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The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Clyde Romero · The Flyboy Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Flyboy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing: cool flying stories.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Clyde Romero.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Clyde is a retired American Airline captain and fighter pilot in the Air Force.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: He has also flown extensively in the Vietnam War.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's flown a variety of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The helicopters include the OH-13, the helicopter you've seen in the series MASH, the UH-1 Huey, the AH-1 Cobra, and the OH-6.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: After flying with the Army in Vietnam, he joined the Air Force, where he flew the T-37, the T-38, the RF-101 Voodoo, and then the RF-4 Charlie.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: After flying with the Air Force, he went on to fly with the Airlines, flying the 727, 737, 757, 767, as well as the Airbus 319, 320, 321, and 330.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Clyde has more than 42,000 flying hours, which I think is a record for any of our guests on the podcast thus far.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: He flew for 37 years in the Airlines as well as 27 years in the Air Force.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most significantly of all, when we talk about his flying experience, in Vietnam he was shot down nine times.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: He has more than 1,100 hours of combat time.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: With that, Clyde, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, Clyde, I'd like to start by hearing about your experience in Vietnam, flying helicopters.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us what those missions were like, and tell us about some of those most significant memories that you have from flying in Vietnam.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: My earliest recollection is in May of 1970.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: The unit I was in, we were involved in the invasion of Cambodia.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was brand new, and I was in the right seat of a UH-1, and we were doing combat assault in the Cambodia, and then flying sniffer missions and doing combat resupply.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And during one of those missions, we were shot up very, very badly.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I took some rounds through the instrument panel and into my chest.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Luckily, I had a bulletproof vest on, and I remember that distinctly.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: We basically did a run-on crash landing in Tain In.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I wasn't in country not even but about 30 days when that happened.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then that unit went home because of at that point in time Nixon was the president and we were pulling troops out of Vietnam, and I was subsequently reassigned to the 101st Airborne Division, which is up north by the DMZ, which is a totally different area of operations.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point in time, I was a scout pilot flying a 086 with a calf troop.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we were involved in very heavy fighting up in a place called the Ashaw Valley.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And on one of my missions, I was shot down in the Ashaw Valley off the edge of something we used to call Tiger Mountain.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we landed basically right in the middle of a heavy concentration of North Vietnamese Army troops.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the rescue was pretty hair-raising.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was a we called it the John Wayne Rescue because we got out of the helicopter.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: The other helicopter that came in and picked us up, picked us up.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: We basically dived in the back of the UH-1 and we got out of there.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the area was so hot.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Usually when you get shot down, they're able to recover the helicopter.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't able to do that in this point because the area was so concentrated with NVA, we had to blow the helicopter up in place.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually went back out that same day in the front seat of a Cobra because I knew where the helicopter was, and we had to blow it up in place.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: So those were two of the missions that really stand out for me.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the other shoot downs and the other times we had crash landings, I know it's gonna sound funny, but they were kind of like routine because that's what it was.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was routine.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: You you got shot down or you lost a tail rotor or you lost hydraulics.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it really wasn't much to get excited about because when that happens, usually you're around other helicopters that pick you up right away, and there's really not a whole lot of enemy fire.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Those two were the ones that really stand out for me.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have to marvel for a moment the thought that getting shot down becomes routine.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's quite a testament to how risky the missions were.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I know that sounds kind of funny, but if you talk to any Army helicopter pilots during that war, it's rare that you're going to find one that has not been shot down because it was that type of environment.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: How did your flying in Vietnam differ from the flying you did when you transitioned to the Air Force?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was totally different.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, you weren't getting shot at.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that makes it so much easier.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I became a cold warrior when I was in my Air National Guard unit because the Cold War was still going.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so my unit, uh, we were always involved in dealing with the Soviet Union, the border threat, flying around in Europe and and supporting the army in Europe.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there were some tense times, but uh nothing like uh the Vietnam War.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to explain.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like well, there's really no nothing to put it there.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're either in combat or you're not.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the Cold War wasn't combat, but at any one time it could go hot, and nobody knew when it could go hot.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to ask you about the planes you flew in the Air Force.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: You flew the RF-101 and then the RF-4.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've spoken to other F-4 pilots, but I've never spoken to someone who's flown the RF-101.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about that airplane.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: What was it like to fly?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the RF-101 was a Century Series airplane, and it was the RF, that was the reconnaissance version, was the highly modified of the F-101, which was an Air Defense Command uh airplane.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: The RF-101 was used specifically in Vietnam.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then they made the RF-4, which is a variant of the F-4 series, which every almost everybody knows.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the reconnaissance version of it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what most people don't know is that the reconnaissance versions of all the Air Force airplanes didn't carry any weapons.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were all, we used to call it alone, unarmed, and unafraid.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: What made the R F-4 an interesting airplane is that it was extremely fast.