No Man's Land

by Kevin Sullivan

  The T-28 Trojan is a big aircraft and is capable of performing carrier landings. I immersed myself in the smells of the engine’s exhaust and the wild vibration that rumbled through the airframe at full power, along with the consuming environment of sweat, instruments and procedures.

  Like most things, learning to fly in the navy requires a step-by-step approach. Initially we fly in the rear seat, literally under a bag attached to the canopy that blocks any view of the outside world. This is to simulate basic instrument flight. We learn to develop an instrument scan and to gauge the aircraft’s performance through the interpretation of the various instruments. Next is the radio instruments phase, using ground based navigation transmitters to fly between known points or routes, still ‘under the bag’ in the back seat. Then we start flying in the front seat while our instructor is in the back. We are introduced into the world of visual flying and manoeuvres, landings and take-offs.

  Before every flight, Ace and I discussed the management of emergency procedures. For me, this was where the foundation of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate was laid.

  Ace would prepare me, lecture me and quiz me on this critical tool as we discussed the various failure scenarios. ‘No matter what happens, Sully, you will always have time if you have altitude. The closer to the ground you are, the less time you have to manage the situation, so always try to gain some altitude as you assess your malfunction. Always be aware of your fuel state; if you have fuel then you have time, too. Even if the engine fails at low altitude, convert speed to height, wind your clock and assess your options.

  ‘Aviate: maintain control of the aircraft first and foremost. Once the aircraft is stabilised you can Navigate: can I restart the engine, can I access a checklist, do I need to find an area for an emergency landing? Finally, once the other two are stabilised, you can Communicate: who you are, where you are, your situation and your intentions. This is the framework for the rest of your career, and I will constantly test you in establishing this discipline. Remember, anything can happen when you are flying solo, so I have to prepare you for that day because ole Ace won’t always be there to save your ass!’

  Being cleared to solo, to fly without an instructor, is a fledgling pilot’s right of passage into the world of aviation. And flying solo in a high-performance navy trainer around the fields of Florida was certainly a big deal. As I progressed, Ace loaded me up more, forcing me to prioritise and to develop a ‘coolness under pressure’ approach to any situation. Routinely, he would simulate an engine failure by abruptly pulling the engine power back to idle; this tested my situational awareness, my response to failures, my memory recall of the emergency procedures, and my control of the aircraft’s flight path as I recited the engine failure procedure: ‘Fuel. Mixture. Mags. Simulate start.’

  While I scanned the earth below for a suitable place to land my stricken Trojan, Ace’s voice would inform me that the restart was unsuccessful, and I’d continue with the forced landing procedures. I would then nominate my proposed landing area, usually a crop field, and transmit my simulated mayday call over the intercom. Once all that was successfully completed and the Trojan was gliding towards an unsuspecting farmer’s field, Ace would announce, ‘Knock it off!’ and I’d apply power and climb away in preparation for my next sequence of manoeuvres.

  I worked hard and soloed on 14 October 1977.

  Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. My first mantra – and it proved to be my saviour for a career in the air. It’s the pilot’s mantra from all over the world, and the basis for a fundamental discipline when operating an aircraft. Ace taught me well, and I salute him.

  *

  As we climb out from Singapore, I apply the mantra to our routine situation.

  ‘Air, Engine Bleed 1 Fault,’ Pete announces. He glances at me, one eyebrow raised.

  This is when we laugh about me being a shit magnet.

  To a layperson the fault might sound alarming, but the engine isn’t really bleeding. This system syphons off, or bleeds, pressurised air from the engine and uses it to provide air-conditioning, cabin pressure and other system functions. The bleed fault indicates an issue with one of the valves connecting the engine to the system.

  It’s a simple procedure to reset the fault, and we proceed with the displayed steps to bring this system back on line. My job is to keep an eye on the aircraft’s flight path while Pete actions the necessary steps. It doesn’t take long.

  Thunderstorms are forming on the horizon over the islands of Indonesia. Through the autopilot we modify our tracking to give them a wide berth as we fly south. It’s easy to avoid these building monsters, and soon we’re in clear air again.

  After ninety minutes of duty time, I’m rostered to take my inflight break. I hand over control to Pete and exit the cockpit after Ross takes his position in my seat.

  It’s a long tour of duty for the pilots today, and I’m taking my share of required rest. Our rest area is outside the flight deck and is equipped with a foldable bunk, a fully reclining chair and a screen linked to the passenger entertainment system. Normally I’d visit the cabin before starting my rest, but the business-class meal service is in full swing, the carts blocking the aisles. I decide to check on my crew after my rest, and with that, I enter the cubicle and lock the door behind me.

  I’m not really tired because I slept well the night before, so I select an episode of Two and a Half Men on the entertainment channel. Charlie has done something to himself that’s causing him to scratch his groin incessantly. His brother, Alan, is disgusted but Charlie doesn’t tell him the cause of his itch, only that he’ll use any available implement to assist in scratching ‘down there’. Later in the episode, Alan winds up in hospital, and Charlie takes the opportunity to expose his loins to the Indian or Pakistani doctor for a prognosis.

