Riding Rockets

CHAPTER 12 Speed

Our TFNG freshman year also included an introduction to the ultimate astronaut perk—flying the NASA T-38 jets. Even fireworks, flaming hookers, and tits under glass couldn’t put a smile on our faces like the ones we wore while flying the ’38, a two-place, twin-engine, after-burning supersonic jet. Even its title, “’38,” was the stuff of testosterone. It conjured up images of breasts and caliber. Originally designed in the late ’50s by the USAF to serve as an advanced pilot training aircraft, NASA had acquired a squadron of them as proficiency trainers for the astronauts.

The years had been kind to the ’38. Its sleek needle nose and exquisitely thin, card-table-size wings were timeless hallmarks of speed. In one hundred years people will look at the ’38 in museums and still say, “What a sweet jet!” It was a crotch rocket that looked as if it had been especially built for astronauts. NASA’s ’38s were painted a brilliant white with a streak of blue, like a racing stripe, running the length of the fuselage. The agency’s logo, a stylized script spelling “NASA,” was emblazoned in red on the tail. It was an airplane and a paint scheme certain to turn heads on any airport tarmac.

The ’38 served two functions: transportation to various meetings and proficiency training. NASA’s simulators were great at preparing astronauts to fly the space shuttle, but they had one critical shortcoming. They lacked a fear factor. No matter how badly you screwed up, simulators couldn’t kill you. But high-performance jet aircraft could. Flying the T-38s kept the pilots razor sharp in dealing with potentially deadly time-critical situations, something spaceflight had in abundance.

Before being cleared to fly the ’38 we first had to complete water-survival training at Eglin AFB in the panhandle of Florida. We parasailed to several hundred feet altitude and then were released from the towboat to float into the water in a simulation of an aircraft ejection. Once in the water we had to release the parachute, climb into a one-man raft, signal a helicopter, then don a harness to be winched aboard in a simulated rescue. We were also towed behind fast-moving boats in a simulation of landing in a gale. We were dumped into the water and covered with the canopy of a parachute and taught how to escape before the nylon sank and became an anchor to pull us to our deaths. For the military flyers this training was a review. We had all been through it several times in our careers. But it was a first for the civilians. I carefully watched them, wondering if any would balk at some of the scarier training or need remedial instruction. In particular I watched the women for displays of fear or for a cry for help during the more physically demanding activities. But they performed as well as me or any of the other vets. I began to reassess my feeling of superiority over the post-docs and women. It would take several more years for the full transition of respect to occur, but this was my start.

The biggest surprise of our introduction to NASA’s T-38 flight operations was the rules. There were none, or at least there were very few. In military flight operations, every phase, from engine start to engine shutdown, was usually part of a training program and closely monitored by superior officers. The ready rooms of military squadrons had credenzas filled with volumes of rules and regulations for operating the aircraft. NASA management, on the other hand, had the misguided belief that astronauts were professionals and didn’t need big brother watching or a thick manual of rules to safely operate one of their jets. Sure…and a teenager being handed the keys to a 160-mile-per-hour Ferrari doesn’t need any rules or supervision either.

We were the teenagers, and the skies over the nearby Gulf of Mexico were our back roads. After a radar-controlled exit from the Houston airspace, we would make that glorious call to Air Traffic Control (ATC), “Houston Center, NASA 904. Please cancel my IFR.” Translation: “Houston, I’m off to play. Don’t bother me. I’ll call when I’m done.”

On many occasions a cooperative TFNG pilot would say, “You’ve got it, Mike,” and I would take control of the aircraft. (Since the ’38 was designed as a trainer it had a full set of controls in the backseat.) When there were thunderstorms in the area I would send the plane twisting among their cauliflowered blossoms like a skier darting through the gates of a downhill slalom. Wisps of vapor would pass inches from the canopy, enhancing the sensation of speed. If there is orgasm outside of sex, this was it—speed and the unbound freedom of the sky.

