—
As much fun as I’d been having in Austin, it turned out that my time in New York was even more amazing. I was making a fourth of what I had been making in Austin and paying three times as much for living expenses, but I didn’t care. I was in New York. My dreams of actually living in the city itself were dashed when I realized just how far out on Long Island the unit was, so I began house-hunting for something in my budget a little closer to where my job would eventually be. There wasn’t much to choose from, but I knew I’d find the right place if I just kept looking.
About halfway down my list of a dozen or so apartments and guesthouses, I hit the jackpot. Someone had renovated an old fourteen-by-fourteen-foot railroad maintenance repair shack. Inside was a single room with a tiny bathroom just big enough for a toilet and a standing shower. A sink and a half-size college dorm refrigerator for a kitchen completed the floor plan—and it could be mine for a cool twelve hundred dollars a month. No closet, no TV connection, one window, and no neighbors—my dream home. When the owner showed me the shed next door and informed me I could park my motorcycle there if I could get it inside, my decision was made. Sold.
I built a ramp so I could park my bike in the shed, set up my futon as both a couch and a bed, and used an upside-down laundry basket as a coffee table. I had all I needed and had never been happier.
I got a night job bartending at a local restaurant called the New Moon in East Quogue, and the staff there started calling me “Austin.” It was a BBQ place, so I suppose I was lending some Texas credibility to it among the customers. The owners were great, and the customers were not what I expected. As opposed to the trust fund babies I thought I’d have to deal with in the Hamptons, our clientele was more like the people who worked hard keeping the rich people on Long Island happy.
I spent most of my free time when I was off work either rock climbing in the Catskills or climbing on top of my motorcycle shed, sitting on the roof, and enjoying a plastic cup of whiskey with a cigar, listening to my blaring music from the open window of my own private railroad shack, missing my dog.
My training wouldn’t start for another few weeks, so I didn’t mingle with the aircrew much—I wasn’t really one of them yet. But soon after I arrived in New York, I did get to bartend for the retirement of one of my heroes, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Ruvola, who would be retiring before I had the chance to fly with him. He was a gorilla of a man who had shown he was a true hero during what became known as the Perfect Storm—the real-life disaster that the film was based on.
After attempting a boat rescue and being thwarted by the worsening weather, Dave and his Co-Pilot Graham Buschor were caught in the worst possible situation. Out of fuel and trying to head back to their base, the crew tried to refuel off of a C-130 airplane in the middle of one of the worst storms on record.
Unable to “plug” their refueling probe into the small round cage attached behind the C-130, Dave had to make one of the toughest decisions a pilot ever has to make—either keep trying and likely crash when the engines flamed out, or use what was left of his gas to execute a controlled ditch into the ocean. But with seventy-foot swells, under night-vision goggles, this was a lot harder than it sounded.
Trying to save his crew while risking being dragged to the bottom of the ocean, Dave ordered the men on his aircraft to bail out as he tried to hold a steady hover. In a previous career, Ruvola had been a Pararescue Jumper or “PJ”. One of the many skills of a PJ is to be a rescue swimmer who trains to save people from stormy water. He knew he’d have a better chance of surviving the plummeting aircraft than the others. After hours stranded in the freezing water, he managed to find two of his crew in the pitch-black storm, tether them to himself, and swim to a nearby Coast Guard ship. A fourth member, Graham Buschor, also managed to make his way to the ship. Sadly, the fifth, PJ Rick Smith, was never found. It’s thought that he may have dropped from the aircraft at the trough of a wave and fallen seven stories to his death in the water, but no one will ever know for sure.
Ruvola is the type of hero you read about or see on TV, not the kind of person you expect to see dancing to “YMCA” during his retirement while you serve mojitos. Meeting Dave and interacting with such an amazing man affected me profoundly. I’d call upon the memory of his example later in my own career when I was tested and faced with daunting odds myself.
