Shot Down! U.S. F-16 pilot explains Infamous 'Dodging Iraqi SAMs' Video (ep. 162)

and as I'm rolling in and sa6 comes up and it's not on me but the guys are just exiting above us and I realize that that missile would just come off the rail and I saw it and I yelled on the radio from mankind on the radio I yelled on the radio for you know credit four to break right break right right [Music] because I knew that's who it was heading you know and he breaks right and the missile speared him and his airplane literally vaporizes [Music] [Music] oh [Music] hello and welcome to the fighter pilot podcast I'm your host Vincent Aiello call sign Jello and on this episode we are again repurposing one of our happy hour conversations from our patreon page now if you saw episode 159 with Fred Clifton then you know that this is a zoom recording so the audio and video quality is not quite as good but based on the response to that video I really think you're going to like it this particular guest was there for the notorious F-16 dodging Sam's over Iraq Mission if you know what I'm talking about it's stroke three we use some of the audio in some of our opening bumpers here on the show and it's a really amazing conversation so forgive us for the audio and video quality we're doing our best but stand by for this really cool discussion here we go there we go I have to show you something and I'm sure you've already seen it but I got to show you anyway yeah some Air Force magazine Air Force man look at this swaying under his parachute major Jeffrey Tice is that you that's me it's the pretty auspicious beginning but uh yeah or not exactly how you want to be remembered but yeah sorry I couldn't resist because this was January 19 1991 and you were stroke who I have a stroke one stroke what you are leaving it I was the flight lead yeah yeah we had to had an eight ship um and I was uh I actually had 16 from my Squadron I was leading one page of eight the other other package of eight was going to a different Target but all of us blasted off at the same time so yeah it was uh third third date yeah 19 Jan 91 third day of the war okay well I I we can talk about various things but for me I have seen that video so many times and I don't know if your voice is in it or not uh oh yeah stroke three and four definitely have a lot of uh show in that and but we used it in Top Gun for you know showing just never giving up and getting your speed back when you can blah blah blah but um the guy whose hud video that is who is that if you're at Williams That's E.T that's Emmett Till yet he was a captain at the time he was my number three man we started out as an eight ship but I had to kick four guys out because once we once we uh refueled prior to the strike as we crossed into uh bad guy territory one of uh one of my wingmen went lost wingman it was a cloudy messy day it was weird I'll explain that in a little while but um I had to kick him back home along with somebody else to take it back because we were at bad guy territory and then a little further up we had a mechanical issue where I had to kick two War guys out because we were a bad guy territory so we ended up instead of eight having four and it was just a matter of reassigning Target dimpies and away we went from there so it was one it was one three five and six I think is all we had something like that so a bunch of wingmen went away and a bunch of flight leads ended up going in and uh so it worked out okay we uh this reminds me when I was at Top Gun the Tomcat was in a wall and it's its career it was having a hard time so the joke was always that you would brief four walk three or step you know step on three start two taxi one and it would come back with an emergency you know so yeah yeah you guys weren't quite as bad but no no the uh you know the F-16 was really extremely reliable we had no issues really overall and our maintenance guys there were above and beyond I mean it's just absolutely incredible this was essentially uh a couple my minor buffoonery issues but they were all worked out later you know all right so you said you started with something like 16 but four end up a four ship go over the uh Target yeah over my target the other other eight from my Squadron managed to go there there were three the whole package queue was as as you read it's a big it was 74 airplanes plus others and and the target array was stretched out from the Northwestern side of Baghdad down to the Southeastern side of Baghdad and um my Squadron mates and their their eight ship were bombing an Airfield up on the northeast side our Target was the oil refinery in the center of uh Baghdad on the Big Bend in the river there if you know what it looks like there's a thumb sticks up there yeah rivers are right there and the third group were bombing a weapon storage area in the Southeast corner of Baghdad and that was uh another Squadron and they had brought 32 airplanes for that so eight eight and 32 big a big honking package I mean it was obviously huge plus we had Eagles in pre-strike sweep we had you know all of the rf4 or the F4 is doing their thing the wild weasels and uh you know partridge in a pear tree there everybody was well it's actually a very good article Tikka I would say I mean as far as yeah go ahead sorry I mean it talks about the strike package it talks about I guess did you have some fallouts with either the wild weasel guys or uh some of the you know you have support there was there was you know obviously after the fact and it took me a few extra weeks to get the debrief but after the fact yeah there was some Fallout but in in reality it actually had very little bearing at all on on you know I mean when you get right down to it it was the the Roe at the time was you couldn't drop if you couldn't see visually visual see the target for us because we're dropping Mark 84's you know not no lgbs this was all smart Pilots dumb bombs and so Roe was you had to see it the guys up in the Northeast they had to abort because if you remember the first week of the war it was just a cloud deck from twelve thousand down to almost the surface and so you couldn't see well we had the proverbial sucker hole my my a chip now for had the proverbial sucker hole and um the guys on the Southeast side they were just basically going through a bunch of cloud deck too and they found they finally saw something so they laid ways to that weapon storage area and uh the guys up in the Northeast were literally going to their secondary Target and conning above our big sucker hole so the whole world lit up as we were rolling in as you know how things go oh yeah none of this none of this was bad until you know it until it was yeah yeah well let's let's pause there and say hello because you and I are just meeting for the first time at least visually here through the miracle of zoom and uh Knack connected us I appreciate that and I forget where you even are but you've got your standard memorabilia behind you there yeah you know I mean currently in my I love me room I live in Tucson Arizona okay yeah so Tucson Not By the Sea that's what I call it yeah well I was in Phoenix yesterday trying to get out of there all day and finally did right we get on the airplane and push back in a big thunderstorm uh shut down the airport so that was awesome but finally got home last night but all right cool is that bad as you ended up I don't miss that at all let me tell you you guys don't get that just a hundred miles down the road oh no no we do get that I'm at the airline thing oh did you do that oh yeah I spent 13 years for America with American okay and uh that's who gave me a ride home thanks very much yeah well good for you yeah yeah it