Asp One, Oak View, CA (2026)

10/26/2024

My Walking Thoughts for Sunday October 27 2024

New Orleans November 1960: My First $100.00 Night.

Following my carrier qualification session aboard Antietam, the orders transferring me from Pensacola to the Advanced Naval Air Training Command headquartered at Corpus Christi gave me four days to cover that distance by private conveyance. This was more than enough to grant me a night on the town in New Orleans. Though I had never been there other to land, refuel, and take off on a night out-and-in hop a month before, my dreams held it a city of intrigue and… well, perhaps a bit of naughty excitement.

Bear in mind (better I should have paid more attention to the situation myself at the time) I was pulling down shy of $300.00 per month, but at least by then I owned my uniforms free and clear, leaving me with a larger margin for playtime than before.

At 0815 on Wednesday, November 16th, with orders and $150.00 in hand, I waved goodbye to the ‘Birthplace of Naval Aviation, and turned my Fiat Abarth Monza Coupe westward, bound for The Big Easy… why the appellation I’m still not quite sure. Anyway, the trip took around four hours with a stop for coffee in Gulfport, putting me at the doorstep of the French Quarter at midday.

From there I began my investigative foray into the famous and infamous joints that lured simpletons like me to spend prodigious sums of money for reasons that evade understanding in my simple brain to this day.

Anyway, by the time evening gave way to the witching hours, I suspect I had made it about halfway through the ginmills on Bourbon Street. It was at this point my situational awareness quotient entered into what I presume in 20:20 hindsight to have been a rapidly cascading failure mode.

This unplanned trip into and beyond the twilight zone resolved itself by the next morning when I found myself in a dingy hotel room, my clothes strewn hither and yon.

While trying unsuccessfully to reconstruct the events that led me to this rather woebegone bo***ir, I spied my wallet amid a plethora of sordid tourist treasures atop the dresser, raising my fear of lacking the wherewithal to make it from New Orleans to Corpus Christi.

“Maybe I should find a plank overlooking the Mississippi and be done with it,” I thought, terrified at what dismal secrets awaited me in the bowels of my billfold. Pondering my prospects for at least a half-hour, I was finally able to muster the courage to learn my fate.

Surprise of all surprises, lying next to my faux elephant-skin wallet—yeah, the one I had had since high school bearing the outline of an unused--well guys of my era know what that round emblem represented-- was a wad of ones and tens amounting to forty-nine bucks. Later, I found seventy-three cents in change in my trousers pocket. My short term solvancy assured.

Showered but unshorn, I was on the street by mid-morning trying to remember where my car was, a mystery I was able to solve by noon. Gaining an hour in the transit from Eastern to Central Standard time, I arrived at the base at NAS Corpus Christi a few minutes before midnight, still unable to account for what had happened the night before. No matter, I made up my mind that my first $100 night had been a rip-roaring success.

Was New Orleans the city of intrigue I had envisioned? You bet. Was it the scene of naughty excitement? Uhh… maybe, but truth be told, I honestly don’t remember.

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10/19/2024

My Walking Thoughts for Sunday October 20 2024

Off to the Boat

November 10, 1960—the Marine Corps’ 185th Birthday. That was the day… the day for which I had been practicing at Barin Field for more than a week… the day I and my flightmates would distance ourselves from 99 percent of pilots anywhere in the world by plunking our T-28Cs onto the deck of an underway aircraft carrier.

At this point, I had 168 flight hours, more than a lot of aviators in the Pacific War had when they arrived in the Pacific to operate from straight deck carriers ready to engage enemy pilots in deadly combat. Moreover, I had 200 landings in the T-28 alone, so it wasn’t that I was wet behind the ears. Put another way, I was certain I was up to the CarQual challenge.

The target vessel was the USS Antietam, CV-36, an Essex class carrier, commissioned in 1945, veteran of the Korean War, and the first with a true angled-deck. She was for six years the Navy’s training carrier, homeported in Pensacola beginning from 1959 until the end of her career in 1963. .

