THREE CAPES: The STEP

The Step.

The one thing all aviators share, regardless of which airplane they fly, is the Step. The Step is anticipates. The Step transforms. The Step is confident. And the Step can sometimes be a fearful, courageous move. The Step is one of those few things that only aviators do. The Step is the glorious space of time between which an aviator makes the decision to go out and fly - that point when he or she commits to leave the ground in the machine - and the moment the engine begins turning. This short period is known as the Step, and every Aviator knows just what it means.

Anyone who loves to fly loves the Step. Fighter Pilots and WSOs/RIOs Step from the duty desk or ready room, fully kitted out in G-suits and harnesses, books and secrets, maybe with poopy suits if the water is cold - to walk out as a group to launch together as a combat formation.

Heavy drivers Step as a group to fly long missions together as a team.

Airline and corporate pilots Step from the terminal or the FBO to fly precious passengers or freight to distant destinations.

Instructor Pilots Step from a briefing room with brand new aviators to show them and teach them the goodness of the air.

And general aviation pilots usually begin the Step from their homes after checking the weather and eyeing the skies to go fly airplanes just for the joy and the freedom of being an aviator.

The Step separates pedestrians from pilots.

Back in the day, SAC alert bomber and tanker crews did the Step faster than anyone, running from their alert buildings out to their aircraft in a full-up sprint! A few fighter units and Command/Control crews still do this kind of Step today, but thankfully, that Step era is behind us.

SAC Alert Scramble

Regardless of aircraft, every aviator Steps in a different way. Some are chatty. Some are cool. Some are serious. Some are focused. Some are quiet. When I Stepped out to the Strike Eagle as a new fighter pilot with Salvo or Miner or JD or D-Day, each one became increasingly quiet and focused as they walked, a few typically timing a last cigarette for the flight line towards the Mighty F-15E. I learned a lot by watching their intensity. There was no talking; and just a few I knew smoked, but I think they smoked to avoid the chat. Most fighter pilots begin the Step as a group in lively conversation leaving the squadron, and then they gradually transition into quiet contemplation as they move towards the salute by the jet with their Crew Chiefs. As we walk closer to the aircraft, our minds get closer to the gravity of what we're about to do with it. In fighters, the ritual of the step sets the tone for the mission because the hard maneuvering and the flying with live bombs & missiles & bullets commands that kind of focus. The Step is the first phase of the mission.

Strike Eagle Crew Chief and B-Man

When a fighter pilot Steps to the jet, he's looking at the sky, he's thinking about where he'll be in 20-30 minutes after the taxi and the afterburners and the climb and the ops checks. He's thinking about 'Fights On', he's thinking about the tanker, he's thinking about his laser code, he's thinking about his bomb wires and fuses, he's looking to see whether his crew chief and B-man have the jet all buttoned-up, poised and ready for the salute - or whether maintenance trucks and equipment are clustered around the jet with maintenance troopers still working it hard. He's thinking about his flight lead or his wingman. He's looking at the windsock. He's thinking about gas. He's hoping his radar works cause that's all he really needs. He's cussing the 50% switch in the back left corner of the F-15E which might keep him on the ground if it's corroded again. He's remembering the ocean winds & waves brief he just heard at the duty desk in case his wingman has to eject out there, and he's thinking about being on time for the Push. He's thinking about Thunderstorms, or the Ice in the clouds. He's looking at streamers and chocks. He's thinking about the air-to-air game plan and he's thinking about the Grinder and he's hoping for the Bonsai. He's thinking about the ranger and his bomb bet and he's thinking about shacking the target, every time. And if he's new, he's also thinking the Wingman's Prayer: "Please God Don't Let Me Screw This Up." And he's thrilled. Because he's Stepping to fly the greatest jet that ever was.

Every airplane has a Step. When I leave my house to Step to my own plane (which is a 1963 vintage tube & fabric-covered Champion taildragger) - my wife has usually known the Step was going down long before I did. She's seen me looking at the sky, observed me checking the NOTAMs; she's noted the green flying shirt I usually wear - and she's known this deal for years...Meredith can predict the Step before I can. Many friends have asked me over the 16 years I've owned my taildragger: "How can flying that little plane be anywhere as cool as flying the F-15E?!" The answer is easy for those who love to fly. Flying is Flying. The freedom, the unrestricted joy of being off the ground - is simply everything to those who love to fly. The friends you make. The places you go. The sunsets you see. The anticipation of opening my hangar door and pushing that stick & rudder taildragger out into the sun is just as invigorating to me as pulling the JFS handle to crank up a Strike Eagle, or signaling the crew chief to fire up the pallouste air to crank up a T-38. The ritual of leaving my house and making that Step to my own taildragger, or to the Bonanza I get to fly is just as perfect as any Step I've ever made to any jet. And it's that way because aviators love to fly, whatever it is they get to fly.

