@TomcatJunkie @refueled Hey, can you pick up some take out from this great place right outside the Nellis gates? Really appreciate it!!
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Bob Dillon
1.6K posts
Bob Dillon
@HAG624
I'm a a self-proclaimed hugonaught, what ever that means...
United States Katılım Kasım 2016
506 Takip Edilen108 Takipçiler
@RSE_VB Is it crazy that even the Tomcat patches are cooler than any other aircraft patches (I’ll allow a tie with the F-117 patches)? 😁
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I was noodling around in my "way back cruise box" full of various stuff from my career and pulled out all these patches and zaps. I had no idea there were so many in there!
And that group of little triangles in the lower left (and second photo) are those little unit emblems that went on the plastic name tag you wore on your khaki uniform (or the "penalty suit" as we called it). These are from Fighter Wing Atlantic and there's several hundred in that bag.
I'm sure there's an official name for those little things but we called them a "gravotnik" (gruh-VOT-nick). I have no idea why.
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Friendly reminder that you should buy more F-14 Tomcat stuff.
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@RSE_VB watching Top Gun in IMAX for the first time has led to a new question. Was there no A/C on the Big E? 😂😂
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@ShawnRyanShow @CWLemoine His “make them tell you no” stance is one more people should use today!
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Who would you like to see on the Shawn Ryan Show next?
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@RSE_VB Sooo, they are going to need pilots with Tomcat hours.. hint hint.
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@PPistone Blaney may have wrecked out but he wins the best mustache contest hands down.
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@GunnerRocks @q95 @bobandtom I was on a bus on the Southside of Indy heading to high school in 1983 when the bus driver turned on Q95. In minutes the entire bus of kids were laughing at jokes we only half understood. Great times, so glad I can say I was there. Thank you Bob..
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PODCAST: Bob Kevoian Tribute with Tom Griswold & Gunner LIVE From @Q95, Indianapolis @bobandtom q95.iheart.com/featured/the-g…
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#PSPlaster 2.0 is now live in the PowerShell Gallery. Now supports JSON templates! Check it out now
powershell.org/Plaster
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@RSE_VB Do you recall when the yaw string (I think that’s what it was called) went away? And did you guys have a cool name for that?
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@CWLemoine Fat Amy giving the US Hockey Teams an awesome escort home making the Mover & Gonky show? 😎😎
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@RSE_VB @harshadmishra15 In Jeremy Clarkson’s voice “On tonight’s show!!” 😎
I’ll watch each one.
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Indeed, they're a bit long. I've struggled to tell a fully developed tale briefly yest provide enough background and "inside baseball" to make it interesting. I keep getting requests to write a book, something I'm actually looking into now, so I imagine each #TomcatTail is a chapter?!?
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Longish read.
The reason why debrief are the most honest things.
Rich "Corky" Erie@RSE_VB
#TomcatTails Number 60 #TomcatTuesday “A Little Low On Gas; What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” The image with this post references what we call “Blue Water Ops” where the carrier is so far from any land that she’s the only game in town if you want to land and stay dry. This is where the rubber meets the road on landing on the ship; land and get some food or eject and get wet. Typically, it’s in the back of your mind for the couple weeks the carrier is in Blue Water Ops as it crosses the Pacific but doesn’t dominate your thoughts…..until it does. Night, bad weather, pitching deck, system degrades can all conspire to let that little thought creep into your head, but Naval Aviators become highly adept at compartmentalizing. You must be able to back-burner any distracting thoughts while flying around the boat. Family problems, late mortgage payment, ill spouse or child, Red Sox beating the Yankees, and the old Blue Water demon can pull you away from the task at hand. And that’s when you’re going to have huge problems handling the task you’re supposed to focus on. You may or may not be surprised to learn that a squadron will have a “Human Factors Board” meeting once a month to assess the mental state of Pilots and RIOs. It’s made up of the CO, XO, and a trusted Department Head or two and they’d have a private meeting to “talk behind your back” as we joked. But this was deadly serious stuff. We simply had to assess the personal and professional lives of the younger Aviators in particular to look for signs of too much stress or problems that could impact safety. It was generally benign but on occasion would create some “one on one training” or a couple days to “take a break.” It turns out that my first moment of that Blue Water Demon creeping into my head came during the day. A beautiful blue-sky day that Carrier Aviators pray for. Deep navy-blue calm seas stretching to the horizon and beyond, the beautiful bright blue sky looking like it was made for you personally. Some of the best flying days