Marine Cobra pilot X-Man joins RePete and Fig to share what it was like to fly attack helicopters in two of the most consequential — and compressed — events of the early 1980s: the invasion of Grenada and the Beirut peacekeeping mission, both in October 1983.
X-Man traces his path from building RC model airplanes in Northern Virginia, to a neighbor test pilot who handed him his first ride in a Cessna 172, through Villanova University, OCS, TBS, and a six-month stash at Headquarters Marine Corps counting ASVAB dots during a recruiting scandal. Flight school, a T-34 Charlie by lottery, and an unwanted set of orders to Cobras in North Carolina put him exactly where history needed him.
From the Grand Anse campus rescue — Rangers, 46s, 53s, and one very unlucky palm tree — to a Zuni rocket in Beirut and a pilot in command who flat-out refused to apologize for returning fire, X-Man delivers the kind of firsthand account that no history book captures. And at 69, he’s still logging AH-1 time!
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