was a it was a mess I was supposed to apply to LA on a deadhead in order to fly to Maui and the deadhead airplane broke and it took so long they just said all right you can just go home so I'm supposed to be in Maui right now but at any rate uh I'm not too high I thought I thought your email said you were going to be in Maui and then I was looking at your background like oh that doesn't look like any layover Hotel I remember yeah that's right wait what you didn't carry all your memorabilia and put it up everywhere I had enough I probably could have carried it and left it in most of the hotel rooms just like yeah yeah all right are you retired now you don't look old enough to be retired yeah I'm fully retired I've been retired for well this will this will be I retired from American Airlines in 2012. so this will be 10 years retired now wow all right yeah I I went a few years early okay because when they filed for bankruptcy the second time I said you guys know what you're doing and uh I I just said and then they foisted a bunch of papers on us after they went to Force Major and basically canceled all of our contracts and all that assets they said oh here's your new here's a new work rules which essentially for me and I was living in Tucson at the time I've been here since 2002. excuse me 2004. and um basically it was telling me that I would be gone approximately 20 days a month because my domicile was New York and I had I had a lot of juniority and I never I never got any seniority because they kept screwing around with all that so essentially uh you take 20 days gone you add commute time back and forth I'd have been gone 26 days a month and I still like my wife so you know it was uh was a pretty easy it was a pretty easy decision at that stage in the game yeah I I said you guys are stupid I'm leaving and I was 57. so I went about three years early I was going to retire at 60 anyway even though they changed the rules at 07 which is another reason I had a lot of juniority there wasn't any a session but once you don't have accession rates you know you're not going anywhere so I was in that band I called it the No Man's Land of juniority you just you weren't going up and you weren't going down you were stuck until a bunch of old farts finally kicked out the top and uh that was you know obviously that was supposed to happen somewhere around 2012 but then they filed for bankruptcy a second time while I'd been there then I said okay you guys are stupid I'm out of here so I left that you know so I've been gone I've been retired fully for 10 years now it's pretty good that's awesome did you have an active duty retirement to go with it yeah yeah I I spent uh 21 years seven months and 15 days on active duty with time for good beat but time off for good behavior they gave me 22 years so yeah all right all right was the whole time in f-16s oh no no no I uh I started out in the F-111 and in the varchosaurus and then uh I did uh I did that through a four year tour and I begged and begged and begged to do something different which back in the Air Force days it was impossible to change airplanes but they had they had an opportunity I had an opportunity to apply for a job with the aggressors the the U.S you know the Air Force version of if you want to call it the Top Gun guys we're just the bad guys but we had three units wanted the states one in Europe and one in the Philippines for the Far East guys well I was in Europe at the time so I applied for the aggressors in Europe and I got selected even though I couldn't spell bfm and uh so I ended up going for the airflow 11 to the F5 and teaching people how to do DHC T and bfml stuff when I couldn't even spell it mostly you know it took me a few to get before you make it yeah and then uh and then I at the end of that four-year tour so I had two back-to-back tours in Europe which was wonderful and uh at the end of that tour my boss was like hey we want to keep you here uh I'm gonna see if we can get you a job you know staying in Europe flying f-16s like you wanted I said oh great I'll I'll be I'm all for that yeah that turned into a chocolate mess and he said ah no no he's he hasn't spent enough time in the f11 so they stuck me back into f11 in a well we called rtu but it was a rag the rag for you guys so they put me back to the rag at Mountain Home Idaho uh for f11 that's fine it was great I grew up I grew up in the f-11 so I I knew it basically like the back of my hand okay then from there um I spent two years doing that and Air Force was having just like the Navy was having a huge Exodus of Pilots because the airlines were hiring what a surprise this was uh late 80s airlines are hiring big accidents people are leaving Air Force goes oh we got to stop this and so they came up with a bunch of crazy ideas from a manpower's perspective and they gave every wing Commander at the fighter base they gave him what was called the they called it the golden carrot so you got a carrot you got two ideas or one every six months so the wing Commander could designate one guy and say I'm gonna give him this assignment you know so all of a sudden our military personnel guys are out of the loop and the wing commanders are making assignments they get you know two a year well that's how I got the F-16 my boss at Mountain Home goes we are wasting your talent here I mean we love you but we spent billions of dollars to teach you how to do a dact and we spent millions of dollars how you know how to do all this other stuff and here we we brought you back into the F-111 Community which was still fun we had a great time you know low altitude high speed at night crazy [ __ ] but he said nope um we're Sandy where do you want to go I go well you know I've always wanted F16 he goes okay you'll get an F-16 well he didn't tell me that he just said you know and I was ready to get out I mean I was I was finished with the Air Force at that point because you were you were glued into one particular weapon system and there was absolutely no no exchange and then I said well you know I'll go out I'll retire or I'll quit and go join the Air National Guard and do something you know do something different right yeah and I was literally within I would say a month or two of of getting out of the Air Force joining the National Guard somewhere I didn't know where yet and uh and then my boss just brought me in his office and read me the ride out and said just shut up and call her shut up and color you're going to get a good deal he couldn't tell me what it was and that's that's how I got the F-16 then all right so so the last 10 years of my Air Force career was flying f-16s okay with a little three-year tour as a uh uh staff weenie yeah you always got to pay your Penance so I always hate when people do this to me but I'll do it to you anyway uh Martin Richard Opus happened to know him he was an f11 guy and then ended up in the uh I think Boston Air National Guard flying the Eagles we had him on a happy hour talking about the uh what was his last name again Richards or Richardson maybe I need to look it's bad I forget Opus he went by anyway he was an f11 guy and went to Eagles and he was Airborne on 9 11. uh so that was I think around your time frame and then um how about today Mike toriel day did you do overlap with him anywhere he was our F-16 guest so we've had F-16 episode we've had f11 episode we've had pretty much everything you've flown at five yeah I I don't recognize either one of those guys and it's pretty unusual because the f11 is pretty small community uh 111. he was an F-16 guy four thousand hours oh okay so he yeah oh D-Day you said t t with a t Tango day oh Tango that no I knew a guy who was one of the