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Transcript

Disco’s Canteen Got a Refill Episode 171 · So There I Was

• 0:00
  Well, hey, you know what? We got to mention, there's two people we got to talk
• 0:03
  about. We got to talk about LZ, who gave his life for his country.
• 0:08
  Another great guy. And died in that war. Awesome. And we have to talk about
• 0:11
  Mongoose, who let us run with the tactical culture of that squadron.
• 0:18
  You know, he could have come in there. He could have played it safe.
• 0:23
  He didn't. He let us run wild, and he let us do what we needed to do to get
• 0:29
  out there and be effective in that war.
• 0:31
  Hats off to Mongoose, and God rest his soul.
• 0:35
  Even before the war struck, I mean, to your point, even before the war,
• 0:39
  like when we were in Westpac, Mongoose didn't hold us back.
• 0:43
  He let us do our thing. Not at all. And I mean, even when guys such as 8.5 degree,
• 0:49
  8.5 G breaks in the Philippines, you know, yes, there may be a ground, but yeah.
• 0:58
  The cell break. Hey, don't forget what Harrier squadron flew more hours,
• 1:03
  delivered more ordnance, took out more targets.
• 1:07
  VMA 542, baby. There you go. Someone's got to tell the cell break in the PI
• 1:13
  story now because you brought it up.
• 1:18
  And he's not here to defend himself so have at it yeah man it was a nozzle break
• 1:23
  he uh you know he came in he came in fast and he and he okay explain what that
• 1:28
  is and how it worked and he got a g spike that was about it yeah tell him tell
• 1:33
  him what that is though strut.
• 1:36
  Well, so if you just do a conventional brake and a Harrier, you know,
• 1:41
  you're going to have trouble getting to eight G's, really.
• 1:44
  But if you pull the nozzles in, which means you're going to pull them in incrementally,
• 1:50
  probably, I guess, I don't know what he did.
• 1:51
  But if you probably went, he probably went to about 30, which caused a rapid G acceleration.
• 1:58
  And probably the aft CG went out a little bit. And he probably squatted the
• 2:03
  airplane in the brake and it probably just spiked the G's.
• 2:06
  I never did it, but I'm assuming that's what happened.
• 2:10
  You hear it's bad? When you get the nozzles past it, the butterfly valve opens,
• 2:14
  and now your reaction control system is energized in the plane.
• 2:18
  And under the nose, there's one of those jets.
• 2:21
  And so when you pull, now on the tip of your nose, you got one of those valves
• 2:26
  open, which pushes out the high-pressure air, and it gives the nose a pitch.
• 2:32
  And so that's what would give you those extra couple Gs. I mean,
• 2:36
  it's like your AOA, too. So you've got to be careful of that.
• 2:39
  Well, it didn't help that Mongoose had just had a midair with an F-4,
• 2:43
  right? Where they pulled his chocks.
• 2:46
  They pulled his chocks at Clark, and he tacked it into an F-4. Isn't that right?
• 2:53
  Yeah, yeah. So here's what happened. Here's what happened.
• 2:56
  The airman heard the APU, and he pulled the chocks.
• 3:02
  Yeah. And so now the airplane's rolling, and, of course, you know,
• 3:07
  August would have had to have hit the main engine start switch to avoid the collision.
• 3:11
  That was his only hope, was if he had hit the main engine start switch and he
• 3:17
  was just a little slow to get there.
• 3:20
  So he had no hydraulics? No.
• 3:26
  So he hits an F4, and then he sends Sal home. Well, it stopped him.
• 3:30
  And Sal comes into the break.
• 3:32
  Sal comes into the break single ship coming from Clark.
• 3:39
  There's that great picture that great picture of sal on top
• 3:42
  of the jet flexing and the next one he's serving coffee for
• 3:45
  all of coke thunder hey we we
• 3:48
  got it we got to say what happened in coke thunder so the last
• 3:50
  day of coke thunder it's a huge joint exercise in the philippines thank you
• 3:54
  last day you do a basic you attack the base and so we're gonna you know we want
• 4:00
  to show the troops who've been busting their ass for us for two weeks to keep
• 4:05
  it we're launching 14 plane strikes twice a day and the troops are busting their ass,
• 4:11
  keeping the planes ready so the last day we're like, we gotta put on a show
• 4:15
  for the fucking troops so the morning strike,
• 4:17
  we come back and attack and we are in the freaking weeds going over the O club
• 4:24
  just barely clearing that everything else, we're flying under they had it all
• 4:29
  on film, we're flying under the towers which are like 50 feet high,
• 4:32
  all this crap and the base commander goes apeshit.
• 4:36
  And he said, if I see another plane flying below the tower, I will have your
• 4:42
  wings. You guys remember that? Yeah.
• 4:45
  I remember the attack on the base. Spiko's in the house.
• 4:49
  Spiko's in the house. Welcome, Spiko. How you doing, Marine? I'm doing well.
• 4:56
  Outstanding. Hello, lads. Glad you could join us. Sorry, I'm so late.
• 5:01
  I'm sorry, I'm so late. Hey, fecal matter occurs.
• 5:03
  Let's bring the audience up to speed. How is it you became interested in marine
• 5:08
  aviation, and what was your commissioning source? How did you get there?
• 5:12
  PLC junior in 79, and then seniors 81.
• 5:18
  My dad was a World War II and Korea veteran pilot in the South Pacific.
• 5:27
  Marine pilot. He was a marine pilot. He started in Dirty Shame.
• 5:31
  His dad started in Dirty Shame. No shit?
• 5:35
  Yes. Oh, shit hot. Well, hold on a second. This is a sport.
• 5:43
  It's a great story. Yeah. Yeah. I got to ask, knowing probably no,
• 5:49
  but is your dad still with us?
• 5:51
  No, no, no. I'm sorry. He passed away a long time ago. Okay. Yep.
• 5:55
  Too much. Gotta tell the dirty shame. Yeah.
• 5:58
  Yeah. Gotta tell the dirty shame story. Okay.
• 6:02
  How's my picture? That's okay. Yeah, you're good. Well, you were good.
• 6:05
  Now you're not. Yeah. Now you're good.
• 6:09
  Okay, so my dad was World War II.
• 6:12
  He was a, they called him R4Ds, and that's a DC-3, C-47 variant in the Navy Marine Corps.
• 6:20
  Yeah. Okay. He met my mom.
• 6:23
  This is like your typical...
• 6:27
  Marine aviation romance story. She's a Navy nurse at Cherry Point.
• 6:32
  And so after the war, he was stationed there. They met.
• 6:37
  But before that, he was a bachelor in the BOQ where the Dirty Shame used to
• 6:43
  be, that building there.
• 6:45
  And so those guys had to walk through the woods.
• 6:49
  You know, people didn't have automobiles back then, or there was only a few.
• 6:53
  So they had to walk through the down Roosevelt Boulevard or through the woods
• 6:57
  to get to the beers, the beer over where the current Oak Club is.
• 7:03
  And of course, it was just a bar and, you know, a couple dance floor and, and tables and chairs.
• 7:11
  So, of course, being Marines, they got sick of that.
• 7:15
  And there was no package store nearby. So they actually wrote,
• 7:19
  he got together with a bunch of the captains.
• 7:23
  It's always the captains, right? So they got together with a bunch of buddies
• 7:28
  and they wrote a letter, a petition, if you will, to the commanding, to the base general.
• 7:34
  And in the letter, they said, dear general, we're all veterans.
• 7:39
  We're thirsty all the time, blah, blah, blah blah. It's a dirty shame we don't
• 7:44
  have our own bar in the BOQ.
• 7:47
  So he tells me that his squatted commander calls him in front of his desk about
• 7:57
  a week after this letter goes up the chain and says,
• 8:00
  the general wants to see you and all these guys.
• 8:04
  So they all pile into the general's office.
• 8:07
  And he holds up the letter and he's looking really pissed, right? And he says,
• 8:14
  I got your letter. I might have some funds for it, but you guys are going to
• 8:19
  have to raise the money, the balance of the money through donations or whatever.
• 8:25
  And he said, but you guys got to come up with a name.
• 8:29
  And they didn't think of Dirty Shame at the time. So they got the letter back
• 8:34
  and they were looking through it and they said, holy shit, what a great name
• 8:38
  for a bar, The Dirty Shame.
• 8:41
  There's no history who's made.
• 8:45
  That's fantastic.
• 8:49
  Spico, didn't you break your arm playing crud in The Dirty Shame?
• 8:52
  No, never broke my arm. Who broke their arm?
• 8:56
  Somebody got hurt there. It was not broken.
