The Rescue Manual: Analyzing the Latest High-Profile Saves; Winged Victory Ep 31

Rob and Scott once again sit down with Julio "Zorrro" Lopez Jr. and Mark Brush, but this time we talk current events that relate to their prior missions and training.  The F-15 crew rescue in Iran and the Artemis II Integrity capsule recovery at sea.  It's a fantastic reminder of the skills and training that the United States armed forces posses and are displaying in real time.

#warbirds #museum #flying  #artemisii  #Helicopter    #podcast  #planes  #history #aviation  #newbeginnings #passion #drive     #nationalmuseumofwwiiaviation #navy #airforce #rescue #nasa 


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome to Winged Victory with Rob and Scott, a podcast by the National Museum of World War II Aviation here in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello. We have a special celebratory edition of Winged Victory. I'm Rob Gale, my partner in crime, Scott Clare. Scott Clare's two of our favorite repeat offenders.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

Zora Lopez, Mark Brush.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

And I say celebratory because among current events, we've had two amazing uh occurrences with helicopters. And so our helicopter brothers are here today, but the successful extraction of the back seater in uh in Iran and then Artemis yesterday. Yeah. And turns out Mark actually knows a couple of the people aboard those Helens.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Four of them so far. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

That's awesome. But we're just we're thrilled, I'm thrilled anyway, that we're back. I mean, growing up in the space race, watching Mercury spacecraft, Gemini hit the water and be recovered, that was that was just the coolest thing ever. And it's kind of sad that it's been damn near your lifetime since we did that.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

It's kind of the first time I got to watch one of those things, really. I mean, but I paid attention to it, and it yeah, it just blows your mind. I mean, it's kind of weird because I feel like we're going back in time a little bit. You're kind of like, don't we have space shuttles and stuff that we could don't we catch the rockets now? I mean, you know, they have to do the whole splashdown thing and then the whole recovery, but uh that was quite something to watch with all those helicopters and everything. Definitely was.

SPEAKER_05 2:04

Yeah, it was it's a it was a beautiful uh landing. And it was I was just on pins and needles watching it, and it reminded me of Apollo because I watched them all as a kid. Yeah. And then uh having been fortunate enough to be part of the uh NASA and uh space uh shuttle and orbital recoveries, I did 11 of those missions. It brought back a lot of memories because it was sad when shuttles stopped.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:25

So it was good to see this.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, it's well you're not gonna do anything. Right. You know, we're just no well, we're I don't know, we're kind of done.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

So I mean, as part of the recovery team like that, I mean, watching that yesterday, what was like the one thing that you're really like, once they get past this point, we're good to go.

SPEAKER_05 2:43

Yes, as I was waiting for them to come out of the ionization when and I'm waiting, and I had a timer set up because it gives you six minutes, and I went, oh no, it's going beyond six minutes here, and I go, okay, okay. And my wife is watching me, and I'm like, there it is, the voice. I was like, relief. Yeah, and then you're watching it come down, and I go, okay, next step, next step. You know, you know, yes, separation, okay. That's still not a shoot. Okay, here's now the drone, you know, and I'm going, great.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

I think that that's got to be the most dramatic thing I think I've ever seen. Is when they had the two shoot drones slow it down, slow it down, and then those leave. Yes. And you know, nobody's talking and letting you know, oh, those are things that are gonna leave, and then the other ones are gonna happen. Yeah, and then the other ones come out and then they're just like, look at when are they gonna open? When are they gonna open?

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Those are seconds, it seemed forever. Yeah, and you can imagine like how fast they were still falling at that point, that if those things were to just completely open, oh yeah, it would rip all the ropes apart.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Oh, yeah, shred the shred the canopy, right? But it it was a little unnerving because in parachuting there is such a thing as a streamer where the canopy never develops. It's like, please don't.

