The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Dan "Bookem" Jordan

Aircraft flown: F-16, F-117, A-7, OV-10, O-2, T-38

Dan Jordan shares his extensive flying career, including flying six aircraft types, memorable moments, and lessons learned from challenging situations. This episode offers insights into aviation, leadership, and the importance of safety and teamwork.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 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 Dan Jordan, call sign Bookham. Dan has flown six different types of aircraft, including the A-7, the OV-10, the O-2, the F-16, the F-117, and the T-38. He's got a total of 3,300 flying hours, and he's been both a squadron commander and group commander, commanding the 61st Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, and later he was the group commander of the 34th Training Group at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Even today, he's still giving back as a professor of the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. So, Dan, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I'm very happy to be here, Never. I appreciate it very much that uh we're doing this.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

So tell me, what was the moment you first knew you wanted to be a pilot?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Just asking that question brings back all kinds of memories. The moment I wanted to be a pilot was when I was sitting in front of a black and white TV with my legs crossed watching John Glenn and all the original seven Mercury astronauts go into space. And of course, the stepping stone back then in particular to get into space was to be a pilot. And then, of course, eventually a test pilot. So that drove all my actions from there on. I emphasized math and science in high school, started out as an engineering major at the Air Force Academy.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

So you've flown a lot of different airplanes. Put us in the cockpit. What's it like for those who haven't flown? The F-16, the F-117, the O V-10, all very different airplanes. What's it like to be inside?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

I think in particular, all of my airplanes were single seat. There might have been two seats in the cockpit, like in an OV-10 or an O-2, but they were single pilot mission type airplanes. And what I really thrived on was the idea that I was the aircraft commander, I didn't have to consult anybody. And it drove an entire unique and different way of thinking. Yeah, I'm a part of a team. I'm either the flight leader or I'm the wingman or I'm part of a bigger mission or whatever. But that airplane and I are a man-machine combination that was hard to beat. That's kind of how I felt about feel about it. It it also drove not being that excited or motivated to go into the airline business because I so enjoyed flying an airplane by myself and doing the things I wanted to do. So I I chose other things after I retired rather than be an airline pilot, but God bless everybody that does that.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

So what is your coolest flying memory?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I have lots of them. Maybe the one that would surprise people is you mentioned I flew the T-38. And what I mean there is that I was an instructor in it in at Inid, Oklahoma, flying a T-38. And I took a student down to San Antonio. I had a meeting. I was uh the deputy ops group commander there. And we're flying back, and he's in the front seat. He's getting two cross-country sorties out of it while I go to a meeting. And on the way home, I'll never forget this. The sun is setting. He is a minute he he has to land before sunset, if I recall, but but the sun is setting. And you can see the from the route from San Antonio to Oklahoma, you can see uh darn near the the uh rampart range out out to the west, and the sun is setting, it's just gorgeous. He's uh descending into Eid, and I I couldn't help it. I said, I've got the airplane, and I I told him, hey, take a minute or two and just look to your left and enjoy it. And I flew the airplane, it continued for another couple of minutes just to let him go and he went, Oh wow. But he was so focused on the cockpit and doing his mission so he could get a good grade out of me and all that kind of stuff. And I went, hey, there there's moments in time that you'll never see this. Most people don't get a chance to see this kind of situation. So I think that was one of the coolest times was being able to share that joy of flying with a new student, a new pilot, and get him to understand or her, uh get them to understand there's more to it than just all the work that goes into flying safe and and doing a mission and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

All of us have had those moments when we've been flying where we just catch ourselves and say, Oh my gosh, I can't believe you know the beauty that I get an opportunity to see the unique perspective. Yep. For me, and I've actually shared this on the podcast uh before, one of my favorite m memories was flying off the coast of Wales under the stark overcast with my good friend Dan Holt. And the two of us were out there in this wild part of the world, no buildings at all. Yeah, they're visible. And we're flying down this rocky coast. I thought, oh my gosh, we are so lucky to be here to be able to see this.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I know the feeling. I really do.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