We would flat-hat across the water, passing alongside container ships and super-tankers. That a seabird might come crashing through the windscreen like a cannon shot and kill us was a fear…but not much of one. We were intoxicated on velocity.

For thrills it didn’t get much better than being in Fred Gregory’s backseat. Fred, a USAF helicopter pilot, was one of the three African-American TFNGs. Apparently helicopter pilots believed they would get nosebleeds if they ever flew above a few feet altitude, or at least I got that impression from flying with Fred. We would depart Houston’s Ellington Field and fly ATC control to the Amarillo City airfield in the panhandle of Texas. There we would refuel and then fly VFR (under our own control) at butt cheek–tightening low altitude to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We would pass over the tops of windmills with just yards of clearance. The only thing that protected us from running into buzzards and hawks was that they had sense enough to cruise at higher altitudes. We streaked across the tips of 13,000-foot mountains and dove into canyons. The 600-foot-deep Rio Grande River Gorge in northern New Mexico was a favorite. I would look up to see the rim of that canyon. As power lines appeared, Fred would hop the jet across them and dive back on the other side. In what is truly a remarkable irony, many years later Fred was appointed NASA’s associate administrator for safety. I guess we all eventually grow brains.

The most dangerous aerial play was “one-vee-one,” or one-versus-one dogfighting. In a flight of two ’38s we’d cruise a few miles over the water, then switch to company frequency, an unused frequency nobody would be monitoring. At least we hoped nobody would be monitoring it. Then each aircraft, flying in formation at the same speed and altitude, would simultaneously break 45 degrees in opposite directions. After flying for a minute on the new headings, we would turn into each other on a collision course. This maneuver ensured a neutral setup, one in which neither pilot had an advantage when the dogfighting started. There were obvious dangers in this arrangement. First, it put two virtually invisible objects on a head-on course at a combined speed in excess of 1,000 miles per hour. The other danger was more subtle. Pretending air-to-air combat with identical aircraft makes it difficult for either pilot to gain an advantage. Pilots are more tempted to push their vehicles to the edge of their performance envelopes to gain a simulated “kill.” In my air force career there had been numerous incidents of dogfighting pilots crossing that edge, losing control, and having to eject—or dying when they didn’t. It happened in my squadron in England. In fact, it happened so often worldwide the air force ultimately banned the practice of identical jets simulating a dogfight.

But in our Gulf of Mexico playground, the only rule was, “There are no rules,” another witticism of Hoot Gibson. Pilots would make that final turn toward each other and slam the throttles into afterburner. It was a game of chicken and we strained to pick out the dot representing the competition. When the “tallyho” call was made, the game was on. Our jets would pass canopy to canopy, sometimes no more than a couple hundred feet apart, and the pilots would jerk their ’38s into a vertical spiraling climb, keeping each other in sight and trying to maneuver for an advantage. Usually the first “vertical scissors” would end in a tie with both planes standing on their nozzles and the airspeed dropping lower and lower. When an out-of-control tail slide was imminent, the pilots would have no alternative but to pull the nose over. With the ocean steadily filling the windscreen, another scissoring dance to gain advantage would begin. Only after several of these up-down vertical helixes would one pilot finally gain a small advantage and a tail chase would begin. The pursued would twist in various escape maneuvers. The planes would shudder violently in high-speed turns that crushed us in our seats. Sweat would pour from our scalps and sting our eyes. Unintelligible grunts would fill the intercom as we strained to tighten our guts and prevent blood flow out of our brains. Unlike fighter pilots we did not wear anti-G suits, which added the danger of G-induced unconsciousness to the games. In a high-speed turn the G-forces could momentarily reach seven, which would pull the blood from our brains and bring on tunnel vision. Just a little harder pull and our vision would have gone to black…unconsciousness. Death at water impact would have followed. But we always managed to grunt our way through the yanking and banking to eventually hear the “rat-a-tat-tat, you’re dead” call over the radio. A victor would be proclaimed and another game would begin.

