Flying the Saab Draken and Viggen - Interview with André Brännström

[Music] hello everybody i'm here with andre brandstrom who was the test pilot with saab he actually flew the demo routine that you saw on the on the reaction video that we did a couple weeks ago very honored to have him on the channel uh let's bring him in we're gonna tell his story and kind of talk about what it was like to fly the demo routine sir welcome to the channel how are you thank you mover i'm fine glad to be here yeah it's good to have you so uh as we do with all interviews this is a story about you we want to hear your uh your life and uh career and then we'll get into more of the specifics on flying the awesome aircraft that you've flown so tell me how did you get the aviation bug what got you into military and just flying in general yeah you know it's since the early age actually uh my neighbor when i lived with my parents at the age of let's say 12 13 he used to fly gliders and i had a ride with him back then and i directly just think hey actually i i've got the opportunity to start flying gliders and that's how it started and to with a start like that uh you know to work as a pilot in in some aspects that would be awesome i sent in the the application to the swedish air force and uh yeah that's a good start that was a really good day when i received a letter well was anybody in your family in the military at all or was yeah it's actually a military family uh but it's in the navy so it's interesting it's interesting discussion who will win that fight and stuff like that but yeah you know wow well what what is the application process is it i mean great grades obviously physical i mean what are they looking for [Applause] yeah actually it's uh maybe above average but uh back then i thought that everybody supposed to be super guys or girls but because i succeed uh my first reaction was hey they're not they're not superhuman so that was my first reaction actually i actually started in at the age of 18 in the flight academy so that was uh pretty early is that part like in in the us you know you go to the air force academy you get your college degree you get your commission and then you go to flight school so is it how did you what was the process for starting flight school so early yeah that that one has changed right now or since couple of years ago but when i started the flight academy that was actually a parallel so you do the theoretical part and made a course at the same time that you you through the aircraft so started at age age of 18 and that was interesting because in sweden you're not supposed to buy alcohol before [Laughter] until you're 20. so i was allowed to to fly a twin jet engine aircraft for two years before i was allowed to buy alcohol wow what what was the primary trainer what was your first uh it also uh saw aircraft psalm 105 it's a twin jet and engine aircraft side by side uh awesome aircraft for basic an initial tackle training part so basic training for one year and another year for the initial tactical training before you go for the fast yet but there's still a mach 84.84 aircraft 6gs and the concept with side by side pros and cons with everything but but uh it's it's easy for the for the instructor to to show uh if you're side by side yeah or or to get your attention i've heard that's did you do you feel like your initial like you know being able to fly gliders do you think that helped you a lot did you have any trouble with motion sickness or anything like that or was it pretty much just one for one yeah i had as i so to say i had a good start i had some experience but i i might say that mabe doesn't help me that much because the the the the training syllabus and how the the training will be conducted you don't need any experience from the beginning uh actually but you for sure will have a smoother ride in in the initial part uh that's for sure yeah but then as you know it along the road uh you start to see who got the got the feeling for aerobatics when you start to do one versus one and uh you're troubling with different kind of things and it's not in relation if you had any aviation experience prior the the basic training yeah yeah so you're commissioning during this time as well is that what you what you're saying so your commissioning is parallel with that as well so you're trying to take military officer courses while you're doing this yeah that was the concept uh back then now it's a little bit in different parts so you do i think it's a couple of years of study before you start to do the flying part and then you come back for a little while and and then then it's uh yeah accordingly and the highest of course at the end part of course and do you get your wings in this uh tandem trainer or do you move on to tactical jets first before you get raided yeah so with the first aircraft that we performed the basic training that was a twin and jet engine aircraft so that's a maybe an odd concept but a beautiful aircraft to to start with easy to fly and all that and after one year of the basic training you got the wings and uh yeah for sure that was a good day yeah i bet i bet did you have like your family come out pin your wings on yeah yeah yeah yeah crying and all that didn't we're surprised how did how do they decide do they rack and stack you uh and say hey top guy gets first choice uh as far as what happens next uh yeah but uh in some aspect yes but it's a little bit within the concept to not early point out who's the best and who's the worst and you nearly didn't made it and stuff because it's a it's a really tight relation with the with instructors and to create environment to to bring out the best of the students instead of you know crap yourself each day and uh and uh you had a bad feeling in the stomach at all time uh it's the other way around uh yeah so that's uh that's the philosophy uh to make the best of everyone by doing that so did you get to pick what aircraft you'd go to next as far as your career or like how did you decide that that was interesting because after two years uh we got opportunity to choose between two places and actually two different kind of aircrafts and most of my colleagues went to fight the vegan in the northern part of sweden really cool aircraft still and not operational anymore unfortunately but we also got the opportunity to choose drakken i don't know if you're familiar with that one with the double delta yeah supersonic interceptor fighter aircraft and i i'm really glad that i i picked up the thought that if i'm start with the oldest i will have the opportunity to do the rest later on yeah so i i flew with the dragon for four years wow how'd you like that i mean what was like your first time flying that thing was it a big shock after