Champion N7158P at RDU

At Bagram, Afghanistan when we'd Step to the jets all loaded up with JDAMs and laser guided bombs and missiles and 20mm rounds and 9mm rounds - the sign we'd read on the door as we exited the chute shop said this: "DANGER CLOSE. DON'T…MISS!” That sign always had a way of focusing the mind as we walked out into the cold dark air of the Afghan mountains, headed out to crank our jets for close air support missions where we'd often have to target our weapons on Taliban forces shooting at Americans in very close proximity. The sign meant even more to us during an alert launch. The act of Stepping for a Close Air Support mission in combat over Iraq or Afghanistan (or now, Syria) has a way of sharpening the mind like nothing else because every bomb on every target we hit is delivered in close distance to American or NATO troopers or civilian non-combatants. I'm certain the intensity of feeling during the Step was much stronger for large air campaigns like Desert Storm.

Bagram, Afghanistan

Second only to Stepping to the jet for a combat mission is a Red Flag Step. A Red Flag Step, on the first day, is like nothing else in the world for a new fighter pilot. Unlike Close Air Support combat missions, or various training sorties at home, where we normally operate in smaller formations, Red Flag missions are absolutely massive: 60+ jets in the air at the same time, flying out of Las Vegas to hit practice targets in northern Nevada against realistically-simulated air and ground threats. There is really no way to describe the intensity of the planning, the prep, the giant briefing room crowd, the communication, the details, the discipline, the smells and the anticipation associated with a first Red Flag Step. It's like nothing else for a new fighter pilot because it's all new - it's exciting, it's Vegas, it's cool. It's everything you've ever wanted to do.

And - it's risky, and it's dangerous, but even worse - there's a real threat of you screwing something up in a very public way. There are no secrets at Red Flag - you either do it right or you do not, you either kill the enemy fighters enroute to your target and shack the target with your teammates, or you do not. You either make it home safely or you do not. And none of that can be taken for granted. My first Red Flag Step was for a night low-level ground attack mission with Stimpy and I will never forget it. Terrain-following radar navigation down low through the mountains in the dark with night vision goggles adds an entirely different level of stress, as does the first time you get to deliver live bombs. There is no way to adequately describe the feeling of Stepping out of that Red Flag building to walk out on the Nellis ramp at night with all those jet engines spooling up around you at the same time, for the first time. A Red Flag Step at Nellis is like no other Step there is.

Red Flag Flightline at Nellis AFB NV

In the same way, a Step for a "Dollar Ride" in pilot training, has a bit of that same intensity - for the student. As a T-38 instructor, I taught 100 or more new pilots how to fly that jet. And some of them were international students. One of our best students, Lieutenant N, had the most difficult Steps I ever saw. Having come from his primary training in Japan direct to T-38s in Mississippi, Lieutenant N flew his very first mission in the United States, his "Dollar Ride" with me in April 1995. Because it was quite hot for a Mississippi April that day, I let him go ahead and get in the jet to strap in as I completed the walkaround myself to expedite cranking engines. I wanted to let him focus on his crank checklists items rather than the walkaround on this sortie. As I finished checking over the jet, I looked up in the front seat and saw him there, head down, desperately struggling with his harness, sweating, grunting, squinting, and with a look of complete terror on his face. He couldn't figure out how to strap in, and he was clearly afraid he would fail the mission, because in Japan, his instructors had been very tough. So I climbed up the ladder to see the situation, and found him there in the front seat pulling as hard as he could on his G-suit hose from his right hip - across his lap to connect it to the jet's G-suit hose by his left hip. Which looked very odd... because his G-suit hose should have been on his left side....I smiled, told him to unstrap, he climbed down the ladder, and then showing him mine, I pointed to his G-suit, which he had put on for the first time...backwards. After a quick adjustment, deeply embarrassed and completely drenched in fear and sweat, Lieutenant N shimmied back up the ladder, and then he did a fantastic job on his Dollar Ride. He turned out to be one of the most talented aviators I ever flew with, and that Dollar Ride Step story always makes me smile. Coulda been any one of us...