The temperature was in the mid-40s as I struggled out of the rack, conscious that a lot was riding on my performance that day. It was foggy as I headed for the chow hall, damp enough to plaster my uniform with a slick film of water. Half an hour later on my way to the hangar, the sky was brighter but still foggy. This had been the prevailing condition over the past week, socked in at dawn, then turning into picture perfect Florida Panhandle days by 0800. Still I worried that the weather might stand in the way of the climax to my training experience in the T-28.

Marshal time at the Antietam for our flight of four aircraft was set for 0930 with a Charlie Time (time at the ramp on our first approach) of 0945. Word had been passed no fewer than fifty times in the last three days, “Don’t be late,” spoken with such vehemence as to promise that to do so would consign us to the book of dastardly performance for all to see until the end of time.

I was tail-end Charlie of our flight that had loosened out with the boat a mile to our starboard side, so we could all take a look at our destination. What was my immediate reaction to the sight? How about “Holy moly! That looks like a garbage scow someone dragged in as a joke.” It really did… maybe smaller.

“No-no-no,” I said, probably loud enough for the Antietam’s Captain to hear me, but it was too late to back out now. Our flight was peeling off to the downwind side, descending to 325 feet, dirtying up, and slowing to that sacred 82 knots airspeed, but with the tailhook in the stowed position to complete what was called the “Look-See” pass.

Coming around to the ship’s course, this time to pass over the deck at 325 feet, I tried to convince myself that rather than a garbage scow, Antietam was as large as the largest runway in the world. I failed, though I did take some heart that it appeared to be large enough to hold the T-28 without turning turtle and sinking.

The next time around led to a touch-and-go pass with the hook still up, this time flying the glideslope all the way to touchdown, then adding power for a go-around. After that, if I forgot to drop the hook, it would cost me a bottle of hootch—no doubt 75 year old malt—to make certain I never made that mistake again.

With the exception of the hook, the rest of the passes—there would be eight in all to attain the qualification—were the same as I’d practiced at Barin Field. In fact the only difference from the field training was the small burble about 5 seconds from touchdown, compliments of the carrier’s bridge structure. I found at that point I had to add a smidgen of power, then scootch it back again to stay on the flightpath.

As always, the T-28 seemed to handle most of the glideslope work, leaving the lineup, to me right up to the instant of touchdown. As carriers today, Antietam had four heavy cables (wires) stretched perpendicular to centerline of the angled deck for the tailhook to snag. The number three wire was the preferred target, one and two, closer to the round down (stern) and 4, the last chance before encountering a ‘bolter.’

At the instant of touchdown—and without waiting to see if the hook snagged a wire—we had been taught, to slam throttle to full power and hold it there until totally stopped, or back to pattern altitude in the event of a hook skip.

It was my experience that even before my wits returned, a taxi director would be frantically signaling me to re**rd the throttle, raise the hook, then haul tail across the “foul line” to allow the next aircraft to land.

Rather than relaxing once I’d cleared the landing area, I found that as I was passed from one deck handler to the next, I seemed to be looking at a lot more ocean than deck… sometimes sensing there may be less than three feet from going overboard. So I paid attention.

Doing as I was told, I’d soon find my bird strapped to the catapult preparing for takeoff. It was here I fell into the hands of the the catapult officer—the shooter—who would eyeball my aircraft before signaling me to run up to full power. After checking my gauges and flight controls and finding them where they belonged, I would give him a snappy salute, indicating I was ready to go. With a final look around, the shooter would assume the classic catapult officer launch pose, and WHANG, my T-28 would be off like a dragster.

The recovery and launch sequences sped by… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Then in response to an instruction from Pri-Fly that I my session was finished, I made a clearing turn to starboard, raised my gear and flaps, and after figuring out where the hell I was, I headed for Saufley.

