Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

conjunction with some properly embellished tales from his training, a picture of his
next aircraft was shown on the screen. Sometimes, as a spirit-crushing joke, another
plane would be flashed just to see the reaction. I mean, if you’re expecting a
fighter, you’d slit your own throat if you thought you were getting a lumbering C-
130 or a trainer. Remember, this night was the culmination of lifelong dreams, four
years of college and a year of UPT. They put up a T-38 for me initially, and as my
soul fled my body in shame, I remember actually grabbing the chair so I wouldn’t
stagger. But amid the guffawing, hoots, and screams, there appeared a picture of a
beautiful F-16. In the end, with lots of backslapping, each dazed pilot would walk
to the front, shake hands, and receive his official orders. You got what you earned
—I had a great night.
I left Vance after that year, considerably skinnier but with silver wings on my
chest. As with most military programs, you soon realize that you actually haven’t
finished anything, because there’s always the next course or school to attend.
Everything you complete just opens a new door. For an aspiring fighter pilot, there
was another full year of various training programs before you got to your first
operational squadron.
First came the three-month Lead-In Fighter Training (LIFT) course at Holloman
AFB, New Mexico. This was conducted in AT-38 aircraft, and the instructors were
all fighter pilots. Actually, the real point of this course, and what made it great, was
to teach the young punk how to be a fighter pilot. So, besides the obvious flying
stuff like dropping bombs, strafing, and dogfighting, they taught other essentials—
drinking games at the bar, hymns like “Sammy Small” and “Dear Mom, Your Son
Is Dead.” We were stripped of all Air Training Command patches and issued
Tactical Air Command (TAC) name tags and patches. It was a true mark of
distinction to walk into any Officer’s Club bar wearing a TAC shield and a
squadron patch with the initials TFS—Tactical Fighter Squadron.
We also went through centrifuge training here. Think of the little seat that got
spun around the room at 400 miles per hour during The Right Stuff or Spies Like
Us, and you’ve got the picture. See, we were really part of the first generation of
fighter pilots going into high-G aircraft, and no one was certain about the long-term
effects. When blood drains from the head during high-G forces, the brain goes to
sleep. Obviously, in a jet fighter traveling at 900 feet per second, this is a bad thing,
and too many pilots were getting killed. Where planes like the T-38 and older
fighters could instantly pull, say, seven Gs, the engine and airframe couldn’t hold it
very long. The Gs would “bleed off” to a very manageable four or five Gs. The
danger in the F-16 was that it could sustain eight or nine Gs long past the point that