• 8:59
  Hey, Pester, didn't we break a couple of that for us? It was the F-15 guys in Okinawa.
• 9:05
  Did we break a couple of arms there?
• 9:11
  I mean, our first night in Iwakuni, our first night in Iwakuni,
• 9:16
  we destroyed the pool table. It was gone.
• 9:19
  Yeah, that's right. $1,500 out of coffee mess.
• 9:27
  But I'm sure we heard some people. We had a disaster behind us, pretty much.
• 9:31
  Oh, yeah, it was awesome. Remember that bar there? That was Dirty's. Dirty's was in Iwakuni.
• 9:37
  Oh, my God. Yeah, I remember dog tags, puking, pissing, broken beer bottles,
• 9:45
  and just crazy shit. Yeah.
• 9:50
  That place seemed like it was about as big as half of somebody's room. It was small.
• 9:56
  Oh, my God. Remember when we would wipe the bar with Woody? We would always
• 9:59
  clean the bar off with Woody.
• 10:01
  Grab the wood bat and wipe the bar down. Do you guys remember throwing him in
• 10:05
  the – when he got really shit-faced because of his situation with his marriage?
• 10:10
  Do you remember throwing him in the koi pond like 10 times?
• 10:13
  We're just like, one, two.
• 10:17
  Throw him in the pond. Yeah, we used him as a bar wipe that night. Yeah, we used a bar wipe.
• 10:23
  He's trashed. We're picking him up. He's trying to fight us. We're like, what?
• 10:28
  Remember the kangaroo courts?
• 10:33
  How about the kangaroo courts where midget tossing was allowed in the K courts?
• 10:38
  Oh, yeah. And we used to throw him and Turbo across the room.
• 10:43
  Midget tossing allowed. Do you remember that? Cold leg? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 10:47
  So for the audience, a kangaroo court is usually when you've done a deployment
• 10:51
  or something like that, you have a court and you'll press charges.
• 10:55
  You make them up and you put in charges. Then you have like a judge.
• 10:58
  Like Spico was the grand poobah at the kangaroo court.
• 11:03
  We had when we were going through the training squadron 203,
• 11:06
  Spico was one of my instructors.
• 11:08
  And he was a grand poobah for that kangaroo court. And that's how I got my call
• 11:13
  song, actually, is Spico gave it to me because I had to declare an emergency
• 11:17
  getting a little low on gas.
• 11:19
  Did you tell that story? Yeah, we got that. Yeah. So Spico, I remember it was down to fumes and vapor.
• 11:27
  And Spico was the fucking king of the court.
• 11:31
  And he looked at me and he said, your call is now vapor. And that was it. Slash.
• 11:38
  Okay, what was it before that? Episode 62.
• 11:41
  What was your call sign before that, Vapor?
• 11:45
  That will that will stud muffin or you
• 11:48
  know something cool like the rope it was the rope it's
• 11:51
  skinny but it's long that's a
• 11:54
  good segue we we know history of
• 11:57
  call signs for everybody here except strut and spiko so let's start with strut
• 12:05
  how did you get the call signs wait a minute let me go first mine's a lot shorter
• 12:09
  okay my kids have been bugging me hold on hold on you don't I don't want to
• 12:14
  say that in this group, but yours is a lot shorter. I'm just saying.
• 12:23
  All right. So my kids have been trying to dig this out of me for 40, almost 40 years.
• 12:30
  And I refuse to tell them. So it's on my deathbed is when I divulge.
• 12:34
  All right. Off the strike. No way.
• 12:38
  That's bullshit. No, that is bullshit. They'll never listen to this.
• 12:42
  Come on, Spiko. The obvious guy in the tent?
• 12:45
  How about the group of old man in the tent?
• 12:49
  Yeah. Come on, Stryko. They'll never hear it.
• 12:54
  It's nothing, really. This isn't going anywhere. It's not like it's on YouTube. No, it's not.
• 13:00
  Come on, Struts. Yeah, no one listens to this. Oh, okay.
• 13:04
  Well, so I probably walked into 542 having been recruited by Smoke because he
• 13:11
  knew my brother, so he wanted to have, you know, his friend's brother in the
• 13:17
  squadron. He didn't really know me.
• 13:19
  He just recruited me into 542, and I had some self-made cool call sign or some
• 13:25
  shit like that, you know.
• 13:26
  And so Smoke, in front of the whole damn squadron, goes, Yep,
• 13:32
  Kuda, Kuda over there, he ain't Kuda anymore.
• 13:35
  He's now Strut, because he walked in here like he owned the fucking place.
• 13:50
  Fantastic that's about right that was it all right what could it fuck you man,
• 13:58
  well now somebody's got to drop
• 13:59
  dime on spikers counsel from me i think he appreciated honest wise counsel,
• 14:05
  Well, I don't know how wise it was, but it was honest. My favorite one was a
• 14:12
  fat-ass shitbird. That was beautiful.
• 14:21
  So awesome. But it was great to work for because he took all the credit for
• 14:25
  our work. I know. That's right.
• 14:29
  Oh, man. Yeah. Hey, yeah. All right. So, Spico.
• 14:35
  So, Spiko, how about, let's talk about Woody snoring in our tent,
• 14:40
  Spiko, and how did we handle that, and how did that affect you when you had to fly?
• 14:48
  I think we, didn't we stuff him into a blivet and drop him into Kuwait?
• 14:55
  We carried him out of the tent. We were right at that point.
• 14:59
  Well, Sal's not here. Didn't you guys throw to him?
• 15:03
  Huh? You guys always were throwing shit at him to get him to shut up,
• 15:07
  weren't you? Oh, we moved his cot out into the middle of the parking lot.
• 15:11
  Yeah, he'd wake up. There'd be boots all around his cot in the morning. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:16
  It was like the three stooges snoring. It'd be like, you know,
• 15:22
  every freaking night. It was awful.
• 15:26
  It was like 100,000 decibels. It was like he was faking it.
• 15:30
  And, man, he was dead asleep. Sal and I were right next to him and we were throwing
• 15:35
  all kinds of shit at him. Soup cans.
• 15:39
  Remember, he put up his mosquito netting to block your boots. That's right.
• 15:47
  He and Pisser were at the other end, but what Pisser's getting at is,
• 15:51
  we got to tell everybody.
• 15:53
  So what happened is when we got, you know, when the word goes out for Desert
• 15:58
  Shield, you know, the Marines you know, we're there right away.
• 16:02
  Because when you go to Westpac for the audience to understand,
• 16:05
  there's a metric that measures the combat capability of a squadron.
• 16:09
  When you're overseas doing coalition exercises and stuff like that,
• 16:13
  you're getting a lot of high numerical combat ratings, so your metric gets higher.
• 16:18
  So when you get back, we are a very highly combat-evaluated squadron.
• 16:23
  That's why we're the first ones to go.
• 16:24
  So 331 had gotten back before us, so they hop on the boat and we go.
• 16:29
  So that's kind of what gets us there early.
• 16:32
  But now the war is over and the air
• 16:34
  force is using the tankers to haul their boys home and
• 16:38
  the marines we're kind of shit out of luck so the navy
• 16:40
  calls up and says hey if you guys can get the
• 16:43
  road of spain we'll clear off the deck of
• 16:46
  a couple carriers and we can get the harriers home because
• 16:49
  we're shit out of luck there the air force is taking care of their own and we're like
• 16:52
  we've been here eight months and these air
• 16:54
  some of these air force going to be like two or three and you know and they're
• 16:57
  already going home so we had to get to rota and so we got this thing all worked
• 17:02
  out we get to rota the airport the navy's going to fly off their s3s and their
• 17:07
  e2s something like that make enough room and you know this to jump ahead a little
• 17:10
  bit we stuffed like what 23.
• 17:13
  Harriers on the kennedy i came home on the big john and then the other one was
• 17:18
  a saratoga yeah so we're taking off to go to rota and then spiko why don't you tell us what happened.
• 17:28
  About what?
• 17:30
  What is this, Pick on Me Day? No, just tell us about how. Oh,
• 17:35
  okay, so this is a Woody segue.
• 17:38
  Oh, yeah. So, oh, and First Sergeant Castleman, remember him?
• 17:43
  Oh, yeah. The AVI chief, he somehow scammed a TV set, and he was right across
• 17:51
  the little street from us, and he played that as loud as Woody.
• 17:56
  Anyway, so Woody kept me up for 24 hours straight, and I didn't get sleep the
• 18:02
  night before. And this is when we weren't flying, right?
• 18:05
  And I was deadbeat, tired, and I told the CEO that I don't know if I can make
• 18:13
  it all the way to Rhoda asleep.
