No Man's Land

by Kevin Sullivan

  *

  Midshipmen completed six weeks of officer training every summer as a condition of the scholarship. The summer between my second and third year introduced us to the world of naval aviation. At Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, candidates were subjected to the most comprehensive physical and academic testing conceivable. Those who passed were selected to fly in the back seat of a training aircraft. My indoctrination flight was in a T-2C Buckeye: a twin-engine, basic jet trainer. This would be my first taste of military flying.

  We were bussed to Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas, and taken to the T-2 training squadron. The parachute riggers fitted us out in a flight suit, g-suit, helmet and oxygen mask. We then received a group briefing on what to expect during the flight and on safety procedures; we’d been trained in pressure chamber, ejection seat and water survival. Then we were bundled into the squadron ready room – a bunch of skinny twenty-year-olds in ill-fitting flight suits – to wait for our names to be called and meet our flight instructor.

  As excited as we were, the overall emotion was worry. Would we puke under g-force during the aerobatic manoeuvring? Some had already returned ashen-faced, their suits adorned with the remnants of their last meal. I refused to eat anything until I completed my flight.

  My name was called.

  ‘Here, sir!’ Time to fly.

  I don’t remember my instructor’s name, just that it was summer and his flight suit was marked with perspiration. Out on the flight line, he led me to our jet and asked, ‘Have you flown before?’

  ‘Yessir, a light aircraft.’

  ‘Did you get sick?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Have you got your barf bag?’

  ‘Yessir.’ I pointed to my g-suit pocket.

  ‘Good. If you feel queasy, go on cold mic and make sure you aim well. You get to clean out the cockpit if anything happens!’

  I don’t blame him for not wanting to listen to me lose my lunch.

  The communications system on the T-2 is like that on any military aircraft. You can talk freely into your oxygen-mask, on cold mic, by pushing a button, or you can activate the microphone by flicking the hot mic switch and you will hear everything that comes out of each microphone.

  My instructor introduced me to my ‘guppy’, the nickname for the T-2. It was painted orange and white, the colours of the Naval Air Training Command, with a large white B on the tail. I gently slid my hands along the wing’s leading edge, then relished every step as I climbed the hand-and-footholds up the side of the jet and immersed myself in the back seat. I was followed by our enlisted plane captain who connected my oxygen mask, communication cord and g-suit as I waited impatiently for my instructor to return. (A plane captain is a member of the ground staff assigned to each departing aircraft.)

  After inspecting the exterior of our jet, my instructor showed me the communications panel and microphone switch, then prepared my ejection seat by removing the safety pins. With a questioning look, he flashed me a thumbs up, which I returned. He was quickly off to strap into his seat.

  Soon we were connected on hot mic. In the hypnotic monotone of a seasoned navy instructor pilot, he recited the checklists from memory. I listened intently but was also mesmerised with my environment: the instrument panel loaded with engine performance gauges, the large blue-and-black attitude indicator, the feel of the control stick and throttles under my fingertips.

  My instructor announced, ‘Okay, we are cleared to start.’

  Signalling with his fingers, the instructor started the engines in harmony with our plane captain. The turbines rotated as the turbojets came to life, and I welcomed their high-pitched whine through my helmet earpads. I deselected the hot mic switch and cracked the oxygen mask from my face, which was dripping in sweat. Inhaling deeply, I sucked the high-octane jet fumes into my lungs; into my being. I would never tire of smelling the exhaust from any of the jets I flew. At that moment, I knew this was my destiny.

  Once the instructor had completed the after-start procedures, he pointed his thumbs opposite each other, signalling the plane captain to remove chocks – the rubber blocks holding our wheels stationary.

  Like the Blue Angels departing to start their display, we taxied forwards under the direction of our plane captain. As we passed him, he snapped a salute. My instructor snapped one back, and I did too – it was my first opportunity to perform this ceremonial salute, so I wasn’t going to let it pass. The young plane captain smiled and walked towards the hangar, shaking his head at the nerd midshipman in the back seat of his T-2 and praying he wouldn’t have to clean it later.