So, Dan, when you were part of the 421st fighter squadron at Hill, you flew the F-16, and I understand that was uh a time you greatly enjoyed. Tell us about your experience there.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yeah. Three years at Hill Air Force Base, right outside of Salt Lake City. Uh beautiful weather, even in the wintertime. I had so many different memories out there of good and bad stuff that happened. One time I remember the ops officer wanted me to launch an F-16. We were this is back in the time when we were counting sorties and making sure we met our goal and all this. The weather was really bad. I was a flight commander, senior guy. He wanted me to take off. And I get to the end of the runway and I tell him, I call him on the on the squadron freak and I go, hey boss, it's minimums right now. I can hardly see the tower. Are you sure you want me to I need the sortie. Welcome to takeoff. Okay, sir. I take off, and not four minutes after takeoff, the soft comes on the radio and says, Hill Air Force Base is not closed for weather. And I've got to divert to uh Salt Lake International and land over there where the uh there the tankers were and the whole thing. And uh later that afternoon when I finally made it back, I was carrying all my gear on my shoulder and and the squadron was in the hallway and they were just laughing their butt off because you know I got diverted and I knew I was going to get diverted, and boy, this is what you get for opening your mouth. It was that kind of thing. That was that was one of the things, one of the events I think that was very memorable. The other was several different deployments. One was to Norway and another one was to Cairo, Egypt. And uh the Cairo, Egypt was not just fun in terms of having almost unlimited airspace to fly around and and train with the Egyptians. We also got to train with the U.S. Navy off the coast, but it was uh during a Bright Star exercise. And one of the events that occurred was my good friend Billy Deal and I were doing a combat air patrol uh defensive cap, basically, and we were defending against some F-111s, and they they had the opportunity that they don't normally have in the States of screaming across the desert. And so we're we've got them on the radar, we're running the intercept. It's hot, it's a very hot intercept, which means if you miss it, you'll never catch them. And I I got him. I shot the 111 down, and he was at 100 feet. I got down there and did it. Unfortunately, I got back in the debrief and the tape ran out of tape right as I shot. So now I didn't have the valid shot and I couldn't claim it and uh all the things that went into that. That was that was uh pretty funny.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