top uh F16 guys uh hours wise uh matter of fact a buddy of mine uh who lives about four miles that way from me here is number four on the list of uh total hours in f-16s I think he's somewhere around five thousand so like wow we had uh John marks on here Carl he's still flying the 810 with over 7 000 hours yeah well that's what happens when your guard bum yeah yeah that's right just grow old there I should have done that it's been retro that's it yeah just be a guard bum that's exactly right we'll be there yeah well that's too late for me but um so getting back to your story so uh so what let's see so how how long have you been in the F-16 by January 19th of 91. um two years oh wow okay but you were experienced in everything else at that point yeah yeah I mean I I got out of the flm community in 89 and I went to rtu for the F-16 right then and that that was in uh would have been uh late summer early fall of 989 and then right as soon as I finished rtu I went right over to uh back to tour home Spain I went back to Spain we're going back to Europe I should say and uh and and I spent a year at tour home before we deployed to go to war okay so I had the better part that wasn't quite two years 18 months of uh of 16 times but I I had enough time in the fighters that I knew pretty much what I was doing yeah I hope so okay so then uh did you get any loving on January 17 or 18 or was January 19 the first uh no that was actually that was my uh second mission uh I didn't fly on the first night because when we deployed we only took the aviation package and that's just the pilots and the maintenance guys and minimal support folks just to keep the aviation going well we get there and it's a Bare Base I mean there's a Runway and a hangar and there's nothing else uh you know our quote um Advanced team was supposed to be there three days before they didn't show uh they showed up a week after we got there and right the guy with the briefcase chained to his wrist you know with a billion dollars in cash cash and yeah he shows up a week after we're already there and we've got things going and well anyway so what I'm trying to tell you is that we all had as the squadron commander pulls Us in the off and it says hey okay we got no we got no support here we're gonna have to make our own base okay and it's like who has uh anybody got civil engineering one guy one guy kind of raises his hand in the back of the room you know okay what what what did you do well I helped the Israelis built air bases in the gev desert okay you're in charge of civil engineering build us up build us a you know place in and now what about you what about you uh yeah Tico you're in charge of Maintenance you're the maintenance officer and you're like you know air force does it different than the Navy and you know so all of a sudden not only do we have to you know build a base from nothing we still had to go out and fly because the threat was still real we were the first F-16 unit and we were one of the closest ones right to the Kuwaiti border there in Doha Gutter and so we were launching airplanes and doing whatever was necessary at that time but we were in an air and Air configuration so no big deal uh maintenance guys we're doing or so we're building an air base at the same time we're trying to support whatever is necessary as the build up began and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger um you know we had one of the nicest tent cities you've ever seen you know exactly how to make this right anyway so so yeah it was kind of a big deal so on the first night of the war I had been awake for 36 hours I literally touched every single airplane and touched every bomb with all my maintenance guys you know I had 800 guys working for me there and uh they were all they were so fired up it was it was all I could do to keep them from going you know hanging on a wing to go with us you know and uh so I did not fly on the first night and uh then I flew on the 18th and then again on the 19th and I was in the afternoon push so we had uh we had basically two two pushes a day um unless well we didn't get any air-to-air commitments because by that time there was enough Eagles and enough everybody else there was a need for us to be there so we were all we were all moving but um highlights of the first strike on the 18th it was it was uh it was like 12 O'Clock High milk run you know there was you know again the Roe the weather was crappy we knew where we were going but you know they said hey if you can't see it you can't drop well then they changed the rules right about the time we were getting ready to step to the Jets they said hey since it's not in downtown you're okay because you're just bombing an Airfield so we basically did a 12 O'Clock High radar lay down you know beep and everything falls off and you go gee I wonder what that was going to look like for you know you didn't get any BDA from that so right very it was very mundane not even shoot we were at the we're in the mid-20s so there wasn't even any AAA coming up to our our altitude it wasn't anything that excited about at all I think we had we had one missile launch and I think it wasn't anywhere near us I mean when I say anywhere near us oh yeah what was that yeah smoke Trail way out in the distance yes hey what was that uh I didn't hear anybody call Magnum so that's not a harm I don't know what that was oh well yeah you see where see where we were it wasn't it it was absolutely nothing we all come back and land and come back and everybody's you know we do a d the debrief lasted longer than it took me or shorter than it took me to tell you that story you know because it's like yeah here we are everybody's good yep no problems questions comments good okay go to bed gotta get up do this again tomorrow you know yeah yeah that's right did you find that to be dare I say somewhat unsatisfying not that we take Glee and War no as as you've done it before we've all moved enough mud to know that there's something very satisfying about moving mud because you get instant feedback right when you've got when you're dropping ordinance there's instant feedback how you did and in those situations you go guess we're just gonna have to wait for a satellite to come by and take a picture and see how we did or wait for the next Target array to come out and say oh [ __ ] we got to go back and do it again you know I mean that's that's the reality of this that is in that sense it is unsatisfying but in the real sense of hey I had eight here I had eight guys when I took off I had eight guys when I got back all the airplanes didn't have any holes in it it was extremely satisfying to have a first combat Mission with brand new lieutenants on my wing you know it was very satisfying to have the first combat mission for those guys and for me come back successful in the respect that everybody came home no holes in nowhere you know and that kind of stuff so yeah I mean there's there's always a good and a bad side to everything sure sure and and I always say on the this podcast you know it's not like we're you know looking for war or want to go but if there's gonna be one we want to know how we're gonna do I mean because we spend most of our Career Training and and theorizing so we want to get out there and do it so all right so the strike on the 18th was nothing like the strike on the 19th sounds like no way different scenario from uh not only the target array but also from how the version uh action was laid out you know we were going to be and we knew this if you recall the first three days of the war as far as the air war was concerned were pre-planned uh and Target array was all laid out and every single Squadron that