Military Pilots Really Have "The Right Stuff"

Tammie Jo Shults, F-18 Fighter Pilot

Today I listened to the audio of pilot Tammie Jo Shults calmly speaking with Air Traffic Control in Philadelphia after the Number 1 engine exploded on her Southwest Boeing 737 aircraft.  Her voice had the kind of calm I have heard on headsets when I have been on military aircraft in serious trouble.  You would never know the danger from the voices of the pilots.

The Exploded Engine on Southwest Flight 1380

Shortly after I enlisted in 1972, I discovered that active duty soldiers could fly anywhere for $10. After I settled in to my first permanent duty station at Hill Air Force Base in Utah late that year, I decided to take a week’s leave and fly military from Utah to Boston and try out Space Available Flying.

I showed up flight operations at Hill the morning my leave began.  The first flight out was to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver.  It was an executive jet flying empty to pickup a general. I was a 19-year-old Airman First Class at the time.  They signed me up for the flight. I was the only passenger for the 500-mile trip over the Rocky Mountains.  It was glorious.  I had a drink and snacks served by the sergeant who was the steward on the plane.  I arrived in Denver thinking that flying “Space A” was about the coolest thing that ever happened to me. 

C-130 Hercules Transport Aircraft

I strolled to flight operations in Denver.  The next thing going anywhere east was a C-130 Hercules on its way to Atlanta, Georgia.  I think the plan was actually to go to Warner Robbins Air Force Base, but in the end, Atlanta was where we landed. Atlanta sounded good to me. I had never been to Georgia and I would be on the Atlantic Coast. 

The C-130E Hercules of that era cruised at 300 mph, less when fully loaded as we were today. After the one-hour trip across the Rockies, it would be more five hours inside the engine roar and wind noise of the four-engine Hercules.  The plane was fully loaded with palletized cargo under straps including what looked like Army mobile radar.  I walked up the tail ramp and past the cargo to the front of the plane.

Behind me, more than 50 high school ROTC cadets filed in for a trip to Georgia for a convention of some kind.  For some of these kids, it was their first flight.  In a C-130, everyone sits in fold-out seats made from nylon strapping material facing the middle of the plane.  The few windows were behind the heads of the cadets. Most of the cadets had their official USAF bag lunch as did I: two bologna and cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread, chips, a cookie, and a carton of milk.  Those lunches would keep me busy for much of our ill-fated flight. 

Before we took off, the loadmaster handed me a set of headphones and asked me to help with the cadets.  I said sure and started checking seat belts.  The loadmaster told the cadets not to look at the cargo while we were in flight and to keep their seatbelts on unless they had to get up.  If you have never been in a C-130 or other cargo plane with seats down the sides of the fuselage, it is great advice not to look at the cargo, but it’s pretty much impossible.  The shaking cargo in flight will shift even a good digestive system into reverse. 

The flight was smooth for the first hour.  Many of the cadets laughed and joked and ate their bologna and cheese sandwiches.  An hour later we hit turbulence.  I watched some those happy teenage faces go pale, then green.  I grabbed a stack of airsickness bags and passed them out, open and ready for use.  Then I collected them. 

The kids kept me busy for the next few hours. While I was helping one of the kids out of the toilet, I left my headphones hanging on the bulkhead.  As we sidestepped toward his seat, the plane shuddered. When the kid was safely buckled in, I went back and grabbed my headset.  I heard the pilot say, “No fuel to the right wing. Engines three and four inop. Feathering props.”

The plane was crabbing in the sky. With power only on the left wing, the plane would try to spin clockwise, then flip back when the counterforces built up.  So we oscillated as if there were an axle sticking up and down between the wings and we rotated on it.

The pilot had been talking to air traffic control. He came back on the intercom. “We’re 70 miles out. Runway at Hartsfield will be clear for us. Ten years ago in the ‘Nam I landed a model B with one engine and some big chunks of wing missing. We’ll be fine. Big bump, when we first touch down, then we’ll be fine.”