available. So what could possibly go wrong on a day like this? Beautiful day, meet Corky, a VERY new Nugget that is pretty good behind the boat but just learning about fuel, fuel ladders, Blue Water, and the most important thing between Pilot and RIO; trust. We’d launched on a day just like that in the middle of the Pacific on a 2 v 2 ACM flight. Does it get any better than that? Frankly no. A quick brief, some training rules, and BANG we’re off the deck of the USS Nimitz joining up and heading to our working radial and DME (bearing and range from the ship). We get to the right spot and run a few intercepts to engagement. Pretty standard stuff. Naturally, as you’re doing this you’re monitoring your fuel to ensure you don’t run out of gas. I discussed the “Fuel Ladder” a few #TomcatTails ago so will paste a synopsis here: A Fuel Ladder is a pretty simple two column tool to make sure you had enough gas to get back aboard the boat. Bottom left is fuel desired on deck (2K lbs daytime), bottom right is landing time. Add 1,000 pounds going up on the left (4,000 pounds per hour at maximum endurance, so 1,000 pounds every 15 minutes), and subtract 15 minutes going up on the right. Here’s a short sample: Fuel Time 5000 0915 4000 0930 3000 0945 2000 1000 Simply put, when you hit one of the fuel gates (like 4K lbs of gas at 0930 below), you’re “on ladder” and throttle back to maximum endurance fuel flow (4K pounds per hour) and hang out until landing time. Bear in mind too that the wingman (me in this case) burns a bit more fuel than lead because he’d jockeying the throttles a bit more so burning a bit more gas, like maybe 5% or so. Fuel looked OK enough to me and we’re close to ladder as the last fight knocks off. As we cruise back to the boat, I finally hit it and call “ladder” right as we enter into holding overhead the boat preparing to land. My RIO “Rac” and I were settled in and just chatting when fuel state begins to be a topic of discussion. Rac is a Marine turned Navy Aviator and an all-around good dude. Also, he’s a Lieutenant Commander Department Head. They’re often tasked to fly with us Nuggets, especially Blue Water. Right, @TexSandlin??? The launch underneath us is going well, looking on time and I’m at about 3,4000 pounds of gas. There’s a little parallax on the gauge, so if I bend down and squint it looks more like 3,800 pounds (every Pilot laughing now). “We should be good”, I say. “Appears so”, Rac says. With perfect timing, we descend to break the deck and are just about at the boat when a late jet pulls out on the flight deck and the Boss say’s “In the break, spin it.” This means take the 2-plane formation around the 3-mile circle one more time and re-enter the break. Uh…..OK. Fortunately, lead knows I’m a bit skoshie on go-juice so he throttles back some during the spin. This works out well and we arrive back at the stern to start the break. Rac asks for fuel state and I glance down and tell him “looks like about 2.8” (2,800 pounds). Now that was MOSTLY the truth but my JO brain was rounding up a bit to avoid getting yelled at. The jet’s “feed windows” showing the remaining fuel in the entire jet were at 1,200 and 1,300 pounds, so really about 2.5. Rac just has a single fuel gauge back there called a totalizer that is notoriously unreliable so this info from me is important. But it looks good so I’m sure we’ll be on deck in a couple minutes and we can talk about it. Break, speed brakes, wings, gear, flaps, and hit the abeam position. We started the approach turn on this beautiful blue sky day and it felt like a great pass rolling into the groove. But. Murphy always gets a vote. And in this case, Murphy voted for a hook-skip bolter. Dammit, throttle up and now we’re flying again and we just bolstered our way into a possible emergency. Rac asks for fuel state and I read exactly what I’m looking at: “1.8”. And those feed windows? They’re “unreliable below 1,200 pounds”. But we’re sticking with 1.8K pounds of gas and going to get this thing on the deck. We were alone in the pattern so able to turn downwind immediately off the bolter. Rac says “you got this?” I replied “Yup, just a damn hook skip.” It was kind of a verbal firm handshake signaling “let’s do this and get on deck.” We came around into the groove on and on and maintained that all the way to the ramp and then settled slightly do a deuce (2-wire). Didn’t want to pass up any good ones, obviously. And that was it; landed and lived to fight another day. Obviously, the real lessons here had nothing to do with fuel systems, carrier procedures, or flying the ball. It was all about trust, particularly between two comrades engaged in some really dangerous stuff. In particular for a RIO that puts his life in his Pilot’s hands every day. Naval Aviation makes you grow up really fast sometimes. I remember this flight very well as it was a cheaply learned lesson about trust, about recognizing that you’re in the big leagues now, about being a consummate professional every waking moment of your life, airborne or not. So much could have gone wrong. Another hook-skip. A foul-deck wave-off. Unreliable feeds and the airborne tanker not close enough to get to in time. I shudder think of all the badness I avoided. We debriefed the 2 v 2 engagements then Rac and I went to get a bite to eat. He was such a solid RIO and a good instructor, we sat and talked and ate for about an hour sharing stories. Not strangely, his stories were mostly about crew coordination and crew concept, things like that. He didn’t ream me a new one or even mention the details of what had (almost) happened. He knew that I knew.