• 18:17
  And uh oh my gosh
• 18:20
  i was i was literally as
• 18:23
  scared as i was in my life because i was like falling
• 18:26
  asleep in the cockpit on the climb
• 18:29
  out and then we ended up over riad and one of the our one of the tankers went
• 18:35
  dead right two of them yeah two of them and and straw dog was was my division
• 18:44
  lead And I just got on the back and I said, hey, if we're going to divert,
• 18:49
  I'll go with them and go back to base because I can't make it the rest of the
• 18:54
  way. I'm just dead tired.
• 18:57
  And sure enough, we switched around. Who ended up in Riyadh?
• 19:02
  Any of these guys? Sal, Rosie.
• 19:07
  I was with you guys. Woody, myself.
• 19:12
  Yeah. Woody! Yeah, I was with y'all. Did he keep you working? And then we ended up. No.
• 19:20
  We ended what? Well, the funny thing was, like you said, two tankers went down.
• 19:24
  So we had, I don't know, it must have been like almost 14 airplanes or some
• 19:28
  crazy thing, 12 or 14 airplanes on one tanker.
• 19:33
  And I was watching my gas, and it was like. 12. First, we had a full back gas.
• 19:37
  I was dashed 12. Yeah, 12.
• 19:40
  And then the next time I tanked, I had like 9,000 pounds.
• 19:43
  And then the next time I tanked, I had, like, 7,000 pounds. And I'm like,
• 19:47
  the math doesn't work out here. There's no way we're getting there.
• 19:50
  Because I was like, I'm going to play too long.
• 19:52
  So, yeah, we ended up diverting to Riyadh, which we discovered.
• 19:58
  The Air Force actually had, like, a Baskin-Robbins and Camel Rides.
• 20:01
  I mean, like, we were in GP tents from, like, the Korean War.
• 20:05
  And they had, like, these blow-up tents with air conditioning and a Baskin-Robbins. Yeah, exactly.
• 20:10
  Wow. Pizza Hut. That's just the way to live, man. Movie theater.
• 20:13
  There's a little movie theater. Yeah.
• 20:16
  And I slept like a damn baby for 16 hours.
• 20:20
  Spico, can I ask you, how did you end up in People Magazine?
• 20:27
  It is Spico Night. Well, no, that was Disco.
• 20:31
  That was Disco and our War Heroes Disco and Pisser.
• 20:38
  Right? In fact, I have a copy right here in front of me. Oh, awesome.
• 20:46
  Did you get him to sign it for you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yep.
• 20:52
  Ellen got it. It was beauty.
• 20:54
  So these guys were waltzing. Did you guys tell this story, Vapor?
• 20:58
  You had told this story or strut, right?
• 21:00
  These two douchebags were just waltzing around campus with these little wannabes
• 21:07
  in tow with a movie camera and dictation machine.
• 21:13
  And it was there I was. And, oh, this is my tent. And this is where I ate.
• 21:20
  And this is where I take a crap and here's where I shower.
• 21:23
  It was just disgusting.
• 21:26
  And they finally end up in – oh, and by the way, where was that basketball hoop
• 21:31
  that you guys played at? It's still there, right?
• 21:35
  Is it? It's still there, man. Yeah, that was at the south end or the north end, yeah.
• 21:41
  So they end up in our tent and, of course, Pisser is leading the little entourage.
• 21:49
  And and i'm the only one there and finally i i'm
• 21:52
  like no for god's sakes get
• 21:55
  out of here and so pisser jumps in
• 21:57
  my lap and starts giving me a a wedgie or a head noogie or something like that
• 22:02
  and now that's how the pictures were taken and i don't know how the hell that
• 22:07
  got into the magazine picture well you're bad-mouthing them yeah oh that's true
• 22:13
  i was yeah hey speaking of He hasn't had your coffee yet.
• 22:17
  Disco or Vapor, he hasn't had his coffee yet. Oh, hey, hold on. I've got to pull that up.
• 22:22
  Yeah, if you guys can pull this up. So this is Soldier of Fortune magazine,
• 22:25
  and there's Storm and Norman Schwarzkopf.
• 22:28
  There's the young guns, man. And they're right here, baby.
• 22:31
  There they are. Young guns.
• 22:34
  But moving to your – yeah, there you go. There they are.
• 22:39
  Can you see that okay? Yeah, and that picture that Vapor is holding up is up
• 22:44
  on – So there I was at US slash episode slash one six zero, which is the title of the show. Young guns.
• 22:52
  So, yeah, that's a pretty cool one.
• 22:57
  Well, to their credit, the people, people, uh, correspondents showed back up when LZ got killed.
• 23:05
  Yeah. They did show up for that shitty day.
• 23:08
  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's right. Can you tell what happened that day Without
• 23:16
  bringing the mood down too much.
• 23:19
  Well I mean no that didn't come out right
• 23:21
  uh so so this
• 23:25
  is Pister I'll tell the story so they when they were taking pictures of the
• 23:29
  two of us Disco and I getting ready to fly combat mission they didn't really
• 23:32
  gather the severity of what we were doing and LZ was our public affairs officer
• 23:38
  so he was the guy that brought them around and Mongoose looked at us and we
• 23:43
  were briefing he He goes,
• 23:44
  let's go and piss her a brief and start taking pictures of those guys.
• 23:47
  So they follow us around.
• 23:48
  So when he died and we had a memorial service, they came back.
• 23:52
  And I think they were in shock.
• 23:54
  They were like, this is, you know, it's a contact sport. I think they were surprised
• 23:58
  that people actually died.
• 24:00
  And they were very somber, I think.
• 24:04
  We weren't because I think the alcohol was flowing that night.
• 24:08
  Well, shit got real flowing. It was kind of like with Enos. Enos and Okinawa.
• 24:14
  You were getting let up. Got him at a wake.
• 24:17
  I won $800 from Dog that night. $800 that night,
• 24:24
  Enos died. I won $800 from Dog that night. Oh, ouch.
• 24:29
  All right. Spike, let's hold it to People Magazine. There's our guys. Oh, yeah.
• 24:37
  What issue is that, Spike? What year and month? Yeah. March.
• 24:44
  That was actually Valentine's Day when they took all those pictures.
• 24:49
  It's got Jack Memphis in there. Yay, baby. Oh, it looks like Richard Dreyfuss. Jack Memphis.
• 24:56
  Jim and Tammy Faye. Jim and Tammy Faye. All right, let's see the picture of
• 25:01
  Spike out. Here we go, here we go, here we go.
• 25:04
  Look at that. Oh, you all signed it. Wow, look at that. At our reunion. Nice.
• 25:14
  All right, let's see the pictures play, Co. Wait a minute. Hold on.
• 25:19
  Wait a minute. There's disco.
• 25:23
  I'm eating a mutton and rice again.
• 25:28
  With his left hand. Yeah. That's right.
• 25:33
  Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. They're working out here.
• 25:36
  They're the only guys that played ball. The basketball hoop. Oh, yeah.
• 25:40
  Look at their shorts. Look at those white boys Those red silkies Toes are on the ground,
• 25:47
  Sorry to the listening audience You gotta go to youtube.com So there was AV8B
• 25:54
  And look at these photos There's Spiko Yeah,
• 26:00
  The grumpy old man of the tent The patriarch of the tent Hush,
• 26:05
  hush, hush There he is Trying to,
• 26:10
  Is that LZ in the background? That's probably Disco. That's my big ass.
• 26:18
  You damn kids, get off my lap.
• 26:21
  I just found this. I'm sure you guys have seen this before.
• 26:26
  Laminated map. There you go. Sweet city.
• 26:32
  Very nice. This is the big one. That's the kill boxes?
• 26:39
  Yeah. Yep, all the IPs.
• 26:43
  Yep. That was your moving map.
• 26:47
  You moved it around? You could move it around in your cockpit all you wanted.
• 26:51
  Hey, Spike, though. I don't know if you remember, Spike, but one time you came
• 26:55
  back from a mission, and I was talking to you.
• 26:57
  You were just telling me about it. You said, yeah, so anyway,
• 26:59
  we rolled it on the target, and I could see these guys.
• 27:03
  Rocky's down there on the guns. And he goes, they were doing this.
• 27:14
  Spinning a barrel around and shoot at your ass,
• 27:19
  I fell out of my chair and I was laughing so hard.
• 27:26
  Oh man so disco I will never forget that disco do you remember I got one more
• 27:34
  picture I got one more picture. Oh, here we go.
• 27:39
  So that one is... Are they playing craps? Yeah, we were shooting...
• 27:44
  Probably shooting dice. So that one ended up on the... I don't see the picture.
• 27:49
  You got it. Can you guys bring it up? Soldier of Fortune, right?