Much earlier in 1991, when I myself was a student in T-38s at Columbus Mississippi, the night before my Instrument checkride I sprained my ankle severely while trying to keep Rob Carpentier from spiking the volleyball on us at intramurals. Enormous, swollen, purple, painful ankle. I knew, however, that if I missed my checkride the next day, I'd likely wash back into the next class and lose my class standing and likely lose any shot I had at getting a fighter or a T-38 on assignment night. So, the next morning, I gritted my teeth, I muscled my black flying boot on over the baseball-sized lump on my ankle, I cinched my boot down as tight as I could stand it, and I went to Step and fly that day. I'll never forget gimping along, just a step or two behind my check pilot (so he wouldn't see my limp), and the exquisite pain I felt in my ankle as I climbed up the ladder into the back seat of that T-38. I passed my checkride.

Years later, in the F-15E, I made that same kind of gimpy Step to the jet in 1999, but this time with my squadron commander, Budman, on a 2v1 air-to-air training mission. The weekend prior, I had exceeded my narrow limits on my friend Rob's Yamaha 125 dirtbike, inadvertently propelling myself as fast as my right hand would make it go over a giant dirt berm, Dukes of Hazzard style. Flying through the air as I released the handle bars, I ended up planted firmly on the ground, dirt in my teeth, my eyes looking directly at my left heel, surprisingly located up by my face, next to my left cheek. Astonishingly, I hadn't broken any bones, but the knee, once my leg snapped back into its normal position, swol up, painfully, to the size of a grapefruit. The following Tuesday, cinched down with one of those velcro kneebraces you buy at the drugstore, I again gimped along two steps behind my instructor squadron commander, this time getting to fly with Budman, who had flown F-4 Wild Weasels and always just operated on a higher plane than the rest of us. During the fights, Budman spent the entire sortie talking about career guidance for me and not so much about all the 2v1 air combat maneuvering engagements we were doing out there over the ocean near Cape Lookout. I think he was giving me a lot more credit than I deserved at the time. Budman was completely at ease with all of it as we were ripping around in circles over the Atlantic, me out of breath with all the Gs trying to select the right missile and shoot down the bandit while missing my flight lead, (my knee seized up in pain from all the swelling going on inside my brace under my constantly inflating G-suit.). Unaware of any of that, Budman remained cool as a cuke back there in the rear cockpit as he dispensed great mentoring ideas about how to grow up to be a leader in fighters. A sortie like no other; it was just surreal...and if you know Budman, you know. Making a mental note never to do THAT again, I eased myself gingerly down the ladder and after that debrief, I went immediately to see the flight doc, Coupon Egerstrom, who was flying with us that day. Coupon checked me out right there in the squadron and told me to just go get some Motrin from the M&M dispenser he always kept filled in the Rocket Chute Shop. I was cleared to Step again without any fuss whenever the swelling went down and I felt better. Love that guy. These missions were two of the most memorable and painful Steps of my life.

C-17

During several deployments, I have also Stepped to fly with mobility aircrew in the jump seats of C-17s and C-130s on a great many missions, and I'd say their Steps to the aircraft can be equally intense as any other. Their missions are very different than the ones I know, but so is their state of vulnerability. In particular, I've always appreciated the respect they give to ground-to-air threats as they put on their Kevlar vests for departures or arrivals at Baghdad, Bagram, Kandahar, and Kabul. The gravity of flying a giant, wide-body full of soldiers in or out of a hot landing zone, exposed and slow, is truly daunting. I particularly enjoyed the incredibly steep C-17 thrust-reverser descents from 20,000 feet into Baghdad and the low & fast Canadian C-130 zoom departures out and up from Kandahar to give their enormous fuselage a rapid line-of sight for anyone hoping to hit them with an AK-47. A Step to any aircraft, regardless of type, requires focus and careful concentration because the business of flying, especially under enemy threat, is unforgiving to careless aviators.