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@HAG624 While I’m not actively working on it, I AM actively thinking about it. AI tells me I have enough for a 300+ page book, but I’m considering how to make it relevant beyond a bunch of sea stories.
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#TomcatTails Number 58
#TomcatTuesday
“The Making of a Combat Wingman”
A few weeks ago in #TomcatTails Number 55, I briefly explained some of the particulars of formation flying and mentioned in passing the notion of “combat spread”, a specific formation used by a section of Fighters (2 of them) when in the air-to-air arena. Today I’ll expand on that notion with what it was like for me when I hit my first squadron as a newly minted Tomcat Pilot.
Disclaimer: this was in the 1993 time frame and I’m sure much has changed since then. In those days you always operated as a section and always stayed visually tied on to your lead. Never get separated, never be where he couldn’t see you. Also, this was just after Gulf War I and Operation Southern Watch was pretty fresh. So “combat”? Not really. No one was shooting at us but the potential was there and we had to be ready for anything.
I’d just finished the RAG at Miramar, the VF-124 Gunfighters, and gotten to the VF-24 Renegades where we deployed a few weeks later. On board the USS NIMITZ (CVN-68), we headed across the Pacific toward Hong Kong, Singapore, then eventually the Persian Gulf. There was MUCH to learn as a Nugget (new guy), but when it got down to brass tacks, the two most important things were performance around the boat (day and night landings), and how to be a proper wingman. Everything else was secondary, for good reason.
I was the designated wingman for our XO, “Squatty” Adamson, a large man (USNA Rugby) and rather intimidating. Lots of guys didn’t like him as he was prone to outbursts, but I figured out pretty quick that he was a lot like my Dad; the outburst was about the situation, not the person. You just happen to be in the line of sight. Understanding that, you’d know his apparent anger wasn’t for you and you could let it roll off your back. Unless of course he WAS mad at YOU. That was different. But all around a good dude.
Before the specifics, a little bit of geometry. Combat spread is defined as a position 1 to 1.5 miles abeam your lead, stepped up 1,000 to 2,000 feet, slightly out in front (or “acute”). If you’re aft of his 3-9 line (a line through his wings extending out the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock bearing), then your “sucked”. Pretty easy to do steady state, but remember you have to turn the mile wide formation left and right.
Let’s say you’re on Leads right and in position (stepped up, slightly acute). If he wants to turn the formation to the right 90°, he starts a right turn into you. When you see that, you wait until he’s 45° through his turn and then start turning to the right with him. All things being equal, when he rolls out on the new heading, you’ll be now on his left and hopefully in the same position (stepped up, slightly acute) but now on his left. Fly that with your hands for a second to see how that works.
Now, rewind that to being back on his right, in position. If he wants to turn the formation 90° left, he’ll either say “Tac Left, go” or in zip lip (no radio comms), he’ll throw his wings up hard left for a second then roll back out, visually indicating that we’re going left. In this case, the wingman starts the left turn and when he’s through 45° of turn, lead will start his turn to eventually roll out on the new heading and the wingman is now on the left side. During that turn, it’s still the wingman’s responsibility to be in position no matter what Lead does. Hope all that makes sense.
As we crossed the Pacific, we fly quite a bit, especially the Nuggets who have the most to learn. Day and night, good weather and bad…..launch the Nuggets! All of this was focused on getting us brand new guys up and ready to be flying over Iraq in a month or so, ostensibly in possible combat operations. The training was intense and for good reason.
Squatty and I flew together a lot, doing 2 v 2 air intercepts, ACM, etc., etc. And throughout, he worked on me hard to hone my skills as a soon-to-be combat wingman. A joke we often heard was intended to show the Lead/Wingman relationship:
Lead: “I wanna hear only two things outta you. They are ‘Lead you’re on fire’, and ‘I got the fat chick’.
The reference here is the skill differential in play, and the absolute authority of your Lead when flying.
