So There I Was . . .

If You’re Gonna Blow Up, move away from me is what an F-100 flight lead told a wingman whose oil pressure kept dropping. Our guest, Ike, followed his dad into the F-100. Dad flew the Hun out of Okinawa in the 1950s. Ike got the same jet in 1969, after the Air Force Academy and pilot training. Then he watched a Thunderbirds solo lose its wings at an air show. […]

Guns Are Where It’s At, says retired Marine Lt. Col. Tim “Monk” Miller, and he would know. He’s a TOPGUN graduate, a former Hornet squadron CO, and a 23-year Marine. However, his So There I Was moment has nothing to do with guns. It’s 2006, at night, six hours into an F/A-18D sortie over Ramadi. Monk admits he’s a jerky sleeper. He dozed off with his hand near the ejection […]

Rope Trick is the phrase Huey pilot RoadRunner (returning from episode 227) drops almost an hour into Episode 230. It’s worth the wait. He joins hosts RePete and Kemo (guest-co-hosting for Fig this week) for a sprawling story. It runs from flight school cliffs in Texas to a Bangkok hotel room. Along the way there’s a cigar-chomping instructor and a Fort Rucker ejection seat. That seat compressed two of his […]

A Thousandth of an Inch of Trouble is all that stood between one airline crew and an on-time departure. Actually, it was a worn brake wear pin, measured down to the thousandth, that a mechanic waved off as “technically good to go.” This week’s episode is a lighter one. It’s just Fig and RePete, no guest, trading stories while juggling schedules and a certain eye surgery on the calendar. Before […]

Semper Gumby wasn’t just a joke. It was John “Sticks” Hall’s real motto. This episode is 88% dedicated to the man who lived it. Pete and Fig open with a hard truth. This summer dealt the “So There I Was” crew three losses in a row. Sticks always said it comes in threes. He wasn’t wrong. Semper Gumby: The Man Behind the Callsign Jeff Manternak, Sticks’ brother-in-law, delivered the eulogy […]

5 Feet — that’s the altitude Roadrunner held on a self-appointed decoy mission in Vietnam, and it’s the heart of Episode 227. It’s also the reason he walked away with a Bronze Star. This week, RePete and Fig welcome Chuck Howard, callsign Roadrunner. He flew with the 175th Assault Helicopter Company, earning two Bronze Stars and 25 Air Medals for valor. Roadrunner’s path started on a Jersey City hammock, watching […]

Farewell Sticks is the hardest episode we’ve ever had to record. On August 20th, we lost our friend, producer, and co-host John “Sticks” Hall in a small plane crash near Bristol, Maine. His son Tyler was flying with him and survived with minor injuries. We’re not speculating on cause. Actually, we’re not speculating on anything about that day. What we can tell you: it was a Diamond DA20, Sticks bought […]

He Who Dies with the Most Laugh Wrinkles Wins isn’t just a punchline. It’s the actual motto behind this episode. Chill-Rob McD grew up on Staten Island. Officer training, he jokes, was spent “validating the left side of the bell curve.” Now he joins the show to talk C-141s, close calls, and the book he wrote about surviving both. Chill-Rob almost washed out of OTS at Lackland. Marching did him […]

Race to the Shear Switch is exactly what it sounds like. You either cut the cable, or the cable decides your night for you. On Episode 224, retired Coast Guard helicopter pilot Larry Hall makes that call for real. Actually, this episode opens rough. Co-host Fig joins fresh off a highway wreck, rear-ended by a Peterbilt into another rig. However, he’s already cracking jokes about mistaking himself for Captain Kirk […]

This week’s Coast Guard aviation stories come courtesy of a special guest co-host: Deuce, a newly retired Coast Guard aviator (and, briefly, the service’s senior space attorney). Sticks and Bago hold down the fort while Deuce walks through the Coast Guard’s oddball, everything-service mission set — including how commercial space launches are about to become a Coast Guard headache. From there it’s classic So There I Was territory: sleeping inside […]