The fighter jet streaked through the heavens faster than the speed of sound, faster than I could comprehend. Bright sun filled the cockpit through the bubble canopy overhead. Then suddenly it was blue sea as Lt. Col. Rob Seaberg of Wheaton slapped the control stick hard to the right, rolling us over until we were flying upside-down at 800 m.p.h.
He chuckled. “You have to do that at least once a flight.”
I grinned and marveled again at what fighter pilots talk of as pushing the edge of the envelope. To them, it means daring to go beyond the perceived limits of man and machine.
Flying in a fighter aircraft can be dangerous. The sudden rush of gravity generated during a tight maneuver can suck all the blood out of your brain so fast that you pass out.
And then there are the major malfunctions. Sometimes jets collide. Engines quit. But not to worry, I was told. If something happens and your pilot calls “bailout, bailout, bailout,” pull the ejection handle. Pyrotechnic charges will blow off the canopy and a rocket engine attached to your seat will ignite, blasting you into the sky. Your parachute will open automatically and you’ll drift down 15,000 feet into the Pacific with a life raft attached to you.
If I pulled my ejection handle, I would fly into the atmosphere alone. If Seaberg pulled his first, we’d both go. But there was one more thing, I was told. If, for example, you felt a sudden bump and happened to glance into the front cockpit and saw, for example, that your pilot was slumped to the side and there was a lot of blood on the windshield, that indicates that you have perhaps struck a bird or sideswiped a Cessna. In that case, you need to flick a switch before pulling the ejection handle so that you can take the pilot with you.
– – –
What is it about fighter pilots? There is something about speed. There is something about brute force. About being a hero. Wearing the flight suit. Hasn’t everyone imagined himself a warrior? Doesn’t everyone want to be the toughest kid on the block?
Seaberg, a baby-faced 40-year-old Illinois native is a genuinely nice man. He is married, the father of four young daughters. His family says grace before dinner. He drives a mini-van and watches his weight, trying not to spread too much of his wife Jennifer’s homemade butter on the homemade rolls. But when Seaberg talks about the missiles on his jet, he gets an excited look in his eye.
“Fire one and it’s like a mad dog in a meat market,” he assured me. “It’s going to go out and kill someone.”
Seaberg went to Wheaton North High School and double majored in aeronautical and astronomical engineering at the University of Illinois. He got the flying bug as a kid when he lived in Quito, Ecuador, where his parents were missionaries. A pilot who flew his family in and out of the jungle let 5-year-old Rob sit up front and drive. He loved it. He joined the Air Force after graduation.
Fighter pilots are smart, athletic and intense. They finish at the top of their class in flight school. Seaberg said a fighter pilot is an intense compartmentalizer who can block out everything else — the wife, the kids, the danger — when the mission begins. It’s all about concentration, order and precision. And about being competitive and aggressive.
“It’s the best and worst of human cultures,” said Brig. Gen. James Smith, an F-15 pilot and commander of Kadena Air Base. “In our business, second place is dead last, because second place is dead. You need confidence to the point of arrogance, discipline and a degree of commitment very difficult for most people to understand.”
Col. William Bledsoe, an F-15 pilot with a ramrod straight demeanor, explained what it takes to be a fighter pilot: “You have to believe what you are doing is more important than yourself — that what you are being asked to do is worth giving your life for. . . . You have to be willing to put your mission and your country ahead of you.”
The F-15 pilot’s mission at Kadena is as clear as the photocopied picture on the bathroom wall: Kill North Koreans. Above the urinal in the bathroom of the 12th Fighter Squadron headquarters is a picture of a North Korean MiG-29.
Kadena is home to the 18th Fighter Wing, which maintains 54 F-15s operating from three fighter squadrons: the 12th, the 44th and the 67th.
The F-15, developed by McDonnell Douglas in the late 1960s to meet the threat posed by the Soviet MiG, is a pure air-to-air fighter. It’s a dogfighting jet. It doesn’t drop bombs. “Not a pound for air-to-ground,” is how they describe it in Air Force talk.
There are rivalries between pilots, and F-15 jockeys would fly no other plane. They talk about bomb droppers like they were klutzes. Ooops, dropped another one of my bombs.
The $30 million F-15 has the best weaponry and avionics in the world, the best pilots and the best training. But it’s not quite as agile as the MiG, so F-15 pilots prefer to shoot down the enemy before they have to get too close. Its missile system has about a 10-mile range advantage on the MiG.
This is what the 12th fighter squadron must train for: Blow MiGs out of the sky. If North Korea attacks, the U.S. military mission will be to gain control of the air, just as it did against the Iraqis during the Gulf War. No enemy has ever shot down an F-15. Its record among U.S. and Israeli pilots is about 90-0. But North Korea would still be dangerous. It has lots of planes and lots of ground-to-air missiles.