And for our listeners, when you say you shot the 111, this is in a training environment, so you weren't shooting actual ordinance at it. So being a friendly and all.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, exactly right. It was all on tape, not not real stuff, but uh they could they could record all that. So yeah, I went, oh my gosh, I I I did everything I was supposed to do. And and I was a young captain at the time. I young and I still was a flight commander, but I was still learning the F-16 at the time. So it was uh it was a lot of fun. The F-16 was my dream walking into the Air Force after graduation, and it took me f several years to get into that, just kind of paying my dues until I finally got in there. It was my third airplane by the time I got to fly it. And by then I'd a bunch of hours, but they were in other airplanes.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Aaron Ross Powell Now you went from the F-16 to the F-117, and at the time the program was still deep in the black, highly classified. Tell us about how you were recruited to the program and then what it was like once you got to Tonopah.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Oh well, that's a really great question. Uh never. It really is. Nowadays, when I kind of give a uh Keewanis club briefing on the 117 experiences, uh, because now it's all unclassified. But back then it was so classified that even when they interviewed somebody, they couldn't tell us a new guy, they couldn't tell us what it was. So I got a call from my group commander, a full colonel. He said, Hey Bookham, uh, I want you to meet uh an Air Force colonel at base operations on Sunday. He'll meet you at noon, and he wants to interview you for a job. Civilian clothes are authorized. Now, I tell people, you know, captains don't have colonels fly in to interview them for anything. You go there, they don't come to you. Uh, but I I did get a chance to uh I met him at the at the base operations. I had I went in my church clothes, and uh we talked for an hour and a half, and then at the end of that hour and a half, I still didn't know if I took the job, I didn't know what I would be doing, except that I would be m moving my family and I to Las Vegas, to Nallas Air Force Base. And then even then it was kind of bizarre because about six weeks later, I the chief of training for the 4450th group, which was the unit that was hiring me. And the chief of training calls up and says, Hey, I want to talk to you about training date at Tucson at Fly A7s. And I go, Okay, does this mean I got the job at Nallis? And he goes, Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're hired. Oh, okay. So so I, as it turns out, I get a second checkout in A7s. I had flown him originally as a lieutenant. Even when I got down to Tucson and was checking out in A7s with a couple of other guys, we didn't know what we were getting into. And they flew a a C-12, uh, I think it's a they were King Heirs, I think, uh, down to Tucson and picked us up and flew us back for the weekend at Vegas. And that afternoon, the group commander, a guy that I really highly respected, Marshall McLeod, he gave us the inbrief. And so we signed the nondisclosure statement. We're inside of a safe, you know, combination, locks on the doors, all that kind of stuff. And then he shows a picture of what we're gonna fly, and we're all gonna kind of in shock. And uh, and you know, by the way, you can't tell your family. I mean, it was another two years before we could talk to our family about it. Later on, I was there when the when the program got announced by the Pentagon. And uh by then I'd been in the unit for two years. I was dual qualified in the A7 and in the F-117 stealth fighter. And uh we were told, hey, we can uh call our family, let them know what we're flying. We can release it. And uh we watched the release on television, and then we called our families, and I called my wife, and I tell her, and she goes, Oh, we knew that, and puts the phone down and hangs up on me. We knew that. She's talking about the wives. I'm going, okay. The wives have a better Intel network than the Department of Defense in the United States, that's for sure. One of the jobs I had when I was in the in the 4450th, when I was in at Tonopah, Nevada in the classified early program was I was responsible for all the ground training for all the new pilots. So they, all the academics, all the simulators. I was in charge of the contracts that ran the training and all that. And I had contacts all the way back into the material command and back into Burbank, where the Skunk Works was. The Air Force was getting to the point where the cost of keeping the program secret wasn't worth the squeeze. And that's the reason it was released at the time it was released. And uh we were happy about that. That generated other things down the road, too, because now you've got the first couple of weeks of being announced and all that in terms of flying out in the western United States. Because we were we'd been flying off of Tonopah in Western United States for several years, but we'd been filing as A7s and not as F-117.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I believe you mentioned to me that there was a time when an F-117 didn't land back at the base while the program was still in the black.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So tell us about that experience. Unlike a normal flying unit, and because we were in the black, classified at all, in order for us to fly outside of the Nevada test range, which is the area just north of Las Vegas, uh, we had to make arrangements with all the air bases and naval bases that we would be flying nearby as so if we had an emergency, we could land and still protect the program. So the first thing as a checkout pilot, you were said, hey, in your in-flight guide, if you'll turn to page whatever, there's a letter signed by the chief of staff of the Air Force that basically says the bearer of this letter is entitled to any and all services as requested. I expect your full support. And it was basically a letter intended to go to any wing commander that might have to receive an emergency F-117 while we were still in the black.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

So let me just clarify this for our listeners. So your in-flight guide that you're flying with on your knee board or in your publications bag has a letter from the Chief of Staff of the Air Force saying Exactly right. If this plane and this pilot shows up at your base, give them whatever they need. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

That's exactly right. It was very, very special. And most people had no idea about it. So consequently, because we had these arrangements, we also, uh as part of the program, we'd set up a what was called a divert team. So if an airplane did divert, and it hadn't happened in the period of time that the program had started and and up until the point I was there. And I think this occurred in eighty-eight, if I recall. I don't remember. We'll have to talk to Cole Seckman because he was the pilot that diverted. But we were flying a mission off-range, we flew up to Mountain Home, hit a camera target, and then came home. One airplane after another, separated by three to five miles all the way up and all the way back. It was like a big circuit.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So what the air traffic controllers would see was a necklace of airplanes in a in a chain and a long trail flying their route up to the word Mountain Home. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

