I’ve been an Operations Group Commander for nearly 10 years and there’s a lot I love about the job.  There’s one thing in particular I really enjoy and it’s attending Review and Certification Boards.  For you non-flying types, it’s a periodic meeting we have to review evaluation issues and to “certify” new aircraft commanders, instructors and flight examiners.  Basically we review their training and evaluation folders, bring in the “certifyee”, and we all get a chance to utter some words of wisdom for them to carry into their new responsibilities. I especially like doing new aircraft commanders.

These are guys that have been sitting in the right seat for 2-3 years chomping at the bit for a chance to be in command and run things their way, and I like to take the time to let them know that, when you’re in charge, things can go pretty bad pretty fast.  I have several stories I like to tell, but my favorite I call; “The worst question anyone has ever asked an Aircraft Commander”.  My apologies to those that have heard it, but here goes.

I’ve known a lot of crewmembers over the last 34 ½ years and the guys that are most memorable are the ones at either end of the spectrum.  The really bad ones because, well, that’s where good flying stories come from, and the really good ones because they make flying a joy.  Fred, and Fred isn’t his real name and I’ve never know a loadmaster named Fred, is one of the really good ones.  He’s the kind of guy everybody likes.  All of the kids whose parents are in the squadron know him by name and give him hugs when they see him.  He’s conscientious, professional, an outstanding instructor and an all around great guy.  So when I signed up for a weekend cross country I knew that things would work smoothly in the back of the airplane.

It was an Aeromedical training mission with the unit over at Wright-Patterson AFB and from the pilot perspective it’s about as vanilla a mission as it gets.  You pick up a bunch of Flight Nurses and Med Techs and they spend hours in the back of the airplane working on pretend patients while we bore holes in the sky.  It sounds like a waste of money and time, but I don’t want someone sticking a needle in me or, heaven forbid, a catheter while I’m being AirEvac’d who’s never done it while bouncing around in a moving aircraft.  On with the story.  We spent all day Saturday flying them around so all we really had to do on Sunday was fly the one hour back to Pittsburgh, park the airplane, fill out the paperwork, and be out the door by noon.  Saturday night we stayed at the Hope Hotel at Wright-Pat and we all agreed to meet in the lobby for dinner at 6.  6:00 came and went with no Fred.  We called his room and he said to eat without him.  After dinner we were walking through the lobby and ran into Fred.  He obviously had other plans.  He was freshly showered and shaved.  He had some “bling” around his neck.  He was obviously on the prowl.  We administered the appropriate amount of ribbing and reminded everyone of the morning bus time of 0715.

At 0715 we were all sitting in the bus, ready to go, except for Fred.  In all the years I had known him he had never been late so I gave him the benefit of the doubt but when he still hadn’t shown up at 0725 it was time for the phone call.  The phone rang 10 times before he answered it and it was obvious that I had awakened him from a deep sleep.  After apologizing profusely, he said he’d be down in five minutes, and he was.  Normally being late will get you a thorough tongue lashing, but seeing as Fred was obviously very upset with himself I figured the abuse he was getting from the rest of the crew was sufficient punishment.  We dropped the loadmasters and flight engineer at the plane and headed into base ops to check the weather and NOTAMS and file a flight plan.  Now for the bad news.  There was a wide area of rain with imbedded thunderstorms between Dayton and Pittsburgh and it was going to be a bumpy ride.  We rushed out to the airplane hoping to get going before the heat of the day pumped more energy into the storms and took off into a darkening sky.

It turned out to be as bad as we feared.  The Navs face was buried in the scope and he was calling out the headings fast and furious.  “40 degrees for 3 minutes and then we’ll come back 60 degrees!”  The hour flight was turning into an hour and a half as we zigzagged our way to Pittsburgh.  Finally we got the handoff to Pittsburgh approach and the controller told us something I’d never heard a controller say before.  “Do whatever you have to do to get through the last line of storms, call me when you’re clear, and good luck”  It was the “good luck” that got me worried.  The nav tuned up the old APN-59 and tightened up his shoulder harness and just as we started to squeeze between the two airplane eating cells a quiet voice came from the back of the airplane over the crackling interphone. “Hey Daryl, this is Fred.  Can I ask you a question?”  First of all, we don’t use names on the airplane, only crew positions.  It would normally have been “Pilot, Loadmaster, I have a question”.  Secondly, we were pretty busy.  But, I thought, something serious must be happening if he was calling me now AND using first names, so I said, “Sure, it’s a little busy but go ahead”.  There was a pregnant pause and then, ”If a girl asked me to spank her, and I did, could I get in trouble”.

You know how they do it in movies when you come to a really intense action scene and they switch to slow motion and it’s like time expands.  At that moment, hanging in space between two thunderstorms, with lightning flashing all around and continuous moderate turbulence forcing us to strain at our seatbelts, time seemed to stand still.  The copilot rotated in his seat to the left and stared at me, the navs head slowly came up from the scope and turned to me with eyes as big as saucers, and the engineer’s jaw dropped to his chest.  I’m usually pretty quick with a response, and maybe I was, but it felt like an eternity before I heard myself say:  “It depends.  Did you leave any marks and does she know who you are?”  Not really a good answer, but it’s the best I could come up with at the time.  He answered “No on both” and I said “We can talk about it when we land” and then time simply accelerated back to its normal inexorable rate.

We had a talk when we landed about boundaries and girls in bars.  And, although I know nothing about the latter, I think I covered the subject pretty well.  As much as you think you’re ready for anything and you’ve seen it all, you haven’t.  The message to the new aircraft commanders; flying is the easy part, it’s the people that will never stop surprising you.

My apologies to “Fred”, I’m sure he’ll be mortified when he gets this!