On the way back, I told myself I should be over the moon in my achievement, but I wasn’t. Instead, I felt a sadness at having left something behind in the process, the letdown just as real as the accomplishment. Even as I accepted the congratulations of the ground crewmen who helped me from the plane (Buno 149586 if someone now owns it, I remained at a loss how to catalog the feeling… maybe even the entire episode with the T-28 at the boat.

In retrospect, the LSO gave me five OKs and three Fairs. Seven of the eight traps involved 3-wires, the other a 2-wire. Best of all, I never taxied into another aircraft or the ocean.

Next week, I’m off to NAS Kingsville for Advanced Training.

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10/12/2024

My Walking Thoughts for Sunday October 13 2024

Field Carrier Landing Practice

Waving goodbye to my unblemished target, I headed back to Saufley Field to prepare for carrier qualification in the T-28 C. The model differed from its sister, the T-28 B, with the inclusion of a tailhook, its associated operating equipment, and a slightly shorter propeller that provided increased deck clearance during arrestment deceleration.

Where my past duties at Saufley involved flying the T-34 Mentor primary trainer with its 260 horsepower Continental O-470, this time I was one of the lucky bastards who got to sound reveille with the 1425 horsepower Wright Cyclone 1820.

The routine was to make an early launch from Saufley, rendezvous with flight mates, and proceed to Barin Field, twenty miles to the west. There, we would settle in for 30 minutes of slow flight, which meant gear, flaps, and speedbrakes out, canopy open, and engine throttled back to maintain a steady eighty-two knots… not 81, not 83. As a point of reference, wings level power on stall speed is 70 knots. Power off in a 30-degree banked turn, this rises to 78, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room either way.

FCLPs

Once settled in, we were ready for the flight’s main event, FCLPs, whose pattern proceeded as follows:

1. Enter the downwind leg with gear, flaps, and speedbrake extended, airspeed 82 knots, canopy open, and at an altitude of 325 feet above the ground.

2. Proceed to a position Abeam the point of intended landing (1,000 to 1,200 yards distant) maintaining altitude and airspeed.

3. Begin the Approach turn 10 to 20 degrees (depending on the wind) beyond the Abeam position using 15 to 18 degrees angle of bank.

4 Pick up the Meatball at the 70-degree position. Still 82 knots, 325 feet, then commence a descent of 350-500 feet per minute to intercept and center the Meatball.

5. In the Groove, line up on the runway centerline and use throttle to maintain the glideslope… nominally 3.25 degrees.

6. On touchdown lower the nose to the runway. In the case of a full-stop landing, reduce power to idle and brake as necessary to clear the runway. If it is a touch-and-go landing (which most are in FCLP hops), retract the speedbrake, add takeoff power, and when airborne transition to 90 knots, make a gentle clearing turn to starboard, climb to 350 feet, and make a port turn to slot into downwind traffic.

The Meatball

From the beginning of aircraft landing on ships back in the 1920s, to the introduction of optical landing systems (OLS) in the 1940s, pilots relied on their visual perception of the landing area, with the aid of Landing Signals Officers (LSOs using colored flags, cloth paddles, and lighted wands.

OLSs were developed after World War II by the British and deployed on U.S. Navy carriers beginning in 1955. In its developed form, the OLS consisted of a mirror reflecting a light source set to show the proper glidepath, and a horizontal row of green lights as a reference to signal whether the aircraft was too high, too low, or at the correct trajectory as the pilot descended the glide slope towards the carrier's deck.

Fresnel Lenses have replaced flat mirrors in today’s optical landing systems, a great improvement for shipboard operations, less so at airports such as Barin that rarely are plagued by pitching or rolling motions.

So how did it go for me?

Smoothly, thank you… mostly the result of exacting training requirements, and the reliability of the T-28, coupled with its desire to do most of the work for me.