For me, the best part of any step is the chance to talk with our Maintainers. The Crew Chiefs. The B-men, the Maintenance Supers, the Fuelers, the Avionics Specialists, the Engine Team. AMMO. Every aviator knows he owes every minute in the air to these amazing teammates, and he knows when he brings a jet back broken or with a boom strike - he'll have to hand it to them to make it ready for the next mission. One of the best we ever had was Tech Sergeant Holuban, a 6'4" tall Hungarian gentle giant, easily 250 pounds and all muscle. In the 120 degree heat of the middle east flightline in a small Arabian country, four of us piled out of the van at the far end of the parking ramp to begin our walkarounds on two jets there, ready for the launch. We had a tanker time to meet one hour up the Persian Gulf, just feet dry in the Sara track near Basra, Iraq, and we were crunched for time. TSgt Holuban took all our heavy bags (full of helmets, night vision goggles, screen filters, target books, water, piddle packs and food & cokes for the 7 hour sortie), and he began hauling them up the ladder for us as we looked over the maintenance forms and preflighted the bombs. Just then, an avionics specialist ran up to me from the other side of the jet and told us he had a glitch in one of the systems and we needed to step to the spare. I yelled over to the Super in the van by the nose of the jet "What's the Spare?!!" - answer - "Tail 181, spot #1!" ....Spot number one. ... That spot was alll the way down at the other end of the ramp. And so we quickly began the process of shifting to the new aircraft. But before I could move to climb the ladder, TSgt Holuban had already scurried up to the cockpits, repacked our helmet bags, and stepped carefully down, holding all 4 of them in his giant hands. Without stopping he then began a full-up sprint all the way to the far end of the sunshades - moving like a blur with our heavy bags all flying around in in the air like pom-poms to our new jet, wayy down there, to get us set up for the launch for which we were now going to be slightly late. 120 degrees on that flight line. "Gotta get you to your Vul time sir!! he smiled, sweat pouring off him as he rushed to help me get strapped in for the crank at Spot 1. Our wingman had already pulled the JFS handle at Spot 12 to begin their crank and they were starting their second engine. TSgt Holuban was a hero for us that day, and although he wasn't really our crew chief (he was a supervisor) he's the crew chief I always remember when I think of the amazing feats our Maintainers do every day to make the Step work for us. Nobody sets the standard for Maintainers better than the way he did on that day. We made the vul time, we hit our tanker at Sara (tanker tracks were named for female country music singers), and we spent 5+ hours over Iraq that day looking after Americans on the ground in rough places. Thank you TSgt Holuban.

A maintenance sprint from here - all the way down there. 120 degree heat.

There was a time when I couldn't Step. At Bagram in 2008, I woke up to fly a late January Dawn Patrol CAS mission in the dead of winter, and I quickly figured out I was deaf in my left ear. Flight Doc Flower watched me down a big handful of Prednisone that morning and put me on the first Medevac to Germany, and after, unhappily, handing my squadron over to our Ops Officer Saint Bernard that morning, I spent several days getting checked out at the Landstuhl hospital. MRIs and dizzy tests. An ear infection had attacked my inner ear, and it was gonna take at least three or four weeks for my hearing nerves in there to grow back. So under meds, I returned to Bagram - taking high-dose steroids daily -and waited for the longest period of my life to tick slowly by, my left ear perpetually roaring with tinnitus as loud as a jet engine. I took a hearing test every single day to memorize the beep-beep-beeping in that wretched hearing booth at the Bagram hospital so I could get my score good enough to fly the jet again. (I learned over time that if I laid on the floor of that tiny booth with my feet up the wall, holding my breath, with my mouth open and eyes schrunched shut, I could just begin to hear the peeps).

Stepping from the Bagram Duty Desk

It was during that time that our squadron launched our alert two-ship, stepping in a hurry to give top cover for Senators Hegel, Kerry, and Biden after their Blackhawk helicopters were forced to land on a hill in eastern Afghanistan by a sudden, heavy snowstorm. Those alert aviators probably had the most interesting Step of our entire deployment. In all, we had 6 Strike Eagles overhead that cloudy scene at various times that night, mapping their radars through the weather on the hills around the Blackhawks and the Senators, keeping watch until the Humvees could make it up the mountain to get them down.