was was going to be flying in this War had an opportunity to go to the black hole in Riyadh and go through all of this you know so we send one guy would go up there look at everything and go yay nay and and we're talking this is Captains and Majors this is not right this is not upper ranking guys it's the guys who were on the pointy end of the spear the upper ranking guys did what they said they do they said here's what we want to do let the captains and Majors figure out how to make it work and that's what happened so we kind of knew what the first three days 72 hours were going to be like and everybody was pretty well prepared for that we knew that by day two the the target array was going to open up and that's exactly what happened so we're in the first daytime raid to Baghdad that's what package Q was it was the first daytime rate into quote Baghdad and so the circle around you know can't drop here all the Roes were already in place so even though our Target array was not downtown it was downtown from the big perspective of right inside this boundary that um the the bosses said yeah you gotta steer around this stuff so that's what we were doing so we kind of knew that I mean everybody knew it was the most highly defended piece of property outside of Moscow uh you know and it was we're all it was just part of the game and by that time I've been in the Air Force 14 years so kind of knew like you said train 14 years and multiple different airplanes and knew what the heck was going on so it wasn't uh wasn't a big surprise as far as what we were doing as a matter of fact a lot of guys were pretty excited about it I had a I had a couple people who were a little bit upset by the fact that you know you look at the uh you look at the measle chart we call it where all the all the Sams were located you know in and around our Target area you go oh this is gonna it's gonna be exciting there's no electricity in all of Iraq what are you worried about you know oh they got generators yeah where are they getting the fuel you know it so you're minimizing everybody's expectations that it's going to be terrible and um but there really really wasn't any any big problem as far as my guys were concerned you know yeah all right so I mean as much as you are willing to take us through this story as you can read it in that article and for those listening on patreon I'll put it back up but they've all seen an article too but I mean you guys find a sucker hole you roll in uh you kind of light them up but they light you up too so that's a well you know you know it was the the whole objective of the package was we were doing a faint towards the Northwest as though we were scud hunting um because that was the big deal at that time you know this because we're launching to friendly areas and we wanted to prevent that so we had this huge package headed towards the Western area the border with Jordan and everything and then at the pre-planned moment everybody has student body right and the objective again was because of the target of race we were all going to be over Target simultaneously and then flow to the South and life was going to be good as I mentioned earlier the guys in the far Northwest when they turned in their target was obscured and they were unable to drop so they just continued at the medium altitude towards their secondary Target which just happened to flow right over top of my target which was wide open and as as we turn in you know and I tell people it was a Stevie Wonder Target I mean uh you know you could find it from anywhere uh and it was too easy you know Big River oil refinery smokestacks jeez how could you miss it um we had renegotiated the dimpies between the four of us instead of having eight airplanes we had four so we renegotiated the dimpies and everybody put uh two mark 84s on top of the cracking Tower so if you're familiar with what an oil refiner is and cracking towers and all that kind of stuff our dimpies were there were four cracking Towers in in the oil refinery and they were separated on North East Northwest and Southeast side of the oil refinery so it was really easy to separate the dimpies from our attack and that was easy so I had arranged the attack so that I would be the last guy out flowing through the target area and coming kind of a Polish heart attack and we all rolled in and come back out and I'm the last guy furthest out well as my eight ship buddies came overhead the world lights up and all of the AAA starts it but it was that was 37 millimeter and it did go up this you know it was blowing up somewhere around 15 18 000 which was almost 10 000 people owe us so it wasn't any big deal it didn't have any any bigger stuff right there in that area so we weren't too worried about it but it was perfectly it was perfectly symmetrical in the fact that looked like almost every street corner had something on it because you know how it was like a checkerboard of you know it was like the same same pattern as the roads in the town you know it was just set up so you could you could literally you could have gotten out and walked on it from one to the other to the other to the other but it was all well below us and that was no big deal um when the Sams started coming up they were optically launched or they were just being ballistically fired you know some guy on the ground was going all the wheels it and he's pushing a button he's not looking at anything because The Radars are shut off the sparkvarks and the wild weasels had made sure of that and of course like I said we had turned off all the electricity in the country before that so there wasn't you know they're only running generators for a little time and they're worried because they're generating an IR signature you know how all this all this tactical stuff runs together and so everybody's just trying to hunker down and but my boss says I have to shoot so he's just launching ballistic stuff and of course the rwr is lighting up confirming those things so you're not getting too excited but when you see one go up passed you an essay 2 for example and go through the formation that's flying overhead everybody gets excited and uh you know I I kind of like to say that you know there's every once in a while there's grown men crying on the radio and they get pretty excited and um but the first really accurate missile literally went between me and my wingman which was E.T at the time stroke three so it was one three uh five and six or something like I can't remember precisely but one and three so me and E.T were we started doing the funky chicken because there the one lit us up and went literally right between the two of us essay two and they go up to about 80 90 and then they blow up because that's what they're designed to do if it doesn't hit somewhere they just blow up somewhere in the stratosphere and um so that one blows up and we kind of get back together and now it's time for the target attack and as I'm rolling in and sa6 comes up and it's not on me but the guys are just exiting above us and I realized that that missile would just come off the rail and I saw it and I yelled on the radio for a man crying on the radio I yelled on the radio for you know credit four to break right break right right now because I knew that's who it was heading you know and he breaks right and the missile speared him and his airplane literally vaporizes so we lost one already and I don't have time to mess with it because my Target's right over here I gotta finish this attack and um that was Mike Roberts so Mr gets gets hit we don't know what happened because remember the airplane was hit at 20 something thousand and you're not going to get a parachute until 14. 