"So There I Was"

One of the vastly under-appreciated aspects of pilothood is the ability to tell a good flying story. Just as there is a wide variance among pilots’ flying skills, the degree of proficiency in telling flying stories is also a benchmark of sorts in rating a pilot’s competence and social standing among his or her peers. If a pilot cannot weave a story in which the laws of physics were briefly suspended during some kind of airborne emergency or near-disaster, resulting in saving the airplane and all the lives onboard entrusted in their care, then other pilots could reasonably question that pilot’s ability to handle the stick when things go bad. And that really is what makes a pilot a pilot; heck, you can teach a monkey to fly, but only a select breed have the steely nerves and daring attitude to make things right when things go wrong. When the wing-off light illuminates on the console, you want a calm and collected hand at the controls, not a monkey reaching for a banana. And story telling is an insight into the pilot’s soul, whether he or she has the right stuff for the job.

Tom Wolfe, in his best selling book The Right Stuff, sums up the attributes required of a pilot well when discussing Chuck Yeager and his contributions to the piloting profession. There are pilots in the mold of Yeager himself who would rather ride an airplane with a multiple-engine flameout into the ground like a glider than utter the E word (emergency) lest some air traffic controller think they’re not real pilots. While not a pilot himself, Wolfe was able to peer into the soul of our profession and accurately expose the “Brotherhood of the Right Stuff” to readers worldwide. If you’ve ever wondered why nearly all airline captains sound like they’re from some dog hollow out yonder from Charleston, West Virginia (Charlie West in pilot parlance), you should do yourself a favor and read Tom Wolfe. He may very well have written the best book about pilots since Ernest K. Gann’s Fate is the Hunter.

There are three scenarios which dictate the degree of truthfulness one should relay when telling a flying story: among his or her aircrew peers, among non-flyers, and at parties or other places where alcohol is being consumed.

After the last flight of the day, it is customary for the crew to meet for drinks after checking into their lodging for crew rest. It really doesn’t matter if folks have changed out of their uniforms or not, or if anybody has showered or not; what is vitally important is that before anybody does anything else, such as sleep or go to dinner, the entire crew must meet in somebody’s room and discuss things over a few drinks. While many subjects from politics to current events may be discussed, inevitably the discussion will turn to flying. And when telling a flying story in front of your peers, it had better be believable. There is some leniency for rumors or hearsay, but if it happened to you, you’d better tell it correctly and you’d better be (mostly) truthful. There doesn’t necessarily even have to be much of a point to the story, but there must be a lesson that everybody can learn from. Even when discussing an aircraft accident, many pilots will not assign blame; they merely discuss what could have been done differently to break the chain of events leading up to the accident. However, nobody can overly criticize what the crew was thinking or what they did before the accident, since others cannot accurately say what they would have done in the exact same circumstances, especially if the mishap aircrew is no longer among the living to defend themselves.

A good example of this kind of story: So there I was, flying an emergency medical flight from Japan to Hawaii with a two-week-old infant with congenital heart failure onboard. After landing in Honolulu, we were directed to exit the runway on the far side from the airport ramp. Once on the taxiway, we realized that we had blown a hydraulic seal on the system that powers the C-141’s brakes and nose wheel steering. The ambulance could not reach us where we were, so we decided to taxi to the ramp using asymmetric thrust to make turns and reverse thrust to control our speed and to stop. I wouldn’t normally do that, but under the circumstances, it was the quickest way to get the poor kid to the ambulance. Yeah, they could have shut down the runway to let the ambulance across, but it would have taken far more time. Lesson learned: sometimes rules are made to be broken if somebody’s life is in the balance.

There is somewhat more leeway when telling flying stories to non-flyers, simply because there is nobody to call you out on your tale. That being said, dear readers, everything I have ever said in this blog is 100% true. If I were standing in front of you at a gathering, I might embellish a thing or two to make it more entertaining, but I would eventually ‘fess up. For instance, I went to pilot training at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas. When we returned to base from our practice area, we would fly along the Rio Grande to enter into the traffic pattern for landing. One time, an instructor and her student pilot started flying along the river, but it soon petered out in the desert. Realizing that the Rio Grande has its headwaters in southern Colorado and not in West Texas, the instructor executed a sharp turn to the east; they had followed a tributary into Mexico. Sometime later, I took a little liberty with the event and made it my own story; I told a friend at a Christmas gathering that I had strayed into Mexico and was intercepted by the Mexican Air Force flying WWII era P-51 Mustang fighters.

Throw in a little alcohol at a party or a bar and anything is fair game. You can say whatever you want and there is a pretty good chance that your audience will not know the difference, unless there is another pilot among the crowd. As a matter of fact, pilots are in their prime at such events; just as my opening blog last month stated: How do you know a pilot is at a party? He’ll tell you. The follow-up joke is: How do you know a fighter pilot is at a party? He’ll keep telling you.

My office job in the squadron when I am not actively flying is that of executive officer. As such, it is my job to write performance reports, commander’s correspondence, awards and decorations, and other official documentation. I especially like writing awards for members of my squadron, since I am privy to events happening on all sorts of missions; I have read about camels crossing the runway during the takeoff roll, airbase attacks, emergency depressurizations, engine failures, bird strikes, and other stories that make good inputs for Air Medals or other awards. They are also good fodder for embellishing my own stories should the need arise. And with the holiday party season kicking off this week, I should have plenty of opportunities to engage in some festive story telling.

I particularly like the camel crossing the runway story. Seriously, how would you explain a camel strike? We have a standard form to fill in for a bird strike, but how would you write up hitting a camel at 100 knots? Maybe it would go a little something like this:

So there I was…