We slowly descended. Our slower airspeed made crabbing less violent. The loadmaster and I double-checked seatbelts and told all the kids everything was fine and we would land soon. We were lying with a smile.

Ten miles out I went up to the flight deck and looked ahead though the cockpit.  Red lights were everywhere on the airstrip. The pilots and the rest of the crew were perfectly calm, but it seemed like the rest of the world thought a plane with two dead engines was a problem. 

We descended. As we neared the ground the pilot pulled the nose up hard.  When we touched, the plane took one big bounce, skidded right for a couple of seconds, then settled down and stopped quickly. 

I waited until all the kids had filed out before I grabbed my duffel bag and walked down the ramp.  Fire trucks and ambulances ringed the area. I couldn’t count all of the emergency vehicles that were waiting for that big bounce to turn into something worse.  I sat on my duffel bag and waited for the crew to come out of the plane.  When the pilots and the flight engineer came down the ramp, they were talking like nothing had happened.  The loadmaster came over and shook my hand. He thanked me for helping out with the kids. 

A couple of decades later I would read Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff” and know that the “Cool” those astronauts brought to the Mercury space program came from learning to fly in the military.  Alan Shepard, John Glenn and the other astronauts, the heroes of my Cold War youth, are now pilots like Tammie Jo Shults and Chesley Sullenberger, military pilots, masters of the complex skill of flying and who remain calm and competent when engines fail.

   

Who Fights Our Wars? "Doc" Dreher, Blackhawk Pilot

Darren "Doc" and Kate Dreher at the Aviation Ball

Through Facebook, I just saw that a friend I deployed with in 2009-10 is off to another overseas adventure. 

Darren “Doc” Dreher is a Blackhawk pilot. We first met during training for deployment to Iraq. We were at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, getting ready to fly to Kuwait and meet up with our helicopters and equipment. Then we went into Iraq. 

Like nearly everyone in the 28^th Combat Aviation Brigade, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, Doc is from the mid state, not the city.  He lives in vast 570 area code that, together with 814 covers the majority of the population of the Keystone State.

When Doc and I first started talking it was because one of the other pilots let him know there was an old sergeant who was a liberal in Echo Company.  We started arguing about whether the TEA Party were just the nicest, cleanest most well-behaved people who ever graced the National Mall with their presence, or they were out-of-the-closet racists trumpeting Birther and other conspiracies inflamed by idiots like Glenn Beck. That was the starting point for several discussions.

Believe it or not, we kept talking.  We could clear a room with soldiers rolling their eyes about more political bullshit, but they could also see we were having fun.  Doc is smart and quick and won most of our discussions.  In fact, it was pretty clear after a while that he continued the arguments for his own amusement. He would smile just a little before announcing the latest outrage by President Obama. 

But Doc is not just razor wit and a pretty face (there were many jokes about which of us was better looking), he was by every indication I could see an amazing pilot. It seemed everyone wanted to fly with him, both other flight crew members and the soldiers we carried on missions.  One time I flew with Doc was up to Camp Garry Owen on the Iran-Iraq border.  On the flight was Colonel Peter Newell, commander of the 4^th Brigade, 1^st Armored, the unit that provided security for our main base at Camp Adder.  Newell put his unit patch on the nose of Doc’s Blackhawk helicopter.  So when Newell went to the border to oversee anti-smuggling operations or some other mission, Doc was often his pilot.

"Doc" Dreher flying over the Ziggurat of Ur

Another time I got to fly with Doc was for a video camera crew visiting Camp Adder. I think it was a British crew, but it may have been a British cameraman working for an American network.  The camera crew wanted to get a flyover shot of the Ziggurat of Ur, a huge monument to the prophet Abraham that was close to our base.  The wind howled out of the west most days. Doc hovered a hundred feet above the Ziggurat and a few miles west with the aircraft perpendicular to the wind. When the cameraman was ready to roll film, Doc trimmed the rotor blades and we flew sideways at 30 knots with the doors fully open.  It was spooky and exciting to be moving only sideways. I had taken some weird twists and turns flying in Army helicopters, but flying completely sideways was new to me.

