The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Gary Woltering

Aircraft flown: T-38, A-10, F-117

Join us as we explore the incredible flying experiences of Gary Woltering, including a record-breaking 18-hour sortie, combat missions in Serbia, and rescue stories from Operation Allied Force. Gain insights into high-stakes aviation, leadership, and the thrill of flying stealth aircraft.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the Flyboy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing: cool flying stories. I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Gary Woltering. Gary G-Man Woltering is a command pilot with over 4,000 hours of flying time in the T-38, the A-10, and the F-117. He's commanded the squadron and group level to include combat tours in Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor, the Bronze Star, and multiple air medals during those combat tours. Interestingly, he was also the man who passed the command guide-on to me of the Eighth Fighter Squadron back in July of 1999. G-Men, welcome to the welcome to the Flyboy Podcast. You and I both flew the A-10 and the F-117. Typically, the sorties we would fly in those airplanes would be about an hour and a half. The longest sortie I ever flew was about 12.1 from New Mexico to Germany. What's the longest sortie you've ever flown?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

So the longest sortie I've ever flown was leading eight F-117s from Holoman direct to Al Jabber, Kuwait. 18 hours and nine minutes. 18 hours. Yeah, at the time it was the longest single-seat fighter deployment sortie ever flown. I don't know if that's still true, but I I wouldn't want to be the one that breaks that record.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

How did that happen? Tell us about the sortie. First, why were you flying over there? And then tell us about what happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So you know, after Desert Storm, about every year in November or December, Saddam would rattle his saber, make threats, do crazy stuff, and force the United States and the world in general to deploy forces to counter him. So this was the 1996, and he rattled sabers. We were alerted in the 8th, no, the 9th Fighter Squadron, excuse me. I was the ops officer of the 9th at the time. So Beast Feast was the squadron commander, and we were alerted to that this was going to be a direct flight from Holloman to Al Jabra. If you remember back at the time, the chief of staff was uh General Mike Ryan, and his mantra was global reach, global power. And he wanted to show that we could extend the United States anywhere in the world and uh strike within 24 hours of arriving. And that was the plan. The plan was Beast went forward with six pilots to mission plan a strike against Saddam in Iraq. I led eight airplanes from Holloman to Al Jabber, and the plan was after we landed, they were going to quick turn those airplanes, load them with bombs, and Beast was gonna go bomb uh Iraq again. So that ended up not occurring because after we got airborne and we're on our way, uh Saddam backed down. But he backed down enough that while we were airborne on our way to Al Jabber, the United States General Ryan, the president, decided not to do the turn and schwack exercise that we were about to do.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