  We taxied to the runway on cold mic with the canopy up, providing some welcome relief from the searing heat and humidity of southern Texas. The T-2’s air-conditioner wouldn’t be effective until we were airborne and ram air was forced down its inlet. I was drenched in sweat under my flame-resistant Nomex flight suit and gloves.

  ‘Clear canopy,’ came the command over the intercom.

  I synched down my oxygen mask and selected hot mic. ‘Clear!’

  As our Buckeye entered the runway, we were cleared for take-off. We stopped briefly on the centreline while the engines went to full power, then the brakes were released and we started to roll, accelerating to lift-off speed.

  We were airborne. The landing-gear handle came up with a thunk and the flaps were retracted as we accelerated, climbing away from the base.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ came over the intercom, my instructor’s visored helmet looking at me from one of his mirrors.

  ‘Great,’ I murmured and flashed a thumbs-up. I hadn’t experienced sex yet, but this had to be better!

  The plane levelled off, keeping low, and the airspeed increased towards 300 knots. A broken layer of cloud was above us, and I figured our level-off was to stay clear of it.

  Wrong – when we reached 300 knots, my instructor pulled the jet up steeply and punched through a hole in the cloud base. As the clouds streaked by, I looked over at the condensed moisture obscuring our wings from the g-force and pressure change over the wing.

  My instructor performed a wingover, an aerobatic manoeuvre in which a steep climb is followed by a vertical flat-turn and change in direction. The nose of the jet was 45 degrees above the horizon as he pulled up into the wingover then released the back stick and g, rolled the wings to 90 degrees of bank and I watched as the nose sliced back down towards the horizon.

  It’s my first opportunity to experience g. A quick glance at the g-meter showed a reading of +4. I felt the heavy weight push me hard into the seat as my body suddenly weighed four times more than normal and I loved it.

  My instructor couldn’t see the cheesy grin beneath my sweaty oxygen mask. Again he glanced back, and I flashed another thumbs-up to let him know I was handling the g-force and his aggressive manoeuvring.

  ‘Okay, you’ve got it,’ came over the intercom, as the control stick wiggled.

  ‘I’ve got it.’ I returned the wiggle. Oh yeah . . . I’ve got it.

  For the next half-hour he talked me through the instrumentation and how to fly with the wings level. He demonstrated more aerobatic manoeuvres while observing me through his mirrors; I was then allowed to try the manoeuvres while he assessed my ability to maintain three-dimensional spatial awareness.

  I was in my element. It may sound like a joy ride but it was far from that. I was being assessed on my aptitude to fly and for consideration to request flight training after I graduated.

  Despite my elation, I knew that this flight was a critical piece in my future career.

  All too soon, we descended to the training field. As we returned to the hangar with sweat stains on both our flight suits, my instructor looked at me. ‘How was that?’

  My enormous smile was my answer, followed by a respectful, ‘Thank you for a great hop, sir.’

  He smiled back and gave a few nods as if to say, You’ll do.

  In my navy career, I would accumulate a total of 500 fight hours on the T-2 as
a student pilot and then as an instructor.

  At the time, the brass ring on my merry-go-round was in sight – I just had to graduate before I could grab it. I started my junior year with another full plate of subjects, though our professors treated us a bit better now we’d survived two years of hell and were starting to specialise.

  That year, I participated in the NROTC Aviation Indoctrination Program: forty hours of private flying at a local airfield that would help me obtain my private pilot’s licence. This meant getting up at 4 a.m. in the Colorado autumn and winter, then driving to the local airport where I launched at sunrise: my first ‘dawn patrols’, but certainly not my last. On touchdown, I’d quickly debrief with my instructor, jump into my borrowed car and blast back to campus for my first classes by 8 a.m.

  I passed my licence-check ride the following year. My first flight as a private pilot was to visit my fraternity house, accompanied by my roommate as ‘copilot’ and bombardier, and display my aeronautical skills to my frat brothers . . . enough said.