• 27:55
  No, that was... This is in U.S. News and World Report a year afterwards.
• 28:01
  This photo was a Reuters guy who I never saw.
• 28:04
  He was across the airfield he took that and then it ended up in the New York
• 28:09
  Times London, it went all over the world oh wow shooting traps in front of a
• 28:14
  harrier is that when you're showing the marines the map?
• 28:19
  Yeah I love that that's a great one Disco, do you remember when I borrowed your
• 28:27
  canteen for a day of landing on the ship?
• 28:31
  For a what now? So we're doing, you know, we're doing, we're going out to the
• 28:36
  ship to do a whole day of flight ops.
• 28:39
  And I needed an extra canteen. So you let me your canteen.
• 28:43
  And, you know, remember we, yeah, I pissed at it.
• 28:49
  Why am I not? I pissed at it. Well, I ran out of water and I had to piss.
• 28:55
  So I pissed in Disco's canteen and then I gave it back to him.
• 28:58
  All right. Well, we got to tell the Lyman DeNord story if we're going to talk
• 29:01
  about pissing in a canteen. So for the audience to know, we leave Cherry Point, North Carolina.
• 29:06
  We're heading to Rota and we leave. Somebody had this brilliant idea.
• 29:10
  We'll leave it like 11 o'clock at night. That way we'll get there in the morning.
• 29:14
  So we got a guy from, well, his name's Lyman DeNord. So what freaking state
• 29:18
  do you think he's from? Yeah, he's from West Virginia.
• 29:20
  So we put on these things called dry suits. And so they're not really comfortable
• 29:26
  and they kind of seal around your neck. You got to dump baby powder and shit.
• 29:29
  Poopy suit. Anyway, we call them the poopy suit, and you're about to know why.
• 29:33
  So they're not comfortable at all, but, you know, this is kind of a long flight
• 29:37
  from Cherry Point behind the tank. They're refueling all the way to Rota Spain.
• 29:41
  And so we land in Rota, and these suits are kind of uncomfortable,
• 29:45
  and the zipper, like, goes, like, across your arms and chest.
• 29:49
  So you can't put them – you can't zip them and unzip them.
• 29:53
  You know, the plane captain's got to come up and do it.
• 29:56
  So, you know, we all get out. You know, we stand there like this.
• 29:58
  The plane captain's unzipped, and we peel this freaking thing off.
• 30:01
  We got our flight suit stuff underneath.
• 30:03
  Well, I'm talking to the one plane captain. It might have been Taylor.
• 30:06
  And he tells me, yeah, it's like a little zipper across the,
• 30:12
  And it opens. I get hit with the smell of like fucking diarrhea just wafts over
• 30:20
  the freaking choking, almost gag.
• 30:24
  He's like, sir, what the hell? And I'm just, well, you know.
• 30:29
  I had about two hours into that flight.
• 30:31
  And I thought, well, I can be really uncomfortable for the next four or five
• 30:35
  hours or I can just relieve myself right now because it's a dry suit and it
• 30:40
  won't let the seat get wet. with shit.
• 30:43
  So he shit himself and flew five hours across sitting in his shit in his price.
• 30:50
  And that's somehow more comfortable? Oh, God. Do you guys remember him at Westpac?
• 30:54
  That's fucking brilliant.
• 30:56
  Do you guys remember him at Westpac when we walked in his room that one time
• 30:59
  and he had a pair of U-trial over the back of the chair?
• 31:04
  You walk in, there was a pair of U-trial over the back of the chair.
• 31:07
  There's a bacon strip in the back of it. You're like, what the? fuck.
• 31:14
  You wipe your ass. It takes too much time.
• 31:21
  Ryman DeNord met his wife. He's at the grudge match Saturday night in the little
• 31:29
  town of West Virginia. He's watching the drag races.
• 31:32
  He said, he's watching it and this one car goes and it's some Chevy Chevalier.
• 31:38
  Man, it's a beautiful car.
• 31:39
  It gets done and they kind of pull the winner up, up to the front there, and the driver gets out,
• 31:46
  whips off their helmet, and does this and this mane of brunette hair falls out
• 31:54
  and he told me, he says, Naper,
• 31:56
  I saw that brunette hair waving and I knew what.
• 32:01
  That was Mrs. Lyman Denord. That was Pam, right?
• 32:05
  That was Pam. He freaking married her and remember,
• 32:09
  the The CO called us in and he said, you guys got to make sure he quits calling
• 32:15
  Pam because Pam called him and said, he gets lonely and he calls me and our
• 32:21
  freaking phone bill is we can't afford it.
• 32:24
  So we have to be on phone watch for Lyman to not call Pam.
• 32:29
  It's called phone sex. Our router's here. He was a piece of work,
• 32:35
  man. He was funny as shit.
• 32:40
  A fig and repeat. I'm going to throw this in here just in case.
• 32:42
  I don't know when you're going to cut us off.
• 32:44
  But I just want to say this on behalf of everybody here.
• 32:48
  There was a guy named Stephen Ambrose who did a great job. A lot of people know
• 32:52
  he wrote like, you know. The Badge Courage. The Brothers.
• 32:56
  And Soldier and stuff like that. And what he was famous for was he basically
• 33:00
  preserved the stories of that generation.
• 33:03
  That, you know, greatest generation and what they did. And he had to go down.
• 33:07
  And I just want to thank you guys because you guys are the Stephen Ambrose of
• 33:11
  the current generation because what you guys are doing is you're getting the stories.
• 33:16
  And so, you know, our kids and grandkids can listen to this stuff because you guys have preserved it.
• 33:21
  So I want to do a little toast here to fucking Fig and repeat. Thanks, guys. Cheers.
• 33:27
  Thank you. Thanks, guys. Cheers. Thanks, boys. Yeah.
• 33:31
  Fig, did we fall bass-ackwards into something amazing here or what? Yeah.
• 33:35
  I mean, we just. you know it was selfish because I just liked hearing everybody's
• 33:40
  stories and apparently everybody else does too yeah,
• 33:47
  I gotta say repeat you got the voice for I know I have a face for radio a face
• 33:54
  and a voice he's got the Sam the man,
• 33:59
  that's right late night FM DJ there right night All right, everybody.
• 34:07
  11.30 in the city. 78 degrees tonight. And Fig just dropped a stogie in his lap.
• 34:16
  Son of a bad word. That's going to hurt. That's going to leave a mark.
• 34:22
  Wolfman Jack. All right, everybody.
• 34:26
  Yeah, Wolfman Jack. Oh, man. Well, this is fantastic.
• 34:30
  We're coming up. We're about 145 or so. We go a little more.
• 34:33
  I think we probably break this one up into two shows as well.
• 34:37
  I can't remember the last time I've had this much fun on the show,
• 34:41
  but holy shit, my core workout is done. It's been a good core workout, really. Yeah, it is.
• 34:46
  Wrap your ribs up before.
• 34:51
  All right, is there anybody you want to throw under the bus? I do.
• 34:55
  Actually, I got a quick one I just want to mention to Pisser.
• 34:58
  I got a note from Lawman. You told the story about checking in on the flight, or now I'm confused.
• 35:04
  He was either checking in or checking out on the flight when he and Woody were
• 35:08
  rolling in on the flight.
• 35:11
  That uh woody got shot down and lawman wrote to me and said oh my god i i didn't
• 35:18
  realize that that that's who that was in front of us so anyone else here were
• 35:22
  they on that flight that night,
• 35:24
  so it was rosie rosie and
• 35:27
  i were on that mission we we got canceled the afternoon
• 35:30
  prior because the highway to hell you know guys like strut those
• 35:33
  guys were turning out of tan and g in the ford bases and
• 35:37
  the afternoon guys they just we didn't have airplanes but the
• 35:40
  next morning rosie and i went over the highway to hell at uh
• 35:43
  low altitude you know under the overcast jink and and we hit a republican guard
• 35:48
  target and right as i was pulling off i heard lawman check in whatever his call
• 35:55
  son was you know two three four and i played that tape for him uh years ago i had it,
• 36:02
  And then shortly thereafter, we heard he'd gotten shot down his dashboard.
• 36:07
  Hey, Pisser, tell him it's a different Woody Pisser.
• 36:12
  Oh, yeah, not P. Woodman T., but Reg Underwood. Let me find the show.
• 36:16
  I'll mention that in a minute.
• 36:19
  Yeah. I'll find the show number that Lawman goes through the entire process about that.
• 36:25
  It was called the... Yeah, I think there's some confusion.
• 36:28
  It was the first... Underwood was off the ship.
• 36:31
  It was the last good day or something like that.