SPEAKER_05 3:54

Yeah, and did you see the third one wasn't quite inflated yet? I'm like, okay, okay, yes.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

Yeah, no, it was uh it was like it was about 30 seconds of well come on.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

So I know that this is gonna be because I I kind of was watching some videos on YouTube last night of people going, why didn't they just take a boat back to the ship? So it's not just because yeah, it's not just because they've been doing this since you know, Gemini, Mercury, you know, using the H3 to pick them up out of the water and get them to the ship. But you can imagine, okay, they were already sitting there in the water for an hour-ish before they got to them, but an hour boat ride back to the ship, uh, as far as how fast that rescue boat goes. But then either you're gonna get hoisted up the side of the ship or go into the well deck in an amphibious ship, which they did have, but then the astronauts are still climbing up through the ship, still having to get off that boat.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Their bodies are fragile, even after as little time as as they've spent weightless. Um you you gotta be pretty gentle. And even in the calm seas we had, having had a number of experiences in amphibious well decks, right? The surf gets up in there and it can be incredibly rough. But I I I was feeling sorry for them though. Even again, it was calm and they're just kind of bobbing around. It's like, I bet you those guys are not feeling very well.

SPEAKER_05 5:24

Even uh the space shuttle, when it would come back and land on the space shuttle facility. I was giving my wife a play-by-play. She goes, Why are they using these uh infrared pictures? I said, because they want to see what's venting. Did you see how all the gases are venting? I said, when the shuttle would land, we would watch it under thermal and see, making sure that it's venting. You don't want to be anywhere near that hydrazine or other chemicals that are coming off that aircraft.

SPEAKER_06 5:47

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:48

So they would go in there, pull the astronauts out, and you'd see the astronauts, the the pilots would technically would walk. The rest of those guys, they couldn't get out of their chairs, so they have to be carried out. Yeah. Uh, because they're, I mean, they're mission specialists, they're not guys that are used to doing all the training, right? Yeah, yeah. And uh so same thing there. Now you've got an unstable platform and you've got the same conditions. You're already woozy, and now you're doing this.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

So that was something, man. I I don't know. I just like I said, I'm kind of newbie to it, so to see that whole thing play out was just amazing. I mean, it just really was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

One of the few commentators that was actually worth listening to was a guy who'd made like four trips in the shuttle, and he said, I got I got home from the first one and I was holding my head rigidly. He said, After the fourth one, he said, I could I could kind of alight in style. But it's it's incredible what these bodies go through. Yes. I mean, first of all, imagine the acceleration as you lift off, and then as we said, the deceleration. Yeah, to go from 24,000 miles an hour to 16 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Well, and for people who watched it, even after they got on the the carrier deck, um, both the Helos shut down and they stayed on the helicopter for a period of time. They're like, there's all kinds of media photos of the crewmen standing outside. And you know, buddy Steve Williams that I served with at uh HSC 85, and they gotta they're just sitting there with their legs hanging out until they get their stability, and then they still were, you know, shoulder to shoulder with two other people getting escorted off the deck.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

It's kind of like you have to, you know, you've been anesthesized or whatever for well, they're not allowed to drive for two weeks, and they're not allowed to do certain things for several weeks. Well, they probably don't have to do any of that, yeah. True because they're gonna have you know their parades and everything that comes with it, you know, they'll be they'll be they'll be moved around.

SPEAKER_05 7:42

Yeah, I had the privilege of going inside Endeavor when it was still around, and um when you walk in, you're in a complete coveralls like clean scene. And then you go through this clean room and it just gets away all the dead skin cells because you when you walk into the cabin, uh everything in there is gonna be floating around. So a lot of them end up with these high infections. Oh, really? Because you're floating, all this stuff is gonna be floating around for the 10, seven, ten days that you're there to get the dust doesn't settle.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Exactly. Yeah, I guess it's kind of like uh imagining yourself like when you're in a hotel room, it starts out really nice and neat. By the end of it, it there's stuff everywhere. Exactly. Probably the same thing except for it, it's floating.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Well, the other the other guy that was worth worth listening to was uh I think Duke from Apollo 11. And he said, you know, you've you've been inside this little container for a long time. He said he got back to the ship, took a shower, and went back to get some of his gear out of the spacecraft. And he said, Oh my god, the odor in that thing was awful.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