But you don't know this as you're airborne at route.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Oh no. So we were alerted that we knew it was going to be a long sortie. The estimation was approximately 18 hours. Uh, we did get to choose the pick the takeoff time, uh, and I chose 1600 local time at Holliman because that would allow us to land in the daylight after the 18-hour sorting. Of course, that meant extensive night flying, uh, which we were very used to. It wasn't a big deal. Rejoined the flight, and we were going to meet the first tanker set over Texas. But as you know, the the weather doesn't always cooperate. It was horrible. We were in between layers in a milk bowl, no horizon, and the tanker said he was at the ARIP. I'm at the air refueling initial point as well, and we can't find each other. So we got help uh from Albuquerque Center, who vectored the tanker to a small area of clear airspace. He had to stay in a 45-degree bank, which is not normal for them. And then the Albuquerque vectored me to him with my flight of eight, and we rejoined in a 45-degree turn at 24,000 feet. And you know, in the 117, pretty much fully loaded, that was a chore. But we got it done, and my hat's off to my three wingmen and to the second set of four for hanging in there during that rejoin. That was a beast. So we got it done, and then we proceeded into the weather for the next two hours, uh, flying alternately and refueling. Uh, and it was uneventful except for this was not a secret deployment. The U.S. had announced that 117s were deploying, and on the second set of tankers, there were a host of media people interviewing us, and that was a surprise.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Well, wait, wait, just wait a second. So you're saying that the first tanker takes you part way there, maybe the east coast or over the Atlantic, and then you get another tanker, and there are reporters on board the tanker? Yes. And you discover this when you hook up to take fuel and you can hear them on the intercom?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Aircraft commander of the lead KC-135 called me on the radio and he goes, Hey, we've got media on board. Are you okay to be interviewed? And I said, How are they gonna do it? He said, While you're on the boom, they'll tag in. I went, well, okay, fine. So the first guy, you know, he he was asking, How does it feel to fly the 117? And we're talking and talking. Well, after I rotate off the boom, the younger guys rotate through, and they're getting a little heady, I would say, with uh, yeah, we're gonna swag sedan, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. And I I got back on the boom and I said, Hey, you may remember this. It's a quote that was used on the I think it was CNN. We are not invisible, we're not invincible, we're just good pilots flying a good jet. And I I pleaded with them to use that, not the hey, we're gonna swag Saddam and all the bravado. I didn't want that on the air. And I think they did. They were pretty good about it. The second set of tankers we rejoined over Boston.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Hang on one second. I think for our listeners, we need to paint the picture of exactly how this was happening. So you are mid-air hooked up to the tanker by a slender metal tube that's passing fuel to you. And as you are doing this in flying formation with the tanker and taking fuel, you are also giving an interview.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yes, that's absolutely correct. And everybody in the flight did the same thing. They interviewed all four of my guys.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

They don't normally cover this in media training, but well done.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

It w it was interesting, but thankfully, it was uh by the time they started interviewing us, we were in clear airspace. So we didn't have to fight the weather uh all the way to the to the coast. And that I would have said no if we were in the weather uh to the interview process. Uh that just would have been a bridge too far. But it was clear air, uh no turbulence, so it was easy to do. All in a day's work. So the weather became a factor again as we got off the coast of Boston. We we were switching from the first set of guard tankers that were KC-135s to KC-10s that were going to take us across the pond, across the Atlantic. And the weather was horrid. Again, lots of uh cloud layers. We were in the clear, but I could see in probably within about 50 miles, a wall of lightning and thunderstorms and nastiness. So I wanted to get the rejoin with the new tanker set complete before we went into that weather. We were able to do it just barely in time. There's a procedure, we had to follow the procedure, it was going too slow. I finally said, Look, I'm VFR with the second set of tankers, I'm leaving you. Bye. I told everybody, Max grunt, and let's catch up to the tankers. And we did. We we got on them, got everybody to the wing, and bam, we went into the weather. And I said, Hey, tanker one, is there any chance you can change altitudes? We're in an Altrav, an altitude reservation. There's a there's a block. Can you see if we can uh get some clear air to refuel in? Because as you know, when you're going across the pond, somebody is on the boom all the time because you have to have divert gas to go somewhere in case you suddenly can't take any more gas. So he said, I'm sorry, but the there is a solid wall of thunderstorms in front of us, and we have no choice but to penetrate it unless you want to go back. And I'm like, No, we're gonna know. That's a hard no, we're not going back. So I said, pick the lightest spot and let's go. And he said, Okay, here we go. And we made a slight turn. I remember thinking, this is not gonna be fun. And the boomer said, uh, number one, you're cleared to pre-contact. And I went, Oh boy, here we go. I got down in the pre-contact position, was stabilized, and we went into the thunderstorm. I'm not talking around it, about it. We were in it. And the only good thing about that is when you're in a a severe thunderstorm and you're that close to the tanker, whatever air mass is affecting him is affecting the three wingman and me. So, yes, we were literally climbing and diving by hundreds of feet as I approached the boom. I managed to get in position. And you know, the the in the A-10, it was so easy because the boom was right in front of you. And if he didn't stab you with the boom, you could force it in. Well, in the 117, you can't do that. You you can't see the boom. You're flying off references. I I'd like to think I'm a good pilot, but I'm not that good. And he stabbed me, and we were taking gas, and we were all over the sky. And then the lightning started. I swear, the lightning, if it didn't hit the tanker, it was awful close. I got flash of blindness on the boom while hooked up to the point where I could not see. I was blind. All I did was freeze the stick and the throttle and not move it. And I could feel the turbulence as we were being jerked around by the by the air mass by the grace of God and some good luck. I stayed connected, came out of that. Slowly, my vision came back, and I was able to fly. And we all had to do that for the next two hours plus. So everybody had a chance to refuel in the thunderstorm.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Joy. And then what happened?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