After Iraq, I saw Doc only occasionally, if I happened to be on flight when he was on duty, or at the annual Aviation Ball with his wife Kate. He first introduced me to Kate as his “favorite liberal.”  Wherever he is, I hope Doc finds another liberal to argue with. Defending myself from Doc’s wit and encyclopedic knowledge made me a better liberal.  Thanks Doc! 

I hope my favorite conservative has a safe deployment. And Congratulations on your promotion to Chief Warrant Officer 5.

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Family Black Sheep Flies a MEDEVAC Blackhawk

Brooklyn-born Amira Talifi, (not her real name) is a helicopter pilot I served with in the Army National Guard. She is one of seven children, the only one who is not a doctor, a lawyer or in finance.  She flies a MEDEVAC Blackhawk helicopter. Her parents wonder where they went wrong.

            When her parents came to America they were determined their children would work hard, go to college and then law school, medical school or into business.  Asian families that come to American, whether from Beirut, Baghdad, Bangkok or Beijing, are known for pushing their children toward professional success.  Amira followed the family program until age 20 in 2008 when she enlisted in the New York Army National Guard as a Chemical Specialist.  She chose that field because the armory she trained in was near her home in Brooklyn and the career field paid a $20,000 bonus.

            During her first two years in the Guard, she continued to attend college, though she switched her major from Philosophy to Industrial Organizational Psychology.  “I thought it made sense of the Army and how they do things,” she said.  While she switched her major, she continued with a minor in French.  But it was her ability to speak Arabic, which she spoke at home, that proved much more useful when she deployed to Iraq with a Military Police unit from Queens, New York.

            In 2010, Amira and her Military Police unit deployed to Iraq. They were attached to the 82^nd Airborne Division.           

“When we first got Iraq we were under 82^nd for about three months, then with 3^rd Infantry Division,” she said.  The leadership of 3^rd ID “approached my commander about getting females to come with them on their civil-military engagements. Iraqi females would come in and needed to be searched.”

“Whether we were the primary searchers or just supervising the Iraqi police women searching, they needed women,” Amira said.  “Then my commander said, ‘I have an Arabic girl for you.’ So I ended up going on every single one of those missions.”

Amira speaks fluent Arabic.  “The Iraqi dialect took a while for me to pick up, but once I did, I was good to go,” she said. “I think I was pretty useful. I like being actively engaged.”

The desire to be actively engaged led Amira to switch from security to aviation when she returned from deployment in April 2011.  “I like being an expert,” she said.  “That’s what attracted me to being a pilot.”

            The switch from security to aviation became complicated. “New York had no slots for aviation,” she said. “People were on like a three to five-year waitlist. In New York, you go to the board. You do everything that you have to do, then you wait for your flight seat to come up, and then they give you two weeks notice, or a week’s notice, and you pack your bags and head down to Fort Rucker (in Alabama) for flight school.”

            She went to Pennsylvania and was accepted for the warrant officer flight program, even before she was officially a Pennsylvania National Guardsman.  “My full-time job was for the New York National Guard, and I didn’t want to leave that until I had my flight seat. So, Pennsylvania was nice enough to let me sit for the board, even though I was not a Pennsylvania National Guardsman. That’s not something that they normally do,” Amira said. “When they sent me to flight school, so I switched to Pennsylvania and haven’t looked back since.”

            The plan at the time was to become an NYPD officer after Flight School.  But after flight school, the plan changed. Amira moved to Pennsylvania to get in her required flight hours without the 100-mile drive each way from NYC. 

