They Had One Chance To Become F-15 Fighter Pilots | AFP | Episode 1

Six or seven, it just seemed like that was the, that was the neatest thing, would be to go and fly those fast movers. You don't have to talk about it, you don't have to tell anybody about it, you just know everything there is to know about flying that fighter. That's my idealistic image of, of myself someday, hopefully. Someday. Health sickness. Rare sickness. I can't believe I'm doing this, I can't believe I'm here seeing this. For all the money in the world, I wouldn't do anything else, but I wouldn't do anything else. You know nothing today, but 110 training days from now, every single one of you guys is going to be able to take this jet and kick the living crap out of any MiG-29 on the planet. It's becoming more serious now. Huge eye-opening for each of us. Such rage, such anger. We are all extremely happy to be in a position to do something about it. Oh my God! It's just, this is what I'm here for. This is why I serve. I'm an American fighter pilot. We're not gonna let that happen again. We're not gonna let that happen again. The brightest beacon for freedom and no one, no one will keep that light from shining. We are strong. Big people have been moved. Kendall Air Force Base, Panama City, Florida, of the Air Force's most elite pilot training program. Number of applicants to Air Force pilot training per year, 15,000. Number of admissions, 2,000. Number of flight school graduates per year, 1,100. The number of flight school graduates accepted to Tyndall per year, 50. The number of graduates who qualify, 8. To train pilots in the Air Force's most powerful and deadly fighters. Each one of those days is going to feel like an eternity to each one of these students. They're going to go from being just a normal guy to America's F-15 fighter pilots. The story is just about our dreams, our hopes, our desires, a challenging time in our life, and our service to our country. Captain Todd Giggie, 24. Completely lucky to have the opportunity to fly the world's greatest high-performance aircraft. If you want to fly the hottest jets, you have to be in the Air Force. He showed up expecting this thing to be Todd Giggie's excellent adventure. He was in for a few surprises. We don't carry briefcases, we don't use umbrellas, and we damn sure don't color our hair. Captain Marcus Gregory, 25. Hometown, Columbia, South Carolina. I've got some underlying important loves of my life. My family, my faith, and the love of flying. I'm worried about being accepted. It says don't be anxious about tomorrow because God will take care of you. This is Mike Love, age 28, Grand Prairie, Texas. I'm just so excited about this training that I'm embarking on. I'm excited to come back home, and I've got two little boys. They watch TV and see jets flying, and they think it's cool. And I'm going to give them their first opportunity to go to school that day and say, you know, Daddy's a fighter pilot. Makes me proud. I'm not your average eagle driver in that I had flown other airplanes previously. I was a bomber pilot. Pulling up to the gates at Tyndall, beautiful place, right on the Gulf Coast in Florida. And then the most beautiful thing of all is the mighty eagle sitting on the ramp. As you're driving up, there's F-15s landing like right overhead. It's unbelievable, and I've never even seen an F-15 up close like that before. You know, and there's just so many eagles flying around. I can't believe I'm here doing this. all right let's go ahead and get this show on the road first of all welcome to the 95th fighter squadron i'm dave freeney i'm the operations officer here congratulations because uh training day one on the f-15 is is a big deal and you guys ought to be proud to be here colonel freeney larger than life kind of guy he's a graduate of the f-15 weapons instructor course which is the pinnacle of training in the eagle he's the man who owns the jets in the 95th you're going to solo the Eagle, that's a big deal. From then on you'll be welcome to the brotherhood. There's not too many people on this planet that get to solo the F-15 and you're going to be one of them. I'm watching these guys all the time and trying to gauge their initial reaction. I want to find the guys that have the hearts of a lion. Tyndall has a really rough reputation a lot of guys that I know have decided not to fly the F-15 just because of the reputation that Tyndall has. If you get washed out of this program you actually go through a flight examination board where they take a look at you and they decide can you still continue to fly what we do more than just teach you how to fly is teach you how to be a fighter pilot, don't be surprised if you find yourself going through some kind of metamorphosis we expect that to happen. Trust me, you know nothing today but 110 training days from now every single one of you guys is going to be able to take this jet off and kick the living crap out of any MiG-29 on the planet. And you will get there. He basically