There's a lot of factors that people don't think about, I guess, when they're doing all that. No. So there was another event um that we felt was extraordinary. I mean, it's really showing kind of the might, I guess, of the United States military was the F-15 extraction in Iran. And I know that really hit home for both of you pretty well, because I mean, you know, we've talked about all the rescue stuff you've done with the helicopters and then the the evasion courses you guys took, and and that was really much in play with this. So, you know, kind of maybe you guys can walk us through kind of how you felt about what was going on there, or or you know, maybe, you know, I know you talked about the fact that they had to go in during the day to start and how crazy that is, but you know, they gotta do it.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

It is, and it it brought back a lot of memories and it immediately brought back things like remember I told you about Landau saying, You're gonna do this in the day, yeah, dude. That's Medal of Honor stuff. And and you could see the the king dragging the two jollies behind it, uh refueling, and sure enough, they went and got the guy the first time. Um and you could see the bad guys shooting small arms at them as they're going by. You see the first one go by and go, well, we hear another one, and that's where number two always gets hit, and sure enough. Uh thank God both all those guys survived. But they did take a lot of bullet holes. But one thing you can't prepare against uh is small arms or a man pad. I mean, that's that's your that's your most vulnerability right there.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

And it sounds like the man pad is what took that eagle down. Yes. And uh again, I lost a family friend to an Iranian man pad in Iraq. Whole Medevac crew on a on a CH-46. Jen Harris and Jared Landacer and their whole crew.

unknown 10:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

And that was that was the Iranians. No doubt about it.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

So I mean, watching that or or or even you know going through it, I mean, how does it feel like? I mean, obviously, you're going kind of going through the emotions yourself, you know, in your own head.

SPEAKER_05 10:58

I I was, my buddies are texting me, you know, what's going on, and my phone is going off the hook, and I'm looking at it, and my wife looks at me and she goes, You want to be there, don't you? And I was like, Well, eh, it's a young man's game, but yes, it brought back some really uh interesting memories. And uh it was good because as time went by, I was like, Good, I don't have him. And I was afraid that the enemy would get him. And uh when we talk about leave no man behind, it's not just alive. We want to bring your body back because we don't want a repeat of what happened 47 years ago when they dragged the bodies across.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Or moag. Yep. Well, so the great thing about the the Wiza, the weapon system operator that they uh our officer that they uh got out the second guy, is you go back to that episode that we did about Sear, the fact that he was on the ground for what, 72 hours before they finally got him? Well he got the S and the E. And from what I've heard is right, he went up a hillside or something to that effect, a very tall hillside. But uh his ability to to once he punched out was all right, you know, let's go, let's go, go, go, go, go. And all of that stuff comes back because you've been through the school and you know, start putting everything in the state.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Yeah, so I mean, how how I guess satisfying is that to know that you guys were put through all that personally, you never had to use it yourselves, but to know that if it is needed, it's you have it. The training works, the training's there, it worked, it does, you know, and so I mean, all these years that you guys just do the training and training and training, and and maybe it feels a little pretty mundane, I guess, at times, but to know that when that that call comes, you guys are on it and it and it gets done. I mean, it's effective.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Well, and it and it also gives you a sense, aside from the pride, but you get this giant smile when you realize the amount of machinery and manpower that was sent after getting one person. Yep. Yeah, and and I saw it written somewhere over the last couple of days that that's the reason Americans are the way they are, is because we're willing to do that for someone. You know, send that much hardware and that much effort to do that.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Yeah, you know that okay, they're sending me in first to take care of this, but I know that I got I got the whole force of United States behind me that they're they'll come and get me if I need if need be. That's gotta just I mean takes the hesitation out of your out of your missions, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah, I don't think any other country does that. But we won't leave anybody behind. And yeah, we we spent a lot of expensive hardware that we that we did we do leave hardware behind. Right. Um, preferably unusable hardware, but we torched a couple of very expensive airplanes at the end of that. Yeah, well, the way this country spends money these days, who cares?

