So There I Was . . .

Why Smart Pilots Do Dumb Things is the title of Heater’s paper. It helped save the Red Eagles. However, this episode opens with a different lesson: never look at your ten o’clock at Groom Lake. CJ “Heater” Heatley is back! We promoted him to four-star admiral on the spot. The check is in the mail. So there he was, in a MiG-21 at the end of the runway at Groom […]

“Clara Ship” is what A-6 Intruder pilot Duker radioed when he couldn’t even see the carrier. Forget the ball. He couldn’t find the boat. Duker went from zero stick time to Navy jets through ROTC at USC. In flight school, food poisoning hit so hard his instructors debated flying him home in a baggage pod. Actually, he survived, then tail-slid an A-4 he was never supposed to tail-slide. In the […]

Unbreakable Wings is the story Navy Captain Derek “DA” Adametz lived long before he wrote it down. Most So There I Was stories start in a cockpit. This one starts on an emergency room table, with a scalpel headed for his ribs. In November 1995, DA was a University of Wisconsin ROTC senior already selected for Naval Aviation. Then a routine run ended in a tension pneumothorax. His trachea looked […]

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 […]