six months later, ended up flying out of Al-Udid. Yeah, six months to a year later, maybe, um, flying out of Al-Udid. Uh the interesting part of that was uh we could be dual tasked to both Iraq and Afghanistan out of Al-Udid. Whereas It's Lip was gonna be obviously solely, solely Iraq. But I only flew at night. We'd go east of Afghanistan, we'd go north to Iraq, and this one I think was around 2004-ish. Uh if you remember when the Blackwater guards got killed in Fallujah, and it was a you know cover of Newsweek when they were hung up from the bridge. Uh, we were there for around that. So almost everything diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. I distinctly remember um, you know, going at uh at uh briefing up, um, getting out to uh the hammerhead, what we called, you know, the uh end of the runway where you do your last chance safety checks and they'd pull all the pins on the bombs and arm you up. Our goal was to always have two F-16s overhead Iraq 24-7. And we did. Uh it was busy, 24-7. And all we were doing was close air support. And I would be talking to the guys in my squadron, you know, coming back as we're getting ready to take off, you know, on the VHF radio. Hey, what have you been doing? And they're like, holy smokes, it's like World War III up there. You know, we cleaned off the rails, we've got no rounds left in the gun. Uh Fallujah is non-stop. You know, and I would remember telling my wingman, like, hey man, this is it, get ready. And we'd get up there two hours later. It took an hour just to get up uh roughly to Kuwait, where we'd hit the tanker the first time, and then about another hour to get up to Baghdad, and then from Baghdad, they would task you out wherever you needed, wherever the troops needed you, you know, and we'd almost immediately get sent to Fallujah and we'd check in and I'd I'd tell them, you know, we'd tell them our loadout and hey, we're two F-16s. You know, at the time we were carrying uh two GB-12s, which are 500-pound laser guided bombs, uh, one uh 2,000-pound J DAM, you know, I think we had two AMRAMs, two sidewinders, uh, our targeting pod, and two fuel tanks. So we were heavy jets for an F-16. You know, and I'd tell them I'm a Ford Air controller. I was checked out at that time as a FAC, a Ford air controller. You know, I'd tell them I could do every mission they needed. We were ready to go, give us something to kill. And I remember the very first ground controller I talked to. Sometimes we talked to, we call them JTACs, joint terminal air controllers, um, you know, could be an Air Force guy embedded with the Army of Marines, or just straight up to the Marines or Army guys, and they would say, Um, you know, we've been fighting all day, like we need sleep. And there was a curfew at night, and the Iraqis knew that, you know, I think they were hit too, if they were out moving at night, uh, they were gonna get killed. I'm sure they were tired too. So we would fly around in circles a lot, um, just just overwatch, you know, and the and the army guys would say, hey, uh, when they hear, you know, I would always ask them, do you want us to come in quiet or come in loud? Do you want to be able to hear jet engine noise or do you want us to be covert till it's time to not be covert? Fountain, usually at night they'd be like, we want you down around, you know, 15,000, 10,000 feet so we can hear the noise uh because nobody shoots at us, you know, when when you're overhead at night and we need some shut eye because we've been, you know, nonstop gun battles for 12 hours. You know, very distinctly at night, we did a lot of um uh special forces task force support. So uh we would go in as the fighters, just overwatch for the you know, watching those guys land two miles away, you know, uh hump it in, walking in quiet. Um, you know, we would fly ahead, look at the target building, you know, tell them it was clear, uh, they would do their raid, pull, you know, pull whomever they were pulling out of that building, and we'd cover them till they got to the helicopter and got out of there. So I look back on it with some maturity of I never, as far as I know, lost an American troop on my time overhead. And I'm very proud of that because I I feel like that was our job, and I think we did it good. Of course, I would have loved to been there during the day where those guys were just dropping bombs and blowing the heck out of Fallujah or whatever, but that was not our role at night. Our role at night was you know keeping the special forces safe, and and to be honest with you, they were so it was amazing to watch from 15,000, 20,000 feet how they do their JOB, the Special Forces guys, because they're really good at it. Um and they almost never fired a shot. And I think that's the goal, right? They pop on a house before the guys even know they're there, they grab them, they throw them back on the helicopter, and they're out of there before anybody can