VonoTemp

A Minuteman III Launches out of Vandenberg AFB at night, photo USAF Most of my posts to date have been “War Stories” from my days as a USAF pilot. There are reasons for this. Airplane stories are inherently interesting, easy to follow, and therefore seem to be what my readers like the most. However, I have expended many more years as a Cold Warrior in the role of “Rocket Scientist”. My expertise has been Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) -- mainly in propulsion and guidance. So why not a few rocket stories? Well, really, ICBM stories can be hard to follow, complicated, and complex. Bernard Quatermass aside, they are not nearly as adventurous as jet airplane stories. (Thank goodness!) As you get ready to tell the story, the first thing you have to explain is that the ICBM mission is to make sure it is never used. (Er, what?) The ICBM mission cannot be fully understood without talking about Sea Launched Ballistic Missiles and nuclear bombers. So that gets complicated.  The ...

Photo of the Aurora courtesy of my great friends at http://www.desertskiesphotography.com   They did it the hard way, from the ground in northern Iceland. I was an Air Force Pilot from 1977 to 1982. In that time, I got to see a lot of very strange things in the sky. But perhaps the most dramatic were the 3 electromagnetic phenomena I will tell you about now: The Northern Lights 1 , St. Elmo’s Fire, and, oh yeah, that time I was struck by lightning. The Aurora or Northern Lights Sometimes we would fly from Northern California to the East Coast in order to pick up some fighters and escort them across the Atlantic. Being KC-135’s, we were their flying gas station. ( See my last post. ) But if there were no fighters to escort, we would take the Great Circle Route 2 and fly very close to the North Pole to get to our European base, RAF Mildenhall. Often, in that northern arc, we would not only see the Northern Lights from afar as someone in the Northern United States might, but actuall...

If you have not done so already, read my previous post, “ Professional Pilots Believe Their Instruments ” before you read this blog. In the late 1970’s, I was a rookie co-pilot on a crew that was flying over to RAF Mildenhall in East Anglia, England to support the European Tanker Task Force. We stopped at Pease AFB, New Hampshire, to join up with a four-ship of F-4s who were also deploying to Europe. We were to be their flying gas station for the journey over the frigid North Atlantic. When I say that we flew over there together. We were very, very close together.  Just consider this. If you are an F-4, the North Atlantic is no place to be all by yourself. You will run out of gas, then you will be forced to eject, then you will land in the cold cold water. And then you will die. So after take off we joined up and were very close. And we got closer as we headed north and east and the haze turned to dense clouds and visibility declined to almost zero. Think of a duck with her ducklin...

Image of T-38 cockpit from a very interesting article about the T-38 that you should read: http://www.warbirdalley.com/articles/t38pr.htm A military pilot quickly develops a faith in their aeronautical instruments akin to a religious fervor. To the military pilot, the mission comes first. Their role is weapon system operator: Drop bombs on time, on target. Deliver goods on time, to the right location. Deliver fuel in flight on time, at a precise location. Obtain recon on time, on target. Piloting the aircraft must be almost second nature since it is merely the means to a successful mission. And being an excellent weapon system operator means you trust the weapon system instruments more that you trust your own senses. Sure, we pilots know that the airspeed provided by the cockpit “speedometer” is merely an “indicated” airspeed based on the difference in pitot tube pressures near the nose of the aircraft. It is neither true speed in the air nor our speed relative to the ground. Our altit...

The Plasticity of Body Schema in Response to Tool Use You can purchase at http://s844.photobucket.com/user/Ruhsky/media/Vietnam%20War%20Collection/KC-135A_refueling_Wild_Weasel_team_Oct_1972.jpg.html When I flew a KC-135 StratoTanker, I was the aircraft.  I had a feeling of being that large. It wasn’t just me flying the machine. I was the machine. You may get this feeling when you drive a car. As you get very good at driving, it is no effort at all to stay in your lane and keep yourself away from other cars. But when you first started, just making sure you kept the car centered in your lane took a lot of brainpower. The words in the previous 2 sentences gives it away. An experienced driver stays in his lane . A new driver is focused on keeping the car centered in the lane. The first is the person/car. The second is all about the car. Do you feel like the car sometimes? If it gets a bump, do you say ouch? Think of a sport you are very, very good at. After hundreds of hours of prac...