…The first phase of pilot training was purely academics, learning the elementary concepts of flight and navigation.\u00a0 The next phase was basic flight in the T-37, a twin engine jet trainer with the pilot and student sitting side-by-side.\u00a0 The 1950s era plane had an agonizing engine sound that earned it the nickname “Tweet.”\u00a0 It was in this aircraft that we were taught the fundamentals of takeoff, landing, and instrument flight.\u00a0 The first flight in pilot training is traditionally called a “dollar ride,” a term which is sometimes applied to the first flight in any flying training program in a new aircraft.\u00a0 The student is so clueless and the instructor pilot (IP) has to demonstrate (and thus fly) so much that the student is essentially a passenger.\u00a0 Traditionally, the student gives the IP of his first sortie a dollar bill as a “tip” for the ride.\u00a0 The dollars are often decorated with magazine clippings (some more risqu\u00e9 than others), phrases, or other details that might characterize the flight, the student, or the IP.\u00a0 Many UPT instructors’ desks are littered with laminated, vandalized dollar bills.\u00a0 The journey from the “dollar ride” to the first solo is amazingly short.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Only one month after my first flight, I soloed for the first time in an Air Force jet.\u00a0 I took off with an IP first; after he was confident I could fly without killing myself (or getting him in trouble), we landed and shut down one engine.\u00a0 He climbed out, I restarted the engine, and I launched again with an empty seat next to me.\u00a0 Flying alone for the first time inspired confidence, though it was somewhat unnerving\u2014it was well-known that solo student pilots would hear noises and feel things in the jet that they never experienced before.\u00a0 There wasn’t anything wrong with the jet; the solo pilots were simply more “aware” of every creak and groan of the aircraft.\u00a0 After I landed from my first solo flight I was carried by my fellow classmates to the “solo pool,” a small swimming pool where all the student pilots who had successfully soloed were dunked.\u00a0 Thus began my flying career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The remainder of my flights in T-37s were relatively uneventful.\u00a0 A few pilots were eliminated (“washed out”), and one quit (self-initiated elimination, or “SIE”) when he decided that flying just wasn’t for him.\u00a0 Pilot training was challenging, and many people got discouraged when “mean” instructors were hard on them or when they “hooked” (failed) rides.\u00a0 Still, a few IPs took time to encourage the students.\u00a0 One of our IPs had a particularly harsh reputation.\u00a0 While flying with one of my fellow students he said, “I have the aircraft,” and took control away from the student.\u00a0 He said, “Take a look at yourself in the mirror.”\u00a0 T-37s had adjustable rearview mirrors on both sides of the cockpit.\u00a0 His student shifted the mirror to look at himself, expecting to see something wrong with his helmet or mask.\u00a0 To the student’s surprise, the IP said, “Now isn’t that one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen?\u00a0 You’re a pilot, flying a jet.\u00a0 You are getting paid to do what others would pay money to do.\u00a0 Now you are that pilot that you always thought was so cool.”\u00a0 He gave his student a moment to admire the profile of his face in the helmet, with the aircraft just behind him and the Texas landscape far below; then he said, “You have the aircraft.\u00a0 Now stop screwing up.”\u00a0 Not long after my class had completed training the Air Force began phasing the aging T-37s out of service and replacing them with the single-engine T-6 Texan II, a tandem-seat turboprop that vastly outperformed the Tweet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most of the T-37 instructors had come from heavy airframes, and many were on their last assignment before they separated and became civilians.\u00a0 (At one point our flight was called “the Pasture,” because it was where instructors with a short time left in the Air Force were placed.)\u00a0 They were enjoying their time and building flight and instrument hours; often they would take leave to go to job interviews or complete their airline check-outs.\u00a0 They headed home early every Friday to spend time with their families or travel somewhere for the weekend.\u00a0 The T-38 pilots were dramatically different.\u00a0 With the exception of one former B-1 pilot they were all fighter pilots, and they were only instructing pilot training because the Air Force required it.\u00a0 All were itching to return to their fighters, and while they were waiting they brought their aggressive pilot attitudes to their instruction.\u00a0 They took flying very seriously.\u00a0 These instructors modeled the classic characteristics of the fighter pilot personality. \u00a0They were aggressive, terse, and blunt.\u00a0 Here I first learned that fighter pilots need to have a “thick skin,” because criticisms were not couched in pleasant words but were delivered with severity.\u00a0 It was not meanness for meanness’ sake; but they were very critical and demanding in a harsh way, at least from the viewpoint of a young student pilot.\u00a0 The criticism did have a purpose:\u00a0 the second track of pilot training was not to teach the basics but the foundations of flying a tactical aircraft.<\/p>\n