4 status struck three we're not looking down there you're looking up at this big cloud and there's vapor and you're okay he's no longer with us we got other things to do finish our target attack and missiles are flying on a regular frequent basis by now that that group the eight ship now is further out of the they're outside of that sucker hole and so they're actually getting clear they're still having to do a few little bit of Sam maneuvering but not not too bad but ET and I are truly tail end Charlie we're the last two out of the target Zone and so as you saw in the video um et's video we were doing the funky chicken for several minutes um that video has been used you use it a lot but I've seen it multiple multiple times well I mean when when I was on the staff I use that video to demonstrate to people who don't understand what piece of essence you know I said this is what P sub s means oh look at his AirSpeed look at his altitude and I I said I'm gonna count one thousand one one thousand two what the look what his AirSpeed is now and look what his altitude is now that's what P sub s will do for you anyway um so that video shows um when I got back uh in my Intel debrief it was uh the Intel guy said they count they they went back and did all their spooky stuff to figure out what was going on and they said between 9 and 12 missiles were shot at etn me in about less than two minutes period um there's only one that I had any indication had any guidance on it which was the one that ended up taking my airplane apart so uh as we were coming off Target we're doing the funky chicken I finally told ET you probably listen to it on the video you you hear me say flow Southeast now structure egressing Southeast now because we were splitting we were about ready to go right into the middle where everything was coming up and so we split that area and I ended up on the western side of it and ET ended up on the Eastern side of it and we were now we're separate and doing the funky chicken to stay away from each other but the missile that had my name on it at the time was it came up as a three it was uncorrelated initially on the rwr and then it came up with an optical guidance indication I went oh okay well if you recall the weather was like I said really bad on the surface it was actually kind of rainy and hazy and humid so when that missile launches you get a big contrail coming off the ground you can see them and it's not a problem so I see a missile coming off the ground at my uh you know left 11 low but it's going north down while I'm going south then I go okay that's not it now look over here no there's nothing over there look back over here nothing over there look back over my shoulder and the missile starts parking towards me that's the first one that actually had some kind of guidance on it and once it started arcing towards me I turned towards it and uh put it on the wingtip and I'd been I did that this is the third or fourth time I've done something like that um and I go you know another one still had my tanks on because I needed that fuel bombs were gone a while back so that's not a big deal um as the missile got closer to me I go oh this guy is really impressive because I unloaded and he bid low so you watch the country I'll go with you and you go okay he's pulling the lead I know what's going to happen next just wait one potato two potato and like the book says when you just can't stand it anymore I started to roll around the missile it went between the Leading Edge of the stab and the trailing edge of the wing on the left-hand side it went so close I heard it right by me and by that time I think I was probably out of chaff and flares but I couldn't tell you for honest honest to goodness but I did have an ECM pod on that was very well tuned to those single digit Sam's so I wasn't too concerned about it and when it blew up it blew up behind me and underneath me and it was just like hitting jet wash on the Range they get a little oh a little verbal no big deal I roll out and then [ __ ] and Betty starts talking to me you know and I went uh oh that's not good and she tells me I got an engine fire and of course I look you know on the F-16 you can just do this and you can see the vertical stabilize so I look back and I go oh yeah okay that's not good and um so I said I got a jettison and I jettisoned the tanks but because of the way I was when the when the uh missile blew up there was some damage to the left-hand tank so the right one clears off normal the left one hung and rolled it and it rolled over and smacked the horizontal stabilizer as it went free and when it did it put me out of control and I so I rolled back over upside down again and I got it back and zoomed up and just pointed the nose up and then the airplane started shutting off and on F16 electric jet without electricity it doesn't work so good and it takes a it takes a few seconds for the epu to get going um and now all of this is all part of temporal Distortion so a second is a minute a minute is an hour and hours a day so now the temporal Distortion has taken effect and and the time has expanded to fill the available void and your brain is functioning at at its normal speeds which we don't ever use so now you're you're undoing things and the world is not happening fast anymore everything has slowed down in my world now everything's still going at 300 knots but in my world it's not so I can I can replay every Everything I did which was mostly mechanical when you think about it on throttle up you know I still got thrust okay I know where I'm going I have no altimeter all that stuff is going and because the epu is just spinning back up the electrical bus cycling is happening so things are shutting down they're coming back on shutting down come back on you would never notice that on a normal emergency Mission if you had emergency in the F-16 like that where the engine shut down the EP would fire you would never notice it but in my scenario I could tell that things were you know the breakers were not resetting it was just taking time so it was like the airplane was shutting down starting up shutting down starting up but no big deal I zoomed up keyed the microphone told him I was hit uh and I told him I I lost the engine well actually I did not lose the engine it had been it had minimum thrust but it was still producing thrust but when I came to Mike and told the flight lead who was already headed back I said You know here I stroke once hit lost I lost the engine and he just he goes punch out I go uh not yet um so then I'm I'm zooming up and I get to an altitude where I don't know I have no altimeter now nothing's working properly the fire is still going on kind of maybe two or three feet behind my head because when I look back over to take an assessment um there was several exploding cigar looking holes in the back of my airplane in the wing the trailing edges were shredded pretty good but it was still flying so I okay I'm gonna ride this thing and about that time as I Coast it up to a medium altitude I'm gonna say I was probably in the high 20s low 30s don't know for sure um I said this feels about like you know the airspeed I need to carry for no engine you know I just needed something so this feels about right so I just leveled off and let it go and by that time I was over the overcast now so that sucker hole is behind me and things calm down radios are calm and I start hearing talk about okay he's over here over here so people were being Vector towards me pardon me and I and I figured that out and I said okay don't come back here press home you know a lost wing man wounded bird just get the [ __ ] out of my way because you don't want to be