“If I send this airplane into North Korea, there will be some attrition,” said Smith, meaning that some planes — some pilots — won’t come home.
“Yes, it’s dangerous,” Seaberg said. “People do get killed. But you’re probably more likely to get hit by a car crossing the street on your way to Wal-Mart.”
That’s the macho fighter pilot talking over a beer in the 12th Squadron’s private bar. Every squadron has a bar. This one has dummy missiles hanging from the ceiling, photos of airplanes and other mementos on the wall and a display of name patches from former “dirty dozen” fliers. One patch, outlined in black, belonged to Robert “Rocket” Schneider. He was killed in the Philippines in 1990 when his F-15 and another one collided.
“It was a sad day,” Seaberg recalled. “A sad evening. We did our mourning and the next afternoon we went back to flying, like getting up on a horse after falling off.”
– – –
It was time to fly. They suited me up and hustled me to a preflight briefing. Everyone synchronized watches. It only dawned on me slowly that this would not be a joy ride. It was a real training mission, with me tagging along in the back of a two-seat training model.
Today we would divide into two teams of four jets. The Knife Team would play the good guys. The Dirty Team would be the bad guys.
I was in Dirty 4 with Seaberg.
I’m buckled in, wearing my flight suit, helmet and oxygen mask. It’s already beastly hot. The flight doctor told me to drink a lot of water beforehand. I forgot. He also wished I’d had a decent breakfast. I couldn’t eat. “You’ll put your body through a good bit of exertion,” he warned. He also worried about “G lock,” getting stressed out from experiencing too much gravitational force. He tried to teach me a breathing exercise to keep the blood in my head. I practice in the cockpit and Seaberg calls to me over the intercom in a worried voice.
“I’m practicing breathing,” I say.
“I thought I’d lost you already,” he cackled.
The canopy goes down and I notice a tiny moth is trapped inside. It rests on the inside of the bubble. What are we doing in here? I ask it.
Suddenly there is a sharp pain. My G-suit is inflating. It’s a pneumatic girdle for the legs and abdomen designed to counteract G-forces in flight. It has sensors and is designed to inflate in flight, but it’s gone full tilt and we’re still on the ground. It’s killing me. I ask Seaberg why the G-suit is freaking out. He wants me to check the connection line. Oh. I had rested my camera on it by mistake.
We taxi down the runway in formation, but at the last second Seaberg calls “red ball” to the tower. An oil gauge is going haywire and he can’t takeoff. He communicates to the ground crew, and asks me to check the gauge in front of me to confirm there is a problem. That’s too much responsibility for me, but I do it. Sure enough, it’s gyrating wildly. There is a 15-minute delay while a sensor is replaced. I’d like to take off my helmet but I can’t find the strap. It’s really getting hot.
We go. Take off is fast and stunningly smooth. There is the whoosh of the afterburners and we are hurtled upward. I whoop. It’s an extraordinary sensation. We’re over water and at some point will leave a sonic boom in our trail as we go supersonic. Seaberg wants to show me an aviator’s rainbow, caused by the shadow of our jet refracting light around it. He dips his wing suddenly so I can get a better view. He could have just pointed.
Still, I’m in command of my senses. I get out my camera and start taking pictures. We’re about to go to work. The Dirty Team joins up and flies toward the Knife group. Everything’s coordinated. The sky is a multidimensional chess board. We will attack according to our game plan. And Knife will react.
I can’t follow the action but I can feel the G forces. We accelerate, we turn, and suddenly I am disoriented. I feel the weight of a 500-pound sumo wrestler on me, but I’m also dangling off the roof of the Empire State Building. My G-suit inflates around my legs and my face feels tight. I try to breathe but I can’t. We’re in some kind of corkscrew turn at 5,000 feet and Seaberg isn’t ready to pull out of it. I panic slightly, but then I’m distracted. I notice my camera in my lap and try to pick it up. It weights about 25 pounds. Gravity!
And then just as quickly, it’s over. Bang, we’re dead.
Over the radio “Blood” calls out “Knife 2, Fox 2, a kill.” He got us with a sidewinder missile.
Blood said he could have shot us even sooner but he needed to confirm we were a bad guy. It’s all done with computer simulators while looking at radar and other information that is reflected onto the windshield in front of the pilot. He never has to look down at the gauges and dials and possibly lose track of the enemy.
We’re in the air for two hours. Between the G forces and trying to take pictures, I feel myself turning plaid. I’m hot, queasy, thirsty and claustrophobic in my mask, which I still can’t get off. I stare at the dials ahead of me to gain my composure and finally get the mask free and take a drink of water. We’re still crisscrossing the skies, shooting upward and then falling away. We climb and turn, and my water bottle weighs as much as a bowling ball. When we start running low on fuel and head for home, I’m ready for it. But I’m still elated.
