The only way to fulfill this order was by developing a means to safely employ the NVG technology in a fixed-wing environment. Arguably, doing so became the single most significant breakthrough for special operations aviation from this period.
Colonel (ret.) Jerry Thigpen, a fellow pilot in the 8th SOS, wrote an excellent book surrounding the history of the Combat Talon entitled The Pretorian STARShip: The Untold Story of the Combat Talon. In it, he shares how the first NVGs became such an indispensable part of our repertoire:
[On] 21 November 1979, [Bob] Brenci was in the squadron early, as were several crew members from the previous night’s mission. Brenci was the chief pilot and assistant operations officer and was filling in for Lt Col Les Smith, who had been called away to Washington, DC, a few days earlier. Captain Thigpen, who had flown with Brenci as an instructor pilot on the flight the evening before, was also in the squadron. He was working behind the operations desk finalizing the following week’s schedule when Brenci called him into his office and closed the door. Brenci had received a call from Smith in Washington directing him to begin preparations for conducting blacked-out NVG landings in the Combat Talon. The only unit in the 1st SOW [Special Operations Wing] that possessed the relatively rare NVG equipment was the 20th Special Operations Squadron, which was the rotary-wing (helicopter) unit assigned to the wing.
Brenci sent Thigpen to the 20th SOS to sign out ten PVS-5 NVGs so that the squadron could become familiar with their operation. Within the hour Thigpen had signed out the goggles and was back in the squadron. Two things impressed him regarding the transaction—first, his hand receipt totaled over $200,000 for the NVGs, a sizable sum for a captain to be responsible for, and second, the insistence by 20th SOS pilots who had said that fixed-wing aircraft could not be safely landed on NVGs due to the lack of depth perception and a limited field of view.
Several crew members, including Brenci and Thigpen, spent the afternoon familiarizing themselves with proper goggle operation. By utilizing a darkened room, basic functions of the NVGs, such as turning them on and off and focusing them both near and far, were reviewed. A night sortie was scheduled for the following Monday on TAB-6 (Biancur Field), one of the many local auxiliary airfields on the Eglin AFB range complex.
On Monday, 26 November 1979, the first NVG mission was flown by the 8th SOS. Combat Talon 64-0567 flew 4.6 hours, with Brenci, Major Meller, Major Uttaro, and Thigpen sharing pilot duties. Because there were no procedures written for airland NVG operations, the crew started its NVG work utilizing established airborne radar approach (ARA) procedures. Each ARA was flown utilizing heading and altitude calls provided by the left navigator. Meller and Brenci took turns in the left seat, and Uttaro and Thigpen swapped right-seat duties.
Partially because of the rotary-wing pilots’ insistence that fixed-wing aircraft could not land on NVGs, the first several approaches were flown on “eyeballs” by the left-seat pilot. During the approach the right-seat pilot turned out all of his cockpit lights and focused his goggles on his instrument panel as the left-seat navigator called out headings and altitudes. The idea was to darken the cockpit enough to allow the left-seat pilot, the standing third (or safety) pilot, and the flight engineer to see outside the aircraft and not be blinded by the glare of lights coming from within the cockpit.
As the right-seat pilot flew the approach, the left-seat pilot and the safety pilot, utilizing their NVGs, assisted the navigators achieving alignment for each approach. In addition, the third pilot, standing behind the left pilot’s seat, also backed up the flight engineer in such critical areas as landing gear and flap configuration. The right-seat pilot flew the aircraft down to ARA minimums, three hundred feet above the ground. When the left-seat pilot had the runway environment within view and the runway was confirmed by both the third pilot and the flight engineer, he took control of the aircraft from the right-seat pilot and landed the aircraft.