here this is not I cannot make it from here to there on my current thrust and uh so a couple quick conversations occur and then I see a big I see an F-111 making a big turn over off to my lower right and I go you know of course I'm not on his frequency so I I just say you know hey whoever you are get the hell out of here on guard and you know he just keeps making his turn and disappears and somebody else was trying to come back for me and I got everybody out of there and about that time again this has taken an extremely long time to tell you this but about that time the engine quits so now I'm a glider and I keyed the microphone and I said I said how far to the Border because I I lost all of that stuff all that stuff had not come back and somebody said 206 I went that's a long way that's a long walk Roe again said if you're more than 130 miles north we're not coming for you the the SAR guys didn't have any any forward bases set up so they go more than 130 we're not coming for you I do the quick math and I go well you know the F-16 is not really good at gliding although it looks real Sleek it's not really good at gliding you get five miles or seven miles horizontal for every five thousand feet altitude and I did the numbers I go ah I might be able to get to 160 from here before I had to jump out and so I said okay that's not too bad and I go through all these machinations and I go okay I got to get prepped and and I had all this classified material that we had taken with us for targets you know that kind of stuff and all the code and I go shoot nobody told me what to do with that in case this happens so I decided I decided I was going to lay it out on the console the F-16 and and if if you're familiar the console is right at your elbow level so I just laid all that stuff out on the console I'll figure when the rocket motor fired it with torched that stuff off it'll be all right so I'm okay I have zero I zero out the KY 50i 0 and all that stuff you know and I did all that stuff and then I keyed the microphone and I go hey how far to the border now long pause 205. okay from 206 to 205 I did all that stuff and you're doing three you know so again the temporal Distortion has really gotten at that point so um I'm a glider and I made the decision that if I get in my Glide if I get to the top of the clouds and I knew the cloud tops were somewhere between 12 and 14 000. said if I get to the top of the clouds I'm gonna bail there because I want to be able to see you know exiting the airplane I don't want to be in the middle of a cloud I don't want to know you know three feet above the ground I'm jumping out I don't know where the ground is so I had that decision process and and I'm in The Descent in the Glide now and then the airplane decides that's all I got the F-16 has the last bit of hydraulic fluid will give you an upward vector and that's what it does it it says I'm going to give you everything I can up I know where up is and so the stab digs in and the airplane pitches up and I can't stop it and I push forward on the stick once it kept going push forward a stick second time it kept going the third time I S to this day I swear I broke the stick off and then I grabbed and then I grabbed the ejection handle and the the cables only six eight inches long I grabbed the cable and I had that thing up against my chin and I pulled it all the way to here and absolutely nothing happens right nothing happens I'm like oh this day is just going crazy and I'm just about ready to pitch up into the close to the vertical and I'm thinking oh man nobody's ever had to do the canopy jettison you know all that stuff because the seat and I kept remembering that there was a fire right behind where my seat is I thought okay maybe it burned through I got a shrapnel something burned through something and it's not working but you're not going through the canopy because it's this thick so you got a jettison if the canopy doesn't go you're not going well the the emergency jettison t-handle is down here by your left hip bone well if you reach down and go like this and pull that thing your arm goes with the canopy on your way out so you can't do that you got to reach across you got to hold the handle all the way up you got to reach across over here and grab it like that you know hey so I look down I see where it is like okay I reach across I get my hand on it and I'm just ready to push the button and Pull and I put my head back again and about that I look one more time and I'm getting ready to squeeze the trigger and all of a sudden I see a little Gap growing on the canopy Rail and I went okay so it's just not happening things aren't happening I'm pitching up into the vertical the canopy goes I start to go out of the airplane but it wasn't it wasn't that wonderful Zoom I'm gone it was just the slope and I thought oh [ __ ] I got a cold shot oh this day is just getting really good and and then as I start sliding literally I'm sliding out of the airplane I thought to myself crap I'm gonna slide down the spine of the airplane and fall into the vertical stabilizer on this in the seat because that's just the way it felt like I was just gonna slide out and fall down well about that time I felt a little wiggle and all of a sudden the seat repositions and now I'm face down so I'm clear of the airplane the drogue shoot has come out stabilized the seat and what's not in the the dash one which is your Nate tops uh is that the seat is going to reposition and you're going to be face down so home seat repositions I'm face down and I am looking at the pitot tube of my airplane from me to you know it was it was like eight feet away from me and I am falling onto the pitot tube of my ear that is the visual I see and I'm going you got me kidney this is just this is just insane and of course you know all of this is because your brain is functioning at a higher level the airplane is falling way faster than I'm going to so it disappears out of the way and then I see the canopy is tumbling off to my left and remember all those classified documents they are flying everywhere they didn't burn you know a lot of stuff that you know it probably melted on the way down it was a good try yeah best thing I could think of at the time so you know now I'm outside the airplane oh by the way you know this or I'm in the mid-20s when this happens low to mid 20s um yeah it's cold up there yeah and it's really cold and this is January in bagged above Baghdad you think oh it's hot no no no it's minus whatever and it's cold I'm just in a flight suit you know and nothing else so I'm freezing my ass off on the way I remember it being really cold on the way down parachutes not gonna open till about 14 000 on the green bottle thinking through all this and my brain is still focused on the fact that stuff has not worked right so I was convinced that the seat wasn't going to function if I didn't help it again I knew the top of the clouds are about 14 I said if I hit the clouds I'm going to have to do a manual seat separation nobody's ever had to do that in the aces Ducey you know so I'm like oh crap and I don't know if you remember you got to grab hold this handle and shove the parachute out because it's in the it's in your headrest yeah I don't remember that wow yeah it might have been different the F18 but at the F16 that's where it was you know there's two little pitot tubes and yeah no I did fly now I I have 170 hours in A's and B's um but I don't remember that ever coming up but maybe I've just forgotten it yeah uh sorry so I thought okay if I get down there I'm gonna go out to do the manual seat separation get me out of the seat get a parachute get rid of this stuff that's