You know, one night we'd go up to Mountain Home, another night we'd go to Bakersfield, another night we went to Sacramento. So it was uh away from all the air traffic routing and stuff like that. Well, this particular night, so the the divert team had never been activated. And the that was the reason those there were C-12s or King Airs that were assigned to the wing in case there was a divert. That was the whole reason they were the primary reason they were there. They got used for other missions, but there was always a King Air C-12 on alert with a crew every time we flew at Tonopah. So I'm in the office, I'm the divert team chief for the wing, for the group, basically for the whole operation. I'm a major at the time. And I got a call from Roger Locker. He was the deputy oper ops group commander, and uh he said, get your butt down here. And I walked in and he handed me the divert team chief bag and said, Get yourself to the C-12 Cole segment, just divert it into Mountain Home. I went, Okay. Anything else? He said, Nope. So we I met the crew at the C-12, and there was a cop and a maintainer there, NCOs, experienced NCOs. I we got on the airplane, we took off, and I started talking to these young merrimen. Okay, this is what we're gonna do. And uh the maintainer's gonna go in and secure the airplane. I think it was a hydraulic problem, but I'm not I don't recall exactly. And um the cop was supposed to secure the facility, whatever that facility was. As it turned out, coal had been secured inside of a hush house, a um a facility off the end of the runway away from the main base. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

For our listeners, a hush house is where you would do an engine run, where maintenance would do an engine static uh ground test engine run. So it's hush house, meaning it kind of muffles the sound, but not entirely.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah, exactly right. Uh of course there's no engine noise because we're he pulls in. So behind the scenes, what's happening is Cole decides he needs to declare the emergency. Bernie Stubbs is his ops officer, and he's right behind him. And Bernie calls the command post at Mountain Home and it says and the code word was spark divert. We're declaring a spark divert. And the guy controller goes, okay. And Bernie goes, I don't think you understand. Get your wing commander on the phone right now. And as it turned out, as soon as the command post activated the spark divert, the wing commander and the vice wing commander were in a race to the safe to open up the plan so they could see what needed to be done. And uh wing commander marshaled the 117 into the hush house itself. That's exactly what happened.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

I love it. The wing commander marshaled the jet into the hush house.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

That's exactly right. And then they closed the hush house and they put a guard on it, and then I brought my guard, not mine, but the guy into the unit. And I as we're descending, I show him the line badge that we all had, and I said, Okay, nobody gets into the hush house but unless they have this badge, including the wing commander at Mountain Home. Do you have any questions? No, sir, I don't. I said, Okay. And uh so the next thing that happens is the wing commander meets the team at the C-12, and he grabs me, takes me to his office, and the cop and the maintainer get uh ride over to the hush house. And the next thing that happens is, okay, because I will I get off the airplane, I've taken all my patches off, all I have is a name tag on there. And uh he said, okay, show me some credentials. And I show him the letter, I show him my ID, and said, uh, sir, I know you've been in contact with uh command post back at Tonopah. And uh and he says, Okay, what do you need? At the time that happened, two OSI agents walked into the office in uh civilian clothes. They're all always in civilian clothes, and he goes, Who? What are you guys doing here? So, sir, we got the notice that there was a divert, and he they start to explain why they're there, and which was very interesting to watch the interaction between OSI agents, office of special investigation agents, and a wing commander. Because they said, Okay, show me your credentials. And uh and they were their whole intent was to wander around Mountain Home, Idaho the next night and hear if there was see if there was any scuttle belt about what happened, you know, in terms of the airplane. So I got released and I I basically started debriefing people that could have been uh could have seen the airplane as it landed, including in particular the tower personnel. Gave them a nondisclosure statement and that kind of thing. And then the next morning, about eight o'clock, another C-12 showed up with the relief crew, and I jumped on that airplane and went home. And after 27 hours, I got some sleep. So I think I fell asleep on the airplane going home, actually. But Cole Seckman, he was nervous, he really thought the world had fallen apart because he was the first guy to ever divert off the Dallas Ranges. I I look back on it, I go, heck no, get a grip, man. You you saved an airplane. That's that's the beauty of it. And then it later on, a month or two later, all the people that were involved in it got rewarded with a with a commendation medal or something. I don't remember what it was, but it was highly appropriate for throughout the whole crew, the whole bunch of people that were there. Couldn't do that without a team. So there's my experience. If Cole hears this, say, hey, I'll say hi to Cole and please contribute to the story because the myth must continue.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