And then we're not even halfway through the sorti yet. Uh, the next kind of funny increment is we break into the clear air, we're able to take a break, everybody's able to get something to eat, relieve themselves if they need to, whatever, because it was gorgeous and a dark, dark night. No stars. We had an overcast above us, so it was kind of a weird, eerie feeling. You couldn't see the stars. You were, it was like flying in the simulator. After we came out the back of the storm, there was no movement, no turbulence, no nothing. And I was able on the wing to trim the 117 up and use the autopilot and the altimeter setting to actually match the tanker so perfectly that I suddenly had no sense of movement, none whatsoever. And it scared me. And I kicked the autopilot off and shipped the stick, and I'm like, what, what, what, what? So that was just an eerie feeling. And as we approached the Rock of Gibraltar, large circumstance was the it was a third set of tankers, but instead of us switching to the next set, they decided they were going to air refuel the tankers. And if you've never seen that, that's interesting. All I can tell you is the tanker in my tanker was being refueled. So KC-10 being refueled by another KC-10. And I I we're in mostly clear air, and I see my tanker run up on the boom and push the back end, the air mass, push the back end of the front tanker up, and suddenly I hear breakaway, breakaway, breakaway. Oh my goodness. I now we have two tankers, four tankers, and four F-117s on the lead tankers, and there's a breakaway. There's no procedure for how to handle that. It's too many airplanes. I just said on the radio, everybody grab a tanker and hold on. We'll sort it out after the breakaway. And then we went into the weather and we had to descend in 500-foot increments until we got out of the weather, rejoined with the tankers again, and were able to get gas just in time before having to divert. Uh, tankers, refueling tankers is an iffy situation uh on a deployment sorted, and I wouldn't recommend it. Uh, so then we just continued across Egypt up into Saudi Arabia, and we're on our way to Kuwait. I checked the weather. The weather at the time was clear in a million at uh Al Jabber, forecast to remain that way. So it was kind of a little bit of a lull. The tankers had not been able, because of the breakaway, to pass all the gas that they needed to back and forth. So our tankers were low on gas and needed to land. So I cleared them off about two hours from Al Jabber. So at the 16-hour point, I cleared them off and we proceeded on to Al Jabber. We get in close to Al Jabber, and I contact approach control, and I I kid you not, this is what he tells me. That's one weather very bad. We have a sandstorm on the field, visibility is zero, feeling is totally obscured. State your intention. Oh, oh, oh, and the other part of that was and the crosswind is 35 knots. I I said, excuse me, 35 knots? He said, Yes, direct crosswind, 35 knots. State your intention.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

So just just to summarize for people, zero visibility, ceiling obscured, 35 mile an hour crosswind, and you have no tankers with you now.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