About a month before I left for training, I was walking into a local Laundromat with a laundry basket in my arms when my phone rang. It was my mom, and she was crying so hard I could barely understand what she was saying.
“Mom? Are you okay? Is Jäger okay?”
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she wailed unintelligibly. “He died.”
I dropped the basket in the parking lot and just sat next to it and cried. I never should have left him, even though I knew he’d have been miserable in New York. I couldn’t believe he was gone, that I hadn’t been there to comfort and hold him at the end. Apparently, his scarred and enlarged heart had finally given out, and he’d died in his sleep.
I was utterly heartbroken. My best friend was gone. It was as if I were experiencing all of the grief of losing my dad all over again, but Jäger, at least, had known exactly how much I loved him. I had learned that lesson from losing my dad.
In October of 2004, heartsick from losing my Jäger, I packed up my shack, put some of my belongings in storage, trailered my R6, and got back on the road to the first stop in the training pipeline, Columbus Air Force Base. The months I’d spent in New York before attending pilot training had given me a sense that I didn’t deserve to walk the same halls as pilots like Dave Ruvola . . . yet. Now I was off to Columbus, Mississippi, to begin my training—determined to earn my place among my heroes.
—
When I arrived at Columbus, I could feel my heart lift as I drove through the front gates. I was finally here, and just in the nick of time. I was twenty-eight years old, within months of the maximum age limit. I took a deep breath as I began looking for signs pointing to my dorm. I pulled my burnt-orange Honda Element peppered with Longhorn stickers into a parking spot outside my assigned room. The dorms on the base were really more like small 1970s apartments, with more isolation and privacy than a regular dorm. The doors opened up to the outside, motel style, rather than opening to an interior hallway.
My arms overflowing with trash bags filled with my belongings, I nudged open the door to my room with my foot and peered inside. Only slightly bigger than my shack in New York, the tiny room was painted a drab tan and the carpet was disgusting. But I was so thrilled to finally be here that I would have been happy to sleep in a sleeping bag in the parking lot. I dropped the bags onto the bed and plopped down next to them, looking around the room that would be my home for the next six months. I heard a few of the guys who were my neighbors walk by laughing, and I stifled the urge to jump up and meet my fellow pilot candidates. I wasn’t there to socialize, and my experiences with military men were not all that positive thus far. That would change when, in the coming years, I would fly into combat with some of the finest men and women I’d ever meet, but at this point I was happy to sit quietly and steer clear.
Training would begin with weeks of academics in a classroom before we would get anywhere near an airplane, but even in the classroom, our fortitude would be tested.
My first true test came during our introduction to survival training in the first week on the base. Our instructor had a swagger born of the confidence that comes with having trained hundreds of people to survive in the wilderness. Survival is all about your attitude, he explained. “Captain Jennings, can you humor me for a minute?”
I swallowed nervously as I looked up to meet his eyes. I hated being singled out, but I walked to the front of the classroom, looking around at my forty classmates, trying to put on a brave face. It was then that I realized there was only one other woman in the room.
I stood in front of the cla
ss as the instructor continued talking.
“So you’ve ejected from your aircraft and you’re waiting to be rescued. No one comes, and it’s your third day out there on your own. Captain Jennings, can you reach into this cup and pull out what you find?” He held up a paper cup above my eye line.
I could feel something slimy and immediately realized it was a fat worm about a half inch thick. No problem. I could do this. Just as I painted my tough-guy face on, the six-inch worm wrapped itself around my finger. To my utter disappointment, I shrieked and dropped the worm on the floor. The class laughed as the instructor explained that I’d never survive due to my prudish American food aversions.
Not five seconds after I had dropped it, I bent over, picked up the worm, rolled it between my palms, and tossed it back like a shot of whiskey.
“Mmmm. What else you got?” The class roared in laughter and cheered me on.
