THREE CAPES: Towering Cumulus! Columbus Mississippi: Flying the T-38 Talon

Reposted higher up

“OPEN JET. GOT AN OPEN JET FOR AN OPS CHECK COMING UP IN THE NEXT 30” Lt Col Kaiser announced on the PA across the squadron.

“Goon - Tell Ed Vaughan I have 5 more flags for him.”

“Vaughan! More flags in the Flight Commander's office!” Goon Gallagher yelled through the door to Captain Ed Vaughan, one of the class leaders in the adjoining flight room.

“Thanks sir! Will pass these along to the scouts.” Ed hustled in the door and through my office, scooping up the five faded, ragged American Flags on his way to late-afternoon Navigation class, those flags now on their way to the local Boy Scout troop who were collecting to burn them properly. Ed was a great officer and was always into something like that. An experienced National Guard C-130 navigator, he and our last four students zipped out of the room in a hurry, having just finished debriefing their second flights of the day.

I was at my desk writing a Gradesheet.

“Sniper!!” I could hear laughing. Rob Parks and Craig Luzier were playfully finishing the next day’s flying schedule, cokes in hand, having flown twice today, arranging magnetic pucks with the names of our Instructors and Students carefully on the big white board. Occasionally they got in each other’s way, and occasionally a magnet zinged the off the schedule onto the floor as they playfully annoyed each other’s work. The emptying Eagle flight room now contained only a couple instructors, behind their desks, finishing out gradebook write-ups and trickling out to hit the gym or head home. Only the smell of sweaty flight suits belied the massive crowd that had just been assembled for our end-of-day huddle. It was early June, and I was the T-38 Eagle Flight Commander at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi.

I’d been at Columbus a while, and as a First Assignment Instructor Pilot (FAIP) with a fair amount of T-38 experience, I had the pleasure of flying most often with some our students who were feeling challenged. We were in the Instrument and Formation phases, so the load was piling up and some of our students were feeling the crunch and the stress, which meant a whole lot more gradebook paperwork for all of us. It was going to be a long, late afternoon as I settled into my thick pile of gradebook work, which for me was like a time-machine. It always took too long

“OPEN JET. GOT AN OPEN JET, NEED ANY AVAILABLE INSTRUCTOR PILOT WITH CREW REST DOWN AT THE DUTY DESK.”

Lt Col Kaiser’s gruff order over the speaker in the ceiling came with the realization that my flight was the only group at this late hour who HAD crew rest. The whole squadron had all come in early this week, Eagle flight had the latest showtime, and I was nearly out of time to be able to take the jet myself before expiring my 12-hour duty clock. I was the only IP who hadn't flown twice.

“OPEN JET. NEED A SOLO IP DOWN HERE ASAP” Repeated Lt Col Kaiser. More intently this time…

“Hey guys, anyone up for taking that one?!” I yelled into the flight room. No answer…stood up from my desk to look in through the door… all IPs were gone for the day. Stunned, I thought, “It’s all mine!” The last flight of the day was gonna be Instructor solo, a very rare thing in a flying training squadron. I hustled down the long hallway to the desk to sign out the jet, passing Lt Col Jack King on his way out after a long day. “Have fun with that one, JJ!”

Lt Col Kaiser’s small Airedale Terrier looked up at me from down behind the duty desk counter with her big brown eyes, body wiggling.

“Aaannnht!” Kaiser ordered, standing behind the counter with a sharp look, and she disappeared quickly out of sight beneath to lay back down on her mat under the desk by his feet. Lt Col Kaiser loved that dog and she occasionally found her way into the squadron at the end of the day, usually out of sight. Nobody ever mentioned it.

“Tail number 339! Don’t break it. Need you to ops check the left engine nozzle, - maintenance just fixed an actuator and I need this jet on the schedule for tomorrow for a student sortie. There's lots of towering Cumulus out there - I HOPE you can find some useful airspace!” He laughed, issuing me my very own jet - the one with my own name painted on the canopy rail. Today, I had it all to myself, with absolutely nobody else to share it.