said, yeah, by the end of this program, you're going to be able to take off on any kind of weather and go out and kill any adversary out there that's trying to attack you. I don't even know how to start the jet. I think at that point, if he had just let us run out to the jets, we'd have figured out how to start him, and let's get going with the training right now. It was really cool. Man at left 7 low. Break left, break left. We make sure there's no doubt in their mind. that we are going to train them how to shoot down other airplanes. And there are going to be people in those other airplanes. And the missiles we carry and the weapons we carry are extremely lethal. F-15's mission, air superiority through air-to-air combat. Then we'll take him out to one of the F-15s, and the instructor pilot will take him through a walk-around. Walking up to the Eagle Jet for the first time, it's something else. I don't think I'll ever take it for granted. Height, 18.5 feet. Length, 63.8 feet. Everything about it is just awesome. You're left 9 o'clock. Space speed, 1,875 miles per hour. It amazed me at how big the aircraft is, just how powerful it is, how powerful it is. F-15's weapons systems, anti-aircraft missiles, and M61 Gatling guns. Just an elegant creature, kind of like a bird of prey. It is really cool to just walk up and stand next to this machine, this mighty instrument of death that you're about to train in. F-15's air combat record, 104 kills, 0 losses. Over the last 20 years, we haven't lost a single F-15 to combat operations. That packet there on the very back is a three pager. It's got a cover sheet signed by the boss, Colonel Rock. Colonel Rock, this is a spouse info sheet. Bubba Foster comes in and he was there to kind of remind us that hey what we're involved with now what we're training to do is uh is deadly serious business you know flying's a dangerous business uh dudes do get killed and it's primarily a consideration for your wife and the rest of your family uh you do go out there and get boarded out you got specifically on uh you know who you want to show up at the house to inform your wife what What kind of funeral arrangements do you want? Where do you want to have that? What kind of burial? It was really a showstopper for me to hear that. I know guys do get killed and I know that it could happen to me. However, I'm in my early 20s and it's nothing that I've ever really thought about. The fact of the matter is, I've been flying in the F-15 community since 1982 and there's lots of friends of mine that are no longer with us. And that's just our life, that's what we do. That's part of our business. Life or death to me meant staying in the program, not staying in the program so there's your life-or-death choice there's my life-or-death choice to me the biggest fear isn't something happening to me it really my biggest fear is just making it through this program I mean I I never thought in these terms I mean I was always hey I need to learn how to fly hey I got to get better at flying the T-38 hey I need to do these things it wasn't hey do you realize in seven months you're gonna be flying over Iraq and nobody even knows about it and you're gonna be there and hey oh by the way you might get killed so you probably need to talk to your wife about what could happen and oh by the way that could also happen you know next week when you start flying the ultimate goal for a student is just to graduate from the course at the end of this course we're gonna end up giving out some awards distinguished graduate awards Top Gun Awards primary focus that just make it through this and help each other to make it through it but after that you know Top Gun happens you know that'd be great I'm not thinking about Top Gun honors I'm just trying to get through the next day I absolutely want to finish as a Top Gun I mean, what else can you aspire to be? The worst thing you can do as a student in this class is talk about winning an award in public, okay? That's bad. Fixing to embark on a really neat journey learning about this airplane. You need to understand early on that this is serious business. Serious business. That's probably something you should listen to. Stump is a kind of a character. I'm a pretty good guy to ask about where to go eat. He's a great instructor, good at keeping your attention in the classroom. classroom. I have no problem to stop in the class and throw an eraser at a guy if he's asleep. The first part of the course is pretty much akin to putting your lips around a fire hydrant, okay, and just keep turning the water on, you know, a lot of academics, man, you're just going to think you never get through the jet. You start throwing so much information to them that they know at the end of it's going to evolve into a hundred question test and got to do well on that. Our job here is not to teach technique. We basically teach the book. Emergency gear jettison in. Okay, what happens if you've got an engine problem? Pitch ratio towards auto. Assume that both your radios