            “After being in flight school and, just thinking like long-term, what I want my life to look like, I don’t think I would be happy as a cop.” She said, “It’s not really my personality type. I realized I would like to make a career flying. Not necessarily helicopters. I like flying Blackhawks and doing Army missions, but airplanes interest me also, and I like the lifestyle of a commercial pilot. It’s nowhere near as fun as flying a helicopter. It’s just like, I mean helicopters are super exciting. But I don’t know if I want that excitement all my life.”

            She likes the intermittent schedule of the National Guard—one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, maybe a few weeks of school here or there.  “It’s an escape from the real world,” she said. “You go away and it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m a soldier again’.

The reason I’m not active duty is because I like having a separate life and having my civilian life, my own apartment and all that.”

            In the Army the biggest step for an enlisted soldier is to be promoted to sergeant. Suddenly you are in charge.  And the senior leaders, if they are good, do their best to move you from the culture of “the guys” to the unit leadership. An even more jarring transition is to become an officer.  Your drinking buddies become the soldiers who salute you. Amira had that transition when her training overlapped with her former military police unit.  They were training at the base Amira was assigned as a pilot.  Her current unit was packing to leave while her former unit was arriving.  She was now an officer,  meeting up with people she served with in the enlisted ranks.

            “I went over to their barracks and saw all my friends,” she said. “The people that I had been there in the dirt with. I showed them my uniform. They’re like, ‘Holy shit, Amira, you really did it. You’re really a pilot.’”

Amira was clear that the move up to the warrant officer ranks put her at the bottom of a different hierarchy.  “I may be a Warrant Officer instead of Specialist now, but I’m just a junior pilot,” she said. “I graduated flight school and the learning has just begun, but I know that being a pilot is not like you just graduate and bam you’re a pilot. It’s a lifetime of learning, but that’s what I signed up for.”

Five Years Later

I interviewed Amira several years ago shortly after she left flight school and was anticipating her first flights as Blackhawk pilot. In the years since we spoke, she has moved to central Pennsylvania and is one of the pilots in the MEDEVAC company that is part of the 28^th Combat Aviation Brigade. 

Flight crews train on different schedules than the other soldiers in an aviation unit, so I only spoke infrequently to Amira in the years since she became a Blackhawk pilot.  About three years ago, she went to school and became a fixed wing pilot. She got a job with a regional airline.  She is a pilot in the Army and a pilot in civilian life. 

Her choice is not unusual. Although an airliner is vastly different than a combat helicopter, a lot of the skills are the same. Many men and women who fly in the military have aviation jobs in civilian life. In fact, one of the Army air traffic controllers who guide pilots in the 28^th is a regional airline pilot in civilian life.  

Amira also has a quirky presence on Facebook unlike any other Army pilot I have followed.  Her page is jokes and comments about life in general and life as a pilot in particular.

Her sunny face on Facebook and her radiant smile on the flight line cover serious thinking and choices on her part. She started college as a philosophy major.  Though she switched to a business major, she speaks with passion and insight about classical and contemporary philosophers and about all the choices that add up to a direction in life. Amira is a Muslim woman in the U.S. Army, a combat veteran of Iraq, and a MEDEVAC pilot who could be called to serve in a war at any moment. 

While I was still serving with the 28^th I wanted to write about Amira for an Army publication, but she gently refused. It would have been fun for me to write about her, but she lives in a culture that profoundly hates the media. Soldiers, from Generals to enlistees are mostly suspicious of the all media, even their own media.  So even if I wrote about Amira for an Army publication the soldiers she served with would be negative about her simply consenting to an interview. 

Amira is just over five feet tall with long black hair nearly to her waist that she ties up under her helmet to fly. She often flashes a bright smile, has a wicked sense of humor and is both an airline pilot and a MEDEVAC Blackhawk helicopter pilot, wearing a uniform for both jobs.  Did I mention she is funny?