Pounding my left fist into my other palm over my helmet, I commanded Johnny to turn on the air. Turning his handle on top of a canister, the long palloust hose jumped and snaked alive on the concrete from its big yellow cylinder on the tarmac, twitching suddenly and violently to shoot a blast of compressed air up into my engine to start my turbine turning. I felt that familiar, rushing, high-pitched sound of air in the tail of the jet spinning the engine into life. I hit the start button to fire the ignitors and nudged the throttle of #2 right engine over the hump into idle to begin the sequence of all the checks that would get me closer and closer to the end of the runway. I didn’t need a checklist, I’d done this so many times it was like breathing. But I used the checklist anyway, and it felt odd to be alone in the jet.

I really hadn’t flown a T-38 solo in a long time, preferring to give that luxury to other IPs in my flight. It was such a rare thing to be alone in the jet, much less be alone in the sky, like I was about to be, at Columbus. Only the T-37s still had a couple of tails airborne besides me, and they were all way down south near Meridian MS. I was headed to the North Military Operating Area (MOA), and this was one of the last times I’d ever get to fly without being on an instructional mission. In a month’s time, I’d be off to a non-flying staff job and a Master’s degree in Washington DC.

“Better make the best of this one, Commander says I’ll never fly a Fighter, and what if he’s right…” I muttered to myself, looking up through the thick gray-brown haze at the towering white cumulus clouds north of the base. I had chosen to go to be an Air Force Intern in the Pentagon and earn a Master’s at George Washington, rather than take the typically sure-thing fighter assignment available to me as a flight commander, and many smart people were questioning my decision. I knew I’d have an uphill battle on the Pentagon staff to fight my way back into any jet that goes upside down.

A trickle of Mississippi sweat rolled slowly down from my helmet, over my left eyebrow and into my eye, stinging me as I squinted west at the sun now moving lower in the humid sky.

“Snake 51, ready for takeoff”…. I was the only show in town.

Tower shot back instantly: ”Snake 51, winds 260 at 10, cleared for takeoff runway 31 Center.

Brakes. Burners. Two Good Swings!

Gratefully, I watched my engine nozzle indicators move together, properly, as I felt the subtle kick of the J-85 afterburners push me northwest down the runway into the haze.

The jet felt light without another student voice in it, and I sucked the gear up low as I held it down over the runway much longer than usual to accelerate faster in the Mississippi heat. I zoomed my needle nose upwards at the end of the runway as I pulled back on the stick and channelized the departure frequency. By the time they answered, I was soaring nose-high in a right hand turn through 4000’, and the roar of my air conditioner vent blowing humid air and ice pellets into the back cockpit became quiet again as I adjusted the air conditioner back to full cold.

“Snake 51, cleared direct Area 4.” I answered the controller as I snapped out of my climbing right turn to zip vertically up into the three dimensional pie-shaped chunk of airspace just ahead of me. Without GPS or advanced navigational aids, Columbus’ airspace was formed into pie-slices of air from 8,000 up to 22,000 feet, oriented on compass radials just north of the base. I dialed the two radials for Area 4 into my instrument and eyed the fluffy white cumulus clouds whizzing past me in the haze, picking my way around a clear path and passing 8000’ as I hit the 12 mile inner limit. From as near as 12 miles to as far out as 35, this was the place where we taught students to maneuver the T-38s in northern Mississippi. We usually flew inside just one of these pie slices to teach– but we used two slices for formation training. Although they were large expanses of air, as fast as this sleek jet maneuvered, the airspace always felt extremely confining. We turned constantly to stay within the block.

Northern Mississippi, in June, has amazing flying weather. And by that, I don’t mean clear blue sky. There’s lots of weather, it’s hot (mid/upper 80s), it’s humid, it’s hazy, and it’s definitely clouded with giant puffies, but it’s not yet quite consistently hot enough every day to create those routine afternoon 40,000’-high-thunderstorms that typify summers at Columbus. Instead, the humidity and the growing heat gives you a short season of towering cumulus - those clouds the make you feel like Superman among skyscrapers when you fly around them. They top out at 18-20 thousand, they’ll occasionally create a shower. But they’re gorgeous, they’re usually not threatening, and on a good day, like this one, the training areas are chock-full of them. Today, the early morning fog and drizzle had evaporated, and now all that moisture was building, just for me, the kind of playground I have only ever seen there in northern Mississippi.

Weaving my way through these giant columns to keep myself legally sound in the maze of clear air near the border of Area 5, I zoomed up to 20k, and smiled as I turned back toward the front of the area to do my G-warm up turns. It was clear that every turn today was going to be a chance to carve around one of these giant white fluffy columns. They were now turning a slight shade of orange in the lowering sun.