SPEAKER_03 13:56

I call that I call that money well spent money well spent, you know. You you get these guys that are willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us to have our freedom or whatever, then you know you better you better take care of them.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

So, in the context of this rescue between myself and and Zorro, Zorro's the units that he served in with the Air Force would typically be the first to get the call. So RQS is a rescue squadron, Air Force rescue squadrons that fly the now it used to be the 60 Gulf, you flew the Gulf, right? The G, and now they fly the whiskey, the newer version.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

That's an amazing airplane. It is.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Yeah, I watched that video you sent on that, and that's uh that's quite the platform. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

I mean, obviously they can't talk about a quarter of what they even do with that thing, but well, and to have so there are squadrons in good context, especially sitting around all these airplanes, is there are squadrons that are that have the aircraft that are designed specifically for combat search and rescue, CSAR, um, or the ones that just train for it. In my unit, you know, the old HCS units and and HSCs, we train for it as a mission area, but we'll be pretty far down the list to actually get called to go do it because we got these guys.

SPEAKER_05 15:05

And it's good to see the whiskey model now out there, uh, which was actually designed for that job, where the in 1982 the Air Force acquired the Blackhawk and then we started converting them, started adding the probe, started adding the started adding the flares. So uh the acquisition world actually referred to it as the Franken helicopter because it was just kind of getting added to adding the MicroHock. I was fortunate enough to be part of the pilot unit, which is the pilot unit that uh helps design uh collect ideas from our we'd have a conference every two years and say, Hey, we need to add a flare ball to all of these, and we need to add this, we need to add machine guns. And we would give generals rides and uh especially the fighter pilots and say, Where's your machine guns? I go, Well, here's what we're using. And he goes, What? And you're gonna go get me? Like, yeah, we need some real machine guns. So we got the mini guns added.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

It's nice to have an advocate between. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 15:59

So and and and when we went to ACC, it was awesome because they're like, You're coming to get me, right? And you don't have this. So they gave us tons of money and we put those airplanes together. So we ended up with 112 paypox. And by the time I retired, of course, it was an aging fleet, and we've been talking about a new helicopter, so I'm glad that it finally got through. So uh they just stopped it from 75 to I think 82 new whiskey models and they've been delivered. Uh so that's gonna be nice because that airplane was designed from the ground up instead of adding instead of component here, component there, plugging stuff in.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

One of the things that the Navy, and I'll keep from being political, but one of the things that we struggle with is the fact that that so they call it har, you know, in flight refueling, that probe on the front um gives you the legs. Like once you have that probe and you got a tanker that you can hit in a C-130 or something like that, you can go as far as you need to from a ship all the way into Islamabad to go get Osama bin Laden. But this shouldn't they the 60 that you saw last night, the MH60 that did the Artemis, um, no probe on it. Yep, yeah. Um, the only Navy I think the C V 22 has it. I'm not sure, but I know the the uh MH 53 does.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

The 22s. Yeah. 22s do. I don't I don't know if the Marine 53s they do. Oh, do they? Yeah. Because usually I I tell my wife if she sees a 60 with a fuel probe, it's uh night stalkers up here to do altitude training. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

There there is so one of the the holdbacks on that, you know, how many times do you hit the tank, by the way?

SPEAKER_03 17:39

So here at the National Museum of World War II Aviation in Colorado Springs, Colorado, we have a lot of flying airplanes, over 25, in fact. In our early years of the fledgling museum, we had like three batteries to share between all of these airplanes. So you can imagine what it was like whenever we decided to fly something, having to remove and lug one of these heavy things called a battery. In the years since Cliff Corps came on as a sponsor of the museum, battery mount functions and need to replace them as well. It's ever fired up a warmth, a watch one started. You don't always get it light up at the first code. The mount worry, we used to have hopefully had enough to use to actually get it fired up and just no longer exist for us. We have total confidence that we will have the battery power we need to get the shell at the time we were using the more conventional aircraft battery. Take the top off and take each individual stuff or acid level. You know the type. We never quite get that level right, and either would be dry or it would be overfilling and filling acid all over you in the plane. I had more than a couple shirts to show it in the process of moving on the batteries, but no more.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

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SPEAKER_05 19:46

How many times are we refueled? Yeah, like aerial. Oh we we do it every single night uh when we go to training. Yeah, so that varies we're very proficient. As a matter of fact, my first rescue of a sailor who's a thousand miles over the Pacific, and I walked in going, I'm gonna go do what? And he goes, send a navy. And I go, Well, they can't they can't. They can't, they don't have a range. I'm like, well, send the Coast Guard. And he goes, but they don't have a probe, dude. And I was like, What? So here I find myself a thousand miles over the Pacific, having to refuel four times to go get this guy. You get him, and yes, got him, got him, got him back, and it was it was an awesome mission, but it was like, this is crazy. I did not realize our capability because we could just go on. I mean, that was a 12 and a half hour mission.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