react. So we did a lot of um a lot of uh task force support, and even on my second time when I was in the reserves later on in Fort Worth, Texas, uh, we deployed to Bogram. We didn't drop many bombs that whole entire deployment, but at night we only dropped one bomb. Um, and I was on that two ship. I was getting ready to drop, and uh my my flight lead was coming in off the tanker and and a great buddy of mine and and was our DO at the time, director of ops, the second in command, and and he called and he's like, What are you doing? And I'm like, I'm about to drop a bomb, I'm 30 seconds inbound hot. And we were just dropping on a rocket uh that that had been uh that had been shooting at army bases all all night long. They would set up these rockets during the day and put them on timers to shoot at night. And he's like, I you know, this is my sixth deployment. I haven't dropped, you know, come off cold, I'm coming in hot, you know. And that was the one bomb we dropped at night, and it was on our you know, a rocket site. But uh other interesting things I remember in Iraq is um it was kind of the dawn of the IED. Um, so when that Fallujah stuff, uh, this was a little surreal because I did right before I went back um to Aviano, uh, got a couple day sorties, and so I was chomping at the bit, you know, to to blow something up. And and those guys had been fighting for weeks straight. And so it started to do the uh convoy support where they were bringing in water and food and bullets from the from the outbases, the airfields into the into Fallujah. I remember it being very frustrating because um I remember the first day I saw it, they you know, screaming on the radios, hey, we just got hit, bomb on the road. You know, this was before really IED was even a in the you know nomenclature of common vernacular for uh military folks, you know, back in 2003, 2004. I remember looking down on the ground, because now I don't have to look through my night vision goggles and my targeting pod because I can use my eyeballs, it's in the daytime, and I start seeing these huge long convoys, like mile-long convoys, and smoke coming up and smoke coming up, and they're screaming like for help, and you're like, what can I do? I'm here I am in this F-16 with a 2,000-pound bomb and two 500-pound bombs, and there's nobody that's attacking, you know, they're getting blown up by roadside bombs from guys remote detonate detonating them from a mile away or whatever. You know, there's nobody to shoot back at. It was very frustrating and sad to watch that happen. You know, all I could do is facilitate bringing in helicopters and medevacing these guys, and and I think the you know, the tactics right, carrying around a 2,000-pound bomb in urban environments, you know, we figured out eventually was not the most trist surgical weapon. You know, they've they've if you keep track of what the Air Force does now, it's a lot of 250-pound small diameter bombs and and rocket, laser guided rockets, you know, because you drop a 2,000-pound bomb on a point target and you're blowing up the whole block. So, you know. Indeed. I did 24-7 close air support, and and I went where the Marines and Army called me, and uh, we went there as fast as we could, and we did whatever they asked us to do. Uh one night a helicopter, an MH-53, had got hit and it went down, everybody was alive. I ran the I ran the um on-scene commander as the Ford Air controller, and I was a I think I had checked out at that point. Again, I know you A-10 guys will roll your eyes a little bit, but I was a Sandy lead. We we tried our best to be uh to be uh search and rescue. We can't do it as good as an A-10, I'll fully admit it, but uh you know, you can't have A-10s everywhere. So we uh I was a Sandy lead at the time and uh we we got all the troops off the helicopter and and Medivac them out, and I was really hoping I'd get a drop of bomb on our own helicopter so the bad guys couldn't get it, but uh they uh strike eagle ended up bombing it the next day. So even that, I'm like, hey, I can blow that thing up if you need me to. And they're like, Well, we're not ready to yet, you know, it's an expensive asset. But uh I I did see on the uh the op order the next day that a strike eagle blew it up. But yeah, so that's what I did. I I don't even I I haven't counted a lot. I didn't fly, you know, a ton, uh I think maybe c 60, 60 ish combat missions, you know, 260-ish hours of combat time. But yeah, all at night, just close air support for for wherever the army and marine guys needed us. But nobody died on my watch, and I'm I'm happy that I sent some 18 and 20 year olds home, hopefully in one piece.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

All of us have experienced in-flight emergencies, and sometimes uh they can be quite interesting. But tell me about your worst in-flight emergency.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