not work I was convinced it just wasn't working well I start falling falling and falling and sure enough I get to the wispy the clouds and oh by the way clouds are made out of water so when you're following through them you get wet so now I'm cold in but and I go okay that's it I can't I can't wait anymore I'm gonna manual separate I reach down grab that handle I got my hand on I'm reaching up to put the pitot tube in there and just shove it and and I get to that point and all of a sudden I get slammed out of the seat you know bam out I get slammed out of seat I got a parachute just about that fast and I'm like oh I guess maybe this stuff is working you know I mean I was convinced so yeah now I'm following through the clouds again a couple things that aren't in the dash one or the natops is that how you don't fall real fast it's about one minute per thousand so I got 14 minutes 15 minutes of hanging in the straps in the clouds I didn't know where the bases were because I wasn't sure where I was turns out I was somewhere between 160 170 miles north of Kuwaiti border so about 30 or 40 miles from where uh I got hit so pretty good far south I thought I was pretty happy about that and I go oh that's no man's there's no there's nothing there I mean we're out in the desert now Sun's going down I'm pretty happy about this I go well shoot people know where I'm at I'm not hurt the sun's going down I'm in the middle of nowhere this is going to be a good spot so grab the radio said the magic words and didn't hear anything well you know you had a Korean era POS here for your radio and and you know I'm wearing a helmet to try to jam that thing up in there you can't hear stuff you know okay well evidently they did hear me and you know the rules were if we didn't hear from you we're not coming for you anywhere coming for you not too far north that's the way I thought so I thought well if I'm about 160 170 miles I said when I hit the ground I got enough adrenaline I can probably do with a marathon in a couple hours and I'll be standing there at 129 miles wait for those guys you know that was my feeling at that time uh then I go holy cow I don't know where the bottom of the clouds are I got to get my [ __ ] together so put everything away got prepared for a parachute Landing and I start coming out of the bottom of the clouds and I recognize that there's some smoke and big rectangular black objects not too far away from me I'm going to say five or six kilometers away off to my left and the wind is blowing me that way so I don't want to go there so I turned the parachute into the wind I try to stop my forward progress headed towards them and then I realized that the smoke initially I thought oh maybe it's just you know oh you know they're cooking fires or something and it turns out now it was it was gunfire they were shooting at me so a couple bullets goes and by and once that happens like okay all bets are off now I'm gonna have to do something different so I start collapsing the parachute so like you know I'm like the uh the bobbing dogs in the in the carnival games you know I'm trying not I'm trying to make myself a really difficult Target and so I I do that and I hit the ground in a perfect plf toes knees knows you know they have right on the ground got everything off made one last radio call and grab the hit and run kit and I took off and I got about four gessio inside strides out of the way before they shot up the ground around me and I'm standing there like this and I thought it was uh the second Echelon of the Republican guards because that's kind of where they were supposed to be turns out it was a group of Bedouin tribes that and of course they don't have a country now they had no teeth and no shoes but brand new AK-47 so I kind of figured they weren't on our side made a big circle around me and they're shooting in the air like everybody likes to do in that part of the world when they are celebrating and their uh leader of that little group those probably 10 guys the leader of that little group gives his weapon to the guy next to him and he walks up to me and he's yelling and screaming and I'm just standing there I'm not doing anything and uh he he's yelling and screaming and he hauls off and kicks me in the groin remember he's got no shoes on I still have my parachute here I saw all those buckles and everything I didn't feel it I had so much adrenaline my system didn't even hurt I think I put a gas it put a gash across the top of his foot and you know he was not happy and he he doesn't want to walk back limping you know so he's trying to be a real big guy after after you know his foot got smacked on the buckles and then he goes back grabs his AK and then runs up and literally jams it up my nose and I got the idea that you know he wasn't happy about that so uh then then he sees that I still have my sidearm and now he really gets excited and he stems back he steps back and and Jacks went in the chamber and I go okay okay and I did the left hand grab and toss and I broke the discus record for that you know when I tossed that weapon and now he gets real excited and and I realize he wants me to go down on one knee or down on the knee and I are like uh so I kind of went down on a knee the guy behind me butt Strokes me boom and I am watching Tweety Birds and stars and the dog pile on me and they Dogpile me tie me up and start dragging me through the desert uh sun is now essentially down you know I gotta I got a pretty good sized nose so I'm plowing a big old Groove through the sand as they're pulling me along you know and um I was really impressed these guys knew every Sand Dune I mean they knew precisely where they were going it's now dark can't see squat we go around over they got tired after about a kilometer and then then they untied my legs and then they were you know uh duck walking me but at least I was walking and not being drugged through the sand and we come around this one Sand Dune and there's a little Shack I mean it's the size of a closet but there's a you know it's made out of tin and they they all Pile in there with me and now they're going through all of you know all my stuff and they decide there's nothing there and they're yelling stuff that I don't understand and uh they get rid of all my gear except for my G suit because they couldn't figure out how to unzip that and I'm tied up and I'm not gonna help them so then they we leave there and we we end up walking to their Camp which was those big black tents I saw earlier in the the day when I hit the ground and they take me into their the nomadic camp that they had there and they put me in the tent with the chief and the chief is sitting there on a threadbare rug just like Lawrence of Arabia leaning back over on a pillow you know looking like he's somebody uh and you know I spent I spent the night playing games with those guys until the next morning you know somewhere in the middle of the night after we had played games for a while um I Heard the unmistakable sound of a C-130 going by and he wasn't too far from me so somebody was out looking for me and you know your mind starts racing in these scenarios and I thought okay they know where I'm they know I'm here they know where I am and in about five to ten minutes a couple of Delta operators are going to come through that tent door and I'm going home and these guys you know it'll be all over and that didn't happen so was a nice thought but it didn't work out like that in the next uh the next thing I know you know we're uh we're piling into a truck the next morning and head off to bagner six more weeks which is a whole separate happy hour discussion all right so you make it out uh Mr you said he