You could have gone all the way across the Pacific if you'd had tanking. Yep, flying behind the guy.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

You absolutely could, that'd be a painful ride. But yeah, the two biggest issues with probe in the Navy, especially on the 60s on a carrier, one is that probe sticks out a fair distance, and handling that thing on the ship is you're gonna hit something, you know, moving around. Hopefully, not a person. Right. But the uh the other thing is, it wouldn't damage the probe. Having that probe, you add an entire training requirement, yeah, and uh uh refresher, you know, requirement. I was looking for a different word, but um having to hit it so many times to stay current, sure. You know, you know, and being able to aerial tank.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Well, it's a it's it's a bit of an artistry because unlike the rest of the Air Force, where the refueling guy flies the probe into the airplane, you have to fly that probe into the airplane.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Hanging down, doesn't have like a hard it's not rigid. No, it's not rigid.

SPEAKER_05 21:33

The probe is rigid, but I'm saying the hose bash down. So the hose comes out and it's got about a 42-inch diameter drogue that comes out. And if this hose comes out 65 feet, and then you have to extend your probe about three feet beyond the rotor disc. Now, in flight, that rotor disc influx down about three feet off the ground. So you've got this little box that you've got to go get. And sometimes the drogue doesn't just sit there, sometimes it'll span, sometimes it'll do an old That's what I'm saying. It's not a rigid. No, no. It's just loading. No. It'll do a figure eight. It's never just perfect. On some days it is, if you're lucky. So you always the tanker comes over you about 300 feet and you climb up to the tanker. And once you get there, you start, you only look at the tanker wing. Never look at the drug. You can see it, you go, okay, it's right about there. Right about there. Okay, right about that. And then you never dive at it with the stick. No, because it's a full power, and you push it in, and you push the hose into about the 55-foot mark, and now it'll start releasing the drone and get about a thousand pounds a minute.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

So if you're watching this on YouTube, finish watching this video and then go Google MH 53 and fly refuel accident. And there's a video out there of a rotor disc that he was pulling way too much pitch, and the rotors went down and sliced the end of the hose off.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

And you're doing this at night.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Oh, by the way. Yeah. I have done it every day. No fun in the daylight, right? That's easy.

SPEAKER_05 23:02

Anybody could do that. The scary part is when you're at night under goggles and it's raining and you can't see the vertical fin on the 130, and you know it's there because you're plugged in, and I'm going, I know he's here. Because you're technically flying closer to him than you're allowed to another helicopter.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah. It's that's spooky. So turning back around, your support of the shuttle missions, what did that entail? Were you guys just on call in case something happened?

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Or it it's uh we always get five pavehawks to make four, and you have Jolly One, two, three, and four. And it's really cool when you get there that regardless of your rank or position, you will start as a co-pilot on number four and work your way up to number one on subsequent missions. So when you first get there, uh Jollies one and two have a great job. They just go sit at the shuttle landing facility and wait in case the astronauts have a problem on the back. Three and four go out and clear the range, make sure there are no ships, no boats in the trajectory of which way the shuttle's gonna launch in case something happens. Uh debris won't land on these boats. So you're out there clearing them the whole time. And depends on the delays. You have a tanker out there and you're refueling and doing it again, refueling and doing it again.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

At least you get the tank in the day on that one.

SPEAKER_05 24:15

Well, night and night launches. Oh, yeah. Okay. So about 15 minutes before the shuttle launches, you get called in and you land at shuttle landing facilities, and I got four ready because you have two astronauts per bird. And we reconfigure those aircraft to accommodate a flight surgeon on each one and two uh astronauts. And so what was really cool, we had a mate D-mate where they take the shuttle and put it on top of the C uh 747. Yeah. So we're the closest humans to the launch. So tradition is we'd run up there and watch the launch. And I'm like, my first time I'm looking around going, should we be up here? Yeah, like that's the same thing. This seems like this is in the blast zone. It is. So then you see this bright light on the horizon. I mean, just intense, and that's where the shuttles already fired and it's going up. I went, I don't hear anything. But this light is just getting brighter and brighter and brighter.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

And I'm like, and then you see the concussion wave coming across the palms, and I went, oh no, and you're holding on to the main D-mate, and it's shaking like this is fun.