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually one of the fastest, if not well, it actually was.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually the fastest F-4 on the deck.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody could catch it on the deck.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: The only airplane that was as fast on the deck, and when I say on the deck, that's low level, below 500 feet, was the F-111.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that that airplane was a monster in itself.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody could catch the RF-4.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was clean, it didn't carry any weapons, and it was a very fast airplane.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so the reconnaissance versions that you flew, give us a sense of what the you were taking pictures, you were recording things.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us about that?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: The reconnaissance mission is driven by the Army.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens is in a total scenario, you would have the Air Force bomb something, and then you'd have the RF-4 come by and take pictures to see how effective the bombing was.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was called battle damage assessment.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we did.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: If the threat wasn't too bad, they would send us out to an area to take pictures of bridges and encampments and lines of communications and bring those pictures back so they could generate a sortie to bomb those places.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'd have to go back out there and see if the bombing was effective.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the missions that were flown in the RF war in Europe or in Asia were flown up against the border.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like so the guys that flew in Korea, they flow up and down the Korean DMZ, and the guys in Europe flew up and down the border looking into East Germany.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then they had there were other missions that were flown in South America and around Cuba, stuff like that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back in time for a minute.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about your first solo.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So my first solo was in Army Flight School 1969 in the uh OH-13, which most people know as the MASH helicopter.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was during the Vietnam War.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was a kid from New York City.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, when I went to flight school, I just turned 19.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even have to drive a car because in New York City, you don't need to drive a car.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have public trips.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't know how to drive a car.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So here I am learning how to hover a helicopter.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you talk to anybody who's ever done this, it's extremely crazy.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the first time you ride a bike, you're going to fall down, except that the instructor pilot won't let you fall down.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So at about 10 or 15 hours, you get it or you don't get it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And even when the, I think, in my opinion, when the instructor pilot thinks you're not going to get it, but you're going to learn because if you don't learn, you're going to crash and die, they say you go to solo.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what happens.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you go out there and you solo, and then you get that inner confidence.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the same confidence you had when you were learning how to ride a bike with the training wheels, and somebody takes the training wheels off you and you're wobbly for the first couple of times.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But then after a while, you think you're a speed demon.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's exactly the confidence that you get.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that, it just moves right along.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the first solo, it has your undivided attention because things can go very, very wrong in a helicopter very quickly.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: But before you get there, you've done a bunch of things to basically prevent anything bad from happening to you.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: But bad things have happened on solo.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: In primary flight school during the Vietnam Warren helicopter school, students were killed.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's a dangerous endeavor.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing with Air Force flight school.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you've flown with the Army, you've flown with the Air Force, and then you spent 37 years flying with the airlines.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about flying with the airlines.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: How was that different?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And tell me what you most enjoyed about that since you did it for 37 years as a captain for American Airlines.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Flying with the airline is uh we have a saying, it's thousands of hours of sheer boredom interrupted by brief moments of stark raving terror.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because when things go wrong, it goes wrong in a big way.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: But flying for the airline is really mundane because they're telling you where to go.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're highly trained at that point in time.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh simulators, uh procedures, the whole nine yards.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's pretty easy, but there are times when things do go bad, and that's when your training comes in.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And luckily, I've never really had anything really, really bad.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've never lost an engine, but I've lost some subsystems.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: What makes it difficult, believe it or not, are the passengers in the back when they become unruly, and when you have uh weather that impacts the schedule, and people don't realize that weather has a vote in the airline industry.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Weather has a huge vote.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what it is, is that the airlines are so dependable.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have like a 98% chance of getting where you're going to get on an airliner.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's that 2% where something breaks at the at your gate or the weather is so bad at your destination.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: During the summer months, a lot of people like to go to the Caribbean or Cancun.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happens during the summer months?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: You have hurricanes.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so hurricanes cross the Atlantic and they impact the Yucatan Peninsula.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can tell you that I've been literally at my gate, and there are people saying, Well, I have a wedding to go to, and my wedding party's there and all that.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they think that we can fly this airplane with all these other people into a hurricane to get them to that wedding, and it's not gonna happen.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's instances like that, or when you have bad weather in the northeast in the wintertime, like Boston and New York, where the snow is coming down really heavy, but you're in Miami, and people say, Well, I need to get up there.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They don't realize there's only one runway open up there and they have to clear it and the whole nine yards, and you're not the only airline trying to get there.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you get to those situations with passengers, they don't understand the gravity of the situation.