We'll we'll definitely have to have Cole on to you know share his side of that experience. Yes. So Dan, let's go back in time to before your experience flying the F-16 and the F-117, to when you were flying the OV-10. I understand that was the worst emergency you ever experienced. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Aaron Ross Powell, you know, there's always a series of them. Every pilot can look back and have a handful at least, if not more. In in my case, I was the uh functional check flight pilot. So I was certifying an airplane for flight after maintenance had done significant work on it. And it was an OV-10, a two-engine prop airplane, observation airplane in Korea, South Korea. I was there for a year, and by virtue of my experience, uh I got named as an FCF pilot. So I take it off, uh take the airplane off, and by recall, I I went into the weather and the air attitude indicator went tips up on me. So now it's not giving me the indications I I need. And I get disoriented. I actually c pop out of the clouds heading straight down. And I went, oh, okay, this is not fun. I'm still high enough to do that. That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

But then the To do that meaning to recover.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

To recover. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Thank you. Back to level flight.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah, back to level flight.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Straight straight down is not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

No, it's not a good thing, especially because it OV-10 operates from 13,000 feet and below. Uh so you're penetrating in the weather, and next thing you know, you're at 6,000 or 5,000 or whatever. And it was uncomfortable. So now I'm beginning to recover, but then the air conditioning system goes wonky and my entire canopy fogs up. I cannot get it to defog at all. So now I can barely see outside, and I certainly cannot see forward at all. So uh I I called uh SOF and said, okay, I need uh you got another OV 10 in the air. It turned out to be my squadron commander. I said, I need him, I need him to lead me down on a formation landing. Because I I basically I'm instrument flying rule. There's it it's clear in a million, but I can't see out the front of this thing to to run the approach. So uh he takes me down on a formation landing and So wait a second.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

So you can see out the side of the airplane, but not the front of the airplane, is that right? Correct. Uh so well the well that was that was pretty creative to say, wait a minute, I can't see out front, but if I can see out the side and I can follow somebody in, I can land on their wing. Absolutely right. That's great improvisation.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, what can I say? So that was uh maybe the worst. Uh another time I was flying an F-16 from Fort Worth to Eglin. We were going down, we're going to fly uh do missile checks, missile tests. We were gonna get to fly uh to launch live missiles down at the range down at Eglin over the Gulf of Mexico. And the thunderstorm line developed and I take the flight. I had a I was leading a flight of six, take the flight, and we we're kind of trying to climb over the thing. And as we get to like 43,000 feet or something, my my air conditioning blows again. And now I've got a uh equipment hotlight, all well and good. Hey, number two, you're gonna lead me in for landing, except now it's dark, and I'm got I'm working off a secondary bus, and as it turns out, I'm low on gas. And I get to the point where I'm emergency fuel trying to land at Eglin. And they have thunderstorms floating around out there. So we end up doing another formation approach. This is a different time, of course, in different airplanes, but I'm doing a formation approach. The wingman is leading, uh, and then I I take my my approach, but the crosswind was right at the limit. So I'm emergency fuel with a wet runway and high crosswinds. At night. At night. This is now it's at night. That's exactly right. Wow. I got out on the on the deck, and then I still to this day remember tower going uh when I got on ground control, and they asked, uh, do you need a tow? Have you run out of gas? Are you can you make it to the parking lot? I went, Yeah, I can make it. Parking spot. So uh that was I mean, in the big scheme of life, everybody's had these kind of uh problems, but those are the two that stick in my head in terms of flying and making decisions and and oh by the way, getting the rest of your flight on the deck too, safely is all that kind of stuff. It's very it's the challenge of flight leadership, isn't it? Or being an aircraft commander and a airliner or whatever it might be. It's that leadership that everybody's counting on one way or the other.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Aaron Powell Clearly, those were both challenging experiences. Are there any other times you've come close to potentially ejecting from an airplane?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