just quit. Part of your verify gear handle down. You just dropped the checklist on the floor. One, two, three are up and one's down. And you have no help but your brain. To know the system's cold. If the fire persists, eject. You got one chance and that's pulling the handles. If it doesn't work, pull them again. If that doesn't work... The first day of academics, we've had more information than what I had in the first month of pilot training. There's a lot of stuff to learn. Get any questions. Questions? Maybe it's my gut. This is entertainment hour. I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree, but I get by okay. Once you're up there, go ahead and spin around, and I'll connect you up. All right. Canopy, visor, mask. Pull all the way down to your hips. Because Mike has been an instructor, I think he processes all this a lot quicker than we do. Mike has a whole lot of flying experience. He's got a lot more than everybody else. He flew B-1s. He was an instructor in T-38s. Captain Love has got to change gears here because he has experience in another airframe, so he's going to have to unlearn a lot of that stuff and relearn the F-15 specifically. Gregory seems to be doing pretty well. He seems to be taking to this very easily. Marcus is a very smart guy. He's very gifted and seemed to do really well in academics. I guess what pushes me to study extra and things like that just to be sure and make it through this. C. Number nine? Number nine? Uh, delta after dip. That's it. Yeah. We got some work to do with you here, I tell you. Lieutenant Giggy is kind of struggling a little bit. He's having to work overtime to get the academics. The academics are, you know, very intense. And sometimes the fighter pilot basics and stuff I can't even possibly understand. I think Giggy probably needs to buckle down into the books a little more. I think he's a lot less worried about the flying part than the academic part. Yeah, you can do the full 360 pirouette like you're doing, or you can just use common sense and come out backwards and start with it. Not unusual for a young man to be slightly overwhelmed initially when you start throwing so much information to him. What about this dude? There is a little bit of an adversarial relationship between the student and the instructor. When you first see the guys, they look like that little skinny pale kid that gets beat up all the time and you say, oh God, here comes another class. I'd walk down the hall and say hi to dudes and they'd just walk right past me. Okay, let's blow him off for now until we figure out who he is. You have to show us that you can put up with the crap we're going to give you, because we are going to give you a hard time. Maybe an IP will refer to a student as a maggot because that's the lowest form of life that ever has the hope of flying because we can we are in the training business here we're kind of a three-legged stool there's academics there's a flight line and there's a simulator the concept of the simulators really is to save flights we put these guys in the simulators and we teach them how to start engines how to go through checklist procedures how to do basic takeoffs and landings how to get comfortable in the jet the feeling of it is perhaps a little bit different than the actual airplane is pretty close the performance of it is very close the other good thing with the simulator is it allows us to give these guys emergency procedures i can give these guys engine fires in flight i can give these guys hydraulic failures in flight i can give these guys flight control problems i can test their ability to fly the airplane get it up and get it down in all weather conditions we want them to know that at the end of this academic simulator journey they're getting ready to embark on uh that the gold mine at the end of that journey is uh is a training flight in F-15 during the sim it's not like the aircraft you don't have all the signs they're just kind of sitting in that dark hole i think Gigi's confidence is probably there whether or not he can carry that to fruition don't know Once that clamshell door closes and you've got that 360 degree view around you, you forget that you're actually in the simulator. You really feel like you're going to fly. You really feel like you're going to fly. Go ahead. Ready on the Eagle? Eag? Warning, engine fire. Engaging number two. Warning, engine fire. Warning, engine fire. Right. The realism in the simulator makes it extremely difficult. Hey, Chief, looks like I've got a hot start on the right side. Gigi had some problems. You know, you're going to burn this thing up. Come on, let's get the throttle back. Let's see if the light goes out. Gigi found himself in a situation where he was having a hard time rubbing his tummy and patting his head. I just jumped to conclusions, thought I knew what was going on, got pretty spun up, and made some bad decisions. All right, stand by, Chief. Chief, I'm emergency ground aggression off the left side. You've got to start working