No, and we're all low on gas. We are fatigued, as you might expect, and the weather is out of limits. We're it's below minimums, both the ceiling and visibility are below minimums. The crosswind is out of limits for the F-117, even without a chute, but we needed the chute just to get the the initial pulse. So we're holding above the weather kind of in a in a sand bowl, a milk bowl. There is no horizon. Uh, I can't see the ground. But interestingly, we had been experimenting in the simulator because Al Jabber did not have an instrument precision approach. It had a tech end, non-precision approach, but that wasn't going to break the weather. We weren't going to be able, at minimums, to see the runway. But we had been experimenting with an improvised, I'll call it, ILS using the infrared acquisition and detection system to lock up the runway numbers, as everyone knows. Every runway has huge numbers, runway 3-2, as I remember. I don't know if that's right, but 3-2, and use the condom, which was the glide path, where with the angle that the IRAD was. Yes. And use the condom to set it at a three-degree glide path, locking up the numbers in the IRADs, and then flying the approach off the iRAD system.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

So for people who haven't seen the screen in the F-117, the condom is uh a uh portion of the screen on the on the left-hand side that shows the downward look angle of the infrared sensor. And so you are setting it, so you are tracking, okay, I want to be on a three-degree glide slope to land, and so you're you're setting it at a certain point in that scale. That is a really improvised procedure.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

It is, and uh not approved, I will tell you, but at the time, there were only two choices. We did not have enough gas to reach a divert base, so it was either fly out over the Persian Gulf and eject or attempt to land. Period. That was that was really the only choice. Uh so of course, being a guy that likes the cockpit, I was happy to give it a shot. So I held everybody up in 500-foot increments on a 10-mile final so that as guys approached, we could land expeditiously because we were all low on gas. So I said, guys, I'm gonna give this a shot. If I wreck or I'm upside down or I've whatever, uh, your only option is uh you can make this approach, try it yourself, or go eject. Uh, I was not looking forward to that uh decision, but I knew that I had to give it a shot. So I did. I locked up the numbers. I think I got them locked at about uh seven or eight mile final uh by going to narrow screen. As you remember, there was wide and narrow. Uh I went to narrow, and the luck was that the humidity was very low. The sandstorm, I mean, there was nothing I could see. I couldn't see the runway, but I could see the runway in my eye's and I could lock the numbers.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Then I said a So you are even though there's no visibility to the naked eye, it's seeing the heat contrast of the numbers against the runway itself. And so that's what you are that's what your airplane is able to perceive and lock onto as you're coming down to the runway.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Exactly. The numbers are paint, so they are absorbed the the infrared energy at a much larger rate and then reflect it back. And the IRADs had no problem detecting the numbers of the runway. So I couldn't see anything else, but I could see the numbers, I could set a three-degree glide path, I knew the final approach fixed altitude, so I just did that. And it worked. I broke out over the numbers almost in a total 90-degree look angle because the crosswind was so vicious. Found the runway over the numbers, so I landed about 1,500 feet down. And the as soon as I hit the ground, I popped the chute, but I was ready because I knew it was going to weather vane into the wind, so I just kept it held straight. There was a certain deceleration, and then the plane weather vaned to the left at to 90 degrees, and I immediately turned and pulled and blew the chute, but making sure my feet were flat on the floor. We did not hit a rudder end cap. All eight of us landed that way, and all eight of us were able to get the chut off the plane, and I landed, taxied back around. Number two was already inbound, and I coached him through. I told him how to how to do it. They were all experienced guys, they knew exactly what was going on. I saw number two when he was 50 feet over the overrun. That's it. That's his that's all nothing, nothing, nothing. Bam, airplane. And that was true for all eight airplanes. Uh it was one of the worst things I could ever experience in an airplane. But after all eight were on the ground, there was a big sigh of relief. And I taxed back in. We we did the Thunderbird arrival, taxied in front of the Hazes, if you remember now Jabber. Yep. We lined up all eight airplanes, and I go, nights, canopies, now we all hit our canopy buttons, and seven of them went up, and mine did not.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

So all of the canopies are going up simultaneously except yours. Except mine.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