For example: The book said that once you centered the meatball on final approach, it should take between 24 and 26 inches of manifold pressure to hold glideslope. It was my experience that in the morning approaches, 24 inches was just about right. In the afternoon with higher headwinds, you might need 26 inches. Once you hit the deck and intended to proceed with a touch-and-go, you needed to get the speedbrakes up and grab a couple handfuls of rudder and elevator trim as you pushed the throttle to takeoff power. Again, the bird did the heavy lifting.

The more FCLPs I did, the less exciting the process was until, when it was time to go to the boat (next week) I felt confident in our (my and the T-28’s) prospect of success.

***

During the entire workup at Barin Field, there was but one heartstopper when a member of my flight began to develop an engine problem.

Dutifully he began to climb, but before he reached 1,000 feet—too low to bail out—the engine seized. I think even today that from where he was at that point, he was in good shape for making it to the duty runway, but the airborne safety instructor told him to widen his pattern out, which turned out to be bad advice.

Barin Field has two 5,000-foot runways, 09/27, the main duty runway we were used to using, and runway 15/33. Unfortunately, from where he had been vectored the student was unable to make a proper entry into any of them. Instead, he cut across the field on a heading of north, touched down just short of the parking apron, ran through what had once been the Operations building, and shedding parts in all directions plowed into a slough.

Amazingly, a wrecker truck was in hot pursuit, arriving on the scene in less than a minute. The driver leaped out of the truck, grabbed the cable from the front windless, and leaped into the water where he took a turn around the aircraft’s tail. Racing back to the truck, he threw it into reverse and dragged what was left of the Trojan’s carcass back onto dry ground. There, sitting in his seat was the pilot, wet, still breathing oxygen through his mask, and unhurt.

There were three upshots of the adventure: destruction of the T-28, demolition of an abandoned building, and most unfortunate of all, the student’s decision to drop from the program.

***

10/05/2024

My Walking Thoughts for Sunday October 6 2024

Come Take Your Seat in the Squirrel-Cage

On May 1, 1960, Training Squadron Three (VT-3) was re-commissioned at South Whiting Field and tasked with training student pilots in the art of Formation Flying, Radio Instruments, and Air-to-Air Gunnery. Since I arrived at Whiting two months after this momentous occasion, my arrival had been delayed just long enough for me to receive the blessings attendant to these activities, especially the last.

Before I go into my own experiences, I’m compelled to bear the vituperation of those not interested in the dynamics of aerial gunnery, but since aerial gunnery was what distinguished fighter pilots from all others in the flying arena, you’re going to have to put up with a few factoids.

Let’s start with the velocity of a bullet fired from an aircraft, which is equal to the aircraft forward speed plus the bullet’s muzzle velocity minus an average slow down rate of 1.7 percent per second.

The velocity of the bullet as it leave’s the T-28’s wing mountef gun pod’s muzzle is 3,150 feet/second, but its overall velocity when adding the aircraft’s velocity of 240 knots, is just short of 3,300 feet/second. If fired at the putative maximum effective range of 1,200 feet, it slows to around 3,100 feet/second by the time it reaches the minum range of 600 feet from the target… the breakaway point to avoid smacking banner with the aircraft. The gravity drop from the bullet between the maximum and minimum firing ranges is approximately a foot and a half.

With the tractor aircraft and banner proceding on a straight track at 3,500 feet and 150 knots, the attacking aircraft at 240 knots with an angle off of 25 degrees has less than 2 seconds to complete the firing pass while in-range (1200 to 600 feet), while pulling roughly 2.5 g. The breakaway is accomplished by relaxing the g-force and leveling the wings, the maneuver allowing the attacking aircraft to pass behind and below the banner.

The "squirrel-cage" gunnery pattern is a tilted circle with four firing aircraft moving around the periphery, equally separated by 90 degrees. The tow aircraft and banner constitute a small chord at one side of the circle, with the starting or ‘perch’ position on the opposite side. The plane of the circle is inclined to the horizon by the amount of altitude advantage of the perch position relative to the tow aircraft and banner. Thus the circle moves at the speed and in the direction of the tow aircraft.