How we survived this idiocy without an aircraft and/or crew loss, I have no idea. On several occasions the extreme maneuvering would lead to a flameout. A “break it off” call would be a certain indication the other crew was restarting a failed engine. It must have been the Almighty watching out after us. As I would later hear John Young say in reference to near disasters on early shuttle flights, “God watches out for babies, drunks, and astronauts.” He certainly watched after dogfighting TFNGs.

If only God would have watched out for me all the way to the chocks. On one occasion Brewster Shaw let me fly our jet to a landing. After touchdown, I made the mistake of lowering the nose too quickly. The tire impacted a barrier wire stretched across the approach end of the runway (used by tailhook-equipped aircraft in an emergency), which dented the wheel and caused the nose tire to go flat. In the vernacular of the military flyer, we had just “stepped on our dicks.” One of the few rules in NASA’s playbook was that backseaters didn’t land the plane. Brewster attempted to cover our violation by telling the flight-line mechanics he had screwed up the landing. “I let the nose down too early.” The maintenance chief seemed to accept this explanation and we thought we were home free…until the next Monday morning meeting. TFNG Dave Walker brought the flat tire into the conference room! He hefted it from behind the table and said, “Brewster, you want to explain this? The incident report says you forgot to hold the nose up for aero-braking.” Dave had recently been appointed the TFNG safety rep for flight operations, so it was not surprising he had heard about the flat tire.

Brewster, a short, wiry, reticent air force pilot, shot Walker a look that read, “After this meeting is over, I’m going to personally shove that freakin’ tire up your ass and then reinflate it!” We had been caught, given up by one of our own. There was no way anybody in that room was going to believe Brewster, a test pilot, had forgotten to hold up the jet’s nose, any more than they would have believed Nolan Ryan had forgotten how to throw a fastball. John Young, in particular, was looking for an explanation.

An hour later we were in his office giving him one…the truth. “I let Mike do the landing, John.” After the confession it was painfully obvious we were going to need new assholes. Young gave us a well-deserved reaming. “I’m constantly fighting headquarters to keep these ’38s and stunts like this jeopardize it for all of us. MSes aren’t pilots. Letting Mullane land was the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

During our grilling, I was struck by how uncomfortable Young appeared to be with command. As with his welcome speech, he couldn’t make eye contact. He looked at his shoes. He looked at papers on his desk. He looked out the window. He looked everywhere but into our eyes. In every prior ass chewing I had ever received from my military commander, and there had been a few, their eyes had been the worst. They had drilled into my very soul and filled me with dread. I recalled my last commander, Colonel Jim Glenn, haranguing me and my pilot for having disobeyed a checklist procedure to jettison some hot ordnance before making an emergency landing. Colonel Glenn had stared at us with the intensity of a cobra. I was embarrassed for Young and his dancing eyes. His unease was palpable. But we were finally dismissed to return to our offices and worry about whether we’d ever fly in space.

The flat tire incident didn’t hurt Brewster’s career. In fact he flew before Dave Walker, on STS-9 as—get this—John Young’s copilot! I can only assume that Young never really knew it was Brewster who had screwed up because he had never looked him in the face.

There was one aspect of the T-38 flying I wondered about. How would the civilians handle the issue of airsickness? Some of them were going to be affected, of that, I was sure. I had been in my early air force flying career. When I made my transition to the backseat of the F-4 Phantom, I vomited enough for a squadron of men. Would any of the civilians have a similar experience? Would any of them give up? There were whispers of some being as tormented as I had been. The office grapevine had it that Rhea Seddon was struggling and Hoot Gibson was taking her on flights to help her adjust. She didn’t quit. None of the civilians did. I admired them for it. It was a shared experience and another lesson for me that the civilian TFNGs were not the wimps I had imagined they were.