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the only time it seems to hit the flying public is when we all turn on the television, and just like we've seen recently, unfortunately, with the airplane, ran off the end of the runway and hit the car.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's what happens when things don't go as advertised.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or you see on television when an airliner slides off the side of the runway in a in a in a snowstorm and stuff like that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody doesn't want to be on that airliner, but there are people on that airliner, and there is a crew on that airplane.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you take those extra steps and you say, okay, we're not doing this, we're canceling the flight, and tomorrow's another day.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't sit well with some passengers, but you know, he who goes away comes back to fly another day.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's what I always did.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I you know, we could always do this another time.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't the military where you have to do a mission and you have to get there.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, this isn't that way.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can cancel that flight, and if you miss it, too bad.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't care.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to end up on the news because you had to get there.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Clyde, tell me about the worst weather you've ever had to fly through to land an airplane.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's two of those.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: One on the military side and one on the civilian side.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: On the military side, the RF-4 flew low altitude missions at night in the weather, in mountainous terrain.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a radar that's capable of doing that.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was the terrain following the radar.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh I remember this mission like it was yesterday.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was doing an ORI, that's an operational radius inspection that every unit had to go through.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we had to hit a tanker to get gas, and it was a very long mission.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the low level started up by Roanoke, Virginia, in the uh Appalachian Mountains, and it was night and it was weather, and no problem, because you're trained for it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we let down in the weather and during terrain following, and my back seater, who's the one who runs the radar, and we're doing pretty good.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the mountains, we're at 500 feet, 480 knots, and we're coming up to our first target.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: We get our target, and we're making a turn, and we're in mountainous terrain, and then all of a sudden the radar goes out.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I have no guidance at all.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now I have instruments, but no guidance.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So when that happens, you have to climb to minsafe altitude.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a this is happening very quickly, and all of a sudden he says, We've lost the radar, and I said, I can see that, but those are precious seconds that you have to do something.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so you immediately fly up to minsafe altitude, declare an emergency, and hope that everything, the minsafe altitude is correct and everything like that, that you don't end up impacting the mountain.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember that like it was yesterday, and we ended up declaring emergency, squawking 7700, climbing out, getting a hold of Washington Center, and going home.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I went home and we landed and I had an adult beverage that evening.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So well deserved.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: On the airline side, the worst weather you can possibly fly into is what we call cat three weather.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's where it's basically fog outside.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't see anything.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the airplane can do that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: The airplane can do that, can land in cat three weather.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when you see that weather at, is that I flew internationally, you see that weather a lot in England, and you see that weather a lot in Paris during the wintertime.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that can be kind of iffy because you're landing on the backside of the clock at two or three o'clock in the morning on your with your body clock.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you really have to be on your A game.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when I say zero, zero, put it this way, you would not drive a car in this type of weather.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like driving in a cock box.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's called wax off.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ceiling indefinite, uh, zero visibility.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And but the airplane can do it.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you couple up everything, and before you do one of those, you do a couple in the simulator, but it's still kind of unnerving to have an airplane as big as your house coming in landing, and all you're doing is monitoring the gauges, and then when that airplane flares, it's kind of unnerving, and the airplane touches down and you come back to throttle idle and speed break.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the approaches, and you see those mostly in the wintertime in Europe.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the wintertime, you see those almost routinely up in the Boston area, because Boston has a lot of bad weather, fog, and stuff like that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And those approaches, they're routine, but they have the earned that undivided attention.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And most passengers are not totally aware of this type of environment, but the training is intense.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the airplanes and the systems are are are able to cope with it and get the airplane on the ground safely.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Clyde, tell me this.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: With all of the flying you've done over the years, what's your favorite flying memory?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was in the military, flying the F-4.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a rewarding airplane, and I always like taking off, flying a good, solid, low-level, and then leaving the low-level route structure and going up and hitting an airborne tanking during air-to-air refueling, which is challenging, but that's good.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then coming off that and then going into what they call a MOA, that's a military operating area, and then doing what most people call dog fighting.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: We call it air combat maneuvering, uh, because that that encompasses everything.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: The low-level flight, uh, which is challenging in itself, because you have to be where you're at.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can get lost.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if trust me, I've been lost, and there hasn't anybody who's ever flown low level that has not been lost.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And coming up and hitting a tanker, air-to-air refueling, and then air combat maneuvering with another opponent and then landing.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: That encompasses everything that we would had to do and a very rewarding, long day.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: But when you finish that, you say, hey, that's what I'm all about.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when young people tell you they're interested in becoming a pilot, what advice do you give them?