Without any lights on the runway or on the aircraft, landing the Combat Talon proved to be quite challenging. As soon as the aircraft touched down, the right-seat pilot focused his goggles outside the aircraft and assisted the left-seat pilot as the aircraft slowed to taxi speed. After several “bone-crushing” touchdowns, it was apparent that the left-seat pilot needed more help than his own eyes could give him. Depth-perception problems or not, the left-seat pilot actually had to land while wearing NVGs. From this first effort, the squadron made great strides in perfecting blacked-out NVG airland procedures. Within the next three weeks, NVG airland procedures were developed and refined, and those procedures formed the basis for a capability that would radically change Combat Talon airland tactics forever. When the first Combat Talon NVG landing was made, it had been 23 days since the 4 November 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
The time had come for me to master my final hurdle before being assigned to a special operations flight crew: my NVG airland and aerial refueling check flight. It was not without incident.
These early PVS-5 model NVGs were less than ideal. They were heavy, had a limited field of view (akin to “tunnel vision”) and very poor battery life. On the one hand, they provided poor light amplification; on the other, if you’d inadvertently look into a bright light you’d be temporarily blinded. Today’s units have much higher acuity, longer lasting batteries, and much better amplification of available light. They swivel down from a hinge on the front of the helmet so they’re much more comfortable to wear, and allow for viewing around the periphery of the tubes.
We began with our pre-engine start preflight check, with one significant addition: We put tape over the primary warning lights on the instrument panel so they couldn’t impair the NVG performance. If you’ve seen the inside of a C-130 cockpit, there are a lot of lights and instruments. Taping them all would be no small undertaking. So in those days, it was hit and miss and we did our best, taping those that would have the greatest chance of illuminating during the flight. Today, there are totally compatible NVG cockpits or detailed taping instructions printed on a separate NVG preflight checklist, telling you exactly what to tape and how to tape it—but that certainly was not the case back then.
Once we got past that, we proceeded with the flight, including linking up with a tanker for midair refueling. By now I was comfortable with the Combat Talon, and fairly confident that my flight would receive a positive evaluation. My flight examiner, Jerry Uttaro, instructed me to turn the Herc around and head back to North Auxiliary Field in South Carolina.
Even with the poor acuity of the PVS-5s, I had no problem sighting the runway and lining up our nose for landing; besides a slight buffeting at about five hundred feet, the mild crosswinds presented no problems. Touchdown could not have been any smoother. I pulled the throttles toward me into the reverse thrust position when suddenly I was blinded by a bright flash directly in front of me. Coming from just above the airspeed indicator, it had to be one of the four nacelle overheat warning lights, signaling a serious overheat condition in the area around the engine compressor section. Since that condition so rarely comes up, we hadn’t bothered to tape those lights. Every bit as pressing at that instant was the fact that I had just engaged the reverse thrust on seventy-five tons of momentum racing down an active runway, and the flash of the warning light had deactivated the NVGs. At moments like that, instinct kicks in—or maybe it’s just repeated training that becomes reflex. Whatever it was, I knew that slowing down the plane and stopping with normal lighting was first priority, and we had to scramble to do so.
We returned the throttle levers to their idle position, switched on the overt taxi lights, removed the full-face goggles, slowed and stopped the aircraft, and departed the runway.
“You never do things the easy way, do you, Schwartz?” Uttaro said with a smile. It felt good to have that one behind me.
Thanks to the patience and aviation prowess of top instructor pilots like Bob Brenci, Jim Hobson, and Jerry Uttaro, I checked out and was ultimately assigned to Uttaro’s flight crew by th
e early part of 1981; it was one of only five crews at the time. Along with Brenci, Jerry Uttaro was a veteran commander in both EAGLE CLAW and CREDIBLE SPORT, so I could not have been in better hands. Basic Combat Certification was a crucial step, a prerequisite to piloting special operations missions. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more.
In the flying business, you have the basic airplane capability and, for a small percentage of aircrew, advanced certifications called special qualifications. In the case of the C-130, these include unique ways to employ the weapon system, special operations low-level, low-altitude parachute extraction system, the flare mission, and other special tactics and maneuvers exclusive to the Special Ops trade. My goal was to become qualified in all of them. Once I achieved this goal (with the exception of “ski landings”), I became an even more valuable asset to the joint special operations community. No longer would my interaction be exclusive to the Air Force. The joint community encompasses Army, Navy, and the Marines as well as Air Force. Joint experience is an essential piece of a well-rounded officer’s career portfolio, but in my case, the experience and visibility it provided me with my Army colleagues may have been the most significant factor in my progression to Chief.
