Fighter Pilot Dreams, Part 1

When I was young I watched Top Gun every day for two years straight. I can still quote most of the film word for word. From age six to age seventeen all I ever thought about becoming was a fighter pilot. At first it was simply because I wanted to be Iceman. (Most kids want to be Maverick. Not me.) top Gun lead me very quickly to other sources. I cleared out the local library's aviation section. I watched the Discovery Channel religiously, hoping to hear about the Battle of Britain or “MIG alley.” I spent hours playing “A-10 Tank Killer” on out family computer. By the age of twelve, I was an expert in the history and lore surrounding combat aircraft and the men who flew them. I learned very quickly that I wanted to become a fighter pilot for reason other than just simple idol worship. I craved the freedom of the wild blue. I craved the power and performance provided by huge engines stuffed into tiny airframes. I craved the challenge, both physical and mental, of piloting a fast, agile craft right up to the edge of the envelope.

Tom Wolfe called it, “the right stuff.” The pilots he wrote about certainly never called it that. In fact, they never talked about it. But they all knew what it was, they all knew it when they saw it, and they were all completely confident that they had it. Wolfe says, “As to just what this ineffable quality was... well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life... No the idea here (in the all-enclosing fraternity) seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in the hurtling piece of machinery ad put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment...” That's all very dramatic, but trying to learn from that just what “the right stuff” is and how you can get it, is like trying to learn combat tactics by watching Top Gun 400 times. What I needed to know was what “it” looked like. I needed to know how to get it. For that, I had to go straight to the source, to “the most righteous of all possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.” Yeager was and still is the yard stick by which all fighter pilots are measured.

Charles Elwood Yeager was born in Lincoln County West Virginia in 1923. As an Army Air Corp. officer, he flew P-51 Mustangs in the European theater of World War II. He became the first man to eject over enemy territory and later return to combat. He is also one of only a handful of American pilots to score five or more kills on a single mission. To make five aerial kills, to “ace” has been the mark of a good fighter pilot since the very early days of air combat in the first World War. Less than 1000 people have ever done it. To become an “ace in a day,” elevates a pilot into even more rarefied air. He finished the war with twelve kills total, a “double ace.” While his combat record made him a legend in military and aviation circles, it was what he would accomplish after the war that would make Chuck Yeager a household name. On October 14, 1947 he did what no man had ever done before. At 45,000 feet above the Mojave Desert, Yeager flew the Bell X-1 test plane to a speed of Mach 1.1 (around 800mph) breaking the sound barrier. The list goes, Wright, Lindberg, Yeager, Armstrong.

Yeager says ever since the film version of “The Right Stuff” came out, the question he's asked most often in if he thinks he has the right stuff. He says, “I know that golden trout have the right stuff, and I've seen a few gals here and there that I'd bet had it in spades, but those words seem meaningless when used to describe a pilot's attributes.” You can imagine my confusion upon finding these words in Yeager's autobiography. If I'm not looking for “the right stuff” then just what is it that I need to have? What is it that I need to know? What is it that I need to do to find my way into the cockpit of a jet fighter?

“'Combat vision,' we call it. You focus out to infinity and back, searching a section of sky each time. To be able to see at such distances is a gift that's hard to explain, and only Andy [Yeager's best friend during the war] and I could do it.” And there it is. I had to have eyes. Good ones! Of all the other qualities a fighter pilot had to have, Yeager believed that it was his eyesight that set him apart from every other “good” pilot. To be able to see the enemy first, be able to see trouble coming before it gets to you, before it's too late to do anything, it's what keeps a pilot flying and makes him one of the best.

When I was in the fourth grade, our entire class was sent down to the nurse's office in groups of three to have our eyes checked. I went first.

“Cover your right eye with your hand.

“Good, now please read line eight for me.”

I tried to read line eight but I couldn't tell the F's from the P's, the Q's from the O's. This was bad.

“O.K. Keith, how about we try line four.”

I tried line four. I had to guess on most of them, but I was pretty sure I got them all right. I had to get them right.

Just write down on you little nurse's clipboard that I have good eye! Write it down. “Keith has great eyes! His eyes are so good he should be a fighter pilot!”

“O.K. Keith can you tell me what the top letter is?”

The top letter?! What is she talking about? Everyone knows only old people have to read the top letter. This is really bad.

“It's and 'E',” I say, utterly confused.

How is this possible? I have to have perfect eye sight.

She sends me back to class with a note for my parents. When it was all over, I had three visits to the optometrist and a set of this, gold framed lenses. Today I wear a contact lens with a diopter power of -5.00. That translates to rough y 20/400 vision without the lenses. It was a major set back for me. But I would continue to purse my goal. There was hope for me yet, as my eyesight in one-hundred percent correctable. With my contacts in, I have 20/15 vision in both eyes. I would need a medical waiver in order to fly, but my need for speed had not faltered. I would find a way.

There is a killer instinct which all good fighter pilots have. It's a blood lust. A willingness to do anything to win, to bring the other guy down. Yeager's closest friend during and after the war was Andy “Bud” Anderson, a “triple ace” with 17 kills. “On the ground, [Andy] was the nicest person you'd ever know, but in the sky, those damned Germans must've thought they were up against Frankenstein or the Wolfman; Andy would hammer them into the ground, dive with them into the damned grave, if necessary, to destroy them.”

My father refused to let me play football until I was in the seventh grade. It was most likely just a financial concern as youth football was very expensive while junior high football was covered by his tax dollars. When junior high eventually rolled around I joined the team, and would finally get to prove I had that component of “the right stuff.” Football is the closest you can get to war in a civilized society, without actually going to war. The game of Football is an avenue for aggression. In a developed society which frowns on violence, men have found it necessary to channel their fundamental need for combat into the arena of organized sport. And in the game of football, there is no position which fits Yeager's description; a violent, relentless unopposable force of a fighter pilot better than middle linebacker. So that's what I'd be. And I was right. I was good at it. While I didn't have the pure athletic talent of some of my teammates, that willingness to go right into the “dive with them into the damned grave,” that I had. I was aggressive and ruthless and despite my lack of speed, still managed to find the ball carrier. I even started using the “Combat vision,” that Yeager talked about. I called it “tunnel vision.” It was like a spot light shooting out through my eyes. I could focus it down to one tiny, intense beam to notice the smallest change in an offensive lineman's balance. Or I would broaden it out to cover the whole field and see a splint end motioning down to crack block the defensive end. When the ball was snapped, I didn't hesitate. I flew to a spot on the field where I knew the ball would be. Often, I got there before the offensive player did. Just as a pilot has to know where every plane is in a dogfight, what's called “situational awareness,” I knew where all 21 other players on the field were, and more importantly where they were going to be.