I noticed, as I returned to my seat, one of my classmates looking a little green. I patted his back and said with a gentle smile, “Don’t worry. I’m sure we don’t all have to do that.” He glanced at me, grateful for the support.
The instructor struggled to continue making his point, disappointed that I wasn’t the easy mark he’d thought I would be. To his credit, he turned it into a learning moment anyway.
“Which brings me to my next point,” he continued. “Never judge a book by its cover. Sometimes the biggest asset on your team isn’t the one who looks like Superman. People will surprise you with the strength they can summon when tested.”
Over the next few months of training, we’d experience some of the most fun and the most challenging moments of our lives. For example, because the T-37 Tweet we’d be flying for this first phase of training was an ejection-seat aircraft, we needed to learn how to land safely from a bailout. They literally tied us to the back of a pickup truck with about a hundred-foot-long rope, strapped us into an open parachute, and dragged us until we flew up into the air like a kite. Then they disconnected us from the truck, and we had to execute a safe landing, what we call a PLF or parachute landing fall. We had already practiced on the ground from ever-increasing heights, by jumping off of a jungle gym type of structure, but it was truly thrilling to try it from one hundred feet under an actual parachute.
Most days after class, I’d drive out to the approach end of the runway and sit on the hood of my car listening to the radio calls made by the students ahead of us in the rotation who were already up in the air. I had bought a radio that would let me pick up the transmissions so I could get used to the verbiage and timing of the calls. Sitting out there at sunset, doing what we called “chair-flying,” I still couldn’t believe I was finally in pilot training. As I sat there, I would chair-fly the pattern they were flying, imagining myself going through the motions: checking airspeed, lowering gear, lowering flaps, and running through checklist items that would one day be second nature.
We worked hard and played hard during training. My memory of spending Halloween in New Orleans that year is pretty fuzzy, but I know we had a fantastic time. As much fun as we had, though, we knew we’d be miserable if we pushed it up too hard on a work night, and as one of the older students, I rarely made that mistake. Occasionally someone would show up for class in their blues uniform stinking of whiskey with bloodshot eyes, but for the most part, we were pretty smart. We knew how fragile our hold on this dream was, and we knew we were already incredibly lucky to be there. No one wanted to risk ending that for something stupid, so we all took good care of each other when we were blowing off steam.
After weeks of academics and flight simulators, it was finally time to head out to the flightline. I remember this part of training as the most eye-opening and exhilarating time of my life. My first time flying a jet was mind-blowing. Taking off was like sitting on a controlled explosion and rocketing up to our block of airspace. Doing it solo was certainly a thrill, and executing the acrobatic maneuvers approaching 250 miles per hour was as close to heaven as I will likely ever get. It’s difficult to pinpoint a favorite activity while flying the mighty Tweet, because I loved every minute of it, but the spin training might have been the ultimate highlight.
During this phase of training, we would purposely put the aircraft into a spin. Think of it like practicing skidding on ice in a car, in order to learn how to control something that feels completely out of control. Of course, in the air, it’s at an exponentially higher level of magnitude. This maneuver would never be done solo—it was always with an instructor. Spin training accomplishes a few things all at once.
First, obviously, it teaches us how to recover from a spin. Second, it shows us how to recognize the warning signs of a stall and familiarizes us with the feeling in the aircraft so that we can avoid it. The higher the angle of attack (the angle the wing makes to the wind), the less efficient the aerodynamics of lift is. At a critical point, all lift will break away from the wing; pilots call this a “stall.” Over the years, there have been far too many deaths attributed to students stalling the aircraft in the slow turns we take around the pattern before landing, so spin training has taken on an elevated importance. Finally, it teaches us aircraft handling techniques and gives us a hands-on understanding of the performance of the aircraft.
When we do spin training, we start off by going full speed up to a high altitude. I watched carefully until the altimeter needle began to struggle as we neared twenty-five thousand feet. I pulled up the nose as our airspeed began to bleed away; the stall-warning horn started screaming and didn’t stop. I was pointed sixty degrees nose up, sky filling the entire windscreen, slowing from two hundred miles per hour to about fifty and about to lose all the lift from my wings. On purpose.