• 36:36
  Just to clarify. The bumblebees? Yes. Yeah, they're coming off the ship.
• 36:41
  And just to clarify, you had two choices that day.
• 36:44
  You either fly under the overcast or you don't. So as Marines, we're going to fly.
• 36:50
  We're going to fly under the overcast or you just go home.
• 36:57
  For Rosie and I that day, it was no question.
• 37:01
  And but it was sporty i mean it was i think it
• 37:03
  was like 7 000 over and we were just taking the
• 37:06
  shit out of here it is so it's episode 25 so there
• 37:09
  i was that us slash episode slash 25 here's to
• 37:12
  woody the last worst day and that's lawman going through the
• 37:15
  whole story of how he was launched woody asked
• 37:19
  uh hey man i'm not feeling it can you take the lead tomorrow and he did and
• 37:23
  uh woody was dashed for and wound up getting shot down on that lawman goes through
• 37:27
  all the whole graze registration and all the work that those folks do to pay
• 37:32
  respect to the body as they treat it and prepare it for a travel home and burial.
• 37:38
  So, Woody's wife and my wife were in the hospital together having babies. Oh, Donda. Yeah.
• 37:46
  Yeah. Yeah. Well, what Pistler was talking about, about the overcast and so on.
• 37:50
  Thank you. Just kind of going back a little bit, you know, when General Boomer
• 37:54
  talked to us, we were, we talked earlier that he was going to hold us.
• 37:58
  To be their artillery. And we, the Harry's were not scheduled for day one because
• 38:02
  he did not want to attract his long range artillery.
• 38:06
  He says, I need to keep you guys because I'm going to need you when we go through the breach.
• 38:11
  That's what I need. I'm going to need your deep strike counter battery stuff.
• 38:15
  But what happened on day one is, as Strutt was talking, Lieutenant Colonel Barry,
• 38:19
  who is the commander of 1st SHRIG, which is Surveillance Reconnaissance Intelligence Group,
• 38:23
  he's commanding a unit that has marine recon army
• 38:27
  special forces and navy seals and they
• 38:30
  have eight ops observation posts
• 38:33
  and they're probing looking for the weak parts
• 38:36
  so the marines can know where they're going to breach where they're going to
• 38:40
  push through this incredible breach that saddam has built they're very good
• 38:45
  at it they just fought a 10-year war against the iranians They know how to set
• 38:50
  up defenses in depth with obstacles, minefields, and everything.
• 38:54
  So that's what these guys are doing. And what happened is when the air war kicked
• 38:58
  off, the Iraqis are attacking back with, what do they have? Artillery.
• 39:03
  And they're firing on these OPs because they'd seen movement and stuff.
• 39:08
  So they're shooting on these guys.
• 39:09
  So the Strig calls in. And again, remember, the Air Force had said,
• 39:14
  you know, we will handle this close air support for you guys and blah, blah, blah.
• 39:17
  Because we're going to hold the Harrison Reserve. And the Marine Corps is like,
• 39:20
  okay, that sounds like a good deal.
• 39:22
  And so Hostage 75 is an OB-10 Bronco, which has a FAC-A, Forward Air Control
• 39:29
  Airborne, in the back seat.
• 39:30
  And they spot, they get called in, they go up there, they see the artillery
• 39:34
  batteries firing from across the border. And these guys are feet wet looking at the stuff.
• 39:40
  And so they call in for the – and so the responding aircraft are Air Force A-10s.
• 39:45
  And they show up. And guess what?
• 39:47
  There is a cloud layer. It could be Saddam Hussein.
• 39:50
  It lit off like 600 freaking oil wells. And you got this layer of smoke and cloud mix.
• 39:56
  It makes a hard ceiling. It was around 7,000, 8,000 feet.
• 40:00
  And the Air Force ROE, I'm not calling A-10 guys a bunch of cowards or anything
• 40:04
  like that. I'm not saying that. But they showed up.
• 40:06
  Their ROE was not to go below 10,000 feet. And so they freaking leave.
• 40:11
  And Lieutenant Colonel Barry, who then became a colonel, wrote an article. And he talks about this.
• 40:16
  His quote was, the Air Force left us high and dry.
• 40:19
  And he was making a point. This guy's an infantry guy on why the Marine Corps
• 40:23
  always has to keep their close air support.
• 40:25
  So they freaking leave him, quote, high and dry. So the direct air support center,
• 40:30
  what do they do? They launch the alert carriers.
• 40:32
  Getting back to what Pissar said, you know, you have a choice.
• 40:35
  You either go under the freaking clouds, you highlight yourself against that overcast.
• 40:40
  And so you're under it. And you can
• 40:43
  look up and you're highlighted flying underneath that and it exposes you.
• 40:46
  Or you freaking go above it and you're not effective. And as Marines,
• 40:51
  we are going to fucking go in there when the grunts are under fire and do our job.
• 40:56
  That's what attack pilots do in the fucking Marine Corps. And so we went under
• 41:00
  him, and that's how we flew.
• 41:01
  And that's what Pisser's talking
• 41:02
  about, that, you know, you can be a pussy and fucking stay above it.
• 41:06
  We can go do your fucking job and get underneath the clouds and go hit your
• 41:09
  target, which is what we're getting paid to do.
• 41:12
  Well said. U-Raw. Yeah. There he is.
• 41:17
  Yeah.
• 41:19
  Yeah he was in so we had a draft at 203 remember that so he he worked with me and,
• 41:27
  law man so we were all pulled into the squadrons from 203 to supplement hey
• 41:36
  can you be a little more specific about that i know what you're talking about
• 41:39
  before our nine the draft talk Talk about that.
• 41:43
  You guys were all instructors at the RAG, right?
• 41:47
  A couple of us were, yeah. There was a number of us that were over at the RAG,
• 41:53
  and the squadron COs got together with the group commander to get pilots from the RAG.
• 42:03
  Into their squadrons to plus us up so we are we're at full to yeah table of organization,
• 42:11
  so a number of us yeah yeah yeah yeah only in wartime right so the they got together and myself,
• 42:22
  and dave ellis chief was an alternate and i forget who else came oh clance came
• 42:30
  over didn't he yeah Yeah, Clint.
• 42:32
  Yeah. Yeah. From 223. Yeah.
• 42:38
  The gorilla. The gorilla. McGill. McGill. Harry back. Harry back and all. Oh, my gosh.
• 42:47
  Yep. So Reg was one of them and Lawman, I know Lawman was.
• 42:54
  Yep. And they went to 331 and they got plopped on the ship.
• 42:59
  And I don't know who else went who went to 231 and then 223 sent a debt to Rota
• 43:06
  Spain. That's all they did.
• 43:09
  And didn't Lovie come over? Lovie came over. Pisser, what's that?
• 43:16
  Pisser, what's that LST code? You know, Lovie's like I'm like 1688,
• 43:21
  Lovie's like, I don't understand any of this fucking laser shit.
• 43:25
  Oh, God. That's hilarious.
• 43:28
  What's going on to, 223 was on combat replacement in Rota.
• 43:33
  They flew there and had planes on standby.
• 43:36
  Their pilots weren't going to fly, but they wanted to get Harriers closer.
• 43:40
  Like I said, you're getting back to these casualties.
• 43:43
  So they had a debt there. And if we were going to be losing aircraft in theater,
• 43:47
  the planes were halfway there and they were going to fly in from Rota in.
• 43:50
  And so that's why two twenty three was in Rota.
• 43:52
  Hey, paper, didn't you didn't you escort Trey's body back home?
• 43:57
  Now, I escorted Earl's body back home from Westpac. OK, I knew you did one of
• 44:02
  them. Remember that? Yeah.
• 44:05
  Yeah. Hey, let's let's tell the audience about what happened in Huntsville, Alabama.
• 44:12
  So Huntsville, Alabama is probably, this audience knows, there's a lot of aerospace industry there.
• 44:17
  And so they were going to build a memorial to like, it just kind of came up.
• 44:22
  They kind of had this little walk of fame that's up in Huntsville.
• 44:25
  And they were going to build a memorial to like, you know, kind of an honor
• 44:29
  of all the aviators that have, you know, given their lives to the country.
• 44:33
  Well, Trey Wilborn, who we've been talking about here, he's from Huntsville. He went to Auburn.
• 44:39
  He went to University of Auburn. He's War Eagle. And he and he's from Huntsville.
• 44:44
  So his brother in law. Oh, that's awesome. Great pictures. So his brother and
• 44:49
  his family find out about this.
• 44:52
  And they said, hey, you know, you've got a local boy here that died in Desert Storm.