  ‘Oh, my goodness! Your little jimmy is all crimson! Have you been applying anything to your genital region?’ the doctor asks with wide-eyed incredulity.

  Charlie smirks and replies he has only been applying actresses and waitresses to this region. He then admits to using hair dye to get the grey out of his pubic hair, but he leaves some silver bits around the sides to look ‘distinguished’.

  In a pontificating tone, the doctor replies, ‘Mr Harper, we have a saying in my country. You can put a tuxedo on a goat, but it’s still a goat!’

  I’m laughing my ass off as the chime of the intercom alerts me to an incoming call from the flight deck.

  It’s Pete. ‘Hey, Captain Kev, you’re back on!’

  ‘There in five.’

  Still laughing, I exit the crew rest and peek through the curtains into business class. The cabin crew are busy clearing the last plates and coffee cups from the meal service. I won’t disturb them with a visit. After a quick toilet stop, I request access to the cockpit to resume my duty.

  The time is 1235 in Perth.

  ‘A goat in a tuxedo is still a goat.’

  I’ll have to look for a good opportunity to use this line.

  I’m relaxed and in a great mood. The flight deck is brightly lit from a cloudless sky as I enter. I’m at 37,000 feet and on top of the world.

  3.

  ‘Whatever you are, be a good one,’ Abraham Lincoln once said.

  I chose to be a pilot early in my life. For me, that contract was signed at age six. There was a Cold War and a Space Race, and the world was evolving and exploring and in conflict.

  I was living in San Diego, California. My father was a chief warrant officer in the US Navy, happily married to my mother who lovingly raised five children and was a typical military wife in those times. I was the oldest of two boys, with two older sisters and a younger one rounding out our family.

  On Armed Forces Day, my father took me and my brother to Naval Air Station North Island for the displays and open-house inspections of the warships – and, most importantly, the display by the Blue Angels. This flight demonstration team proudly showcases the precision and skill that all US Navy pilots are trained t
o perform. That day the Blue Angels were flying the F-11 Tiger: a supersonic, single-engine fighter that operated from aircraft carriers throughout the fleet. The Tigers were painted a high-gloss navy blue with gold lettering and numbering. They were the most amazing machines I’d seen in my young life – also the loudest and fastest. Watching them fly so close, so fast, so precisely . . . Well, the navy had me from that day. It looked like something a brave person would do, and I wanted to learn to be brave.

  I wanted to be one of those pilots, to be ripping through the air, and I’d do anything and everything to be in one of those machines.

  When I shared this dream with my father, he bluntly told me I’d only get there by pushing myself to excel. He had survived the Great Depression and was a navy veteran of World War II, and he’d worked hard to be a chief warrant officer.

  I decided my path was set, and it was up to me to start that journey.

  Soon I was a full-fledged aviation geek. At school, I was always near the top of my class in Maths and Science, and I grew close to a classmate who shared my ambition to fly in the military. Before I learned to drive, I would beg my parents to take me to the library so I could read issues of Aviation Week & Space Technology.

  I came across a novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, Falcons of France. It was based on their experiences in the Lafayette Escadrille in World War I, flying Nieuports and Spads against the Hun over the trenches of No Man’s Land. Naively, I concluded that I’d be a combat pilot and live that adventure.

  The Vietnam War was in full swing. More books on modern combat emerged, such as Thud Ridge and Flight of the Intruder. Colonel Robin Olds, USAF Wing Commander, F-4 fighter pilot and MiG Killer, became a role model to me. His junior pilots would do anything for him – fly any mission no matter the risk – and he’d be leading from the front. He had a reputation for being at odds with his superiors, but he and his pilots were high achievers. I also read about MiG kills by navy pilots Duke Cunningham and Willy Driscoll over North Vietnam. Cunningham’s famous quote, ‘Train like you fight’, would echo in the ears of many aspiring fighter pilots.

  I built plastic aircraft models to do battle in my room, imagining what it would be like to fight the Red Baron, Adolf Galland or Colonel Toon. But I didn’t really know if I could fly an aeroplane.

  My chance came when I was on the high school tennis team in San Bernardino. We had a match in Perris, and a student’s father offered to fly some of us down in his Mooney light aircraft. ‘Anyone want to sit up front?’ My hand came up first, so I sat in the front right seat on the way down. Despite my teammates’ loud protests, I was allowed to fly the Mooney all the way back to San Bernardino as I explored its angle-of-bank limits. We’d lost the tennis match, but my flying was pretty good.

  *

  While in high school, I decided to pursue a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and to fly as a military officer. The US space programme was in full swing, and I marvelled at the Gemini and Apollo mission launches. The idea of flying further and higher dangled in front of my face like a big carrot; I wanted to become a test pilot or maybe even an astronaut.

  To get there, I could follow one of three routes: attending a military service academy, getting a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) Scholarship at a university sponsored by one of the services, or graduating from university then applying to become an officer candidate. I chose the ROTC route, setting my course to compete for a scholarship and attend the University of Colorado in Boulder.