Alert 2-ship Step at Bagram

Bagram. 335FS Flagship 2008

That same week, Flight Doc Flower, Crawfs Crawford and I Stepped to the Strike Eagle, finally, where a group of faraway USAF flight docs had ordered that I pass a real-world aural test in the cockpit. So on 21 Feb 2008 with my English-Exchange Officer WSO, Crawfs, waiting by the left wing and a backup pilot waiting in the squadron, Doc Flower climbed in, I cranked the right engine, and he proceeded to read 100 ridiculous phrases to me over the intercom, which I had to repeat back word for word. Of course, I heard them all perfectly in my helmet (thanks Doc!), Doc Flower jumped out, Crawfs hopped in, I spooled up the left engine and we flew an uneventful mission over northeast Afghanistan with Stryker and Yoegi on the wing. It was up to then the most joyful and fantastic mission over the high snowy peaks of northeast Afghanistan I had ever flown. Weeks earlier, on the C-17 to Landstuhl Germany, I had sincerely worried I'd never fly any airplane ever again. Doc Flower saved my hearing with his first fistful of steroids, and this Step was a sweetest one of my life.

With Crawfs, 4 weeks after losing my hearing

My last Step to the Strike Eagle was in Spain. Leading a 14-ship of 'Chiefs' home from our deployment to Afghanistan, I Stepped with Flak Willis from Moron Air Base Near Seville on what was to be my last flight in the F-15E. It was just unforgettable. Although we’d all made it there from Afghanistan and across the Med over two hops thus far, I knew the odds were high that we'd lose someone along the way across the pond because it's almost an impossible thing to have that many moving parts - 14 fighters in three groups, supported by 9 tankers coming to join up us at various spots over the Atlantic from multiple locations - without something going wrong. As Flak and I briefed up that final mission and we Stepped out to lead the Chiefs home to our families waiting 9 hours away on the Tarmac at Seymour Johnson, I watched all 28 aviators gather and suit up together and Step out to our 14 Strike Eagles. I remembered with great respect all the stories of jets diverting into the Azores, or into Gander Newfoundland or to Bangor Maine - low on gas or with severe systems malfunctions. When we Stepped to the jet on that day, I paused, just as I had done on every single mission I've ever flown, with my hand on the ladder, head bowed for 5 seconds, praying my standard prayer I always did before climbing up into every jet: "Lord make me a better Person, Christian, Husband, Father, Officer, Pilot, Instructor, Commander - And give us All a safe mission, Amen." We then launched all 14 Strike Eagles in three cells, and well underway over the ocean, just as expected, Dozer, my #5 wingman in our first cell had a refueling port malfunction over the middle of the Atlantic just west of the Azores. The tanker wouldn't let him back on the boom to receive any more gas because to do so might have damaged that refueling boom for everyone else.

Coming Home

Nothing sparks creativity like thinking you might have to divert over the Atlantic, and thanks to lots of enthusiastic wingmen doing fuel calculations and clever teamwork & coordination, we were able to rework the fuel plan, get Dozer onto the boom of a different, helpful KC-10 tanker crew as a last receiver and keep him there to get them enough JP-8 to make it all the way to the next tanker on the other side of the pond - a feat I still consider a minor miracle. We landed 14 jets and taxied everyone into the chocks together in a giant Elephant Walk at Seymour Johnson. It was by far the best Step to any jet and the best mission among many good ones of my entire career. Thankfully, we managed to bring all 14 home together.

14-ship Elephant Walk into the chocks at SJ

You can always tell an airline captain who still loves the Step - the one who still has that spark. The way he engages a passenger, or talks to the gate attendant. Or says goodbye to the customers as they disembark. Years of bag-dragging can surely make that job monotonous, I suppose, so it's a great thing to see when you do see it. But there are some aviators who have lost the joy of the Step somewhere along the way. I've been told some flying gigs can be quite boring, and I'm sure they can be - but I'm inclined to think it's more about circumstances than the mission. And I've known Air Force and Navy pilots who had tremendous flying careers - and then just chose never to fly again after leaving the service. Why did they stop?

To all those who have forgotten how it feels to make the Step, or haven't been airborne in a while, or perhaps have just lost the spark, I'd say this: Find whatever it is that gives you that energy. If it's not flying, then figure out what it is - maybe it's a sailboat, maybe it's a motorcycle...or three... Maybe it's service work, maybe it's a new business, maybe it's fitness, or maybe it's a family RV. Whatever it is, find it. Go find it, and find your spark.

If, however, what you're really missing is indeed that splendid feeling of Stepping to launch yourself into a glorious sky - then go and find a great airplane - and get yourself back in the air.

And if you're someone who has always wanted to fly, but have found that other things continue to get in the way - Do It.

Go Fly.

Step.