I learned very quickly that Squatty valued being in position over all other things. If he couldn’t glance up to his 10 or 2 o’clock a little high and see me in perfect combat spread, I heard about it on the radio. “Where the f*ck are you!”. “You’re sucked.” “Get the hell in position!” I’d fight like hell and continuously strive to get back in position. I can recall very specifically those Tac Turns left and right, crisscrossing the skies, back and forth.
We’d start a turn either way and rather than slime my way through it, I hyper focused, used altitude, air speed, and throttle (even blower) to get into and maintain position. I’d be gyrating inside the cockpit, straining my torso and neck left and right to make sure I didn’t lose sight of him and could predict better a) where he was going to end up, and more importantly b) what I had to do to get into position before he expected me to be there. Over and over we’d practice, during intercepts, on admin runs back to the ship, or any time we had a few minutes.
And two things were immediately apparent. First, I was using WAY more gas on a flight than he was. That’s normal as the wingman moves the throttles a bit more, but I was way serious about position keeping so I used more gas to get there. Second, and more importantly, I noticed that my overall situational awareness (SA) outside of the Tac Turn at hand was very limited. If we were doing a training intercept, I wasn’t paying much attention to it as I had no attention left to give, such was my focus on position keeping. Just get there and use every brain cell you need to do it.
After a few weeks of this, something else began to emerge. The brain cells used on position keeping got stronger, so I could devote a few of those cells on things besides the Tac Turn. My SA was improving rapidly as the position keeping skills shifted from an intentional mental effort to more visually actuated muscle memory. I no longer needed to stare at lead and react; I could just glance, predict the trends, make a correction, glance, and re-assess. Lather, rinse, repeat and all of the sudden being in position in Combat Spread became a skill set rather than a training effort. Later still, I could devote all my SA to mission stuff and the “admin” of position keeping was indeed pure muscle memory.
We hit the Persian Gulf soon thereafter and started our Operation Southern Watch sorties, patrolling over Southern Iraq to ensure none of the IAF got airborne. The cool part here is that this moment pulls together virtually ALL the phases of a year-long training syllabus in the RAG I’d just completed. For a year you do Navigation, Formation/Rendezvous, Air Intercepts, Tactical Formation, ACM, In-Flight Refueling, Carrier Qualifications, and more. And now, at this moment in you’re flying career, you’re doing ALL of that IN THE SAME FLIGHT! Welcome to the Big Leagues, kid!!!
Squatty was quite the character. He had a notoriously large noggin and wore the largest flight helmet available. When a squadron deployed across the Pacific, a large chart would be at the front of the ready Room tracking our plot between San Diego and Hong Kong. It’s 7,370 miles, if you’re curious. Some enterprising JO took a photo of Squatty in his helmet and made Xerox copies of it where each was about a 2-inch circle. He then taped them to the large chart going across the Pacific. So rather than asking “how many miles to Hong Kong”, we’d ask “how many Squatty Heads to Hong Kong?”
And while I’d learned quite a bit about leadership and taking care of Sailors from my Dad, Squatty taught me some good lessons too. One day I manned up to launch on a cool 1 v 1, but the jet broke in the chocks so I didn’t get to go flying. I came off the fight deck in a huff, pissed at not getting a flight, and was not quiet about it. Squatty pulled me aside and fixed me with that 6’4”, 240-pound former rugby player stare.
“Do NOT show your frustration to the Sailors and Chiefs. They’re JUST as pissed as you are and it feels like you’re taking it out on them. Instead, talk ‘em up. Give ‘em a pep talk about ‘we’ll get it next time’ and ‘nice effort, gentlemen’. They want nothing more than to give you an up and up jet to make our launch count. Be grateful for their effort and show it to them.”
Very wise words that informed the better part of my career as a Naval Aviator and Naval Officer. Squatty eventually left the Navy and flew for the airlines. He passed away a number of years ago but always has a place in life as brash big dude with a bigger heart than you knew. He taught me quite a bit beyond how to be a Combat Wingman really. He prepared me for my first “feet dry” moment over bad guy country.
Thanks, Squatty.
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@CWLemoine Race car driver by day, Top Secret Helicopter Pilot by night!
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@jsnover Should we all change the PowerShell console from Royal Blue to a fading midnight black in honor?!?! All the best in your retirement, and thank you!!
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@DamonBennett_ Really sorry to hear about Frank’s passing. Loved watching him be a great professional, doing things right, and helping people out..
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@jsnover Oh wow, do you remember GraForth? I used to love animating 3D cubes. Wrote an entire program to mimic the monolith from 2001/2010…
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