• 44:57
  Here you guys go. I think I got this. Hang on. Let me see if I can get this
• 45:00
  picture. It's actually that.
• 45:01
  Yeah. It's the article. If I can get this thing here. Yeah.
• 45:06
  That's the picture. If I can get it right. So what happens is when they build this memorial.
• 45:11
  Yeah, there it is. They say, hey, let's there's the photo that they took.
• 45:15
  And Disco got to those guys. And so they made a statue.
• 45:19
  And we all flew out there for that dedication. We got some nice pictures of
• 45:23
  all the 542 guys all flew out there for that dedication.
• 45:27
  And then remember, Pisser, you and I, we then we jumped on the floats for the
• 45:30
  parade. Remember that? They had a parade.
• 45:32
  Well, one day they donated. It was during a Veterans Day Memorial Day or something
• 45:36
  like that. And we rode in the parade.
• 45:39
  Yeah, it was like three miles or five miles in the most patriotic city I've ever seen.
• 45:44
  I mean, old ladies in wheelchairs getting up and saluting and really impressive,
• 45:49
  Huntsville, Alabama. Yeah.
• 45:55
  Yeah, my son graduated from Auburn, and I told him that story.
• 45:59
  I said, man, you got one of my old squadron mates went to Auburn,
• 46:02
  and there's a statue of him up in Huntsville, Alabama.
• 46:06
  So, yeah, here's the tray.
• 46:09
  Boom, Semper Fiato. Yeah, no kidding, man. Great guy, man.
• 46:13
  That was, I remember. Yeah, so I had a short and undistinguished political career.
• 46:19
  I was the mayor of Ponce Inlet, Florida, and they set up a veterans memorial there.
• 46:25
  And they had, you could buy bricks. And I put two bricks in it for Trey and Underwood.
• 46:31
  And I had to give a speech when they opened that memorial. And I had to inform
• 46:37
  the public that, you know, it's a real deal when you got people out doing this stuff.
• 46:42
  And I had to explain that, you know, that these two guys, you know,
• 46:46
  to this general audience, I said, these two guys went out and fireballs alone.
• 46:51
  And Underwood had a five month old daughter he had never met.
• 46:56
  And Trey had a fiance and a wedding that never happened. You know, so I told him. Yeah.
• 47:02
  Good for you, Strutt. Thanks for doing that, man.
• 47:08
  So you're a mayor, huh? Oh, I was.
• 47:12
  It was a short and undistinguished political career. Mayor Rutledge.
• 47:18
  Your Honor, I can just tell you that.
• 47:22
  Spica, what do you know about flying poop fish?
• 47:26
  Oh, I wasn't involved in that. That was you and somebody else. Okay.
• 47:33
  We'll leave that one alone. That was our debt to Somalia.
• 47:41
  Yeah, Somalia. Where Pisser was trying to break the ceiling record in the Harrier,
• 47:46
  which you probably did, didn't you?
• 47:49
  55,000 feet, baby.
• 47:53
  We took all the struts off the aircraft and just had a gun pack.
• 47:57
  I got the 49 once and I thought I was doing it. Holy shit.
• 48:03
  You obviously weren't trying hard enough for you. Apparently not.
• 48:07
  For some reason, we had no satellite coverage in Somalia.
• 48:11
  So the Mew commander challenged us to get him some footage all the way to Kenya.
• 48:17
  So so we i i set up a brief for
• 48:20
  him and you know we had a lead airplane a trailer plane a camera
• 48:23
  airplane and we went all the way into kenya with if
• 48:26
  you study that you know it's potentially early bin laden although he was probably
• 48:30
  in sudan at the time that but the technicals but when we were done man we were
• 48:36
  really low on gas and there was no atc so we and we had nothing on the airplane
• 48:41
  I mean, no strikes, as Spyko said.
• 48:44
  So we just climbed and climbed and climbed, and then did an idle descent from like 160 miles away.
• 48:50
  Yeah, I was at 5.50, man.
• 48:52
  What? Puckering. I mean, we were low on gas. How high did you get?
• 48:58
  $55,000. Holy shit.
• 49:05
  What's the surface ceiling of the hair? Wasn't it like $42,000 or $43,000? Whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 49:11
  I think that Natop said $40,000.
• 49:16
  Spico remembers it because we were really low on gas. I think it was in the air.
• 49:22
  That was like you're on flashers over the ramp, I think.
• 49:27
  Yeah i was super low on gas um yeah yeah
• 49:30
  we i think we were idle from 160 miles
• 49:33
  out to the ship but there was no air traffic control in somalia and
• 49:36
  we just i just kept climbing i think
• 49:39
  it was like digger and maybe somebody else
• 49:43
  but but we brought the imagery back to
• 49:45
  the mute commander and they used it to actually do an amphibious
• 49:48
  landing and they drove all the way to kenya and they
• 49:51
  use those pictures we handheld camera
• 49:54
  to create the flops to create
• 49:57
  the flops all the way to kenya yep damn
• 50:01
  yep that's great take it easy guys i gotta run it's fun so auto i need you to
• 50:06
  leave your computer connected please so we get uploaded your your when you when
• 50:11
  you pitch out thank you sir i was just going be good so don't lump the mule
• 50:16
  on it don't lump your mule,
• 50:19
  oh boy all right so i'm going to take you out of the screen but uh leave your
• 50:23
  computer connected thank you and we're having another god bless marine semper
• 50:28
  fly yeah thanks man take care.
• 50:32
  All right. They're peeling off. Yeah. Auto's bingo. We're starting to get flashers.
• 50:38
  There you go. So I've got one here. I've got the, there it is.
• 50:43
  There's the media assets.
• 50:44
  So we heard this story from Pisser's perspective in episode 160.
• 50:50
  And it's a picture that he took of Disco.
• 50:54
  Disco. What the fuck are you thinking? So we got a picture of Disco inverted
• 50:59
  over Pisser in a hair. I love it.
• 51:04
  I would say from the looks of that picture that the lift vector is a problem
• 51:08
  already I can say this probably didn't end well,
• 51:13
  no it didn't end well because we're both still here but you can see my cock
• 51:19
  and I was just I'm about to kill one of my friends this is not a good thing,
• 51:28
  that's obvious.
• 51:32
  Oh, my God. Let's take a roller. Yeah, that's one of the things.
• 51:36
  Do you see any drop tanks in that picture?
• 51:41
  There's no ordinance. There's nothing. Yeah. I thought I could have swore we
• 51:44
  had drop tanks, but obviously we did.
• 51:46
  But, yeah, I remember that day. Holy shit.
• 51:50
  Where was that? That was between Japan and Korea.
• 51:55
  Wow. And Mike had just bought, I think Mike had just bought a new camera,
• 51:59
  where he had a camera and he wanted to take a picture.
• 52:01
  He goes, hey, hey, disco, fly over the top of me and go inverted,
• 52:05
  and I want to take a picture of you.
• 52:10
  And we're already, you know, we're already just pretty slow.
• 52:14
  And, you know, it's just physics, man.
• 52:16
  You pull the nose up, potential energy goes away.
• 52:20
  Just basic physics. I roll inverted and a Harrier does not fly inverted anyway worth of shit.
• 52:27
  And that thing's coming down like nobody's business.
• 52:30
  And I got the stick, and I'm going front to back, side to side,
• 52:35
  and I'm getting nothing.
• 52:36
  And I'm seeing – it's a great picture because my mouth's wide open. I'm screaming.
• 52:43
  And Pister's looking at – I can see his camera looking at me.
• 52:47
  He's taking this picture, and I'm going, I'm going to – I'm going to kill him.
• 52:51
  He's – we're going to die.
• 52:53
  There's going to be two jets in the bottom of the ocean here.
• 52:55
  I'm going to survive because I'm out in front of him. So I'll be able to punch
• 52:58
  out, but he'll be dead instantly.
• 53:00
  And I'm not kidding you, man. It was the last second. I mean,
• 53:03
  I swear to God, God just went, push the rudder pedal.
• 53:06
  And I literally rolled around it. I just, I literally rudder rolled around it.
• 53:11
  And somehow, how, I don't know. I don't know.
• 53:16
  It was a God thing. It had to be. Well, he knocked me off autopilot.
• 53:20
  Otto's not here to defend himself. but he did that shit in Desert Storm with me.
• 53:27
  Otto did the same thing and I'm like, he's like, hey, I'm going to do a canopy
• 53:31
  roll and I go what? What's that?
• 53:35
  And suddenly I'm looking at that same damn picture and I had to get out of the way.
• 53:43
  I'm like, let's not do this shit. Yeah, we should all be dead. Let's all go home.