it. This simulator is absolutely a torture device. It's just absolute pain. It's got all kinds of multiple malfunctions. You're just sweating for an hour and a half. You know, if it was easy, anybody could do it. You're sitting in there and somebody's out at the console just absolutely dialing death your way that you have to handle. All right, look, Gigi, go start flying the jet, buddy. Right now, you're not doing the right thing. I don't like them. them. That whole God environment where they can deliberately mess with you, I guess it's good training, but I'm like, this is not realistic. Our Boeing 1-2 is aborting down the runway. Boeing 1-2 suffered an A-B blowout on takeoff. No assistance required. Plan is to taxi back. I don't know. I probably would have put the hook down, because you were above 100 knots. Okay. Didn't need to, because you're on a long runway, but you never know, huh? Roger. Better safe than sorry. I just wasn't sure if I was past that first cable yet, so I was kind of worried. you know i think you could have done better right let's get this thing on the deck and we'll go debrief it and talk about it i think they should give you more basic practice in aircraft control and instruments and things before they start telling you how terrible you are you're looking at all the flashing red lights and everything's going wrong and you're not taking care of the problem it's not like anybody needs to tell you that you're sucking it up i think probably what we're going to need to do is refly this again uh didn't demonstrate proficiency on the areas you needed to. Lieutenant Diggie is having some problems with some of the emergency procedure training and flying the jet and trying to do both at the same time. The busted ride is a failed ride in the sim. That's bad news. Once you bust a certain number of simulators in a row, you start leaning toward being eliminated from the course. All of us, we've only got so many chances to repeat stuff. You get a couple tries, if you don't get it, that's it, you're out. In In the first week at Tyndall, I am not getting to spend a great amount of time with the family. My wife is a little bit terrified, I think, by the prospect of starting some new training. We've been content as a family doing the T-38 instructor stuff. It's a very good life. It's a small-town America. Panama City's our eighth move, so I'm pretty tired of moving. The stresses at home are all the same stresses that we all deal with. You know, honey, I want to be home. I want to be with my family. That's my number one priority. And my job is to be an American fighter pilot. It's a blessing, it's a calling, but that's my job. On the average, I see Michael two hours an evening, if that, and mainly just for dinner. It's very hard to be alone and in a new place, and the only people that you have are your children. And, you know, you don't have your husband anymore because he's busy. It makes a marriage and everything harder. I didn't want to marry Violet. I really wanted a husband who worked a nine-to-five job and came home and had time with the family. But Marcus just wanted it so bad, and that just, to me, that was the big thing that turned me around, was just seeing how much he wanted it. The long days, and I come home, it's time to hit the books. We try to reserve some time before I go to bed to talk and stuff, but lately it's been, you know, a study to basically, boy, I gotta go to sleep to get enough sleep for the next day. next day. Being pregnant of course I have the ups and downs emotionally. What I handle well and when I handle it not so well. It's very difficult when I watch the baby story on TV and the husband goes to all the appointments and they have all that fun bonding. We're having a baby time. There's my baby again. Doing real good. He hasn't fallen once. My fearless wife. She's so damn good looking. It's From my point of view, I met him during pilot training, so I was used to him having a very stressful life. I was used to him being very busy and all of that, so I don't think that I will see any less of him now. The best thing about meeting Lori when I was going through the process of pilot training is the fact that from the get-go, she understood what my schedule was like. I was gone 12 hours a day, five days a week, all throughout the training program. I'm just going to take a picture for your mom. So she had some idea of what she was getting into. I've got movers here and I can't leave. I think it's difficult on Lori and it's difficult on anybody that's trying to support somebody that's constantly having to gear themselves up and psych themselves up to go through these different programs. I give a lot of credit to the spouses that do that. What's that? The washout rate runs about 8% or 9% or so. So if you have an eight-man class, about one or so per class has a chance of not making it. You need to be able to talk about things because you can't possibly learn all this by yourself. And we can do no wrong by absolutely working together and