Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

The biggest surprise of our introduction to NASA’s T-38 flight operations was the rules. There were none, or at least there were very few. In military flight operations, every phase, from engine start to engine shutdown, was usually part of a training program and closely monitored by superior officers. The ready rooms of military squadrons had credenzas filled with volumes of rules and regulations for operating the aircraft. NASA management, on the other hand, had the misguided belief that astronauts were professionals and didn’t need big brother watching or a thick manual of rules to safely operate one of their jets. Sure…and a teenager being handed the keys to a 160-mile-per-hour Ferrari doesn’t need any rules or supervision either.

We were the teenagers, and the skies over the nearby Gulf of Mexico were our back roads. After a radar-controlled exit from the Houston airspace, we would make that glorious call to Air Traffic Control (ATC), “Houston Center, NASA 904. Please cancel my IFR.” Translation: “Houston, I’m off to play. Don’t bother me. I’ll call when I’m done.”

On many occasions a cooperative TFNG pilot would say, “You’ve got it, Mike,” and I would take control of the aircraft. (Since the ’38 was designed as a trainer it had a full set of controls in the backseat.) When there were thunderstorms in the area I would send the plane twisting among their cauliflowered blossoms like a skier darting through the gates of a downhill slalom. Wisps of vapor would pass inches from the canopy, enhancing the sensation of speed. If there is orgasm outside of sex, this was it—speed and the unbound freedom of the sky.

We would flat-hat across the water, passing alongside container ships and super-tankers. That a seabird might come crashing through the windscreen like a cannon shot and kill us was a fear…but not much of one. We were intoxicated on velocity.

For thrills it didn’t get much better than being in Fred Gregory’s backseat. Fred, a USAF helicopter pilot, was one of the three African-American TFNGs. Apparently helicopter pilots believed they would get nosebleeds if they ever flew above a few feet altitude, or at least I got that impression from flying with Fred. We would depart Houston’s Ellington Field and fly ATC control to the Amarillo City airfield in the panhandle of Texas. There we would refuel and then fly VFR (under our own control) at butt cheek–tightening low altitude to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We would pass over the tops of windmills with just yards of clearance. The only thing that protected us from running into buzzards and hawks was that they had sense enough to cruise at higher altitudes. We streaked across the tips of 13,000-foot mountains and dove into canyons. The 600-foot-deep Rio Grande River Gorge in northern New Mexico was a favorite. I would look up to see the rim of that canyon. As power lines appeared, Fred would hop the jet across them and dive back on the other side. In what is truly a remarkable irony, many years later Fred was appointed NASA’s associate administrator for safety. I guess we all eventually grow brains.

The most dangerous aerial play was “one-vee-one,” or one-versus-one dogfighting. In a flight of two ’38s we’d cruise a few miles over the water, then switch to company frequency, an unused frequency nobody would be monitoring. At least we hoped nobody would be monitoring it. Then each aircraft, flying in formation at the same speed and altitude, would simultaneously break 45 degrees in opposite directions. After flying for a minute on the new headings, we would turn into each other on a collision course. This maneuver ensured a neutral setup, one in which neither pilot had an advantage when the dogfighting started. There were obvious dangers in this arrangement. First, it put two virtually invisible objects on a head-on course at a combined speed in excess of 1,000 miles per hour. The other danger was more subtle. Pretending air-to-air combat with identical aircraft makes it difficult for either pilot to gain an advantage. Pilots are more tempted to push their vehicles to the edge of their performance envelopes to gain a simulated “kill.” In my air force career there had been numerous incidents of dogfighting pilots crossing that edge, losing control, and having to eject—or dying when they didn’t. It happened in my squadron in England. In fact, it happened so often worldwide the air force ultimately banned the practice of identical jets simulating a dogfight.

But in our Gulf of Mexico playground, the only rule was, “There are no rules,” another witticism of Hoot Gibson. Pilots would make that final turn toward each other and slam the throttles into afterburner. It was a game of chicken and we strained to pick out the dot representing the competition. When the “tallyho” call was made, the game was on. Our jets would pass canopy to canopy, sometimes no more than a couple hundred feet apart, and the pilots would jerk their ’38s into a vertical spiraling climb, keeping each other in sight and trying to maneuver for an advantage. Usually the first “vertical scissors” would end in a tie with both planes standing on their nozzles and the airspeed dropping lower and lower. When an out-of-control tail slide was imminent, the pilots would have no alternative but to pull the nose over. With the ocean steadily filling the windscreen, another scissoring dance to gain advantage would begin. Only after several of these up-down vertical helixes would one pilot finally gain a small advantage and a tail chase would begin. The pursued would twist in various escape maneuvers. The planes would shudder violently in high-speed turns that crushed us in our seats. Sweat would pour from our scalps and sting our eyes. Unintelligible grunts would fill the intercom as we strained to tighten our guts and prevent blood flow out of our brains. Unlike fighter pilots we did not wear anti-G suits, which added the danger of G-induced unconsciousness to the games. In a high-speed turn the G-forces could momentarily reach seven, which would pull the blood from our brains and bring on tunnel vision. Just a little harder pull and our vision would have gone to black…unconsciousness. Death at water impact would have followed. But we always managed to grunt our way through the yanking and banking to eventually hear the “ rat-a-tat-tat, you’re dead” call over the radio. A victor would be proclaimed and another game would begin.

How we survived this idiocy without an aircraft and/or crew loss, I have no idea. On several occasions the extreme maneuvering would lead to a flameout. A “break it off” call would be a certain indication the other crew was restarting a failed engine. It must have been the Almighty watching out after us. As I would later hear John Young say in reference to near disasters on early shuttle flights, “God watches out for babies, drunks, and astronauts.” He certainly watched after dogfighting TFNGs.

If only God would have watched out for me all the way to the chocks. On one occasion Brewster Shaw let me fly our jet to a landing. After touchdown, I made the mistake of lowering the nose too quickly. The tire impacted a barrier wire stretched across the approach end of the runway (used by tailhook-equipped aircraft in an emergency), which dented the wheel and caused the nose tire to go flat. In the vernacular of the military flyer, we had just “stepped on our dicks.” One of the few rules in NASA’s playbook was that backseaters didn’t land the plane. Brewster attempted to cover our violation by telling the flight-line mechanics he had screwed up the landing. “I let the nose down too early.” The maintenance chief seemed to accept this explanation and we thought we were home free…until the next Monday morning meeting. TFNG Dave Walker brought the flat tire into the conference room! He hefted it from behind the table and said, “Brewster, you want to explain this? The incident report says you forgot to hold the nose up for aero-braking.” Dave had recently been appointed the TFNG safety rep for flight operations, so it was not surprising he had heard about the flat tire.