  In May 1977, I completed my Bachelor of Science and was commissioned as an ensign in the US Navy. My mother and father witnessed their proud son embark on his aviation career.

  4.

  On Qantas Flight 72, conditions are perfect; the air mass is smooth, cloudless and sapphire blue. We’re still over the Indian Ocean, but the red shoreline of Western Australia’s northern coast is now clearly in view.

  I first visited WA in August 1981. I was on my first operational cruise on the USS America, which involved a port visit to Perth.

  The aircraft carrier signalled its impending arrival with a sixteen-aircraft formation. I was in the trail formation of four F-14s, and the other three formations joined to form a ‘diamond of diamonds’. The cloud base was relatively low, making our procession even more spectacular as this massive formation flew around the city at an altitude less than 3000 feet. Traffic jammed everywhere as drivers stopped to watch us fly past. I couldn’t look down as I was flying in the ‘slot’, maintaining my position relative to the other three F-14s as we circled the city. The next day, the America set anchor near Fremantle and our port visit began.

  Life aboard an aircraft carrier is a spartan existence. For starters, you have more than 5000 roommates – and, in my time, they were all guys. There was no privacy, no creature comforts. The shower and toilet facilities were communal, and sometimes the ships’ plumbing got blocked and those areas were flooded with backed-up sewage. The ship operated around the clock, whether or not the aircraft were flying.

  The ceiling of my small two-man stateroom was connected to the flight deck. This meant my precious few hours of sleep were disturbed by sounds of aircraft taxiing, catapults firing, arresting gear trapping landing jets, the muffled roar of engines at full power, and the scraping of tie-down chains as the blue shirts marched along to secure another jet to the flight deck.

  The food in the officers’ mess was below average. On my first cruise, I survived on celery and peanut butter; on the second, ‘sliders’. This is navy code for a cheeseburger, and they were made available later in the evening, well after the normal dinner service was complete. For junior officers, our days revolved around having a slider as often as our flying schedule allowed. If the soft-serve ice cream machine ever broke, there was a mini mutiny in the officer’s mess.

  Before our port visit in Perth, I’d known very little about Australia. In my elementary school geography class, Australia was part of Oceania, on the other side of the planet. Later, I read history books that depicted Australian soldiers as fierce warriors, both during the trench warfare of World War I and as the Rats of Tobruk in World War II. Warner Bros. cartoons portrayed Australia as a wild place with boxing kangaroos, Tasmanian devils and boomerangs. Bugs Bunny had many encounters with the tornado-like Taz, one of my favourite characters.

  I found myself impressed with Perth and the people of Australia. The pace of life was slower, the climate was clean and the beer was cold. My duties aboard the ship as a junior officer precluded me from spending much time ashore. It took a while to look the correct way when crossing the busy streets and there were some close calls. I had enough time to enjoy a cold Swan Lager or two, but the high alcohol content was more than our beer-free bodies could manage (our ships were ‘dry’). I hoped to return someday to enjoy a summer.

  *

  Nearly a year before my journey to Australia, in October 1980, my transition to the F-14A Tomcat at the Replacement Air Group squadron, VF-124, at NAS Miramar – otherwise known as ‘Fightertown’ – in San Diego, California, was nearing completion. This would be my final step before I joined an operational squadron and carrier deployment.

  The Western world was still embroiled in the Cold War, so I had a good chance of being involved in armed conflict somewhere on the planet. The tempo of training was intense – and proportionally dangerous to cater for this level of political uncertainty. As always, the rapid power-projection afforded by a carrier taskforce meant that the navy and marines would be the first on scene at any potential hotspot. At the age of twenty-five, I was positioning myself at the pointy end of the spear of American foreign policy.

  The F-14 course would prepare me for fleet operations. Part of the syllabus included night carrier qualification and air combat manoeuvring. The navy had experienced an increase in accidents caused by pilots losing control through aggressive manoeuvring as a result of increased air combat training. Although mandatory spin training was introduced in basic jet training, it wasn’t enough to cater for the various scenarios a fighter pilot could encounter when pushing his aircraft to its limits during aerial combat.