Burners lit, with sweat from the hot tarmac 6 minutes earlier steaming down from my helmet across my face, I felt the G-suit inflating, and that familiar feeling of being pushed down into the ejection seat as hard as I wanted. While looking up at a massive white column I pivoted my maneuver around it in my 180-degree 5G bank. I rolled out with a smile, raised my visor and dropped my mask for a minute to angle the cool air from my vent by my right knee up at my face – the jet was finally cooling off at altitude. And here I was at 15 thousand, now in the dark shadows of the giant cumulus clouds, ripping around a slalom course inside area 4. I felt greedy, and I felt that kind of aggressive giddiness you can only know when flying alone in a G-suit and a pointy jet through this amazing, majestic hall of monumental clouds.

Pulling back upwards in a giant left-turning whifferdill, I topped over the column closest to me, on my back, and I looked east. As far as I could see, yellow-orange columns were all jammed together, slivers of shadowy but clear airspace in between, their mushroom tops reaching just to the top edge of the airspace showing me just a little room to maneuver.

It was the pilot jackpot, the endless towers of cumulus, begging me to experience every one of them, and I was the only person alive who could take all this in.

“Area Monitor, Snake 51, Request.”

“Go with request, Snake 51.”

“Snake 51, request the Entire. North. MOA.”
This was not a normal thing...

...a long pause, then:

“Shake 51, you are Cleared the Entire Columbus North MOA, 8000 to Flight Level 220.”

Fights ON.
I had the whole north side of the pie to play in.

There’s really no legitimate way to describe how incredible it feels to chase towering cumulus across the Columbus North MOA in a solo, white, pointy jet. The best words can do is remind you of the experience, if you've ever had it: The feel of the turbulent bumps you create when pulling Gs, like dirt roads of various roughness depending on your speed. The brilliant high-altitude light hitting your eyes as you shoot out from behind the shadow of a cloud. The way the G-suit nudges your right forearm under increasing G-loads when you pull back on the stick. The pinch of the parachute harness in your crotch. The Squeeze of the G-suit on your legs as you fight against it to keep your blood in your head. The feeling of the ribbed trim button under your gloved right thumb, as you perpetually click it forwards and back to neutralize stick pressure while you explore the whole envelope of glorious flight. The sweat in your eyes being cooled by the vent through a slightly open visor.

The way the end of your nose gets mushed down under the oxygen mask as you pull up hard; the way the wingtips flex up in your two canopy-bow side mirrors under G, leaving wispy white vapor lines and occasionally that brief flash of wingtip vapor you know you're making when pulling hard, down low in the moist air. All of it together creates a sensation of wonder and intensity as you balance the joy of it all with the strong gnawing desire do it all right, all the time: To not Over-G the jet, Over-G yourself, shoot out of the protected airspace into an airliner, hit something on the ground, or run your jet out of gas. Squeeze every ounce of goodness from each drop of jet fuel but still do it within all the flying rules, which were generous. Your pilot's prayer climbing up the ladder:

"Dear God - Don't Let Me Mess This Up."

My feet to the sky and my canopy bow full of upside-down cotton clouds, I pulled gently now, way back on the stick as I lit the burners again for 2 seconds and nudged the stick forward, just to feel the jet rocket straight down for a few seconds, light in the seat. I pointed my candy-striped pitot boom vertically down at a green field near the Tombigbee River. The sun disappearing, I strained to see an opening in the darkness underneath one of the columns that started above the 8000' floor. Snapping the throttles back to idle, rolling left and carving underneath at 5Gs, I leveled off at 8300’, 500+ knots, screaming along below, underneath in the shadows, now flying East.

As I looked left and right, I could see sharp lines of angular light, bright rays making it from the sun through gaps in the skyscraper-like clouds and slicing down to the green trees far below. The scene creating a feeling like the one you have when walking on a New York City sidewalk in the late afternoon. Ahead of me, a big one, an immense shadowy wall of moisture I was about to climb.

Slamming both throttles with my left hand into burner down in the low darkness, I pointed right at the base of this massive buildup, accelerating even more now, as I looked straight up and found a glimpse of brilliant dark blue sky directly overhead. I waited just as long as I could stand it, then held off just a second longer, and pulled right to 5 Gs, launching the needle nose in a curving arc upwards, the radius taking my feet just to the edge of this brilliant white wall. Straight up in full burner I felt my heart racing, watching the altimeter almost explode, winding up clockwise as fast as I’ve ever seen it spin, now worried about shooting straight out the top of the airspace towards where the airliners fly.