This is uh uh I was gonna say it's the worst. Um it was definitely the one of the more memorable ones for for many reasons. It was at um it was at uh Aviano in Italy. Uh we were doing a two against two air-to-air fight down over the Adriatic. About this is important later in the story. Maybe again my memory starts to get blurry, but let's call it six months prior, the Italians had just started to get F-16s from America. Okay. And one of the bases, I think it was called Chervia, was on the um eastern side of uh of Italy, right along the water. We would go do a lot of our air-to-air stuff just south of Aviano, south of Venice, uh, out over the Adriatic Sea. And I was uh leading my two ship with a uh with a I think he was a I don't remember his name, I think he was a full colonel. He was from Inserlic, was coming over to get some hours. So an F-16 guy, but that hardly ever flew. And it was his first sortie ever in Italy. You know, but this is supposed to be a benign two against two, go out, shoot missiles at each other, hit the merge, don't do a lot of turning. You know, great uh local area ride for him. Okay. Um, leading the other two ships was my squadron commander Joe Gostella. Uh his calls name was Gus, one of the best bosses I ever had. Uh we're out there just doing our thing, you know, shooting our missiles, very, very benign, um, you know, as far as air-to-air sorties go, daytime sorties.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

For our listeners, these are practice missiles, not actual missiles that he just gets.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Yeah, all practice missiles, all practice shooting, yep, uh, nothing live, uh just practicing our skills to be able to use the radar and and uh you know uh lock people up and shoot them at range and then get close to the merge where you could see each other and and and use your infrared uh training missiles and that kind of stuff, yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And the merge, for those who aren't familiar, that is when two airplanes cross side by side going opposite directions.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yeah, to the the precursor to the dogfight in the F-16 uh single engine, uh, of course, the oil gauge, we called it the peanut gauge. It was bigger than a peanut, but it was the smallest one. It was on the top of the engine stack on the right side of the engines. I can't remember, I think it was uh it was measured in pounds per square inch, and you know, and maybe this tiny little needle, and it was maybe the tolerances were plus or minus five psi, and it would bounce around all the time. You know, if you stared at that thing, you'd drive yourself crazy because you only got one engine, and and uh, you know, uh with that engine only comes a limited amount of oil. And if you stared at that thing, you'd be like, this thing is bouncing more than plus or minus five psi or whatever it was. I can't remember. But we did have a so the the F-16 was obviously supersonic, go upside down, negative G, positive G, you know, the engine was designed to handle all of that. But it had a system. This I'm really reaching back. Um, uh it was called engine lublow. And if that light came on, if you're doing a lot of negative G or the oil was going, you know, if you will, to the top of the engine instead of sitting in the bottom of the, you know, like a car with gravity, it would register. Uh, you'd get a master caution, which is a big yellow light in the cockpit, um, and and on a little panel, everything in the F-16 was small because the cockpit wasn't very big, uh, a warning that would say engine blue blow. And if I remember correctly, the procedure was just roll out, don't accelerate, get at 1g, one times the force of gravity, give it, if I remember, 30 seconds for the oil to settle down, reset the system, and and uh if you reset it, it shouldn't come back, and you keep on fighting. Okay, if it does come back, not great, because that's the indication of a real problem. So I remember the weather was bad. Uh, we did have this new divert base chervia because up to that point I want to say it was F-104s that were there, so it was a shorter runway, you know, 8,500 feet, so not very long for F-16s. Um, but uh they had just uh got an instrument landing system, so a precision approach system for the weather, if I remember. But unlike most US fighter bases, uh they did have cables on either end. So, you know, um for the most Air Force fighters had a hook that you could put down, but it wasn't as beefy as a navy jet, you know, we didn't land on aircraft carriers, obviously, but it was a last resort. If your brakes failed or you're gonna go off the end of the runway, you put the hook down and hopefully catch this cable. But most Air Force bases, the cable could go down into the concrete, so every time you drove over it, it didn't bounce up and hit the bottom of your jet. Of course, the Italians, this since this was a