I would say yes. The answer is yes. At least five times I thought I was gonna have a mid-air with somebody. Now, most of that, four of those times would have been in the middle of uh air combat training, a dogfight of some sort, whether it was one-on-one or four V4 or something like that. One time I had a student uh at Luke, I was the commander then, and uh, we're recovering and we're doing the bomb check off the range where we're checking each other for for bombs, and I give him the lead uh so I can check his racks, and he's he's good. And I give him the thumbs up so I can take the lead back, and the next thing I know, he's flat plating me. He's he's turned 90 degrees to me as I'm pulling into you. Pulling in he's pulling into me, and I'm now I have to force down, I have to push the airplane down because I couldn't go up. I'm I literally have to push this thing down. And uh later on he it was pretty interesting. I I felt like I was in danger there. But the other times were we say near mid-airs, close enough, right? Maybe the the most the most lucky I ever got was uh when I was a brand new lieutenant in A7s flying out of Louisiana and I was at Red Flag, and we were on one of our first early, you know, that 10 mission goal that they had to get lieutenants into Red Flag. I was on like two or three, and we're doing a ridge crossing up in the red flag, in the Nellis Range complex, but at the red flag space, and I'm crossing a ridge, and as I roll right to cross the ridge, I come nose on to an A6 that's rolling left. So we literally pass belly to belly within 10 feet of each other at the top of the ridge. I'm I'm not kidding. That that was like, holy cow, that was what the heck, you know, kind of thing. And but you know, in in those kind of missions, you're flying wing, you're going in to hit your target, you know, you just kind of shake it off and keep pressing, and then go find this guy and go, my your egress route was not where my ingress route was, and I know it. So why weren't you where that you're supposed to be? So it was uh one of those stories that that uh I tell people about how close my life could have been different. But that literally happened within 10 feet of each other.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

So, Dan, what's the worst weather you've ever had to deal with as a pilot?

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Well, that's that's a really great question. We've all thrown flown through storms. Uh nobody can ever exchange the experience of being in the back end of a C-5 as he's put penetrating a thunderstorm and getting bounced around. But maybe the worst experience, I wasn't flying at the time. I was uh commander at uh Luke Air Force Base and 61st Fighter Squadron. And at the time, the 61st was the largest F-16 squadron in the world. We had 33 jets, and we were flying 30 of them, different phases of maintenance, et cetera, to do the mission of training new F-16 pilots. And uh one night I got a call from my chief master sergeant and he said, Hey, a storm just hit us, and it was a bad storm. I was at home at the time. It hit about 10 p.m. And he said, We're we're down for the count. And so I got in as quickly as I could. And uh, no kidding, I went from 33 flyable airplanes down to three. And those three happened to be in the hangar. What happened was a a uh micro burst or a big storm came out of the north at Luke Air Force Base, and it was basically out of the direction of Flagstaff and came down the valley, uh rolling downhill, and the winds hit 100 knots. The supervisor of flying had called a weather recall, and the last airplane to land, the SOF said, shut down on the runway as the storm hit, because it was a rolling kind of thing you see in the movies where the dust is rolling toward the base and toward Phoenix metropolitan area. It it completed, it did a whole bunch of damage across the whole valley. But he had to shut down so he wasn't sucking up rocks and pea gravel and whatnot uh into the entire thing. And once the storm was gone, they went out there and towed him back in. But he rode the storm out sitting on the runway. My squadron was at the about as close to the tower as you can get at Luke Air Force Base, which would have been at the southern end of the runway. And so I had 30 airplanes on the ramp, all of them basically facing the direction of the wind. They were, no kidding, all down for the count. When I got out uh on the runway and was walking around with the chief master sergeant and the chief of maintenance, if I walked up to an airplane, a jet with and took my hands and put them on the flight controls, you could hear gravel and sand and grit in the actuators. You could feel it as you moved the actuators. All of the guns in all these airplanes had to be uh removed and replaced because the wind is so powerful, it blew sand and pea gravel out of the infield and packed all the crevices in the airplanes, including where the guns were. All of the brakes of those airplanes uh had to be removed and replaced because the sand had packed the brakes so bad you couldn't tow them.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