For years I’d been focusing my sights on a career in Special Ops. I visualized countless scenarios: insertions and extractions in every conceivable configuration and environment, some friendly, others hostile, requiring specialized tactics to evade enemy antiaircraft fire and missiles; special operations low-level, with blacked-out aircraft and NVGs; HALO (High Altitude Low Opening), HAHO (High Altitude High Opening), and static-line airdrops; clandestine missions that hinged on deception. I anticipated (and experienced) each of these—with enthusiasm, I might add. But the opportunity that I was about to be assigned was something so extraordinary, it never crossed my mind that I’d be chosen to participate.
* * *
Sometimes when the boss calls you into his office and you have no idea why, even though you know you didn’t do anything wrong, just a tiny part of you wonders if you screwed something up. That’s how I felt when Lt Col Bob Brenci called me into his office in early summer of 1981.
“Norty,” he began, after having me take a seat in the chair beside his desk, directly across from a wall jammed with framed photos documenting his esteemed career. “You’ve proven that you can fly the Combat Talon, now how would you like to help us design its replacement?”
“I’m not exactly sure what that means, sir, but it sure sounds like a worthwhile challenge.”
He went on to explain. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the CREDIBLE SPORT project that Jerry Uttaro and I were involved with last year. Well, TAC has assigned Jerry to lead a follow-on program that we’re calling CREDIBLE SPORT II. This one’s not about rescuing hostages like the first one. It’s an effort to save funds and use the assets—and information—from the original CREDIBLE SPORT, to serve as a test bed for a new Combat Talon. It won’t be using the rocket assists like the first CS project, but it will retain the other super STOL [short takeoff and landing] modifications. We’ll be using the one remaining aircraft from CS I. We’re designating it YMC-130. And I’d like you to work with Jerry on the project—serve as the project’s second test pilot, and see what you and the team can come up with for the next-generation special operations aircraft.”
When I walked out of his office, my head was spinning—for so many different reasons. First and foremost was excitement for the tremendous potential of being part of a challenge like this. Having the opportunity to work so closely with Jerry served to sweeten the pot. I made a beeline for his office to thank him for having such faith in me; certainly he played a key role in recommending me to Brenci.
They referred to the process as an Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE), and we were called the OUE team. Testing would be split into two phases, with the first to begin in late August of 1981, and continue until mid-November. In this phase we integrated minor alterations to improve aerodynamics and flight safety. Phase II involved modifications more specific to the needs of the new Combat Talon.
As Col Benci mentioned, by the time we received the test aircraft, the rocket motors had already been removed. But the other modifications were still very much intact. It truly was an ideal aircraft to work with since it already incorporated many of the subsystems, technologies, and concepts contemplated for Combat Talon II. These included integrated, self-contained navigation/precision approach avionics, aerodynamic STOL features, and advanced cockpit displays. It had double-slotted articulated (expanded) flaps, expanded structural surfaces that we called the horsal and dorsal fins mounted on the rear fuselage—these improved directional stability at slow speeds—and extended-chord fully powered aileron surfaces that were boosted to provide additional lateral control. Modifications also included a new radome, a FLIR (forward-looking infrared) turret with laser range system; an externally mounted refueling system to provide an in-flight refueling (IFR) capability; a Doppler radar tied in to the aircraft’s inertial navigation system; a terrain-following/terrain-avoidance (TF/TA) radar to facilitate low-level flight; and a defensive electronic countermeasures (ECM) suite for added protection.
The guidance system—an important landing aid—was cutting edge at the time. This was also the very first usage of computer-aided visualization and sensor integration (both the pilot and navigator had CRT displays) that allowed us to operate the aircraft on internal guidance only; absolutely no external guidance was required. Integrating avionics to give the aircraft an autonomous landing capability was a totally unique concept at the time.