got shot down but you didn't know but he did he makes it out as well he does I didn't know you know I thought he was dead for about 10 days and then we we were being moved around quite a bit and the second I was in five different prisons in in the Baghdad in and around Baghdad the second one we were in was like a stock military Stockade and the gardens would come by and check you know they would ask you your name and we took to shouting out our names and then after about 10 days I heard mr's voice and I heard his name so I knew he was alive so and we both got released approximately the same time was there someone else in your fourship because I think when I listened to the video I think I hear like stroke fours hit or something like that so who who else in your group no nobody else in my group got hit um that was credit for that you hear Credence oh okay okay and then it was uh et's uh I think it says in that article his Expendables weren't coming out yet uh it proved the adage that maneuvering is more important than Expendables yeah uh they they claimed that he he came back with uh chaff and everything stuck in the airplane but it was pretty common that the chaff bundles in the F-16 they would jam in you know I would say 30 of the time you'd think you were expending but they weren't going out you know and you never and well we didn't have that many to begin with you know there's not a lot of room back there yeah so um if you think about it do you got I'm gonna pick a number I don't even remember now you got 40 chap bundles every time you smack smack the button two come out you know you're smacking the button you know yeah yeah they take long to empty those out in a two minute avoidance scenario you're busy yeah the F-18 had won 30 round bucket in each intake under the intake so we had 60 on the early Jets and then they doubled that on later Jets and on the Super Hornet and then they came out with the Bol or whatever I don't know if you guys ever had that like was in the launchers but yeah goodness all right yeah way way different yeah for sure plus years ago things were different yeah well we'll have to do another one of these to uh I usually try to keep them around an hour uh but we'll have to do another one to talk about your captivity because when I was a young pilot so when all this happened by the way I was in college um but when I was accepted into flight school and started through flight school I used to read as much as I could get my hands on as far as pow books go because I it's not to say I was afraid of it but I just thought gosh that sounds awful uh but number one but number two I want to know what other people went through so if those emotions happened to me if it ever happened then I would be uh hopefully at least armed with yeah that's pretty normal uh but then you know just to be encouraged by the people who did but yeah you guys uh from from some other stuff I've read including um the tornado book by John Nichol I'm pointing at it as if you can see it over there on my bookshelf but um he spent some time as a guest as well and it sounds like uh it wasn't particularly Pleasant I guess to understate it no you know people go well how was it I go well you know I lost 45 pounds in 46 days that'll give you an idea okay um the uh the treatment was certainly not within the Geneva Convention rules whatever you want to call that um yeah it was it was uncomfortable at times there's no doubt about it but as I tell people six weeks does not compare to six years no a very a very good friend of mine who has become a very good friend of mine lives about two miles from me he spent five and a half years in Hanoi Hilton and he's a very very good friend of mine and you know uh we were chatting at some uh reunion of some kind I can't recall where it was and I said to him yeah six weeks doesn't compare to six years and he looked at me he looked me straight in the eye and he goes you missed the boring part so I'm like okay I'll I'll go with that which which can be awful in its own way uh yes indeed so um there's so many things I want to ask you about that but again let's let's save it for another time but I do want to ask you about your first flight back so you get reparated in I think what March mid-march of uh 91 March March 6th yeah okay how long does it take you to fly again and what was that first flight back like um after uh we were repatriated took three or four days to get stabilized on the hospital ship then we went back I went we all went back to the States uh another week in a hospital and then they the Air Force mandated that I have 30 days of convalescent leave in the United States and I wanted to get back and fly an airplane back you know from qatara they wouldn't let me go so of course um I don't I don't get back to uh Spain my Squadron had finally redeployed back to tour home I don't get back to Spain until around about tax day so it would have been April 18th or something like that and um I I got cleared back on flying status within another two weeks so my first flight was probably May of 91 ish okay um you know that was one of the beauties of of my scenario is um while I was diagnosed with a mild to moderate case of PTSD getting back doing what I used to do and being able to do it you know the the PTSD gets diminished because you're focused on something else and you're focused on doing your job so I credit the fact that I was physically able to get back and do what I was doing before now um the first time a false alarm came up on the rwr I almost swallow the seat cushion you know but other other than that you know it was okay how about now 30 years later has it been yeah I mean are there still rough nights uh I'm sorry to even ask but no no I I don't have a problem talking about it I I don't have I mean I can't tell you that I don't have issues but nothing that wakes me up in the middle of night of you know on a sweat or where I'm constantly worried about something though I don't have any of that yeah my life does not suck you know this is this is way good you know life is way good double retirement you're still married and uh and hopefully having some fun on the side uh this is cool man I appreciate your time today and we're gonna stop in a second we'll do a quick debrief and wrap up but um boy you're an American hero I I presume you get a lot of requests to go visit the academy and other places to tell your story um I have not had anything for quite some time and usually it occurs on the anniversary stuff you know the 25th to 30th so the 35 is coming up I expect that to happen uh I am and I I say this to just about everyone who asks these questions and I go I'm not a professional eow you know it's that's six weeks out of a rather long life uh it was a speed bump I'll be happy to tell you I'll be happy to tell you things that you don't really want to hear I said it's not the topic of dinner conversation but if you want me to tell the story I'll tell you a story you know you I don't mind doing that to uh organizations that are related to the military I gave up many years ago doing the civilian thing because it becomes uh becomes a burden because they have no concept yeah yeah and yeah they the H word is not something that's sponsored around you know and uh so we we don't even worry about that awesome well you're here to me Tico I want to thank you again for that wow that's amazing and uh let's keep in touch oh yeah absolutely no [Music] foreign [Applause]

Channel: Fighter Pilot Podcast

Views: 117,037

Keywords: Military Aviation, Air Combat, Fighter Pilot, Air Force, Naval Aviation

Id: lOKAPJg-Rdc

Length: 67min 29sec (4049 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023