Some of the funniest things she says are about dealing with men, both in an out of the Army.  Recently she posted this on Facebook:

How to get men to stop talking to you:

“You look exotic, where are you from?” 
“Oh I’m from the islands” 
“Which one?” 
“Rikers”
#orangeisthenewbacktfup

            I never flew in her aircraft as a civilian or in the Army. MEDEVAC helicopters don’t carry passengers. But I would be happy to fly with Amira at the controls of any aircraft.  And it is interesting to see through social media how she navigates life in 21^st Century America.

 

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Surprising Follow Up with a MEDEVAC Pilot

I do not have a photo of MEDEVAC Pilot Suzy Danielson

But this poster covers her attitude towards life

Yesterday I posted a story on the DUSTOFF Facebook page I wrote about a MEDEVAC pilot I served with in Iraq.  The story is here.  She was a pilot in the Gulf War in 1991, left the Army in 1993 and forgot she was still a reserve officer.  In 2009, the Army reminded her with a FEDEX package telling her to report for duty.  She was 44 when she returned to active service and deployed to Iraq.  

After I posted the story, I sent Suzy an email, not knowing if she was still using that address.  At midnight, I got an email back from Suzy.  She is in Afghanistan!  Apparently she liked returning to the Blackhawk helicopter cockpit.  I asked her to follow up with me when she returns.

Who Fights Our Wars? Army 3.0: Pilot Trains for 1st Combat Deployment During Third Army “Career”

 CW2 Sara Christensen

In 1985, when President Ronald Reagan was just beginning his second term, the Soviet Union was fighting in Afghanistan and the Cold War was still a hot topic, Sara Christensen enlisted in the Army Reserve.  She lived in California, had just graduated from high school and wanted to be a dental technician. 

The following year she went to Basic Training and MOS training at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.  In Texas she met her future husband Kelvin Christensen.  He was an E5 on his way to Officer Candidate School (OCS) in California with the Army National Guard.  Although just a Private at the time, Sara managed to get accepted for OCS.  Kelvin and Sara went through the course together and were commissioned 2^nd Lieutenants. 

At this point, the Christensen’s were both officers.  They chose Aviation as their branch and eventually went to flight school.  Sara trained in Hueys, Kelvin in Blackhawks.  By 1991 they both had transferred to the Pennsylvania National Guard serving as aviation officers. 

LTC Kelvin and CW2 Sara Christensen

At this point both Sara and Kelvin were well on their way with their second Army careers as commissioned officers.  Kelvin continued with his career in aviation and currently is a Lieutenant Colonel and is the Cargo Battalion Commander for the Eastern Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (EAATS) on Fort Indiantown Gap.

Four years later, in 1995, the Christensens decided to go from no kids to three kids all at once.  They adopted three children from the Pennsylvania Foster Care system who need homes.  With three kids, Kelvin and Sara both continued their careers in the Army. 

By 2001 the already larger than average family had more than doubled to seven kids and Captain Sara Christensen left the Army National Guard for the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR).  She kept her commission and, in fact, was promoted to major while on inactive status. 

After more than a decade of raising seven kids, Sara decided to return to Army Aviation after a thirteen-year break in service.  The timing was critical because the maximum age to return to aviation service is 46 years old.  She made the deadline, beginning her third Army career as a Warrant Officer.  She could have come back as a commissioned officer and been eligible for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, but she wanted to fly and would have more opportunities to be in the cockpit as a warrant officer. 

In addition to beginning Army service for a third time, she has now held rank in all three sections of the chain of command:  enlisted, officer, and warrant officer. 

Despite being three years in to what a third Army career, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Sara Christensen is currently training for her first combat deployment.  She is a pilot with Detachment 1, Charlie Company (Medevac), 2-104^th General Support Aviation Battalion,  28^th Combat Aviation Brigade.  She is training in Texas for deployment to Southwest Asia later this year. 