Sounds easy as you sit there in the classroom watching as an instructor simulates the squirrel cage and attack profile using a pair of little wooden models to illustrate its different positions, beginning with the perch. This position puts the attacker T-28 slightly forward of abeam and 3,500 feet above the tractor with an overtake speed of 20 to 30 knots.

Using the models, the instructor then demonstrated the attack profile from turn-in, through the reversal, into the final attack phase, and breakaway, first as it should be, and then with mistakes and their consequences.

In our dreams we students tended of focus on the final attack portion, but in truth the keys to arriving at the correct firing position lie in commencing the attack at the correct perch and then completing the reversal at right point. If you’re too early you’ll end up with too high an angle-off from the banner; too late and you’ll find yourself ‘sucked,’ engaged in an energy sapping tail chase. There, your threat is not only to the banner, but the tractor aircraft and its occupants as well…a serious no-no In the eyes of all instructors.

Now to the real deal.

Rather than a ‘go for it’ exercize, the G-1 hop was a ‘look-see’ event either in the back seat of an observer aircraft or the tractor… my fate. There are stories of students becoming 20% aces at the expense of the tractor, but I’ve never been convicnced of their veracity, though they make for great barroom tales. My memory holds that the minute a student commenced his reversal either a microsecond too early or too late, the airwaves were filled with screams of “wave it off.”

“Not going to happen to me,” I told myself in preparation for my G-2 baptism to aerial combat. Armed with 100 red-painted 20mm cannon shells, I was ready to show the world what an ace in the making looked like. In fact I held the same expectation for G-3, G-4, and G-5, all of which served to instill in me a large dose of humility, along with a healthy respect for the true marksmen of previous eras where the targets were not straight-and-level banners proceding at a miserly 160 knot “shoot me” pace. Suffice it to say, no vestige of long gone heroes graced our rolls while I was there, nor any instructor, though one managed to snag the banner with a wingtip, not that he received Por Le Merit for the achievment.

The T-28 itself was a flawless gun platform, which if you provided it with the proper starting position then waited for the correct reversal point to arrive, would pretty much deliver you to that magic point where you were certain tear the heart out of the banner.

After six rotations through the squirrel cage on each of the firing hops, our flight would join on the leader, worn out from the excitement, but eager to see how many holes each of us had inflicted of the banner.

It took the tractor aircraft about an additional 15 minutes to make it back to the field, by which time our flight had time to shut down, fill out ‘Yellow Sheets” and wait, shuddering with anticipation, as the arming crew dragged the rag onto the flightline for our eager inspection. Like those of our predecessors, ours remained unsullied to the very end.
Aerial Gunnery Pattern Viewed from Above

• Perch
• Reversal
• Firing Range.
• Breakaway
• Climb back to the Perch

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09/14/2024

My Walking Thoughts for Sunday September 15 2024

The Blue Angels…from the Slot

Except for appearances in front of crowds or at functions in their honor when they act out the role others expect, the Blues (pilots and to a lesser degree, crewmembers) are serious, soft-spoken, almost remote. Not aloof, mind you, but occupied more with matters of their responsibility and…mortality.

And why not? It's easy enough to grasp. It's what you experience the minute you go outside the safe limits you've set for yourself. Go on, put yourself in their spot; locked in the middle of the famous Blue Angel Diamond. You've nothing to lose but a little complacency.

***

You find there are three spaces you'll transit during a performance. The first is when you start your walkdown to the plane. It's rehearsed--ritualized because someone decided that demonstration pilots should look precise from the moment they hit the flightline.

The second space is transition. It has no name. Nowhere is it written down. You and your teammates never talk about it, but everyone knows it's there--inviolate. Let it be too short and you find yourself rushing to catch up; too long, and you fidget. The goal is a melding of man (or woman) and machine; a mutual absorption of identities that occurs in a flash of recognition.