new F 16 base, just had the cable on top and it was tied down. But they we had a a nodum, which is stands for notice to airmen that said, Hey, there's cables up if you need to divert there, but land beyond the cable because it is probably gonna bounce up and hit the Butt end of your jet. So we hit the merge. I get the engine lublowed. Um, it was on a Friday. I remember this. I also remember this because my wife's like 75 to 80 year old grandmother had just flow, who's a great lady, uh, is no longer with us, but one of the best, flown over by herself to Italy to hang out with us for two weeks. So I'm like, babe, I'm flying, I'll be home, you know, land at three, debrief, you know, hit the squadron bar a little bit, I'll be home for dinner, right? So again, you see where this is going. We hit the merch, master caution, engine lublow. I call a knock it off, which is a safety term in the Air Force for everybody stop maneuvering, everybody get visual with each other, somebody's got a problem. So we go through that drill, it's very scripted. Yeah, you know, I tell uh my squadron commander Gus, I'm like, hey, uh, I think I was number three at the time. Three's got a you know, engine lublow, standby. So roll out, and you know, I'm working on getting my checklist out just in case. Um, 30 seconds. I tell my number two to rejoin on me. I'm a captain at the time, I think, right? So always nervous having an 06, you know, fly on your wing. Uh um, and you know, again, this guy is not familiar with the local area at all. Uh he's coming from Italy, uh, or I'm sorry, from Turkey as a staff officer. Um, he rejoins on me, starts looking me over, and 30 seconds go by and I push it and it comes back. I push the warning reset, and I'm like, oh boy, this I think is real. Uh so immediately I tell, hey, you know, tell the boss, hey, we're uh diverting to Chervia. I tell my number two, like, you know, uh tell me we're church, you know, I'm busy doing other things. You know, I'm telling, hey, number two, uh, give me the steer point for that. He's like, you know, I can tell he's just like, dude, I didn't sign up for this. You know, like I don't even, you know, I alright, it's first time flying here. Uh weather's bad, you know. Um, and in the checklist, it talks about um, you know, eject your stores. So at the time we just had training missiles on and a centerline gas tank on the F-16 when we did air-to-air sorties. It was empty, it was out of gas. The what I'm pointing at the coastline, I can't see the coastline, clouds everywhere, you know. And I think to myself, this is my one time to put in the F-16. We had a button. Maybe maybe every Air Force fighter does, where you can like one-stop shop, hit the emergency jettison button, and everything falls off your jet to get rid of the drag. And I'm thinking to myself, like, wow, this is my one chance to like actually punch off my fuel tank. And then I'm thinking to myself, I don't know how close I am to the coast. Like, I would just feel terrible if I killed somebody on the ground. You know, this thing's out of gas, it's not that much drag. So as my finger goes over the button, I don't punch off my tank. We start talking to roam control, air traffic control. English is not so great. I'm telling them single engine, and I am staring at this gauge the whole time. Because the minute it goes to zero, you're out of oil, the engine's gonna seize. You know, I start doing the old put all my pencils, tighten up all my straps, you know, get the ejection handle in the F-16, it was in between your legs, you know, uh, out where it was uh readily grabbable if I needed to. I was like, this could be, you know, as soon as this engine seizes, uh, you know, I can't. Uh the F-16 could glide, it had a glide ratio of we called it one to one. So for a thousand feet, theoretically, you could go one mile. So at 10,000 feet above the ground, theoretically, you could glide 10 miles. But you gotta be able to see where you're gliding to. I can't see it. The you know, I'm I'm telling, I can't see the ground. I'm telling it because the clouds, the weather's terrible. I'm telling my number two to get me the weather at Thervia. You know, he comes back and tells me it's at um ILS minimums, which uh I think, you know, for us at the time in the Air Force, this does sound right, 300-foot ceilings and a mile of visibility. Yes, you know, so not great weather. So I'm telling Rome I need immediate emergency, I'm declaring an emergency, I need vectors. I told my number two, just go back to radar trail. You're gonna land, you know, you're gonna land with me in the Air Force world. We like mutual support, we like to go everywhere as a twosome, uh, you know, to have each other's back. I said, start getting ready for this instrument approach, go back to radar trail, which means he takes a lock on me and goes back two miles behind me and just follows me down through the weather. And I'm telling Rome Control