  I made it to the final phase of the selection process: an interview with a reservist officer. Despite all my preparation, it didn’t go well – within minutes I sensed he didn’t like me that much. Two weeks later the result arrived in the mail: I was a tentative finalist, meaning I had to wait for a finalist to turn down a scholarship. This was a huge blow. Never having experienced this type of failure before, I was demoralised and didn’t know what to do.

  I’d been accepted to the University of Colorado as an Aerospace Engineering student. My father tried to convince me to do a degree in pharmacy, which he was willing to fund if I quit ROTC and stayed in California. I told him I’d continue with my plan to attend the university of my choice and follow my dream, offering to cover food and board if he would pay for the first year’s tuition. Reluctantly, he agreed. This was a significant amount of money for a modest middle-class, single-earner household with two children still in school. I would try again for an ROTC scholarship once I was enrolled.

  It was a big gamble, but any other outcome was unimaginable to me. I had to believe in myself and follow my ambition, fighting to prevent the unthinkable.

  At the tender age of seventeen, I didn’t realise my ‘plan’ was akin to loading myself into a cannon. When I stepped off the bus in Boulder, I pulled the lanyard that launched me into the world of aviation – if I survived the cannon blast, I could be a pilot. I knew it would be hard but I welcomed the challenge. Alone, frightened and excited, I dragged a heavy suitcase towards my campus dormitory as I took my first steps towards my future.

  The navy was expanding its nuclear power programme and was looking for ‘hard science’ majors to fill its ranks. At the admin office of the campus navy detachment, I enrolled in the navy ROTC unit in a non-scholarship position. I still had to comply with all the requirements as if I was on scholarship. As part of the enrolment process, I was asked, ‘Are you interested in becoming a nuclear propulsion officer?’

  ‘Of course!’ I exclaimed with an eagerness that was perhaps a little disproportionate to my true interest in this career path. My field of study satisfied the navy’s initial criteria. But the navy wouldn’t consider granting me a scholarship until I passed the first year of my engineering course. I also had to attend Naval Science classes, wear my midshipman uniform to classes every Thursday, attend a marching drill every Thursday afternoon, and do physical training at 6 a.m. twice a week.

  Our drills took place in fields next to the dorms, well within snowball range. I had to hide my smirks at the marijuana fumes that wafted over the marching midshipmen as our platoon leader’s cadence competed with ‘Light My Fire’ blasting from speakers in the dorm-room windows.

  The Vietnam War had just finished, so wearing a military uniform around campus singled me out for a few choice comments from students and some special treatment from a few professors. Being young, bulletproof and a bit blinded by ambition, I grew a thick skin and absorbed with humour the abuse for choosing to serve my country. I didn’t think I fitted the mould of a ‘baby killer’.

  My illusion that I would match my high school academic performance was quickly shattered by the insane workload dumped on first-year Physics and Calculus students. I felt as if I’d been bound like an Egyptian mummy, taken a mile off the coast in a boat, thrown overboard and told to swim to shore in less than thirty minutes – my first priority to avoid drowning in homework, followed by getting it in on time. Fortunately, I had company: my roommate struggled with me, perched on the edge of academic extinction. My first-semester grade averages were just above the pass mark.

  During the Christmas break, I travelled back to California. I knew what was waiting for me. Unimpressed with my academic performance, my father was primed to pull my funding, and rightly so.

  We were having an emotional and frank discussion when I excused myself to don my midshipman’s uniform, the double-breasted dress blues. I returned to face my father. The image of his son in the uniform he’d worn himself for so many years, imploring him for one more chance, was enough for him to give in. But even if he’d refused, I would have worked to fund my second semester. I was learning to be brave and not quit.

  In late January I returned to campus desperate to succeed. To me, ‘succeed’ and ‘survive’ now had the same meaning. I was learning to be brave, and I willingly put my face into the academic meat-grinder.

  As the semester drew to a close, I was invited to a formal interview with a navy instructor as part of the scholarship selection
process. We discussed my ambitions versus ‘the needs of the navy’, and I told him I wanted to serve as a nuclear propulsion officer. Throughout the interview, the most important of my young life, I kept thinking to myself, Don’t mention flying. Don’t screw this up! ‘Yes,’ I said out loud, ‘we must stop the threat of communism . . . Yes, we must confront the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc . . . Yes, I’m prepared to serve my country.’ I had learned the lesson from my interview in high school. This time, I succeeded, but it all hinged on my grades.

  During the summer break, I sweated on the daily arrival of the mailman. When my grades finally arrived, I ripped open the envelope and was elated to learn that I’d passed. My father expressed relief, but privately, he was concerned for his eldest son – my career path could easily place me in harm’s way. He had experienced the dark side of war but never mentioned it to his family, and there was nothing he could say to me that would alter my ambitions. At least his financial burden would be reduced significantly thanks to Uncle Sam.

  In a small ceremony at the start of my sophomore year, I stood at ramrod attention in my impeccable dress uniform. With my right hand raised, I swore allegiance to the United States. I was awarded a three-year scholarship and enlisted as a midshipman into the US Naval Reserve. My chest was bursting with pride. I’d made my plan work, but there was only a slight reduction in pressure to succeed – maybe 1 psi, in the nerd-speak of a second-year Engineering student.