trying to succeed together. And it sounds crazy, but spending time in the bar is absolutely perfect for that. Thank you. Beecher. Here. Hit off. Put the paint up, buck, jive. Yes. My view on the squadron bar, it's a place where we gather to talk about things. There's an old adage in the fighter pilot community that you'll learn more at the bar than you will on any flight. If you're looking for some perspective, it's 70 hours a week of training and one or two hours at the end of the week for bonding and storytelling. As he got up, he tripped and hit the ground. He fell down. The point is, this is a fraternity that you are attempting to enter. As a student, you haven't entered it yet. Shark kind of personifies the consummate fighter pilot. I mean, the guy has his ---- together completely. He's an outstanding pilot. He's well-respected in the squadron. when he talks dudes listen. So I want to know if Mace hurt himself when he stood up to take the hat. Everybody in the squadron is known by their call sign. I mean if somebody calls and she asked for Jason I mean everybody sits there and has to think because you know who the hell is this guy. Everybody has a call sign so looking forward to getting a call sign of my own. When students first show up at the course they really don't have a tactical call sign. Somewhere over the course of that six-week period they will do something that earns them a certain call sign. So in the meantime we just name them Boner 1 through 6 and that's their call sign until they get the real call sign. Dude, you're Boner 1. You're Boner 2. Who's the next guy? What a better name in the Bonehead or Bone Cranium squadron than to give all the new guys the nickname Boner and just a Boner with a number and I just happen to be Boner 5. I just have one question. It's directed at Boner 6 there. Cinco that Boner actually. I gave you this guy walks in and he looks like a seventh grader in a flight suit we call these guys snaps it's a sensitive new age pilots you know these guys listen to Backstreet Boys and we listen to Van Halen bar has a lot of rules Mr. Bones is the mascot of the 95th Bar Discipline and he's been around for forever who knows where traditions start but you have to pay proper respect to him every time you're in the bar so every shot is to mr. bone The only time I get out of my coffin is when I'm doing these f***ing damn videos. Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones! They're more of a go-to boner at this point. And the question is this, what's up with the dude, dude? I think Todd, on his first day in the bar, made an impression. If you don't accept Gen Xers into the Eagle community, if you have a tattoo, cover it up. I mean, it would upset the balance in my world if I knew my wingman is flying around with nipple rings. So I just wanted to make that abundantly clear to him. The best thing to do is try and stand out, just be yourself. Lieutenant Giggy is maybe a little bit too cocky for somebody with not a single hour of F-15 time under his belt, but we can take care of that. Lesson one as an Eagle driver, never pass up the opportunity to keep your mouth shut. seven thousand is approved roger all clear i try to out far enough in advance to where unexpected things don't happen too often and i think uh some of the time i've been spending at home going through that stuff has been helping me out ready yep okay let's go okay the simulator is the ultimate high-tech video game this part was so fun looking over your shoulder just seeing the base behind you the one i almost couldn't do that any better myself. That's pretty good stuff right there Plan is to fly over the water, dump fuel. All right, nice job. Let's hop out. Let's go talk about it and debrief. Nice job. I feel pretty confident about the simulators. I'm doing okay. Captain Love and Captain Gregory are doing fine. Although Lieutenant Giggy, his his grades tended to tell me that maybe he wasn't quite up to speed. Because he failed the first sim, Giggy's got another simulator test tomorrow. And it is time now for him to step up to the plate and do better. I realize the importance of the simulator tomorrow. Hopefully I can show them that I'm serious I'm here for business and that's it bottom line I'm pretty pissed off about my performance on that simulator. Bummed me out. Basically I know I know I'm capable of doing better than that as they say it's important that you don't suck today. If Giggy were to fail this ride a second time it would be a cause for concern. That's very rare to have back-to-back failures. He has to have no hiccups. He has to do this correctly to get to the next ride. Captain Lud, ready for that first flight? You're about to see what it's all about. Captain Lud and Captain Gregory now move on to the next step. Their first flights in the jet and Love is up first. What is it gonna take for these guys to get ready for their first flight? The fear of God. Mike Love, he's about to go out and strap on the F-15, the greatest fighter there is. It's your