I need immediate vectors. You know, I could have engine failure at any moment. Um, they do their best. You know, I mean you know, adrenaline is high at this point. And I remember, I remember telling my number two, hey sir, heads up, the cable is a thousand feet down the runway, it's only like a 9,000 foot runway, so you got to land a thousand feet beyond the cable. So now you're already down to you know 8,000 feet. Don't go off the end of the runway, but don't land in front of the cable because in the F-16, when you would land, our brakes weren't very good. So we would aerobrake, which means you tilted the nose up and let the wind resistance slow you down. And then the speed brakes in an F-16 were on the back end and they were clamshells, so they opened like this. They opened like this, and they were right on either side of the um of the engine. Danger was is if you went over that cable and the cable snapped up, it would hit the bottom of your speed brake. So that's what we were trying to avoid. And he's like, Yep, uh I got it, I got it. So we land, I land past the cable, do my best landing. You know, the engine never sputtered to the credit of General General Electric and that amazing uh single engine jet. You know, I taxi clear, uh, that's when the adrenaline hits, you know, the knees start shaking. And now I'm like, man, I just landed in an Italian base and I don't speak any Italian, you know. I could say like hello and and and uh you know, tell somebody off. That's about the only curse words I knew in Italian, uh, which is very handy most of the time in Italy, and uh where and you know, and hello and where uh can I have a beer? And and I can tell somebody where to go. Uh so I pull into parking, shut down, you know, I raise my canopy. Uh the guy standing there uh puts the ladder on for us to get out, and in my best Italian, I'm like, Bongiorno! And he and he comes back. This is 100% true. He's like, hey bro, what's up? And I'm like, Whoa, your English is really good. And he's like, Yeah, I'm from Fort Worth. And I'm like, You're American? He's like, Yeah, we're here training the uh Italians on how to do maintenance on the F-16. And I'm like, Great, because I don't know any other Italian. That was it. And he's like, Well, uh, yeah, that's great. And wait till you get out and look at the bottom of this jet. And I'm like, okay. And I got out, uh, climbed down the ladder, legs are shaky, you know, the adrenaline started to wear off. About that time, my number two is pulling into park, and uh, I look, and the entire bottom of my jet is brown in oil, and in the back of the jet was a little sight gauge where the maintenance guys could look in with a flashlight and see what the oil level was, and it was at zero. Like I had no oil left, and that baby kept running. Uh, and I and and yeah, so I did in reality have a massive oil leak that who knows. I mean, I probably went 10 to 15 minutes by the time you know that engine quit, and we finally, you know, have to get vectored through the weather for an instant reproach and lined up and landing, you know, it was a good 10 to 15 minutes. Uh so I had a good guardian angel that day, and then the real fun story was uh my number two gets out and lands, and he sees the bottom of my F-16 covered in oil, and he's like, holy smokes! And he's like, I have a confession. And he's like, I landed before the cable. So he sheared off a good two feet on the back of his speed brakes completely. So now we have two broke jets uh in Chervia, Italy. Uh, I'm supposed to be up in Aviano uh having dinner with my grandmother-in-law and wife uh an hour ago, you know. There's like no cell phones back then. I'm you know trying to find a way to get a hold of my operations desk back in the in the 555th Fighter Squadron. And, you know, I'm like, here we are, we're on the ground, this is what happened. Oh, by the way, we have two broke jets. Don't blame me on number two. I told him not to do this, and he's a colonel, so you can yell at him, don't yell at me. Uh, and oh, by the way, you know, uh, can we come home? So, really long story to the closest I ever probably came to pulling the handles. And I must say, uh, one of your previous guests, uh, Keith Butler, Ghost, was our safety officer at the time, and I don't think he ever gave me a safety award for that one. So I still have 20 years later, have a bone to pick with ghosts, because I feel like I should have got like safety save of the week for that one. But uh take that ghost. The F-16 treated me pretty good though. For all of her faults that uh people throw her way, um, she was my baby and she always took good care of me, and that was probably the the closest one. You know, I remember that Fort Worth maintenance guy saying you were you were on borrowed time for where this thing was gonna seize up.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

So, Brett, what's the strangest runway surface you've ever landed on?