We flew more solo sorties, learned formation flying, and executed what was called “fluid maneuvering,” basically a very elementary form of dogfighting.\u00a0 Besides the flying, we were taught to frame our thought processes in the same terms as a fighter pilot.\u00a0 Most US Air Force fighters are single-seat aircraft, which means most fighter pilots spend their time as solo “aircraft commanders” flying in formation with another solo pilot.\u00a0 (The two-seat F-15E is an obvious exception.\u00a0 The Navy also has several multi-seat fighter aircraft.)\u00a0 Previously, the side-by-side seating of the T-37 had made several of the controls, particularly the radio, a stretch for the left seat (student) pilot.\u00a0 It was not uncommon for a student pilot to ask the IP to make a radio channel change for him.\u00a0 Most instructors were open to this and even encouraged it as a “crew concept.”\u00a0 In the tandem seating of the T-38, all the controls were within easy reach.\u00a0 Besides that, the T-38 IPs emphasized the need for the fighter pilot-to-be to execute the complete mission without assistance.\u00a0 Some IPs would sit quietly in the back and not say a word during the entire flight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After pilot training we still had several training classes to accomplish.\u00a0 Since the Air Force now knew what aircraft we were going to fly they could send us to training tailored to our specific airframe. \u00a0For example, fighter pilots went through a slightly different water survival than heavy pilots; most fighter pilots would probably eject and be alone, while heavies might ditch and have a crew.\u00a0 In the case of resistance training, which was training for conduct if we became a prisoner of war (POW), there were “special” courses for pilots assigned to aircraft with intelligence missions.\u00a0 All Academy graduates had completed the forest survival portion of SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) while we were cadets; the resistance portion of the course had been removed from the cadet syllabus after a scandal occurred and was broadcast on national TV.\u00a0 I completed the resistance training at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. \u00a0After a week at Fairchild I went to water survival at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida, which houses a little-known unit of US Air Force boats.\u00a0 We had also accomplished part of the water survival training as cadets; we completed the top-off parachuting course in the Gulf of Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Centrifuge<\/strong><\/p>\n A more significant milestone specific to the fighter pilot is attending the centrifuge, a dastardly little machine located at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.\u00a0 Made famous by its amusement park portrayals in various movies, the centrifuge was not nearly as fun to actually experience.\u00a0 Future F-16 pilots were required to stay conscious under a force of 9 “Gs” for 10 seconds.\u00a0 A person sitting or standing experiences 1 G, or a force equal to gravity.\u00a0 At 9 Gs, a 200 pound person feels as though they weight 1,800 pounds.\u00a0 Though significant, the increased “weight” is bearable.\u00a0 The more challenging aspect of G forces is that the outward forces cause a pilot’s blood to pool in his legs and feet.\u00a0 The potential result is a lack of sufficient blood to the brain which causes a blackout under G, called a “G-induced Loss of Consciousness,” or G-LOC (pronounced Gee-Lock).\u00a0 The specialists did a good job of teaching us the proper techniques and gave us equipment to wear in the form of a chap-like “g-suit.”\u00a0 Much as the movies showed, we were seat-belted into a cubicle that simulated a cockpit.\u00a0 The cockpit was on the end of a long arm that spun at amazing speeds, compressing us under increased gravity (G) forces.\u00a0 Sustaining Gs in the centrifuge is significantly more difficult than in the actual aircraft and is extremely physically demanding.\u00a0 Fortunately, so long as fighter pilots stay current in their airframe they are not required to return to the centrifuge.\u00a0 It is a “rite of passage” that I would not want to repeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n After completing those various training classes I went to the Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals (IFF) course at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia.\u00a0 There we flew AT-38s, a slightly modified version of the T-38 we’d flown in pilot training, and learned the basic concepts of dogfighting and bomb dropping. \u00a0The emphasis was formation flying, basic fighter maneuvers, and ground attack.\u00a0 The IFF squadron was the first one I was in that was composed exclusively of fighter pilots.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n After completing IFF, I was assigned to the F-16 basic course (B-course).\u00a0 It was a six-month class that started with the fundamentals of taking off and landing in the F-16 and finished with tactics and using the F-16 as a weapon.\u00a0 The course progressed well, and my training report said that I was an average to above average F-16 student.\u00a0 The B-course involved many long days; it was intense in a different way than initial pilot training since the F-16 had significantly more systems which required greater systems knowledge.\u00a0 By this time, though, I was used to the rigor and the schedule of the training.\u00a0 What was new was the fighter pilot persona that was finally displayed in full force.<\/p>\n Return to<\/em> God and Country<\/a>. …The first phase of pilot training was purely academics, learning the elementary concepts of flight and navigation.\u00a0 The next phase was basic flight in the T-37, a twin engine jet trainer with the pilot and student sitting side-by-side.\u00a0 The 1950s era plane had an agonizing engine sound that earned it the nickname “Tweet.”\u00a0 It was in this aircraft that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2,32],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-military","tag-pilot-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGo to<\/em> ChristianFighterPilot.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"