Chris Penningroth’s Weltanschauung

     Today Drago, Motor, Sox, and I flew a pit-and-go pair of ACM sorties.  Drago and Boat flew Blue first sortie, Sox and I flew Blue on the second.  We had a great time on both sides (so to say). 

     It went like most ACM sorties.  The one interesting moment happened when Motor intelligently used the sun as a backdrop to dive in on me, preventing me from seeing him.  Sox called out for me to evade, but since I couldn’t see which direction Motor was coming from (up, down, or sideways), I elected to simply fly in the circle I was going in and make some small jinking maneuvers, essentially remaining predictable so Motor could fly around me.  A lot of fighter pilots would likely have taken the opportunity to practice a vigorous no-sight defense.  I wasn’t comfortable with that, and maybe I ought to have been, since I knew Sox saw Motor and could have knocked off the fight if I’d rolled the wrong way into Motor, and maybe I’d’ve saved us from the browbeating I would (probably rightly) get in the debrief for not being aggressive enough getting out of Motor’s gunsight.

     After we got back and reviewed tapes, Motor was pretty excited that he had in fact gotten some "Frames" on me from his attack, meaning if he’d been firing his gun, the shells would have hit my jet.  He was so impressed with himself he kept crowing about it for several minutes.  He only stopped when he noticed I was counting "Frames" in my tape on his jet.

     The difference:  I knew he was there and simply chose to not maneuver aggressively without being certain where he was, thereby ensuring no close passes would occur.  He just didn’t know I was attacking him at all. 

     If in real life, it would have been like the difference between performing damage control (or lets face it, probably having to bail out) while wondering what I could have done better (a no-sight defense) and wondering "Holy Smokes! What just happened!?!"

     Sometimes the lesson learned isn’t exactly about the technical aspects of the flight! 

     Today’s mission was to be a medium altitude surface attack tactics flight.  Rost would lead our four-ship while Drago led a second four-ship against a pair of actual Red Air and a bunch of simulated SAMs.  It was a little benign, but still fun.  Red Air leaned on Drago’s flight, so they got to clean up the air picture and pretended to attack the pretend SAMs for us.  Our four-ship flew to our targets unmolested (which was what made it benign), even when we ran a second attack drill. 

     This was about as ho-hum as it gets trying to coax 18 tons of metal and JP-8 at 500mph through hundreds of horizontal and tens of vertical miles!

     Today Huck, Boat, Gilligan, and I went all-out to try to make life miserable for Kane, Topper, Bosco, and Rost.  We threw ’em the kitchen sink and they handled us pretty well. 

     The interesting thing was we were fighting near the leading edge of a blizzard that was approaching the airspace and was due to hit our base late that evening.  The oceans below were unusually calm for this time of year.  The serene scenes below of snow-capped islands reflected in the calm seas beneath gentle bands of clouds certainly made a nice backdrop for the main event!

     The first shot in the arm was a really fun SEAD mission.  Gilligan, Lt Col Z, Scooter, and I flew out to the training area with my old friend Cash and his wingman Motor playing Red Air.  We shot our way in, shot our way out, took a couple extra shots at some theoretical SAMs for good measure. 

     The second shot in the arm was a no-kidding immunization.  Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t mind getting shots.  I like the idea of being immune to any and every disease possible.  I’ve got antibodies for everything from anthrax to yellow fever!