Can I ask you a question?

"What's the fastest you've ever gone?"

"What's the highest you've ever flown?"

These are the two most common questions I get about my flying experience as a Naval Aviator. Oddly, these "milestones" are not something that we discuss much while we're in the job. You just do what you need to do for the mission. If you've seen #topgunmaverick then you watch professionals doing their jobs as best they can. If you can believe it, flying high-powered fighter airplanes can become fairly mundane, when it's your day job.

There were days, waking up on the aircraft carrier, where the day job was almost viewed like the old Dunkin' Donuts commercial . . . "time to make the donuts." Complacency can set in, and you just go through the motions. We actually had to sometimes, give ourselves a wake up call to the dangers of the job. Four months into a 6-month deployment, we actually needed to re-evaluate our focus on the nuances and hazards of landing airplanes onto boats. Yikes.

However, there were 2 instances during my time with the Tomcat that I had stunning experiences.

One time, while walking through the office spaces in the hangar, I looked out one of the windows that overlooks the airplanes inside the hangar. There were three of these massive F-14s, wings swept back, with a few of our maintainers fixing them up. The large hangar doors were open and it was a clear sunny day. As I took in that scene, I was struck by how cool that was. By how impressive those machines were, and how deftly the sailors made them go. I felt like a spectator in a museum, or at an airshow. I was just like "Wow! that is soooo cool." The sheer size of the airplane made it look imposing, the design, the canted engines, the shoulder haunches, it just looked aggressive and ready to go. I just stood there and gawked. Then it struck me . . . I get to fly those. How lucky am I?

It's easy to lose sight of how others view the job. (this is a tangent) I remember when we had the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader head out to the Persian Gulf for the 4th of July to give us a little show during the "holiday." If you've never seen the show they put on, those ladies are amazing. The athletic talent they had and the variety of skills on the squad were equivalent to professional athletes. I watched one of them twirl a flaming baton, at night, in a solid 20 knot wind, toss that up in the air a good 30-40 feet, into the wind, then swing a blind leg kick, where she lost sight of the baton, regain sight, catch it and keep twirling like it was nothing. Shoot, I would have been on fire as soon as they lit that thing.

Well, me and my RIO were right behind Cat 2 the next day. Sitting in the jet, we were waiting our turn to hit the catapult and slip the surly bonds of earth. We saw the very clean, white float coats (life jackets) that VIPs wear when they visit. The Cowboys cheerleaders were coming out to stand between Catapult 1 and 2 and watch some flight operations. Seeing this, I told my RIO that we should go full "muscle-man" and flex for them. Now, were were fully masked up, visors down. You couldn't tell who was in that jet, but when we turned and flexed, about a dozen of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders were taking photos of us. It makes me smile when I think that I'm in some scrapbook of a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Me. Some dopey guy from Jersey.

Which brings me to my second instance that stunned me in my job. One day, we're flying back to the ship after supporting Operation Southern Watch in southern Iraq. It's a beautiful afternoon and we have a good 30-40 minute transit over the Gulf to find the boat. I started to chill out and look around. I see the image in this article. I remember seeing the live missiles on the shoulder stations and was like. Man, cool, live ammo. Look at that big wing on that airplane. I thought, "this jet lands on boats." Then I started having a mild panic attack. I remember thinking that someone has to land this plane on that ship and freaking out, in my head, that I can't possibly do that. Who's gonna do that! I'm just some unathletic, pasty white kid from Jersey. Bad 70s haircut, braces, benchwarmer . . . How, on God's green Earth, am I gonna NOT kill me and my RIO? I don't know how to do that! I don't deserve to be here!

My heart started racing. I was looking around trying to figure out if this was real, like someone else was gonna take over and make this all end up all right. Took about a minute for me to come back to my senses, I continued to fly my jet and get a "Cosmo OK" landing on the ship. I'm not sure why that happened. I don't know if that happens to all pilots at some point. It just struck me as a weird, sort of out-of-body experience, but assuredly helps me appreciate the opportunity I had and how lucky I really was. Of course, I didn't mention any of that to my RIO. He didn't need that burden on his mind.

Oh, and to answer your questions:

Mach 1.5.

55,000 feet.

#navalaviation #flynavy #F14Tomcat #TopGun