The external battery on my airplane had failed in flight. That control. The canopy. So I am on a 120-degree ramp in 35 knot winds in a rubber suit for the last 20 hours. And I this is a terrarium I'm in, and uh it's just getting hotter and hotter.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Well we we neglected this little detail of the anti-exposure suit, which is like it's uh I would say it's like wearing a wet suit, you know, except it's a dry suit. So you have your uh it actually doesn't let water permeate, but it's about as comfortable as something.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

It's a rubber suit. No heat escapes, but lots of heat comes in. And I another little aside, uh we fitted the rubber suits the day before, and you know they come with a really long neck and it has to be cut. So the life support guys cut mine, but in a jagged kind of cut. Well, you're constantly doing this flying, and that rub, that friction, created a cut across the back of my neck that did not heal for six months. It was so deep. So back to the I'm stuck in the cockpit, and they hook up a police unit, and the police unit is blowing hot air, not cold. So I'm like, wouldn't you please stop that? So they stop that and they confer and they go, sir, you're gonna have to use the Rube Goldberg manual canopy raise method.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

And it's like 308 turns or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yes. It's over your right shoulder, it's behind the seat. It's like somebody, as an afterthought, put in, hey, we got to have a handle that we can crank this thing up with so that we can get pilots out. I cranked on that thing for like five minutes, and I got it up about that much, so the angle was like that. They took a uh Sanchian uh ladder, put it on the right side of the plane where that thing is, and had the youngest and strongest crew chiefs climb up the ladder one by one, facing the rear of the airplane, reach their arms in and crank that thing. And they'd crank for two minutes and they'd replace him with another guy. Crank for two minutes, replace him for another guy. It took them 10 minutes to get the canopy up far enough that they could get me out of the plane. So it doesn't stop there, never. This is, I told you it'd be the most incredible deployment story. So if you remember, Colonel Kevin Smith uh was our ops group commander. He was there on the ground. He went forward with Beast. I climb out of the jet, I drink an entire quart of water right there. And Kevin Smith goes, gee man, that was outstanding. Absolutely outstanding. But he looks at his watch and he goes, uh, you guys need to get cleaned up. We have a spins and lowac law of armed conflict conflict briefing in 30 minutes. And I'm like, you know, you're not serious. He goes, Oh yeah, we have to get it done so that you guys can fly tomorrow. I'm like, fly tomorrow, oh my God. So we all we we changed clothes, we got in a new flight suits, back into the briefing room, and you can imagine a low whack and spin special instructions briefing. It was scintillating. I was asleep in about five minutes with my head on Kevin Smith's shoulder, and we we were all out like a light. You know, they give you goat pills to get through the flight. Well, we got through the flight, but after we landed, there were some serious side effects that if you remember, uh Doc Brown contacted me later, flight surgeon pilot, and asked about the physiological effects of the flight. And he wrote an article. We were very lucky. Within an hour of landing time, we experienced everything from dizziness to extreme headaches, shaking. It was not fun. And then the low wack and spin brief, where we all fell asleep, just dead asleep. We were exhausted. But that is the end of the 18.2 hour saga.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

Would not wish that on anyone. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

It was wonderful to do once. But uh, you know, I got to do it again later when we deployed to Aviano, but that was only 14 hours.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Oh no. Only 14. Well, let's uh let's talk about Aviano. You uh led the eighth fighter squadron over there at the start of uh Operation Allied Force in 1999. Can you tell us first about uh getting your squadron over there, your first missions in combat. Then we'll we'll talk about uh the shoot down after that. But sort of give us your uh uh for those who haven't flown in combat, help them understand what it's like.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