SPEAKER_02 30:32

These are all uh Aviano stories that pop into my brain. Years and years ago, I think it was a Marine A6, uh before my maybe in the 80s, hit a ski gondola. It was national news uh doing a low level and uh accidentally killed a bunch of people. Uh and so uh I think that was the the straw that broke the camel's back for the Italians on they took all of our bombing ranges away in um in uh Italy. So we could never drop even practice bombs in Italy. So every time we needed to, we could like real live practice bombs, we could computer simulate them all day long. But if we wanted to drop real practice bombs, we had to go someplace else. So we did a lot of combat support still when I was there over um Kosovo and Bosnia and Florence in the no-fly zone. But the dual edge of that was the there was Dutch uh JTACs, if you remember the joint terminal air controllers that were over there, and they had a bombing range, so we could go over there and drop our little 30-pound practice bombs and and shoot the gun and shoot rockets. If we wanted to drop big bombs, 500 pounders, 2,000 pounders, you know, we had to come back to the states uh or or go to other, we had to deploy other places. But one uh creative way is we would go up to um yeah, Slovenia, one of the Slovakia, Slovenias, there was a bombing range up there, but we could not carry bombs through Italian airspace, uh, so we had to fly up there, land. We had um our own uh weapons troops up there in maintenance, they would load us up, we'd take off, uh hit the bombing range, which was right by this old, you know, eastern block. I I still remember it. Had like SU 25s and uh uh SU22 fitters, none of them were flyable, but sitting on the side of the runway, to me, as a Cold War kid, you know, I thought that was the coolest thing ever, seeing these old Russian relics. You know, I just wanted to go crawl all over them. But um, and we would drop our bombs and then like sky hook it back to Italy because we'd be on fumes uh because we didn't want to, you know, spend the night there. It was again like an 8,500-foot runway, uh no grooves, which uh for the people unfamiliar, most American airports, whether it's civilian or military, they cut these tiny little grooves in the runway. So when it rains, the water flows off to the side. You know, it didn't have any cables, so thank goodness we brought up some portable cables at the end that we put at the end of the runways. But if it rained, it got really slick. You know, it was like asphalt, not concrete, not grooved. No uh every American fighter base usually has like a thousand foot, we called it an overrun and an underrun. Um, so it wasn't landable surface, but if you needed it, you it was stressed to taxi on. They had nothing, it was just a farm field, 8,500 feet of non-grooved uh runway, and then and then that was or it and then off into the dirt. And so again, we went up there for ship. I I remember uh Johnny Vargas, great weapons officer, is brand new, uh leading us up there. Uh number two uh was uh Rick Schaefer, who unfortunately passed away years ago in a private plane accident. Me as number brand new uh I was brand new instructor, I was number three that day, and um our ops group commander, uh I can't remember his name, but uh number four. And I had aspirations of doing bigger and better things in the Air Force after that, and so I did not want to screw up in front of the guy that uh had a very you know influential part on riding my ticket uh after Aviano. So we get up there, and of course, a little tiny thunderstorm parks itself right over the field, rains on this little runway. We hold and watch it. We're getting low on gas, like uh number one's having to make, you know, do we go to Bratislava, which is a civilian airport where they do not want fighter jets there? Can we sky hook it back to Italy? Finally, the rain moves off. He lands. Uh, we all come up initial, looking sharp, four ship, pitch out. I'm number three, and in my brain, I'm like, you know, I'm gonna give, I think we would do five seconds, right? Like one guy would pitch out five seconds later, the next guy pitch out, so and so. I'm like, I'm gonna wait just a couple extra potatoes just to give myself some room off number two. Uh Vegas lands, and I remember him saying breaking action terrible, which isn't even a term. It's like poor nil, you know, and I'm like, hmm, all right. You know, I'm I'm busy doing my thing, so I'm not watching him land. I um see number two land, and he doesn't say a word. I come in and I've given him some extra room, and I told number four, hey boss, you know, I'm gonna uh give me a couple extra seconds so we got some extra spacing. I land, I go into, I see number two down the runway, he's in an aero break. Uh this is 100% true story. I land, get my nose up so I can no longer see number two down in front of me. All I hear, thank goodness, because they did not speak good English, but we also sent American controllers down into the tower. And I hear three, if able, go around, two's in the cable. And I'm like, oh my God. Uh I am like halfway through my aero brake. I remember lowering the nose, seeing a what at the time looked like a lot of F-16 staring me in the face, plugging it into full burner, and just thinking, well, I'm either gonna spear him in the back and we're all gonna die, or I'm gonna barely make it. And I remember pulling the stick as hard as I could. The F-16, you