• 53:51
  So I did not know because i was looking through
• 53:53
  a camera yeah and he knocked me off he knocks
• 53:56
  me off autopilot and i thought shit that was a
• 53:59
  good flight but you know you know i'm looking up you know baboosh autopilot
• 54:03
  off and then he rolls into trail and then he doesn't
• 54:06
  say anything and he's really quiet and then
• 54:10
  we're heading to osan and you know it's me i'm gonna
• 54:12
  go into the fucking bracket as fast as i can of course he and
• 54:15
  he was funny he's like i'm gonna do straight in you know
• 54:19
  wasn't until we got on the ground he's like oh my god it
• 54:25
  was it was bad yeah yeah he just two mile trail straight in yeah of course i
• 54:33
  go under the bracket you know as fast as i can which was normally what i did
• 54:37
  too i like i mean it's like hey how fast can we get away from you.
• 54:42
  Well that was that was a special one but i
• 54:45
  mean there was i think i think i can't remember who the guys were
• 54:48
  when we went to norway a bunch of bunch of the guys because we did that norway
• 54:53
  we first got to the squadron the place was a it was a it was a hot mess we get
• 54:58
  there and i land i land with somebody else i won't say any names but they use
• 55:03
  the braking stop on we do a section approach,
• 55:07
  they we separate at the last minute because the british controllers are just
• 55:11
  freaking yammering away and that person told me to separate,
• 55:16
  I couldn't hear them because of controllers.
• 55:18
  Then finally they give me the kiss off so I separate.
• 55:22
  Then we, I mean, I touched down and literally his airplane's in front of mine
• 55:26
  and it's just getting huge.
• 55:28
  And I remember there was a bunch of guys because they had flown over on KC10.
• 55:31
  So I tanked over and they were on the, they were flew over in KC10.
• 55:35
  So they're on the ramp watching this at the end of the runway.
• 55:38
  So in Barta Foss, it was six inches of sheet ice.
• 55:41
  There was no breaking action whatsoever.
• 55:44
  You could barely see the lights. It's just a whiteout. And I'm going,
• 55:48
  oh my God, I'm going to hit this guy.
• 55:52
  And then i mean amazingly we i mean i just dropped the nozzles and went full power and i,
• 55:57
  tom was in squad and i got airborne and i
• 56:00
  went by him and as i went it was funny because i'll never forget
• 56:03
  this i kind of flew by as i was about lateral maybe
• 56:06
  i don't know 50 75
• 56:09
  feet i looked down he goes like this but you're kind
• 56:12
  of one of those as he sees me you know like dog would do and so anyway i go
• 56:18
  i go around and as a you know good student and to i mean i was brand new out
• 56:22
  in the squadron i nozzle out which was really stupid but i didn't know anything
• 56:26
  any different i nozzle out so what i'm doing i'm accelerating and i come around i roll back out on,
• 56:31
  runway heading and i'm going like 230 knots and i'm right over the end of the
• 56:35
  runway i just went this is not going to work and i just look straight up and
• 56:40
  they told me to level off at 10 and i was I was already at 12.
• 56:45
  So I rolled it upside down, came back down, calmed down, came back around,
• 56:49
  did a PAR. And I was just like, oh my God.
• 56:53
  So yeah, but I remember those guys, they said, you should have seen it from
• 56:56
  our perspective with the KC-10s.
• 56:58
  All we saw was this cloud of ice and snow.
• 57:02
  And all of a sudden your airplane just went out of this, because it looked like you were gonna hit them.
• 57:07
  And I thought, you have no idea how close I got to hit them.
• 57:12
  I don't think anybody here, Pisser, Strut, Otto, me, any of us are not grateful for being alive.
• 57:20
  Just the stupid shit we did, you know, the close calls we had.
• 57:25
  You're just kind of like, I ain't doing that shit again.
• 57:28
  I ain't doing that again. Hey, Disco, I almost died that day.
• 57:33
  I was on smoke swing and the same damn happened to me except I didn't hit him.
• 57:38
  You know but it was the same shit you know i ended and i was lucky i didn't hit him,
• 57:44
  you know it was it was it was an unbelievable shit show
• 57:47
  we're lucky we didn't lose airplanes that day oh i
• 57:51
  know i'm in but in five when we first got to
• 57:53
  542 what i was like we didn't you and you and i got
• 57:56
  there they just lost skivvies and then not too long after
• 57:59
  that they lost jamie richards i mean it was like every six months
• 58:02
  we were losing a pilot in 542 it was just
• 58:05
  it was a freaking clown show there it was just a mess so
• 58:08
  it was it was a yeah that's true when we first got there it was just like i
• 58:13
  said the culture was not healthy it really wasn't so disco let's do a little
• 58:19
  humor let's let's get disco doing like you know f14a plus utah let's let's get your real,
• 58:27
  fucking humor with a grimace you know yeah you know making fun of people we
• 58:33
  got to get this thing going?
• 58:35
  Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, you. I remember that all the time. Just do that one. F-14 Plus. Utah.
• 58:43
  What are you grimacing for?
• 58:46
  Yeah, so his brother flew F-14 Tomcats, and he was always...
• 58:50
  Yeah, F-14s, A-plus, beautiful airplane, wonderful airplane, best airplane ever.
• 58:55
  So I just give a shit all the time. F-14, A-plus. Yes.
• 59:02
  So, Disco, we're on the flight line in QB.
• 59:06
  Do you remember this? We're in QB, and we're doing a Cope Thunder launch with 20 jets.
• 59:12
  And you're like eight airplanes to the right of me. And you just fucking call
• 59:15
  me on the radio, and you're like, what are you grimacing at? And you went.
• 59:20
  It was a freaking nonstop. That's one of the things that was cool about it.
• 59:25
  It was a nonstop clown show all the freaking time. We were always just razzing
• 59:32
  each other and screwing around.
• 59:34
  That's why Snatcher finally said, Right, you guys. Knock it out.
• 59:39
  You're not talking like teenagers. And we're just going, why now?
• 59:44
  This has been working for us the last year and a half. Why should we stop?
• 59:49
  I mean, it was just a- Wait, no more tadpole soup. No more brown star loving.
• 59:52
  No more tadpole soup. None of that shit. Yeah, tadpole dressing.
• 59:55
  No more tadpole dressing.
• 59:56
  No more panty suit. No more- Shit. No, we're fine. No, we're fine.
• 1:00:03
  Hey, Strut, you remember that when we were in the Philippines,
• 1:00:06
  I'll never forget the Strut, we were in some freaking bar.
• 1:00:09
  And Tom goes somewhere, he disappears, he comes back, he goes,
• 1:00:12
  hey, hey guys, just what I just did.
• 1:00:14
  We're like, what did you do? He goes, I went and bought some of those,
• 1:00:16
  you know, those rotten ducks and the eggs.
• 1:00:18
  Watch these chicks eat them. So we got, remember the balut?
• 1:00:21
  So you went and bought all these balut eggs, you were handing them all these
• 1:00:24
  Filipino girls in the bar.
• 1:00:26
  And they were just eating it, and that stuff smelled like shit.
• 1:00:35
  It was a freaking clown show did they serve it over with kimchi to make it smell better,
• 1:00:45
  it was like a fermented duck they buried on the ground and strong wind got i
• 1:00:51
  remember it's a brown paper bag full of these rotten he goes hey check this
• 1:00:55
  out i bought all these rotten i'll be right back,
• 1:00:59
  And they ate him. I mean, when he cracked the egg, it just, I was like,
• 1:01:03
  oh, fuck. Somebody just took it.
• 1:01:05
  It was like Lyman threw his underwear over the chair again with a bacon strip in the back.
• 1:01:11
  Damn.
• 1:01:14
  He was a piece of work, man. Oh, dear God. You need to wipe because it takes too much time.
• 1:01:24
  This has gone downhill You know, rabidly, we're in a fucking nose down,
• 1:01:31
  high speed dive at the moment.
• 1:01:34
  Oh, man. Well, it's as good a place as any, I think, the Landy airplane.
• 1:01:38
  I think first and foremost, I just want to say thank you to all you gentlemen
• 1:01:41
  for taking time out of your day and your evening to spend time with us.
• 1:01:45
  More importantly, thank you for your service, for stepping up and signing that
• 1:01:50
  check to your country. when you didn't have to do it, it wasn't required of
• 1:01:54
  you, but you stepped up and you did it and you offered to put your lives on the line.
• 1:01:58
  And we lost friends who we have great respect for and love for,
• 1:02:03
  and that was a painful part of the service.
• 1:02:05
  But clearly the camaraderie and the love that you all have for each other came through tonight,
• 1:02:12
  and we're grateful that you were kind enough to spend some time with us and
• 1:02:17
  let other people get a peek into what it was, what it was all about.