We deployed to Aviano in February of '99. When we arrived, the weather was 200 feet and a mile visibility, pounding rainstorm. Uh that was a piece of cake, considering that they had an instrument landing system, an ILS approach, and we all landed uneventfully in a driving rain. Uh, but we broke out uh with about a half mile despair, saw the runway landed. Uh it was it was easy to do. Uh then we had an issue just getting set up as a squadron. They gave us a condemned building to use as an operations facility. Uh, and luckily we had about, it turned out to be a month until we actually flew combat sorties. They were still playing policy and negotiations and trying to resolve the issue diplomatically with Serbia, but you could see that it was not going anywhere. And we we launched in. I will tell you the 8th Fighter Squadron Black Sheep, to a to a man, from the youngest airman to me as the commander, were just focused on making a operations facility that we could fly out of uh and live in safely. But it took a month to get set up to fly. So night one. Uh night one arrives, and it's my first true combat sortie. Yeah, I had a hundred hours over Iraq uh and it from Turkey to Iraq in A-10s after Desert Storm when we were flying uh provide comfort sorties, and technically that was combat time, but it's not the same. Uh I remember night one, I'm leading uh not just the 10 F-117s, we're generating 10 uh out of 12, uh, but I want to say the number was somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred airplane strike package to include everything that we own uh from the Air Force and foreign sorties as well, uh, that are virtually under my command as we go attack on the first night of uh of the of the war. That was the sortie that won me the Distinguished Flying Cross, uh, which I think uh was presented really because there aren't too many guys that get to start a war. So I got to drop the first bomb. Uh it was a technically it was a simultaneous attack, but so 12 of us, 10 of us dropped the first bomb of uh the war. But here's the interesting story. I go to my first jet and I had a unique configuration. I had a GBU 10 and a GBU 12, one 500-pounder, one 2000-pounder. Everybody else had either two GBU 27s for penetration or two GBU 10s for blast. But my first target was a radar in Serbia that was in a wavelength that we did not like. And we needed to eliminate that radar uh in order to feel safer over the northern portion of Serbia. Uh, to make complicate that, that radar was in a neighborhood, on a knoll, in a neighborhood. And the president of the United States had declared that would be the first no-collateral damage allowed target, NCD. And General Leaf called me over to his office and he said, gee, man, this target B, whatever, whatever, is NCD, first NCD target of the war. If we miss that target, the president has said he will put that pilot in jail. And I said, sir, that just became my target. I don't know what they're planning, but I need to leave here and go back and tell these guys to rework whatever you're doing because that's my target. He goes, why? I said, nobody in my squadron's going to jail before me. So I'm gonna fly that target. It turned out to be a very difficult target to hit, but I've jumped ahead too far. I go to my first airplane, I can't get the DT to the what do we call it? DTD, DTD, the data transfer, DT, yeah, DTM.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