You don't think it, you know it in the fit of the seat cushion; how your knuckles brush the canopy rails as you glide your hand by the rows of switches on either console. One instant, you're out there with the audience; the next, you're in here with a you that melds with an amalgam of boron and honeycomb, aluminum and silicon; an improbable collection of million year-old acid-etched neurons poised to plunge to the depths of the imagination, and beyond.

The third is fulfillment. Not like any others at all. You don't see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or even feel it. "Aha," you say, "You sense it!" But wait. It's deeper; less dense. It radiates from some central core with a wavelength and amplitude so impossibly small, it courses through you the way a spaceship hurtles through the interstellar void. It lies far beneath awareness, yet it possesses you, permeating from within. It nestles in the synthetic binding force holding us fast to all the other stuff of this new being. The neuron; the synapse; the whirling turbine, marshalled electron; the molecules of air awaiting the implacable rendering of Bernoulli’s Law. Here, physics and fantasy become inextricably one.

***

"Smoke on," The Boss orders to stir the crowd prior to taxi-out.

It's a gathering thing, beginning as whole images. You take the runway with three other glistening icons drawn together by as yet incomplete forces. You're aware of the back pressure of the throttles on your palm; of gloves that interdict your union with the sculptured handles that bristle with the buttons of your trade. You acknowledge the curt power-up head nod of the man ahead--Number Two in the formation who rides the leader's starboard wing--and note remotely that your engine instruments track the forward plunge of your left hand.

"Burners…now!" the Boss calls releasing brakes, and as the shiny pack leaps forward your world contracts until it encompasses a jittering slice of wingtip and one square foot of reference area on Two's fuselage. Nothing else matters until you're airborne and ready to duck into the slot beneath the leader’s aircraft.

"Four's aboard," you hear a lip mike distorted voice report in your headset knowing it's yours but sensing it’s coming from somewhere outside the flight.

"Tighten it up, Three," that voice intrudes again, coaxing the left-hand wingman up into position.

As Number Four, the slot man, yours is the most difficult of transitions--really the hairiest of the program--where immediately upon becoming airborne, you snap the gear handle sharply up against its stop, simultaneously tapping the stick to the left to commence a slide beneath Number Two's tail.

Even before you've reached the space between the two wingmen, you bias the stick back to the right and scootch the throttles forward to tuck beneath the Boss and balance off the diamond formation. It may look simple from the viewing stands, but it isn't. Invisible vortices stream back and below the lead and wingmen ladling the air with downwash; most violent and dangerous during the initial transition from lift-off to climb. To flirt with these so close to the ground is to court disaster and you taste the surge of adrenaline each time you catch a momentary buffet.

"Ease the power," the Boss coaches, but it isn't necessary because at a range of six feet from your nose to his tail, just the slightest mismatch of power becomes apparent in the blink of an eye. That's what it's about--relative motion.

In the course of the show, the formation will attain speeds as high as 600 feet per second while separated by less than five feet. The trick is to sense any opening or closing velocity while the differential is still slight and take immediate corrective action. In point of fact, you are hardly ever stabilized in position, rather constantly correcting and re-correcting with minute movements of the stick and throttle.

"Fifty-six," Boss reports, advising the altitude in hundreds of feet at the top of the opening loop. The backdrop shifts from sky to earth as you settle lightly into your shoulder straps. You watch the runway emerge from the canopy bow, blossom, then slide beneath the nose as the flight continues its arc back into the sun.

You didn’t count them, but you know that in the forty seconds since brake release, you've sawed the throttles back and forth more than a thousand times. The stick grip has traveled nearly an eighth of a mile at four inches or less a crack. The wingtips on either side of your canopy have fluttered and flopped in the turbulence but on-balance they've never strayed more than a foot from their prescribed position--three feet out and locked at eyeball level.