SPEAKER_05 25:17

No, it's not. And then you see it, and you can't help but salute those astronauts who take it off. That's awesome. And then you wait another 90 minutes because that shuttle has to go around the earth once, and then you go, okay, they're good to go, you're released. But you're only released to return to your base and stay there and wait until the shuttle comes out.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

On call.

SPEAKER_05 25:38

When the orbiter returns, you go get ready or helicopters, because you've got to be there for the astronauts. And once it lands, we're like, once again, we watched it there, making sure they pulled the astronauts out and they're good to go. And then we were finally released, the mission's over.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

So one of the things you you mentioned uh the call sign Jolly, which dates back to Vietnam. The Jolly Green Giants were the first SAR helicopters. But uh another call sign that you've uh probably used is Pedro.

SPEAKER_05 26:09

Yeah, they did that in Afghanistan, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yeah. And that's the Metabac helicopter. Pedro is your friend.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

You want you want to see Pedro.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

You want to hear Pedro. And you and you know, again, Pedro's coming to get you. They're not gonna leave you in the dust bleeding. They're gonna come get you. And the dedication of that is just impressive.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Oh, yeah. So and I gotta ask you, and I'm not gonna say you're gonna interview you, but the mustache that started getting painted on the birds. Is there a story behind that? Were you still in when they did that? I was not in when they did that, but they started doing that in Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_05 26:51

And uh it was sort of a whole Pedro call sign, so they started putting in the mustache. Right across the mustache. So I'm glad they've gone back to Jolly. So this is really good because I mean, Jolly, I mean, the Jolly call sign, I mean, you go anywhere and uh they know what it is. They everyone knows what it is, and you never buy a drink. Fighter pilots will buy you a drink every time you go anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

You're a Jolly, they'll shake your hand and uh it's uh the only the only fighter pilots who shouldn't buy drinks are A-10 pilots. They absolutely they should never buy their own drinks, ever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

So without giving away any uh you know obviously secrets and stuff that we shouldn't really be talking about on air. I mean, what else you guys got to talk about this extraction?

SPEAKER_05 27:36

I mean, well, people were commenting there was you know way too many airplanes involved. I go, well, no, we've had that guerrilla package forever, and we call it that. So it's usually the two helicopters. Uh you know, we got uh six crew members, but usually uh two or three pairs women in the back. You know, what's uh uh what's a particular mission? Do we have a front seater and a back seater, you know, the Ajax? And then we have Sandy who protects us, and then King who refuels us and gives us that distance. This is us. Now around us, you have to remember that AWAC is directing the traffic and somebody needs to protect the AWAC. Uh we have a cap over the entire rescue forces because somebody's got to protect us. We don't want to be hijacked by somebody. So the package gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you have all those assets, um that's awesome. And I I was there when Jessica Lynch got uh rescued. So I'm watching that from where I was sitting at Talil that night. And when the night stalkers all showed up, I was like, okay, something's gonna happen tonight. Something's about to go happen. And uh sure enough, we watched it, and that was really cool. So since they were there and we were needed that part for that extraction, the packages get bigger. And uh I ended up having to go to Kuwait and pick up uniforms for her and deliver those to her because uh when she was in Kuwait, hospital there.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah. Well, and the you know, the armchair quarterbacks, well, why why are they doing it in daylight? Well, first of all, because we can. Yeah. Opportunity. We own we own that airspace now.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't get to choose when when you have to go. Well, there's nothing really, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

There have been there have been a few daytime rescues that were ill-advised. I can I can think of one in the Balkans when the pilot got whiny, and uh the professionals said, tell the dude to wait till dark, and then another service said, Well, we can go do it, and boy, they used up all the luck though they were entitled to. They got shot to pieces picking up this idiot. Yeah, and so daylight only when it's like, yeah, we we own it.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