uh the computer made the decision, you just pulled, and then when she was ready to go, she'd go. I come off the ground, and I feel like I cleared his tail by about two feet, you know, as I'm sucking the gear up. It probably was awesome to him as this F-16 flies over his head at about a foot in full burner. Um, and so th now I'm like, oh, we're really gonna have to divert. We were already out of gas, you know, three and four are gonna go into Bratislava. But to our credit, our guys got out there, got number two out of the cable really fast in like eight minutes. It was incredible. Reset the cable. I come around and land on fumes, I'm emergency fuel at that point. I and I remember putting the nose down. It was the rain had gone, hitting the brakes, nothing happened. Full anti-skid. I'm like, oh my god, I'm going into the cable, and I'm really gonna screw number four. But I just put the pedals to the floor, you know. I'm thinking I'm either going into the cable, I think I made the decision at that point, I'm just gonna go into the dirt. And like, I'm just you know, this is I'm just gonna end it and end my career. I'm not gonna, you know, make number four our ops group commander divert to Bratislava. But I finally get it stopped and skid off at the last taxiway. Again, adrenaline's pumping, legs are shaking. And again, I remember taxing in and looking at um Tracer was his call sign. I'm like, Tracer, dude, what the heck? How come you didn't tell me you were taking the cable? And he's like, I keyed the mic when it happened, and all the adrenaline took the spit out of my mouth, and nothing came out, no noise, just air. He's like, I tried. And I'm like, huh? Okay, all right. I'm a little less mad. I'm a little less mad. He's like, I keyed the mic and opened my mouth and nothing came out. And I'm like, well, you almost died, you know, because I almost ran into both of us, and that was almost the end of both of us. But anyway, that was uh that was probably the most interesting runway I ever landed on. Yeah, or at least the closest call, but I still remember it. Three, if able, go around, twos in the cable. And I'm like, oh my god, I can't go around. But again, that mighty GE engine, she put out a lot of thrust out the back end.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Yeah. What a great engine. As you've reminded us, flying can be a very dangerous business. We've all lost friends along the way. Is there anyone you'd like to be sure we remember today?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Yeah, absolutely. And I I hope uh, you know, I've uh I think about this stuff all the time, and I I hope in in my in my uh old man brain I don't forget anybody, but uh I this was my welcome to the real world air force. I had been at when my first assignment was at uh at Coonson. And yeah, again, you know, all I'd ever wanted to do, right? Fly jets. I never went to a school or a staff job. I flew for 21 years. I did every command I think you can do in the Air Force, a few more moves than I was planning on, but um, you know, just how I planned it, just chase chasing the G suit around. Um and I'm in the the 35th uh best squadron, Pantons. If there's any Pantons out there, push it up. I had been there, I don't know, a month, maybe three weeks, uh new guy. I hadn't even got named yet. I was I was so new. And uh Randy Murph, uh Chongo was his call sign, was my sponsor. Was supposed to have my first night vision goggle ride the next night. And Chongo, I think, was on his second or third um uh with a great instructor in our squadron who just retired from FedEx, actually. Um, and uh he got spatially disoriented and and crashed and died. Um and I'd been there like three weeks. I mean, he was my sponsor, he was the guy that walked me around when I showed up, and that was my welcome to you know big boy land in the Air Force. Uh it was surreal, you know, being a new guy in a squadron, having a death uh in the squadron in the first month, um, you know, to go through that. Um uh very, very sad. Then uh even crazier, about two weeks later, uh to maybe a month later, I was supposed to go home to get married. So credit to my wife, great Air Force wife, uh, not designed to go to Coonson for a year remote and get married. She had to move home with her parents, and you know, that is not the way your first year of marriage is supposed to go. And a great buddy of of both of ours that she got to know because she lived with me when I was down in Phoenix for that year doing F-16 school, uh, was Mitch, which was Mitch Bullman, and he uh was out at Shaw in G Locked, which stands for G-induced loss of consciousness. They were doing an air-to-hair ride, you know. And you heard me talking 30 minutes ago about how the F-16, you know, it's a big motor, and down they're out over the ocean off the east coast of South Carolina, Shaw Air Force Base, and and that that baby, I think they were doing a fight tank fight, which is what we called where you'd go out, do some dog fighting, you'd go hit the tanker, get gas, uh, and then go do dog fighting again. So it was a it is a I think a if you've watched Top Gun Maverick, uh, you know, they did a pretty good job of showing what your face looks like when you're pulling G's and how hard it is to talk when you're doing that. You know, it is a workout, it is a full-body workout. And when you do two of them in one day in the summertime in South Carolina, uh, it's