So how long were the jets down unflyable?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah. And by the way, this this is all happened, this happens in August, and in October we're going to have an IG inspection for the wing. My squadron, by the time we got to the IG inspection, we still only had twelve airplanes flyable. Wow. Uh the biggest story out of that was the pea gravel came across the ramp and hit the plexiglass the hit the canopies. And so windward side of the canopy, you can almost see a direct line to it, would be all these a thousand pits. I'm not talking a couple, I'm talking a lot. And then the other side would be clear. So we fixed the engines, we fixed the flight controls, we fixed all this stuff, but we still had this problem about the canopy. At the time, the ops group commander was a guy named uh Mike Hijack Hostage, who ended up being a commander of air combat command. But he was the ops group commander, and I called him up and said, I'm really worried about these canopies. I I don't think they're safe. And he said, said Bookham, there's no other there are no canopies in the entire Air Force, much less at the factory that we can call on. I said, okay, well, we'll we'll try to fly them. And as it turned out, I got one of my senior flight commanders went out there on a on a radar intercept mission, and I talked to him afterwards. And uh I said, So did you lose sight? Because the pits in the canopy when the sun was hitting it at the right angle would starburst and you couldn't see through the canopy. He said, Yeah, I lost him for a second, second half. And I picked I reached across the ops counter, picked up the maintenance phone and said, All the airplanes are grounded. I'll come down and talk to you. And the next thing I know, I got a call from Colonel Hostage. I said, Boss, they're grounded. And he goes, There's no canopies. I said, I understand that, but I'm not gonna fly bad iron. And if you need to replace me, that's okay, because I'm not gonna fly. And uh, as it turns out, that decision generated tech rep for Lockheed or General Dynamics. Uh, he figured out that we could buff out these pits, and it would take 24 hours of buffing, and every airman in the squadron was buffing air canopies, but it would fit fixed the airplane, but nobody'd ever thought about buffing the pits out, and that's how that how we solved that problem. Otherwise, it was a hundred thousand dollar canopies that we couldn't fly. Yeah, I'll never forget that. Boss, I'm not gonna fly bad iron. That's all there is to it.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

So there you go. Another leadership lesson.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

That's exactly right. I at least I think it is anyway.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Absolutely, yeah. And I'm sure uh general hostage appreciated it too.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

I I think so. Yes, I think so. And we did okay on the IG inspection, happily.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

So, Dan, we know that flying can be dangerous. Have you lost any close friends? And is there anyone you want us to be sure to remember today?

SPEAKER_02 30:50

I've uh I've lost a lot.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

I've lost uh classmates in flying accidents. I lost a classmate in Nellis Air Force Base, uh he was in an F4, he uh aborted on the runway. It was a blown tire, he ran off the runway and the back seater misunderstood the command out of the front seat, and uh Chico was uh unstrapping when the backseater punched him out. So I'm there's there's there's bad luck right there. I l I've lost friends in the Sea of Japan. I've lost friends in this Yellow Sea, classmate that that I lost in uh in the onset to Desert Storm, uh hit the ground flying on F-111 and just training, not even ready for war yet. Just getting ready for the war, uh for Desert Storm. Yeah, I'm maybe the one that I still remember and I want the world to honor him is uh Donnie Hebert. Donnie was my my roommate, my senior year, and he was flying B-52s. I showed up at uh Hill Air Force Base to start flying F-16s about this time, and he took off out of Warner Robbins, Georgia for a red flag mission and unfortunately hit a mountain on the way in. Bad weather, their radar went oops, and then next though he ran straight into a mountain. It took uh almost a week to find him because right in the middle of that storm the snow covered the accident site, so they didn't have access to where where was he? All this it was very, very difficult. And uh his father was a retired army colonel, wonderful family, and uh I I miss him dearly, and every time I go to DC I go visit his grave at Arlington National Cemetery. So uh Donnie, I miss you, buddy, and uh thank you for asking there. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

So my last question for you today, Dan. When young people approach you and tell you that they're interested in learning to fly, what advice do you give them?

SPEAKER_00 32:47

I tell them go for it. It's an experience that very few people get a chance to do. Just go for it. And learn everything you can out of the books and learn everything you can from your instructors because they're the ones that are passing on all the wisdom that maybe you're hearing right now in this podcast. Even if you don't feel like it's it's for you, the fact that you tried is a worthy endeavor, in my mind. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Here, here.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Here, here.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Bookham, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Thank you. And I really have enjoyed this. It brought back some memories as we talk about this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

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 fulfilled that mission today. New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.