• 1:02:21
  So thank you for sharing.
• 1:02:24
  Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad a vapor left his musk gland at home.
• 1:02:29
  Well, you know, you got to love having guys make this go around,
• 1:02:33
  but he's insulted my mother so much for the last few years.
• 1:02:38
  I can't even let my mom watch this podcast.
• 1:02:43
  Sometimes it's going to come up. I knew it was going to, but Cheryl's going
• 1:02:50
  to pay for it, just so you know. She's always paying.
• 1:02:53
  Well, they insult their mothers all the time.
• 1:02:57
  Repeat, you've lost control. Georgia is tired. Yeah.
• 1:03:01
  We pulled the pin on the grenade and let it out. Never had control.
• 1:03:05
  No, we didn't. We were out of control from rotate.
• 1:03:11
  Can we end this with something serious? Yeah, absolutely. Pisser, do your dog tag thing.
• 1:03:19
  Oh, my God. No. I don't have one closer.
• 1:03:24
  I would do it. I mean, it's a... Oh, man. Dog tag floss.
• 1:03:29
  We covered that in the Pissner's episode. Oh, God.
• 1:03:33
  Vapor, you going to do it? I mean, it's no problem. I can do it from the Iwakuni freaking.
• 1:03:39
  Yeah. It was actually Naida Baru.
• 1:03:42
  No. No, is this really going to happen? I think he's going to do the dog tag floss.
• 1:03:47
  Yeah, I got to snap this thing first. Sleeper used to do it all the time.
• 1:03:51
  It's been a while, but I'm sure I can.
• 1:03:55
  Well, wait a minute. This is disappointing. it's now become common.
• 1:04:01
  What the fuck? It was me. Who's this other guy that was doing it, man?
• 1:04:09
  Sleeper was a bulldog. He did it. There we go. He did it long after I did it.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah, I'm sure it was. We got to hear the noise. We got to hear the noise.
• 1:04:18
  This is going to be a good shit in your pants.
• 1:04:22
  For those listening, he's stuffing the dog chain up his right nostril.
• 1:04:28
  Oh, no. It's going. You got to cough it out, and then you do it up the other
• 1:04:32
  nostril. Then you hook them together, and then you can flush.
• 1:04:36
  Man, I can't get it going. I can't do it anymore.
• 1:04:39
  He's got a blockage. You haven't been with your boyfriend in a while,
• 1:04:42
  so that's why you can't. He's got blockage. Damn, I got blockage. Oh, good Lord.
• 1:04:47
  Somebody get a little afrin.
• 1:04:52
  You've been living dry climate too long, bro. You've got to snort in.
• 1:04:57
  Yeah, I'll try. Okay. Maybe it's the elevator.
• 1:05:00
  You got to snort it in, Mike.
• 1:05:04
  And Spiko's got a fresh pint. We can keep going.
• 1:05:08
  That's right. Oh, boy. I think he's got it.
• 1:05:12
  Pisser, did you tell the story about the butt-pick coffee that we used to make?
• 1:05:20
  Oh, you got to remind me of that one.
• 1:05:23
  So we had a yeah well i can tell it so the skipper
• 1:05:27
  was none too happy when he found out the
• 1:05:30
  coffee mess officer was using the okay
• 1:05:34
  so the arabs they wiped their ass with their hand and so they had a device next
• 1:05:39
  to their toilet which we became known as a butt pick and so the butt pick was
• 1:05:45
  like a water pick for your teeth except for your ass and so they'd hold the
• 1:05:49
  butt pick with the right hand and they wiped their ass with their left hand.
• 1:05:52
  Well, the skipper found out that the coffee mess officer, yet to be named in
• 1:05:57
  this story, was using the butt pick to fill the coffee urn.
• 1:06:01
  No, he wasn't. And that became banned.
• 1:06:06
  Well, the reason we did it was because we had to walk three flights of stairs
• 1:06:10
  down to fill the coffee urn up, you know, the big-ass silver coffee urn.
• 1:06:15
  So we came up with that. Anyway, the butt pick was filling the coffee urn.
• 1:06:20
  Oh, he lost it when he found out we were filling it up with a button.
• 1:06:27
  The golden butt pick. Oh, I mean, never drink coffee again.
• 1:06:34
  Well, at least the tradition remain. You never washed out your coffee mugs.
• 1:06:39
  Hey, bro, how you doing, man? I couldn't get it.
• 1:06:43
  He flamed out. His eyes are washed.
• 1:06:46
  He's bleeding out of one nostril. I think he lost his tooth in the process.
• 1:06:51
  I'm so pretty disappointed. Oh, man.
• 1:06:55
  Hey, you know what? It's okay. yeah yeah
• 1:06:58
  all right yeah the audience would appreciate it
• 1:07:00
  we're gonna give you a that would have been a video short for sure that would
• 1:07:06
  have been a video short for sure we're gonna give you the combat veteran pass
• 1:07:09
  it's okay there you go right on right on you guys want it i'll do it so normally
• 1:07:15
  when they say landing airplane we all shut the fuck up but that didn't really
• 1:07:18
  happen Yeah, well, exactly.
• 1:07:21
  Like Biggs said, we lost control a while ago. Oh, no.
• 1:07:25
  Having lose control, meaning we had control at some point. Yeah,
• 1:07:28
  which we never had. We never had.
• 1:07:32
  Hey, anyways. Faber, I'm disappointed, man. Man, it got hung.
• 1:07:38
  It kept going in my freaking sinus.
• 1:07:41
  It's long, but it's skinny. It's a chain. It's more than you can get it.
• 1:07:46
  No, it's short, but it's gay.
• 1:07:48
  My nose is running loose. You're an old man. I'm going to have a freaking sinus
• 1:07:53
  infection after this. You got all the beers going like you're in prison.
• 1:07:55
  Vapor, I'm going to come have a beer with you in September.
• 1:07:58
  All right. Hey, dude, we'll do it, man. All right. All right.
• 1:08:01
  And you'll have to do it then. So, all right.
• 1:08:04
  Hey, we got a couple other thank yous we need to bang out. And first and foremost,
• 1:08:08
  thank you to all the people who have lost all sense of common sense and sound
• 1:08:13
  judgment and opened your wallets and thrown money at us to keep these kinds of shows coming to you.
• 1:08:18
  So there I was at US slash Patreon and right on our red website.
• 1:08:23
  So there I was at US slash donate.
• 1:08:25
  Thank you. God bless you. We're humbled. We can't believe you're doing it,
• 1:08:29
  but we're grateful you are.
• 1:08:33
  Kiddo yeah thank you yeah who else who else we need to thank well we got sticks
• 1:08:41
  and bago in the background throwing pictures up and doing all kinds of producing
• 1:08:46
  things in the background so thank you boys making it happen for us yeah and
• 1:08:50
  then badass is here tonight bds,
• 1:08:53
  aviation photography dot com he uh he takes good care of us he does good stuff
• 1:08:59
  he does good work yeah his photographs are pure art artwork yeah so thank you
• 1:09:08
  badass oh there you go that's a badass picture there,
• 1:09:12
  up at the very end of 542 tiger bird look at that ugly thing what the hell is that.
• 1:09:23
  That's like a like a class A mishap in progress watching that thing fly,
• 1:09:31
  so and then uh just two more people
• 1:09:34
  to thank fig but i i can never remember that's the
• 1:09:37
  uh it's the sound which is not really coming through very well i hope you can
• 1:09:41
  fix that i turned it down too much that is the uh sound of the dos gringos the
• 1:09:46
  two f-16 pilots that actually make the air force sound good these guys are awesome
• 1:09:52
  yeah they got four albums out There's not a bad song on any album.
• 1:09:56
  And if you're having a bad day, play one of their songs. You'll laugh your ass off. Yeah, indeed.
• 1:10:02
  So, until next week, everybody. See you soon.
• 1:10:07
  Music.
• 1:10:08
  It's good seeing all you guys.
• 1:10:17
  Well, there I was, crossing the pond. And you could see that I wasn't exactly fond.
• 1:10:23
  Of all the shit I was wearing on that day,
• 1:10:28
  Now an F-16 is cramped enough But it's even worse With all that stuff supposed
• 1:10:34
  to save your life But we knew there was no way Cause when you're going down
• 1:10:41
  the North Atlantic, man, it's over,
• 1:10:45
  What do you say, Fig? He said it's over Can I shut it down yet?
• 1:10:49
  Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
• 1:10:53
  We're good. See you. No!
• 1:10:56
  Wait. Don't shut it down yet, Strutt. And we are out.