I held the nose up with the stick and tried to stay level as the plane began to shudder and climb higher and higher, fighting the stall for as long as I could. Finally, physics won and the left wing dropped, beginning a spin and a rapid descent toward the ground. Ten thousand feet per minute sped by the smooth glass of the canopy. From the ground, the jet must have seemed like a figure skater spinning and dropping headfirst from a cloud.
As the blue and green lines of the horizon twirled around at a disorienting speed, I focused on my instrument panel, breathing evenly.
I eased back on the throttles and put the rudder and ailerons in neutral position at the same time. Then I yanked the stick full aft and pushed the rudder to the floor in the opposite direction of the spin. After another turn, I pushed the stick full forward, marveling at the amazing performance of this beautiful aircraft.
As I recovered from the steep dive and high airspeed, the aircraft stabilized. My instructor and I were back to comfortably cruising along at a mere 180 knots and fifteen thousand feet. Primal exhilaration filled my chest. I felt like screaming in victory.
I looked over at my instructor with a grin plastered across my face.
His fists unclenched.
“Wow,” he boomed into my headset, “that was the best spin recovery I’ve seen . . .”
My smile stretched.
“. . . from a chick.”
Damn.
—
Pilot training wasn’t all adrenaline-filled acrobatic stunts. There were painful, tedious parts as well. The students ran the morning briefing, where we would take turns speaking to the class about the weather, the schedule, and other key information. This was boring but also highly stressful, as the instructors critiqued us while the other students sat at attention, observing. The majority of the students in the class were fresh out of ROTC or the Academy, and as such were very green second lieutenants. I had five years in already, so I wore captain bars on my shoulders.
As the highest-ranking student, I was appointed the class leader. I tried hard to think of a way to cut the tension during the morning briefings without disrupting the learning. A few of us decided that we should begin a word-of-the-day competition. The challenge would be to
attempt to use the word in the morning briefing without arousing any suspicion among the instructors.
This worked for a couple of weeks, but it soon became too easy. In our prebrief meeting, I knew it would be my turn to speak that day, so I felt like upping the ante a little bit, just to keep everyone on their toes. I looked around the room at the tired, stressed-out kids in the class, my mind racing. When someone asked what the word of the day should be, I quickly responded, “How about flaccid?” My classmates chuckled.
“Do you dare me?” I added. Realizing I was serious, one of the older guys who was in training to be a KC-135 pilot for the Air National Guard quickly shook his head. “No. No, we do not dare you.” The rest of them were a little more adventurous and were more than happy to dare me.
As a Guard pilot, I had a huge advantage over the rest of the class. The active-duty pilot candidates were still competing for a class ranking, as I had so many times before. At the end of training, the school would give the number one student first choice of the available aircraft. If there was only one F-16, for example, the number one person could take that and there would be no other F-16 pilots from our class.
However, things were different in the Guard. Because my unit flew HH-60 helicopters, I already knew what I was going to end up flying, so I wouldn’t have to compete for the airframe I wanted. The warrior in me wanted to fight to graduate at the top of my class anyway, but I was willing to risk getting in a little bit of trouble with my instructors if it cut the tension for a few minutes for everyone. The instructors filed in to listen to my briefing. My classmates sat up at attention, wondering if I’d have the guts to go for it.
“Good morning. Aircrew brief for Tuesday, March twenty-ninth, is as follows,” I began. “Weather is good with unlimited ceiling, clear visibility, and flaccid winds at about five knots from two seven zero . . .” Despite their best efforts, a few of my classmates cracked smiles, and the instructors began looking at each other. I finished the brief, and everyone went about his or her daily schedules. I couldn’t believe I had gotten away with it.
Shoot Like a Girl Page 8