Rolling 180 degrees and tilting my head way back, I pulled again on the stick with my back to the cloud at 16,000, feeling that light tickle in the seat, holding the green circle on my angle of attack indicator, following the crown of the round top until I was inverted at 20,000’. Leaning my head way back against the ejection seat to look out the top of the jet straight down at the mushroom cap and the sheer face of the column going vertically to the bottom of the area,

I eased the jet out of afterburner. Then, rolling a quarter turn, I gleefully began a spiral left turn down, 20 degrees nose-low, pulling around and around and around this awesome, massive white cylinder till I was again at the bottom, breathing hard but breathing through a big smile under the mask as I contemplated just how many of these cloud formations I could attack like this before running myself out of gas. I eyed my fuel gauge, stood the throttles up vertically - pulling the power back to 90%. My ‘magic number’ kept me from getting too fast or too slow, while saving gas.

I quickly realized I needed to play for a while way up high with the power back, where the jet uses much less fuel, and pick my sky-scraper soaring for the perfect, special columns along the way. I eased her up high again to 20k in an energy-gaining climbing-turning whifferdill, and began dancing around the clouds way up there, treating the lofty cloud tops like a mountain range, spinning myself through aileron rolls across the wispys as I found ditches and notches in the clouds to aim at in the serene blue and white.

I could see the sun getting much lower, along with my fuel, and the haze down low was thickening as I neared the eastern edge of the airspace. And here, just over the Alabama border, sat the most gorgeous, fat, yellow-orange 20,000’ cloud column in the whole sky, and it was calling my name.

Again, I popped just over the cloud I was playing with, rolled inverted at 200 knots, and pulled straight down, finding a curving, weaving path in the clear air for my modified Split-S to position myself down low so I could aim directly at the orange wall in front of me. Full burners again and a breathtaking pull up with that beautiful vapor stringing off my wingtips in my mirrors. This time taking my jet vertical, I flew just up the face of the cloud, half-in and half-out, as my feet skated up the edge of the wall. With my pitot tube and burner cans just just barely out in the clear air, I consumed the full whiteness of the cloud face streaking past me on both sides, shooting myself surprisingly through a small fluffy cotton ball protruding out the side, glancing with wonder up at the other column directly above my head in the climb. A cloverleaf-ish rolling pull this time, to sky up in an inverted sort of arc, upside down again across the magnificent rounded orange top, across to the dark shadow behind, continuing down again in that glorious, higher-G, descending tight spiral around and around to the bottom. I reluctantly checked the weather and called approach to request clearance back home. I was just under an hour airborne, I was light on fuel at the front of the area at 8,000’, and covered in sweat. And I felt like Superman.

Approach control immediately cleared me home, and with my power way back, I eyed my fuel gauge, which was concerning me slightly. I might have used just a liittle too much afterburner on that last cloud. Thankfully, the jet used almost nothing at idle power, and I found my way down south then west, “VFR” through the thick Columbus haze using my ILS instrument needle to help guide me to the Center Runway. Feeling my way through the murky Columbus sky past the banana-shaped pond and Highway 45, the faint, hazy outline of Columbus Air Patch in the shadows finally appeared under my nose.

At 300 knots, I broke hard right over the numbers to slow down, lowered the gear and flaps rolling out below 45, entered my final 180 degree turn, descending gently down in a right bank turn, coming around smoothly for the last landing of the day and marveling at just how much you can see from the front seat of a T-38. I squeaked the tires when I touched down just a little short, maybe 600’ down, then took the next taxiway exit as I safed-up my ejection seat and popped the canopy open. Looking west at the orange glow with my mask hanging down, the humid air of the Mississippi heat thermaling in waves off the concrete assaulted me with a thick, syrupy ooze, shocking me back into the dim reality of being on the ground again. I decided to finish my gradebook checks - tomorrow.

Afterburner Nozzles - Worked fine!

Ops check complete.

This was the best flight of my life, up to that point, and is still in my top 10. I remember it every year in early June, and I re-fly this mission in my mind every single time I see that late-afternoon, yellow-orange, towering cumulus in the high distant summer sky.

June 11^th, 1996.

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