  The Navy Test Pilot School developed a training course to address out-of-control flight, and the aircraft chosen for this was the T-2 Buckeye. The T-2 was a twin-engine jet trainer and had proven its ability to enter and recover from upright and inverted spins. I’d flown it during basic jet training as a student, and later became a T-2 instructor pilot. This course in out-of-control flight became mandatory training for all pilots transitioning to fighters.

  No fighter pilot was worth their salt if they hadn’t taken their aircraft to the limits of its performance and beyond. The pilot had the ability to exceed these limits if required, but they needed a skill set to regain control if it was lost. This innovative programme ensured that pilots could recognise and recover from upright and inverted spins, accelerated and yaw-induced departures, and zero-airspeed departures – extreme manoeuvres that we might encounter during air-to-air combat.

  My instructor explained the signals the aircraft would give as it approached its critical angle of attack: the point where the airflow over the wing separates and the lifting force of the wing is lost. The T-2 was equipped with a rudder pedal shaker system, another physical cue to the pilot that the boundary of uncontrolled flight was approaching.

  The rudder pedal shaker was linked to the angle of attack system (AoA). This gauge measures the angle of the airflow over the wing. Every wing has a critical angle of attack where the airflow separates from the wing and the aircraft stalls; basically, it starts falling like a bird that had lost its feathers.

  The manoeuvres required me to fly the aircraft past its limit, forcing entry into the out-of-control phase, then to recover using the F-14’s spin procedure. As the pilot, I had full feedback and control through the traditional cable and pulley system that connected my control stick directly to the aircraft’s wing and tail. Tactical aircraft are also fitted with a rocket-powered ejection seat, a pilot’s ‘get out of jail free card’, which we wouldn’t hesitate to activate if we were still out of control and below 10,000 feet.

  Over the eastern desert of California, I routinely pushed my aircraft into extreme territory, exceeding the critical AoA. I spun and tumbled the T-2 beyond its operating limits under the supervision of my specialised instructor pilot. The stuttering rudder pedals hammered at my feet as I pushed the T-2 past its limits of controlled flight and into the departure and spin phases
. The gyrations of the plane were wild and similar to those of a Pitts Special at an airshow. It was physically challenging to maintain stick and rudder pressure as the jet tumbled, and I waited impatiently for the instructor to command, ‘Recover!’

  My athleticism was tested as I explored the positive and negative g limits of the T-2, and I spent a lot of time hanging in my straps after the negative g accelerations. I knew that if I was to be a successful fighter pilot, I would have to master the recognition and recovery skills introduced in this training. It was an essential part of my progression and essential for my future selection to attend Top Gun.

  At the completion of this short course, I was more confident that I could survive most of the adverse flight regimes I might encounter during the extreme manoeuvring that lay ahead in my transition to the F-14. This survival skill set became second nature during my military flying, but I’d never needed to use it in the mundane world of commercial aviation.

  Until today.

  *

  In the cockpit I give Ross a friendly punch on the shoulder and jerk my thumb back, my signal for him to give me back the captain’s seat. I slide in then secure the lap and crotch belts of my safety harness. I leave the shoulder straps off as I listen to Pete’s handover briefing to me. As he talks, his fingers dance over the keys of his navigation computer. ‘Weather is fine at destination and at our divert fields. Progress to Perth is showing an on-time arrival. We’re maintaining the increased cruise speed to make up time, and we climbed to 37,000 feet while you were on your break.’

  My office is serene, just the way I like it. Commercial flying is all about flying safely from A to B. Boring is good in this job.

  On my own computer I follow Pete through the briefing. Ross has excused himself for a toilet break. He’ll be on duty with me for the next hour and twenty minutes, and Pete will start his rest period after this briefing.

  Pete points to the left of the aircraft’s nose to highlight Learmonth, our closest airport, near the town of Exmouth, Western Australia. I scan my navigation display, confirming the symbology for the airport and its position relative to our flight track.