So I I definitely want to give a shout-out. I was thinking about it the whole time that we were talking about it, but giving a shout out to the fixed wing guys, whoever was doing the the cast, the close air support, um, whether it was A-10s, you know, not getting into it. But what we would train for, I'm sure Zoro saw this many, many times, is we would go to Nellis and do uh combat search and rescue training with the A-10 fighter weapons school. So essentially what Sandy does is sanitize the route. Yeah, so they leave the helicopters at a safe point and they go forward, sanitize the route, come back, and then escort them to the next whole point. And then when it's time to go get the survivor, we rush in. But you got that A-10 or a couple of them overhead the whole time. And then on the extract, they will find a target and come right up along the side of us at about 100 yards and unleash that gal in the front end of that A10. And from even from 100 yards away, is feeling the reverberation of that thing through the helicopter, like, oh my god, that's awesome. Um, but those guys don't get like there were a lot of aircraft involved in that rescue that didn't get the cuda. The Helos are the guys that are right in front of the cameras, and you know, but the uh the fighter guys that were above that kept them safe.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Well, and Sandy is another call sign that goes back to Vietnam, and our Skyraider is perfectly entitled to be a Sandy bird.

SPEAKER_05 31:13

And that's a special qualification, people don't realize not every A-10 pilot gets that. It's a select group of uh aviators that get a chance to come and train with us, and they have to go through this course to become Sandy qualified. Um when I was at Patrick Air Force Base course, everybody wants to go to Florida, so we'd have like six weeks worth of training, and every week we'd have a new A-10 unit show up. And I'm like, oh my god, how many of these guys are we gonna train? Because everybody loves to come to Florida. So for about six weeks, you're training six different squadrons, select individuals who are qualified to do that in that squadron.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

What you mean people don't want to go to my not in January, ADAC.

SPEAKER_03 31:53

Exactly. Well, do you guys got any uh parting comments about any of this or anything else you'd like to talk about? And you know, give these guys a little shout-out or well go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 32:03

Yeah, I'm uh I was very proud of, you know, I can say, hey, I was a jolly, jolly green rescue pilot, and and uh it was it was I I told my kids this is what your dad did for a living because now they're watching this on TV and they're like going, what? Because you know, it's been kept secret. I mean, after uh Scott O'Grady got shot down uh took us uh when they got him, President Clinton actually came down and said combat search and rescue and everything we do in it is secret. And we actually got orders down to all our squadrons saying you're not allowed to be on the news, you're not allowed to talk about this. Yep. And so uh I was kind of surprised at a lot of things that were discussed. Now, the media is doing what they do best, ask questions. Uh, we need to do what we do best, and sometimes not say exactly. But uh I'm glad combat search and rescue is still a priority. Yeah, and it's worth weight in gold. And I tell you, a life is worth more than any of those toys we destroyed.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Yep. Yeah, I mean, like I said, just being a civilian and watching the the capability that I mean, in a million years, I mean, that's something that's made out of a movie. And then you and then the whole time you're like, come on, this isn't real. This can't be you, you know, this guy went down in the middle of Iran, he's got to climb up a mountain, whatever happened, you know, and then you got the whole force coming in to get him out, and it just just to know that that's real, and that and that happens, and that's and that's a real and it's not the first time it's happened.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

No, not at all, you know, at all. So to do this without any U.S. casualties is impressive.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

It is, it just, I mean, I don't I don't care what you think about what's going on right now, you know, whatever your personal ideations are with it, but you cannot deny what the United States military service is doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Well, you you mentioned without casualties, but we are willing to take casualties to honor that commitment. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

And that that says something right there. And as far as the you know, my my parting shot as far as the Navy goes, bring back CSAR and SOF, like dedicated. You're here because it's it's huge in the eye right now. But going back to Vietnam, there's a squadron called HC7, Sea Devils, that had 125 rescues in Vietnam and they were all combat going over land. Dude Cunningham and Willie Driscoll, you know, they're famous for being aces, and they got rescued by HC7. Um, but having that capability from the carrier to be able to move the carrier close to shore and watch.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Or from a weight. Or from a small boy. Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Well, I mean, it's a theme these days. I mean, 90s music, NASA's back. So why not bring it all back? Bring it back. Bring it all back. Yes. Right there. I guess it's a good place to stop. Yeah. I really appreciate you guys sitting down with us again on uh such short notice. It's a nice current event, kind of our first thing we've done. It's a current event, I suppose. So I really appreciate your guys' input on it.