first time flying the F-15. It is almost too hard to put into words how great of a day it is this is gonna be a blast. It's gonna be awesome. The first flight in the F-15 is kick in the pants with a student in the front seat and an IP in the back seat the first ride means you've transitioned now from just talking about how to fly just simulating how to fly to actually putting some of those skills to the test. Captain Love, he's clearly on his way to getting in the jet for the first time. He was a B-1 pilot, but the question in my mind is always the same. I don't care where you come from, are you going to be able to do it? Are you going to be able to fly the F-15? To be quite honest with you, you can never answer that question one way or the other by just looking at somebody. He's got to go out and do it. I've come to terms with the potential for danger. been flying, things can go wrong, but there's nothing to replace actually flying and I'm very excited about it. It's important for me to demonstrate to everybody that I have what it takes. You're only as good as your last performance, so to speak, or your last simulator. So when you do something marginal, you're kind of hanging your cranium a little bit low. You know, it can't be bad the whole time. Something good's gotta happen. Okay. Back to the end of the runway. Another jet. Another day. Tower, Bones 1-2. Clear for takeoff 3-1, right? Bones 1-2, roger, takeoff. Giggie needs to be able to deal with the emergency procedure without looking through the world with a straw. Okay, Giggie, come on. You know, we got ninja bots. I was wandering off course and I was doing like ten different things and I was just a big mess. And he freezes the simulator and he just says, is there any doubt in your mind that you're doing the wrong thing? And I'm just like, come on, come on man, give me a break. This is like a bad dose of medicine, but it's a life insurance policy in that you've got to know every procedure. After that, the whole ride just went downhill. We started the penetration. I was still working on the emergency procedure. He starts bringing on other problems, other lights. And every light that came on, he just started saying, oh, you've got an inlet light. What are you going to do? Inlet light, inlet light, inlet light. Okay, Giggie, come on. You've got to take care of the issue. but he just knew that i was so rattled and that i was at least 20 or 30 feet away from him so i couldn't get out of the simulator and strangle him you gotta start flying the jet it's flying you right now i think they forget what it's like to just start out and they get absolutely frustrated with you and they say mean things to you and you're like come on i bet you couldn't do this well i i get very frustrated when a student busts us in and doubly frustrated if if he busts two of them. Still going to plan on flying a little conservative. I'm going to fly a flatter, flatter, faster approach. Bones, 1-2, soft roger. What kind of hydraulic lights you got on right now? It's quite mesmerizing, especially when everything's red and flashing at you. Warning, engine fire. No. Warning, FDIT over temp. Gigi. I saw in Gigi, for the first time, maybe a little bit of fear. i think it has set in the gravity of the situation i had all this pent-up frustration and anger for how i had performed you know under pressure and unfortunately for me a lot of the mistakes you make are irreversible and then you're basically screwed keep it on the runway keep it on the runway don't let it go off come on keep it on the runway how about the hook tower goes one two Two emergencies, I.P. roll out. Tower one two, Roger. Here comes 101 fire trucks. Obviously, I think you agree, that didn't go much better. Matter of fact, we may have taken a couple steps. I think Giggy got a little emotional about it. I think here's a young man that's been successful at everything he's ever done, it's been easy for him, carried a little bit of swagger, and all of a sudden he knows that he's failed. Not only failed once, but he's failed twice. I'm incredibly hard on myself, and you get to the point where you just have such rage that you just want to scream and I don't like feeling that way. Lieutenant Giggy has struggled in the early portion of the course, not doing very well in academics and then actually failing two of the emergency procedure simulators. Now it's up to the point that he only has one shot left, one more time to get that right and if he messes that up, he is done. We are washing him out of this course. He's better than that. He's got the potential to be a good fighter pilot but you know so it's time to step up to the plate and not strike out his dreams in jeopardy stay tuned for scenes from our next episode next time an American fighter pilot Marcus and Mike live their dreams and fly the F-15 for the first time Buck Rogers that day but Giggy is grounded, it's do or die, get the job done or go home Strap yourself in, there's turbulence ahead. The quest to be Top Gun continues.