So I found myself deeply immersed in development of the next generation of fixed-wing special operations airlift, rather than flying actual tactical missions, and I was enjoying every minute of it. I spent a good deal of time in Atlanta at the Lockheed Marietta plant, both before Suzie and I got married and after. Not the ideal situation for a young newlywed couple, especially since these trips kept me out of town for weeks at a time. I was probably gone for at least nine of the first fifteen months of our marriage, and Suzie was not a particularly happy camper.
From time to time I would fly back for the weekend, but these would be spur of the moment trips without any advance notice—par for the course in the special operations field in the early ’80s—not so much for a newlywed bride in an unfamiliar city without knowing another soul. Suzie had her own unique way of letting me know how she felt about it. Case in point: one Saturday morning when I stepped off the Republic Airlines DC-9 from Atlanta and approached a row of payphones at Fort Walton Beach’s Okaloosa Regional Airport (now called Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport). I inserted my dime and called home.
“Good news, Suz,” I said enthusiastically. “I’m in town for the weekend, so could you please pick me up at the airport?”
“Excuse me, who is this? I don’t recognize the voice,” she fired back sarcastically.
I chuckled. “Message received. Now would you please come over and get me?”
“I suppose I could … but I won’t. Until you find the common decency to give me some advance notice that you’re coming in, you can find your own way home.” Click. Fortunately, the taxi stand was only a few hundred feet away.
* * *
Uttaro and I spent months evaluating the CREDIBLE SPORT II aircraft and avionics performance. These included high- and low-level navigation, simulated aerial refueling (as helicopter tanker), airdrop, and night airland operations using NVG/blackout landing techniques.
In the twenty-five sorties and 60.5 flight hours that constituted Phase I, we found major design deficiencies in the airframe and in its avionics suite, and insufficient margins of safety required for peacetime operations. We also called for improved flight controls, the preparation of flight director/autopilot control laws, the installation of a stall warning system, improved stability augmentation, a better functioning radar system, improvements to the cockpit configuration, and proof testing of the STOL flaps. Once these issues were r
ectified by Lockheed, we transitioned to Phase II testing.
We finally flew the aircraft from Dobbins to Hurlburt so that we could run some tests in the Eglin Range Complex. It was parked on the ramp configured for slow-speed flight, so it looked demonstratively different from all the other C-130s lined up on either side of it. Picture a supercharged Knight Rider Mustang Shelby with hood scoop and high-performance rear racing wings parked amidst a row of standard equipped V6 GTs. I’d been passionately involved with this project for the past year or so, and in many respects I considered that aircraft to be my baby. For months I’d been telling Suzie about the added fins, extended flaps, FLIR turret, and such; I couldn’t wait for her to come by to see them all for herself—to share my excitement.
To her credit, she arrived in under fifteen minutes. I was still near the CREDIBLE SPORT aircraft when she arrived. I’ll never forget how she had this big smile on her face as she approached me, looking all around at the various 130s so expectantly. “Which one is it?” she asked.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Norty, if you got me out here for nothing … I thought you had this wonder-plane here.”
She didn’t notice the difference. To her, it looked just like all the other 130s. I was crushed.
Our next scheduled test flight was a night sortie to take place that Friday night. This was an overall evaluation of all the systems. We were flying in to Duke Field, not too far from Hurlburt, utilizing the autonomous landing system—the mechanism that allowed us to operate the aircraft independent from any external guidance. The FLIR sensors and associated apparatus automatically tracked our exact position, and exactly where we were supposed to be.
Being the mission commander, I was on PVS-5 NVGs in the left seat, looking outside as both a safety officer and ultimately to take the airplane for landing—but at that point I was allowing the right-seat pilot to take the plane in according to the internal navigation and guidance data he was receiving from the autonomous system. My reputation is that I’m a pretty quiet guy, and that’s especially true when I’m in the cockpit. There’s enough going on without idle chitchat providing distraction from the tasks at hand, so when I do say something, those around me know that it’s of consequence.
Journey Page 13