a real workout. And he uh G Lock, he you know, he passed out and you're in a single seat uh cockpit. There's um there's nobody there to save the day. Now, luckily, um, you know, I have a lot of friends that would still be alive today if this system existed. Now there is a system in the F-16 that will automatically recover you uh and save your life, but that didn't exist back in you know the early 2000s. So, you know, that was two weeks before my wedding. He was supposed to be a you know a groomsman in my wedding. So now it's like two buddies of mine in like a month. I'm like, holy smokes, you know, what did I get myself into? Another great uh he was a great student of mine when I got out of the active duty. I was a RTU instructor, which stands, I don't even know what RTU stands for. Anyway, it's the schoolhouse for I don't know what does RTU stand replacement training unit. Yeah, yeah. And I was uh I was a schoolhouse uh instructor in Springfield, Ohio in the guard, and um he was a great student, uh Luke Grunther. Uh his call son was Gaza. He ended up going to the nickel, you know, which was my uh you know old F-16 squadron. So he got spatially disoriented just doing a training sortie out there over the Adriatic at night, you know, the same airspace that I was talking, telling you about when I had to divert into Chervia, you know, married with um, you know, brand new married and and um and passed away. Another uh uh great buddy uh of ours, uh Snapper, was uh in uh Kunzon with me. Uh and uh he was one of the guys, if you remember, I don't remember what year it was, 2007-8-ish, uh an Afghan, they were on a staff job, two F-16 guys, a couple guys got killed, but they were on a staff job in Afghanistan, and a crazy Afghan colonel walked in and shot up the room, and uh and uh Frank Bryant was his name, and uh and he got killed in that. Uh so that wasn't even a flying accident, uh, you know, that was just uh some dang staff job in Afghanistan. And then uh, you know, the one that or you know, they all hit home pretty hard, but uh my flight commander in the triple nickel at Aviano was uh Troy Gilbert, Trojan, who was uh killed in a strafing accident uh in Iraq, uh a daytime strafing accident, and just uh unfortunately had a controlled flight into terrain on his second gun run and and uh you know became national. Uh it's a pretty well-known story if you look it up on the internet uh on how many, I mean, like a decade, you know, for them to find his body and repatriate it and and and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, too too m too many, you know, a few other peripheries that I knew at the academy, you know, wasn't great friends, but um, you know, guys that died in T3 accidents when we were at the academy going through that initial flight training, and you know, um it's just uh it's a dangerous business. You know, you uh it will jump she will jump up and bite you if you don't uh pay it through respect, it's it's due. And and you know, every one of these guys was a great pilot, and it just was you know, when your numbers up, your numbers up and it wasn't their day. And uh I yeah, I think about them all the time. You know, I've uh a couple of them are out, uh Trojan and Snapper out at uh Arlington. I visited their graves a couple times. It's you know, it's it's sad, and it'll continue to happen. A lot of great guys and girls out there doing it, and um it's part of the sacrifice, you know. I raise a toast uh to those guys frequently.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Yep, for sure. Well Brett, thank you so much for being with us today on the podcast, and thanks for sharing some true learning lessons and leadership and remembrances.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, I I appreciate you having me. It was uh it was a hell of a run. Twenty-one years, I was I was not quite quite ready to hang up the G suit. Um, you know, I I don't blame him one bit because he was a hundred percent right, but I I remember walking in the door when my son at the time was uh twelve years old from Columbus flying 38s, and you know, between FedEx and and that job, I was on the road, you know, 21-ish days a month in a hotel um between the two jobs, and he's like, Dad, you are never home. And I'm like, Oh man, you're right. I I am never home. I hate it. I had a great commander down there, had great lots of great commanders down at Columbus, and I walked down the next week and said, Boss, I I think I need to I think I need to hang it up. People people are starting to notice, and it's not all about me anymore, you know. Like this is what my kid said, and he's like, Yep, you've had a great run and time to retire. So that was it. And I haven't I miss the bros, I miss doing hello level, and I miss going to the range and shooting the gun and dropping bombs. Um I do miss the bubbles and I miss the bar and and the camaraderie, but uh it is nice to not do another PT test or uh you know stand-of stand-of out test anymore. So yeah, the airlines is a definitely a different world when it comes to that.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Always good to listen to the wisdom of the 12-year-old as well.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

He's a smart kid. If 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 and 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 previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.