Fighter Pilot Parent by Brick Conners

Author:Brick Conners
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632992307
Publisher: River Grove Books
Published: 2019-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

I went back to work on another no-fly schedule. Morale was low. As I waited for the CO to sign the schedule, I heard the emergency tones and signals and then an announcement saying the US-3 was coming back. The airplane had a system failure, and with nowhere else to land, was returning to the ship. By the time we were having another meal, our dead shipmate was making his way back to the freezer, awaiting repairs on his ride.

The following day, US-3 number two arrived with the right parts and the right people to fix US-3 number one. Our poor shipmate made another assisted trip to the flight deck and was strapped into US-3 number two. This time, though, he had live passengers with him. This particular airplane is cramped to begin with, and with limited seating, it must have been very awkward for the living passengers. They taxied to the catapult, launched, and within moments had to return to the ship!

The murmurs started in all the other ready rooms. “The dead guy is getting more flight time and traps than we are . . . wow . . . only in the Navy, I guess.” Our poor dead shipmate made another return trip to his freezer. But now he was a celebrity. During the past week, he had the most flight time and the most traps in the entire air wing. Everyone was now tracking his status. With no disrespect intended, everyone saw the comical absurdity in this situation, and it served as both a distraction and a morale spark when everyone galvanized together in getting him home.

There would be a third launch and return—I can’t recall the reason. But the dead sailor became the only thing anyone talked about. It was so crazy that laughter seemed to be the only option. Humorous cartoons started circulating. Bets were being waged on how many traps he would get and on which flight he would successfully escape his freezer home. On a typical deployment of that era, the average pilot would get about one hundred traps. Since our flying was so limited, we were way off pace. And as each day went by, a dead man was catching up to us. Senior leadership saw this as a mission that had to be solved permanently at the very next opportunity. I suspect the flight crew was instructed to keep heading for Diego Garcia no matter what happened to their jet after they launched. But it would take another couple of days before the next flight. I guess they wanted to make sure the airplane was perfect.

It ended up being kind of like the Super Bowl. You could hear conversations in the passageway predicting the outcome. There were expert commentators who professed to know something about the nature of the previous airplane problems and the prospects of a successful launch. Every ready room had a map hung that highlighted the route to Diego Garcia and the exact point, halfway, where the airplane would turn around when it experienced any problems.

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