The EDTM, the electronic data transfer module.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Transfer module. I can't get that to make to the plane. With without that made it to the plane or flying a big T38. All the bells and whistles of the 117 are not available. So they send me out a new EDTM. I try that, it doesn't work. Now it's getting close to takeoff time. And remember, I'm leading a hundred airplanes strike package. So I go, dudes, I I I've got to go to the spare. But I told you not to load a spare with my load because it was the only airplane that I had a unique load. And I remember Chief Jim Morse looked at me and he goes, Sir, we that we were taking no chances. One of the spares has your configuration, it's right over here. So I go to that jet, and the crew chief comes out from underneath it and he says, Sir, uh, it's ready for your uh inspection. I said, it needs to be ready, chief, because I'm climbing up the ladder. Pull the pins. I didn't even look at it. I climbed up the ladder, they brought me a new EDTM. I loaded it, I did a GPS alignment on the fly out to the runway, and I was about a minute late taking off. So the result of all of this is that our takeoff and landing data, which had been figured for a cooler evening and a lighter airplane, I start the takeoff roll, and I realized very quickly this is going to be close. 9,000-foot runway at Aviano, the liftoff speed computed was 190. You know that the nose wheel limiting speed is 192. So I am rolling down the runway, and the departure end cable, which is a thousand feet from the end of the runway, goes under my airplane. I feel the and I said, baby, you have to fly now. So I jerked the stick back, got 10 feet off the ground, and as you remember, wheels, the gear came forward in the 117. I leveled off 10 feet above the ground, raised the gear, and there's a fence about a thousand feet off the end of the runway. And I swear to you, I thought, I'm gonna snag this fence with my gear. Meanwhile, I get just enough altitude to get over the fence. And this massive wave of what I thought was grain in a field, when I realized it was people that were off the end of the runway, and uh, and that there was a slight climb off the end of the runway. The I laid these people down like a field of wheat, never. I I could not get any higher. I mean, I buzzed them. I couldn't have been 25 feet above them. And I was late. I called back to to ops and I said, have everybody burn a thousand pounds of gas right now. Don't don't let anybody else take off. I'm not proud to admit this, but I made one call to uh approach or departure, and I said, I am airborne on the sortie, as tracked, goodbye. And I sucked the antennas in switched channels to combat frequency and violated airspace of at least one country. But I made it to the tanker on time, and otherwise we weren't going to combat that night. So you know that we would stack up and run in uh the roach run, we called it. Uh, and I remember we got the code word for everything's good. I made the code word repeat over the combat frequency to make sure everybody got it. And my first combat sortie uh began with the penetration of Serbian airspace. Uh, and the first target of uh it was a uh no collateral damage allowed target radar. Uh, and I found that, but I mean, immediately I didn't have time to think about that. I hit, we had been practicing no-look and short look targets for months, uh, as you remember. So I hit that target. The plane immediately went into a left bank, rolled out on thankfully, it was a huge target. It was the uh what the Serbians were claiming was a Yugo factory, which was in fact an SA6 and spare parts factory for the Air Force. And my plane rolled out and I had 20 seconds to bomb release. So I had to quickly do the switchology to call up the second bomb, which was a 2,000-pounder. I mean, I had to go to wide field of view because the narrow field of view was so large I couldn't pick out the specific desired mean point of impact, DIMPY, which was the entry to the factory. And I quickly went back to narrow, uh, locked that up. Actually, I just manually tracked it and dropped a second bomb. And and then after that, I was on my way out. As you remember, the Serbian Air Force launched against us on night one. So I'm on my way out of Serbia on night one, elated that I've hit my two targets. I'm listening to the air-to-air fight, which is significant. Well, our F-15s are shooting down their MIGs at a rapid rate. I had set the bullseye into the alternate HSI. So you later can explain what that is. But I'm listening to the bullseye calls uh and I hear bullseye, bogey 320 at 10. Well, I look down and I am 320 at 10. And bogey in air-to-air parlance means unknown. And I'm I still suck to my antennas in, I'm still stealthed up. I can hear because we have conformal antennas, but I can't, nothing's going out. Uh, no, nobody's gonna hear my call. The AWACS that's controlling the fighters knows our flight plan and where we're at. And immediately I hear an F-15 call declare Bogey 320 at 10. And they go, nope, the there's friendlies in the area, stand by. Then the next call is Bogey 320 at zero. This guy is 10 miles behind me. And they said he's over the mock. And I hear the call from the F-15 say his heading 320. He is directly above and behind me and approaching weapons parameters. And the I'm about to say, it's a bad guy on the radio, about to put my antennas out because I I don't want to get shot by our own guys. And then, needless to say, he doesn't want to shoot me either. So they finally declare the bogey to be a bandit. The F-15 rolls in and shoots this guy off my butt at about seven miles above and behind me, which is a very dangerous place for me to be. And after that, the rest of the sortie, I tanked on the way out, got enough gas to get home. The weather was horrible at home, but it was like I'm alive. And I landed, and it was incredible. It was a night to remember, my first combat sortie.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

So tell us about the night 806 got shot down.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