SPEAKER_05 34:55

Yeah, I was impressed that you had uh interviewed us prior to all this happening on Combat Search.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

It's timely and it's awesome for me personally because I don't know anything about any of this stuff. And then I'm I'm listening to this stuff on the news, you know, and I'm like, I know what they're talking about. I know what that is. And then you texted me, like, oh my god, this is happening right now, you know, and I'm like, I know, this is crazy. Yeah. So I mean, it's weird to get excited about something like that, but you know, in the end, when it all comes out and it and it comes out great, it was an you know, there's been some pretty exciting things the last couple you know, this last week to sit down and watch and be be proud to be an American. It is, absolutely, as you ought to be. Zoro. Thank you very much, Mark. Absolutely, appreciate it, gentlemen.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

All right. Well, again, I'd uh thought this was something worth celebrating.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

Yeah, you know, like I as soon as it was going down and Zorro was hitting me up, and you know, we were kind of going back and forth about it, it was like, man, we really need to get these guys back in here. And I know that it it seems like it's uh I don't know, maybe a little redundant because we've already talked about it, but to actually talk about it in terms from something that just happened, you know, and then and then on top of the cherry, the charity on top is watching you know, Artemis and watching that whole evolution.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

I mean, like it made my heart swell.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

It's just crazy to me that you could have something just basically just floating out there and they could put it right right where the boats are, you know. I mean, they know exactly where that thing's gonna be at what time. Yep I mean, they knew exactly what time that thing was gonna splash down. I mean, it's just we have it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

We have a lot of smart people who work hard, and a lot of them don't get a whole lot of credit. I mean, the all those NASA scientists, all the people that calculated that trajectory.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

And I mean, I was listening to say it's got to burn for this long right now.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

I mean, I was listening to the uh the after the press conference afterwards, and they had all the officials up there, and you could just see how I mean they're just like they don't belong in this earth with us because they're so just on a different level, you know. I mean, you're just watching them and you just it's it is amazing. It is an amazing thing that we can do and that they're gonna continue to do, and and I'm kind of excited about seeing how they get this base on the moon. On the moon. That's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

Yeah, one thing I hadn't even thought about is you know, people talk about the strategic minerals on the moon and how there's so much more there because it doesn't have an atmosphere.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Fun facts.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

Well, yeah, that's another thing. I was like, you know, they're talking about being on the moon and they got this giant picture of the moon behind them with full of craters. And I'm like, well, how are they gonna keep from obliterating the base on a daily basis? Because stuff's hitting that thing all the time. Well, and there's no atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

The the smart people figure it out. The smart people will figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

I'm gonna guess that they already got that figured out, probably.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

If they're planning on being there in two years, so yeah, and but planning a little a little closer to home, by the time people are seeing this, they will still have a chance to see our Corsair fly. First fly day.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Yeah, the F3A Corsair will be flying with Alan Willjack behind the stick.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

And uh we're we're all geared up for that. They've been working on that thing and just fine-tuning it and making sure that we don't have any issues at all. Yeah. The weather's been pretty damn fantastic because we haven't had a winter this year.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

So much.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Doesn't seem like we're gonna be uh have a weather issue, but you never know.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

But well, that's always the caveat, weather permitting.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

So I would highly recommend. I mean, it's just the price of admission. Come on out, see a great presentation in the morning. You get to see the airplane fire up within 20 feet of you. Um goes out and makes a few passes, and then while you're there, you can see our new building. Uh they got the panels going up, they got the uh roofs going on, the structure's all there.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

So yeah, it looks looks like it will. It's exciting.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Yeah, it is super excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Super excited is the the exact term.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

We'd like to thank the Concorde Battery for being on board. Um, they're really a big part of this whole thing, and we really appreciate them being here. So we'll call that a full episode. And so our guests, Zoro and Mark, my partner Rob Gale, William behind the scenes, and myself, Scott Claire. Stay safe out there.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Please do.