Chinook Pilot Qualifies for All Guard Marathon Team

CW2 Amanda Nesbitt and her son Dathan

Photo by Beth Cardwell Photography

CW2 Amanda Nesbitt

The Chinook is the fastest helicopter in service in the United States Army. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Amanda Nesbitt, a Chinook pilot with Bravo Company, 2-104th General Support Aviation Battalion, recently showed she is among the fastest soldiers on the ground also.

Nesbitt qualified for the All Guard Marathon Team at the Lincoln Nebraska Marathon held May 5, 2013.

“The top 15 women and the top 40 men qualified for the team,” said Nesbitt. “There was no qualifying time. The fastest runners made the team.”

Nesbitt ran the marathon in three hours and 43 minutes. She was 14th among the 15 women who qualified for the team.

“I just made it,” she said.

A feat she accomplished in with just six months of training that began less than a year after the birth of her son, Dathan.

Nesbitt is 29 years old and has been in the Army for 12 years. She enlisted in high school, first serving in a communications unit in Allentown. She earned a bachelor's degree from East Stroudsburg University in 2008. Nesbitt ran in college but did not run marathons.

After college came a succession of big events. She went to flight school in 2009 and became a Chinook pilot in November 2010. Just over a year later in February of 2012, her son was born.

“I had a baby last year so I knew it was not going to be easy to make the team,” Nesbitt said. “Sometimes I ran alone at night with my pepper spray, 18 miles around and around our neighborhood, but I was determined to make it. And the team was rooting for me.”

Her husband, Drew, also an avid runner, supported Amanda’s marathon ambition.

“Drew made it possible for me to put in the time to train,” Nesbitt said. “He supported me the whole way.”

“I tried to make the (marathon) team five years ago, but Pennsylvania did not have the running base it does now,” Nesbitt said.

Her first marathon humbled her.

“At mile 18 I was hurting,” she said.

She finished with a 4-hour, 17-minute time and put away her marathon goals until late 2012.

She signed up for the event even before she knew if Pennsylvania could take her.

“I figured I would go by myself if I had to,” Nesbitt said.

The All Guard Team includes the Army and Air Guard and represents all 50 states plus Guam, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

Nesbitt said the top overall female qualifier was Senior Airman Emily Shertzer of Pennsylvania who ran the 26.2-mile distance in three hours and one minute.

“Emily has been to the Olympic Trials,” Nesbitt said.

Three of the 15 women and four of the 40 men who qualified for the All Guard Marathon Team are from Pennsylvania. With seven of the 55 runners from the Keystone State, Pennsylvania has the largest team of all the states.

“Pennsylvania was also the first place team at the qualifying race,” she said.

“I went into the race wanting a 3:40 (time),” she said. “I knew it would not be easy 'post baby.' I ran a 3:43 this time. I'm OK with that. Next year I want to run in the 3:20s.”

Now that she is on the team, Nesbitt will be able to choose races she will compete in during the coming year.

“The Army Ten-Miler and Boston are on the list,” she said.

Nesbitt last competed in the Army Ten-Miler in 2011 when she was six-months pregnant.

“I was not that fast, but my time was good enough to help the Pennsylvania team win the National Guard category,” she said. “It was cool to get the trophy from a general.”

The All Guard Marathon Team goes to marathons and half-marathons around the country and represents the National Guard Recruiting Command.

“I have heard we also march in parades and run relays,” she said. “And we go to the Expos before events.”

“We have red and white running uniforms and bright yellow warm-up outfits. No one is going to miss us,” Nesbitt said.

Bravo Company, 2-104th GSAB, is currently deployed to Afghanistan. Nesbitt is a reserve pilot serving on rear detachment. She could be activated and join her unit at any time, and she is ready for that marathon, if she is called.

Read more: http://www.dvidshub.net/news/108339/chinook-pilot-makes-all-guard-marathon-team#.UbUZh_aUu3A#ixzz2VqMDCqCl