​Sharing a Harrowing T-38 Talon Training Tale

Pilot training in the U.S. Air Force has always been extremely demanding. Despite extensive preliminary screening, a high washout rate is typical. One out of three students washed out of my class even though the air war in Vietnam was reaching its peak and pilots were in demand.

In those days, everyone went through an identical one-year program to earn their wings—two months flying the propeller-driven T-41 (Cessna 172), four months in the T-37 primary jet, and six months in the supersonic T-38 Talon. A typical training day included five hours on the flight line, four hours of academics, and an hour of physical training. One week we’d report to the flight line before dawn and attend academic classes in the afternoon, while the next week academics began the day and we’d fly late. Our training was at Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama.

Competition was intense. My academic average in 17 courses, ranging from aerospace physiology to applied aerodynamics, was 96.92 out of 100, good only for a fourth-place tie. Due to the intensity and pace of the training, I wasn’t able to record my experiences in detail. What follows is a taste of what the Air Force calls Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT).

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

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The T-38 Talon was an aircraft ahead of its time. Although it became operational in the 1960s, the sleek, supersonic trainer they call the “White Rocket” was still among the world’s most advanced pilot training aircraft more than 40 years later.

A quote from the flight manual (ATCM 51-38) gives one an idea of its performance: “You must monitor the Mach number during high-speed flight to avoid inadvertent supersonic flight under unauthorized conditions.” The T-38 gave its students the flight performance characteristics of sophisticated contemporary fighter aircraft, and because of the knowledge and skill required to fly it, produced both highly proficient pilots and a high washout rate for those who could not master it in time.

Many of my T-38 flights were memorable—the first supersonic sortie, first solo, aerobatics, instruments, cross-country, night solo, and formation. One of the most unforgettable involved a minor in-flight emergency during my third solo.

When I finished primary jet training in the T-37, I was ranked high in my class. I had received an excellent grade on my final “Tweet” check ride, and I was beginning to feel cocky and a little too sure of myself. Those of us who felt that way soon realized that the Talon was much more responsive than anything we had ever flown, and one ride in the simulator convinced us that it took a special skill to adjust to the sensitivity of the control stick.

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Full aileron deflection could produce an unbelievable 720 degrees (two revolutions) per second rate of roll. Before long, though, I got the hang of it enough to enjoy an uneventful first solo, and by my third solo, I was feeling a little more confident and almost arrogant again.

It was morning shift on the flight line. I felt a twinge of apprehension when the scheduler stepped aside of the plexiglass greaseboard to reveal a “SOLO” printed next to my name. Soon I’d collected my G-suit, parachute, and helmet, tested my oxygen mask at one of the regulator stations in the equipment room, and made the long trudge to the aircraft I’d been assigned.

By now, the hours of checklist memory drills with my wife, Donna, made the preflight routine easy. You almost had to be a contortionist to strap into the T-38 cockpit. Usually, the ground crew assisted, and eventually my parachute, helmet, mask, shoulder harness, lap belt, G-suit hose, intercom cord, oxygen hose, ejection connections, and safety pins were all in the proper position. 

A rapid twirl of my index finger told the ground crew that I was ready for engine start and, after a dozen other checklist items, the chocks were removed and I called the tower for taxi clearance. The engines screamed as I shoved the throttles excessively forward to get rolling, then pulled back to idle for the turn toward the flight line and the thumbs-up/salute exchange with the ground crew.

Last chance inspection on the taxiway revealed no hydraulic or fuel leaks, and soon I was locking the canopy shut and radioing the Runway Surveillance Unit (RSU). A staccato voice responded with my takeoff clearance, and I again felt that twinge.

Talon takeoff was truly thrilling. You had to be on your toes because everything happened so fast. I taxied into position and pumped up the brakes for the run-up. The brakes were hard-pressed to hold the aircraft stationary in full military power, and it took a few seconds of trembling knees to properly check my engine instruments.

Brake release coincided with afterburner ignition, and the resulting whiplash acceleration made a launch from the Battlestar Galactica look tame. The next few seconds required another instrument scan, the abort decision, and super-sensitive directional control. Liftoff occurred at 155 knots and, by now, acceleration was so intense that the gear handle had to be slammed up immediately to avoid overspeed at 240 knots. 