yeah it's it's sharkening because it's a mach 2 aircraft and it's of course old uh in many aspects even back then in 94 when i started to fly that one but the characteristics of the aircraft and how it looks and how it behaved and what kind of mission that we actually flew that was uh really something that's awesome so in you could say that now because it's open figures but but pretty much during the training for a couple of years and that before you're graduated so to say uh we flew in average 37 minutes for each sortie and and the first year and the first year i flew 220 flight hours so we we pretty much lived in the aircraft and that's a dream for a pilot yeah that is amazing well that's uh that's what kind of it's so it's an interceptor so you're not pulling a lot of g's i mean did you actually get to go mach 2 yeah we did but as you know those kind of figures it's not with the fully loaded aircraft and stuff like that and it's a full ab and you're going for a dive uh so but that was really slim aircraft and the design to actually quickly and go scramble from uh high level high speed and uh then the fuel consumption is uh yeah the result of that kind of mission to intercept quickly not air patrolling for hours and then do that kind of missions but really interesting to fly and and we had the opportunity to be operational rocking pilots you supposed to do in a yearly basis do the super stall so when you go out of the envelope and just yeah falling like a stone uh and how to go back into the envelope so we most often high altitude high speed you pull yourself into a cobra maneuver and uh that was something the first time uh you did that i mean tell me about it that that sounds like you know the closest i've flown is a you know hornet but to be able to do something like that is that i mean you feel like the jet is still in control or do you feel like you're just hanging on and just okay i hope this works it's not in control in that part because when you enter that one you have the angle of attack of 120 degrees something like that you're just decreasing your your speed from let's say indicated 300 to to zero by doing that so that's the initial part of the of the cobra maneuver but then you have you have a pending and uh and the rotation could be a clockwise or counterclockwise rotation and then what we trained back then if you out of the loop to to take the control of the aircraft once again but you drop the the altitude from the the high 30 000 down to 18 20 000 something during those kind of maneuver but yeah that was quite interesting did you ever i mean so i mean i'm assuming you did dissimilar and similar dog fighting did you ever you know unintentionally talk well okay either way tell me about fighting it i mean was it a a decent aircraft against other machines you know uh i mean they they we stopped flying the dragon it's a superb aircraft for its purpose but from a dogfight perspective maybe not the best uh best one and that's how everything is when you when you're redesigning and improve stuff so yeah we did a lot of dog fighting uh but if you compare it with today's aircraft of course it's it's uh it's a easy way to to yeah to get beyond yeah yeah of course and um sometimes with better platforms back then you it was quite hard to see and they did a pretty nice job so you could have with uh yeah slim and great tactics you could do we actually did uh fully maneuvering two versus four and that was interesting to do that wow and and in a dogfight situation like that uh it's a hard time to yeah to have sa on everybody of course even if it's not the hmd and the most powerful engine in the world and and so on so the one that you don't see that's um lose sight lose the fight that's what yeah how long did you fly that before you moved to your next airframe uh i did i flew that one for four years and then i actually got the opportunity to move on to to fight vegan because my wing was supposed to be the second one for the gripen and at the at the age of uh 22 something yeah and i i was down on the list so uh i got the opportunity to fly the fight to vegan and i i swapped a wing uh start doing that and that was something else in the dragon that was when you're doing uh [Music] acm stuff like that that's pretty much the same despite of which aircraft you're flying uh if you're a little bit rational about that but in the fit of again then one that was almost a new world regarding tactics data links mice warden was the first one and i was joining the job to implement the amram that was our first platform for for that and that was a interesting journey to do that but it's a system aircraft not uh not the old one with the mid 70 technology in the drake and now we moved on to to have a highly integrated data links and improved radar and radar warner and stuff like that so you're training both air to air and air to ground is that your mission sets but the the vegan version we had um different platforms of the vegan system to to carry out different missions so fight vegan uh as you can hear from the name uh primary uh fight mission so air terror mission and then we had the strike version of the vegan and we have the reconnaissance one also okay so i'm i'm a fighter guy all the way and uh if someone uh missed that in the room i will tell them you're like what is it the eagle guys say not a pound for air to ground those are the yeah [Laughter] wow i mean is there a rivalry against you know i mean was there like an internal rivalry with you know fighter guys versus the strike guys versus could be could be i i think actually it's the same all around the globe and in all air forces it's always bragging about that and the striking guys they're doing the history and the fighter guys they're the best one and the director they're going low and fast and deep into the mission area well how long did you fly that aircraft yeah i was supposed to do that for four years but after two years flew a couple of hundred hours a great time big software upgrades in the aircraft at the same time but then i got the opportunity to to start flying the gripen because actually uh i got a new request to yeah i could tell you about the phone call from from my my wing commander from a previous swing he said okay we need a guy that know the guys that will be flying in the griffon got experience from the dracula experience from the fight vegan and that's you do you want to have the job not just yes yes sir i do yeah yeah so two weeks later i i moved to sultanas wing for to start the conversion training for the gripen and that was in january 99. [Music] you

Channel: C.W. Lemoine

Views: 115,734

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Id: LRR3mXOwAPY

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 23 2022