So, humorous aside, first, we had been told we had no choice but our survival radios were being upgraded. And I pointed my chest because he's wearing a heavy vest with a weapon, all your combat survivability stuff. And the radio was one of them. We had not been trained on how to use the radios, and life support had not been trained on how to set them up. But the call came from the Pentagon, you must use these radios. Well, in setting them up, they have to have a zero position. This is where you are in space. Well, inadvertently, our life support guys missed a zero. So there's the first part of the story. When Sugar D and I, I won't use his real name because I don't have his permission, but Sugar D was his call sign, and he went out that night and he got shot down. This was the fourth night of uh Allied force. I was not flying that night. I had flown the first three nights, so I'm on the desk. I'm the the top, top three. I I knew when the guard transmitter went off with the that we had a somebody had lost an airplane. General Leaf was in the command post. He called me on the phone. He said, gee, man, get over the command post right now. So I did. I walked in, he turned to me, and his first words were Please tell me you weren't flying sorties over Russia tonight. And I I go, No, sir, absolutely not. He goes, You have a jet down, and the first ping we have from the survival radio is Russia. And I'm like, No, that's not, that's not the case. So that complicated the rescue, but uh we did eventually rescue him. So the second part of this story is Sugar D going out to fly. As you know, we uh when you walk out the door, you have you got a vest, a parachute, uh, two helmet bags full of maps, your helmet, all the kit that you go out to the jet with, and Sugar D was walking to fly. We were also jabbing the nose, the little tiny nose compartment uh with I'll call it memorabilia, mostly flags. And we're flying these flags and then doing a certificate and presenting them to family back home, to other members, other squadrons, what have you. So Sugar D is standing there at the ops desk. I've just given him his step brief, and up walks our little Intel gal who looks at Sugar D and she's got a flag. It's a small flag, but she's got a flag. And she says, Sir, would you fly this for me? And he he looks down, he's got two big bags of stuff. He he goes, stand by. And he puts a bag down, he unzips his flight jacket and takes it and stuffs it inside his flight jacket, her flag. Zips himself back up, out to fly, he goes. So after he is shot down, within 24 hours, the story of his rescue is utterly amazing. Uh, this the it was done by search and rescue just so def the special ops guys and did a fantastic job uh of finding him and getting him into the helicopter uh first night uh auto rotation ever done in combat to right in front of the Serbians. And Sugar D got into the helicopter, had the presence of mind to ask permission to climb on board, which I found extremely I was amazed at. He had disposed of his nine millimeter, that's another story, uh, and he climbed onto the plane, the helicopter, and they flew him back home. The next morning, when we were, I got a phone call. Get to the flight line, there's somebody there that you'll want to meet. So I get to the flight line, it's me and Kevin Smith, OG, are the first to meet Sugar D. Uh, his hand was bandaged, uh, but other than that, he was undamaged. He came down the flight of steps uh from the helicopter, we hugged, uh, and I turned and there was the Intel gal. And Sugar D undid his flight suit, took that flag out, handed it to her. And the salute was you can tell it's an emotional moment for me, very much. Uh but you I mean, how you couldn't have scripted that in a Hollywood movie any better. And that's absolutely the God's truth of how that happened.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Amazing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

I have told that story a hundred times. That's as far as I've gotten without tearing up. That is absolutely an amazing story, and every bit of it is true, right? To the him taking that flag out from inside his flight suit. Incredible.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

So, G-Man, my last question. When you talk to young people who are interested in flying, interesting in becoming pilots, what advice do you give them?

SPEAKER_01 45:08

So never I come from the land of I don't think we're ever going to fully automate airplanes. It's not in our nature. Uh certainly there will be drones in combat, but the thrill of flying, the immensity of responsibility, but the incredible fun of flying cannot be missed. And it cannot be duplicated by flying a drone or UAV. So my advice is if you want to fly, go fly. Because it is the funnest thing you can do with your pants on.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

G-Man, thanks so much for being with us today and for sharing some absolutely amazing stories. You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab. The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've met that mission today. New episodes of the Flyboy Podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find all of our previous episodes on our website, the Flyboypodcast.com. Until our next story, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.