Flap retraction followed, and the afterburner extinguished for a 300 knot climb to 10,000 feet. I intercepted the climb corridor, made the appropriate calls to Atlanta Center, and completed another checklist. At 10,000 feet, I accelerated to 400 knots until I reached Mach 0.8 and held that until FL 240. The T-38’s climb rate was truly remarkable. It once held the world’s time-to-climb record. Level-off usually required a 1,000-foot lead. 

I was assigned a high-altitude block of airspace in the training area farthest from the base. After a quick level-off check, I began with a few aileron rolls. I could only perform a few continuous rolls before the nose dropped into a dive. Then I practiced the loop. I entered a dive, set the throttles, accelerated to 500 knots, and began a steady 5G pullup on the stick. The pressure of the G-suit on my legs reduced the tendency of a blackout. 

As I approached a vertical attitude, I threw my head back and searched for the inverted horizon, released a little back pressure to avoid buffet as the aircraft decelerated, and increased the pressure to recover from the dive. It was thrilling! There is nothing quite as exciting as solo aerobatics in a supersonic aircraft. I can’t remember exactly what other aerobatics I practiced that day. We were required to be proficient in chandelles, lazy 8s, split-S’s, loops, aileron rolls, barrel rolls, cloverleafs, Immelmann turns, and Cuban 8s.

My favorite was the Cuban 8. Each half of the maneuver is a slightly modified combination of the loop and the Immelmann. Three-quarters of a loop leaves you in an inverted dive from which you immediately roll upright to start another three-quarter loop to a half roll in the other direction.

The barrel roll is a coordinated roll in which the nose of the aircraft describes a circle around a point. It’s not as fancy as the Cuban 8 but requires considerable skill and practice to perform correctly. After several practice maneuvers. I sensed something was wrong. Things were a little too quiet. 

I called Atlanta Center for a radio check, and I knew I would get no answer. Instead of the sound of my own voice, I only heard a muffled murmur inside my oxygen mask. I tried and tried again on different frequencies, but nothing worked. There was no reason to panic. It was a beautiful sunlit day, and everything was working except my radios.

I had been in a similar situation before during T-37 training. I was with an instructor, but we had not only lost normal radio contact, but our instruments as well, and there was a thick blanket of clouds below. There was absolutely no way to orient ourselves without punching through the clouds, but they were so low it would have been extremely risky to try. We might have hit the paper mill, a transmission tower, or even the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We nearly had to eject, in an orbit at 25,000 feet, when we finally received a radar vector on the emergency guard channel. 

No, I was not in nearly as bad a situation this time. At least I had VFR weather and operable instruments. I followed my lost communications procedures to the letter. I squawked the lost comm code on my transponder so that my radar scope signal on the ground would indicate my problem. Although I was in a remote area, I was adjacent to the descent corridor.

It was the same descent corridor where an instructor decided to play games with me during a later flight. I was solo in formation on his wing when he gave me the speedbrake signal. I acknowledged with a head nod and, at his signal, properly popped my boards (extended my speedbrakes) while he plugged into the afterburner as a joke. We instantly had a half-mile separation. It did not take me long to close back to fingertip formation and give him an appropriate signal of my own.

I used my instruments to follow a Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) radial toward the field and began my descent. I had to arc miles from the field and attempt to locate the VFR entry point, a geographical landmark designated for emergencies like mine. After searching with my eyes for what seemed like hours, the proper image appeared, and all I had to do now was squeeze in among a dozen supersonic trainers—half of them piloted by solo students like myself. 

I rocked my wings on initial and pitched out to a nice landing. No more emergency. As I raised my canopy to taxi back, I felt the blast of fresh air and disconnected my oxygen mask to perform yet another checklist.

I felt like a hero. Here I was, a student on only his third T-38 solo flight, who encountered an in-flight emergency and accomplished all required procedures en route to an uneventful landing. I felt really proud as I recorded the discrepancy in the 781—complete radio failure. I entered the equipment room, cleaned my mask, and racked my parachute.

The captain behind the weather desk said that a major wanted to interview me. I thought he was going to recommend me for a “Well Done” award. I got what amounted to an interrogation. Not a word of congratulations.

Apparently, he didn’t seem to think too much about my little emergency. So much for the hero. 

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This feature first appeared in the February Issue 967 of the FLYING print edition.