The cockpit temperature is a cool 55 degrees, yet you can feel the sweat beading on your forehead and soon a stinging drop finds your eye. You blink, but there's nothing you can do except endure the discomfort. In 20 seconds, you'll be out of sight of the crowd where you can loosen up just enough for you to wipe your face…but for now you take it.

"Three, bring it aft a tad," the voice intrudes again, and you sense his wing sliding back six inches to its proper place.

You think, Well, we nailed the opener, only 33 more maneuvers to go.

[This is a piece I wrote in 1967 after dinner with one of the Blue Angel pilots flying F-4 Phantoms.

I was never a member of the Blues though I think I could have done the stick-and-throttle stuff without killing anyone. But it takes a very special person to handle all the other tasks that make the Blues the most visible symbol of Naval Aviation…in fact of the entire naval establishment… a very, very heavy burden.]

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09/07/2024

My Walking Thoughts for Sunday September 8 2024

Formation Flight

I’ll go into the T-28 syllabus for formation flight training next week, but first I’d like to present a broad background on the topic

Understanding number one:
Formation flying is one of the most challenging and therefore most fun pursuits there is…period.

Also, breathes there a pilot who hasn’t watched the Blue Angels or any of the dozen or so other flight demonstration teams in action and not dreamed of being a part of them. I hope not.

Understanding number two:
Formation flying is the first skill that begins to set military flight students apart from their civilian counterparts. True, civilian pilots too can engage in it, but with different ends in mind.

Understanding number three:
An obvious utility of formation flying is that it allows two or more aircraft to travel safely from one place to another at the same time and in roughly the same airspace, but if that were all, it probably wouldn't be worth the bother.

Understanding number four:
Formation flying is the classroom for the study not just of relative motion but in a greater sense, aerial teamwork. Yes, killer instinct is a vital part of the fighter pilot equation, but not the only one…maybe not the most important. Mission is the bottom line of military flying, and this is where teamwork comes to the fore.

Understanding number five:
Combat formations are about mutual support and if anything, more difficult to maintain properly than parade formations because of the distances involved. Distance between combat elements varies in relation to a number of factors—altitude, airspeed, visibility, purpose—but for a quick and dirty marker think of a mile separation at 25,000 feet for a starting point.

It's easy enough to say that it is the wingmen's responsibility to maintain position on the leader but clearly it is not that simple. In a tactical maneuvering situation for instance, at any given time one person will be in a better position to clear the other’s tail, maybe the flight leader maybe the wingman. In a prolonged turn this situation will swap back and forth. As a result, all participants will be making constant adjustments to maintain mutual support.

***

Not so, close company formations where leaders do the leading and wingmen do what it takes to stay in position.

Understanding number six:
While the leader can do much to help the wingman by making maneuvers as smooth as possible and by communicating what’s to follow by use of hand signals or head nods, neither is required—merely "good form.”

Understanding number seven:
From the wingman’s standpoint, formation flight requires total, undivided concentration on a very particular spot on the leader's airplane and staying there...no exception permitted. Formation flying is an endless series of corrections in response to even the tiniest of mismatches the in the vectors of the participating aircraft. For instance, any change in the lead aircraft’s flight path will necessitate a corresponding but somewhat greater response by the wingman. The longer the delay in responding to a mismatch, the greater the amount relative motion will develop, calling for an increased severity in the required response.

With all the electronic wizardry in present day aircraft, you might wonder whether there’s a place for flight integrity (or even pilots) anymore, but if experience teaches anything it’s that even the simplest of plans and assumptions disappear into the ever-present fog of war when the furball begins.

Belief number one:
The next war may begin in the hands of the technologists but shortly chaos will assert itself, resulting in aircraft and aircrew attrition, communications, navigation, and intelligence system shortfalls, changing strategic and tactical objective that toss all the plans and assumptions into a cocked hat, and all the other things whose impacts will be recognized after the initial dust settles.

When that happens maybe we’ll remember why piloting skills and teamwork are important and that formation flying is important to their existence.

Asp One

10/26/2024

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