Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [45]
Jim later had a chance to fly the F-16. Two of his roommates died in F-16 training accidents, and the job fell to Jim to pack up their gear and return it to their families. Later, Jim would again have to eject from an unflyable plane, an F-16. Again, he survived. “Every day I wake up is a bonus,” he’d tell me.
PERHAPS THE most harrowing flight of my military career came in an F-4 out of Nellis. My “GIB” (“guy in back” or “backseater”) was Loren Livermore, a former bank clerk from Colorado who decided to abandon his desk job and become an Air Force navigator. He and I were on a gunnery range over the Nevada desert. I was leading a formation of four fighters, flying a box pattern around the target on the desert floor as part of bombing practice.
We were at a very low altitude, and I felt the plane move by itself. Imagine being in your car, driving along, and all of a sudden, without turning the steering wheel, you start veering to the left. It would be a bit shocking.
For us, in the F-4, the unsettling moment came when we felt the plane make a sudden uncommanded flight control movement.
Loren had hooked up a cassette recorder so he could have a record of what we said to each other, and of our radio transmissions. My response to this movement was very clear on the tape.
“Goddamn it!”
“What was that?” Loren shot back.
“I don’t know,” I told him.
Being just a hundred feet above the ground, traveling 450 knots, in a plane with a mind of its own—that’s not a path you want to be on. I immediately pulled the F-4 skyward. I needed a rapid climb to get away from the unforgiving ground. I had to buy myself time and give myself room. At a higher altitude, Loren and I might be able to make sense of the malfunction and deal with it more effectively. More important, if the situation worsened, we would have the time and altitude to be able to recover, or successfully eject and survive.
I radioed, “Tasty one one, knock it off.” That was my order to the other three planes to abandon the practice run and stop the training mission.
Each pilot acknowledged my order.
“Two knock it off.”
“Three knock it off.”
“Four knock it off.”
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” I said. “Tasty one one. Flight control malfunction.”
As leader of the formation, I still had to give direction to the other three planes. “Two and four go home,” I said. “Three join on me.”
I wanted two of the jets to go back to Nellis. They could serve no useful purpose, and I didn’t want the increased workload of being responsible for them anymore. As flight lead, I had a responsibility to my flight of four jets as well as myself and my WSO. It was prudent to stop the training when it was no longer reasonably safe and to focus my attention on the higher priority of merely staying alive a little longer.
I chose to have No. 3 escort me, since he was also a flight lead and was more experienced than either No. 2 or No. 4. I wanted No. 3 to see if he could help me make sense of whatever my F-4’s malfunction was. Before 2 and 4 left the range, and the frequency, I radioed, “Tasty one one, armament safety check complete.”
Each of the other pilots responded.
“Two, armament safety check complete.”
“Three, armament safety check complete.”
“Four, armament safety check complete.”
This ensured that all arming switches were returned to the safe position before planes left the range.
The No. 3 pilot was George Cella. At the time there was a popular TV commercial for Cella Lambrusco wine. The lovable character in the commercial, named Aldo Cella, was a short, pudgy Italian guy with a dark mustache. He wore a white suit and hat, and had women hanging all over him because of his brand of wine. So George’s tactical call sign was “Aldo.”
Aldo said, “Better do a controllability check.”
When I got to a higher altitude, about fifteen thousand feet, I slowed down the jet to make sure it would remain controllable at a slower speed when the time came for me to attempt a landing. Loren, my WSO,