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have it in your heart because there are going to be days in flight school that you're going to completely mess up.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: You I mean, it's just going to be really, really bad.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there isn't a person that ever went through flight school, whether on the civilian side, because I know a lot of civilian guys and on the military side that you didn't have a down day when you couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to have it in your heart to say, I can do this, I want to do this, and I'm going to make this happen.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this has to be your primary focus because there are going to be days that it's not going to work out for you.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not going to work out for you.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then let's say you make it and you become a pilot and you did like my generation did.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: You go to Vietnam and you go or you go to a conflict and you get shot down or you get wounded.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's the true test saying, okay, I'm wounded, I'm shot down, I've got, I've been, I've been rescued, I want to go back instead cockpit.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: The majority of us that I know of guys have been shot down, wounded, and said, I'm getting back in.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: I earned those wings and I'm going back in.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that is what you have to have within yourself.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And see, doing it in a simulator where you know you're not gonna die is totally different than when you're in the airplane and something goes bad.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Totally different.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: You got to have it within yourself because things are gonna happen in the air.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, Clyde, have you ever come close to ejecting from an airplane?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: I came close to ejecting twice.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So in the F-4, you have a back seater, and he's not a pilot.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's a weapon system operator, but there isn't an F-4 pilot around that hasn't taught his F-4 backseater, his weapon system, to learn how to fly the airplane.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we always flew low level, and when you fly low level, you have to worry about bird strikes.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And bird strikes can be very, very bad because you're flying at a high rate of speed.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And usually when you take a bird strike and it hits the canopy, the bird enters the cockpit where you're sitting and it can disable the pilot.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this has happened before.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a big rush on teaching your backseaters how to land the airplane and how to fly the airplane.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: So one day, um, my backseater, who was highly experienced, we enter the pattern and we call it entering the brake.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: You enter initial and then you do a hard left turn and then you roll out and you throw the gear and flaps down.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, You got it.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Make believe I'm totally disabled.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Except don't blow the gear down because we don't, if you blow the gear down, then we really have an emergency.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So he takes the airplane, we're doing 350 knots, he enters the brake.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the F-4 had a really bad handling characteristic called adverse yaw.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if you pulled it past a certain AOA, the airplane would depart control flight.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy pulled it past that AOA and the airplane departed controlled flight.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: We basically entered a spin for as for the civilian.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: At pattern altitude.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: At pattern altitude.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the airplane, luckily, the it when the when the F4 departs, it can either depart nose up or it can depart nose down.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember, you're only 1,500 feet above the ground.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: So two things saved me.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: The airplane departed nose up, which gave me altitude, and I had probably 4,000 pounds of fuel.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it was such a violent departure that it dropped the INS offline.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I got it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I said it just like that, what a high.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when your training comes in.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the airplane immediately pitched up and then it just dropped because it wasn't flying at that point in time.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it went nose down to about 60 degrees, nose low, because I never forget that.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I immediately took the airplane with my left hand and I went to after burner and I did what they call an unloaded recovery because zero G takes zero lift.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I lit the burner because I needed airspeed really, really bad.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I did an unloaded recovery and I rolled to the horizon.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So now I have to pull the F4 at the edge of the stall with the burners going.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, if I pull too much, I'm going to stall and crash.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if I don't pull enough, I'm going to hit the ground.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm in that feathered edge right there.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing all this at this time.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have a fair amount of time in the F4.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't panic because that's what kills a lot of people when they do the part.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: They panic.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I lit the burners, I felt the burners hit, and then I took my left hand and put it on the lower guard on the ejection seat because if I didn't hear the burners light, I was going to eject this right there.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, had we've been able to get out, I don't know, but I was going to make it a good try.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the burners lit.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So now I have thrust and I had like 4,000 pounds of fuel, and the airplane weighs 30,000 pounds light, so it was 34,000 pounds of thrust, but I had two after-burning engines that were putting out 15,000 pounds of thrust.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, I didn't need the wings.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had engines that were going to drive me up.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: The wings were just there.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I was basically, so, and that's what saves me.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the thrust came, the thrust pulled me out.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't realize how close I'd come until I basically got level flight and we did a straight-in landing until the guy in mobile, because we have a mobile guy that sits out there and he makes sure that gear is down on all the airplane.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Clyde, when that happened to you, you went below the horizon.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's how low I got.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I figured I missed the trees by about 100 feet, maybe, maybe less.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I was very lucky.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was light on fuel, cold crisp today.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't panic, and I learned from that.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the other time was we were in a MOA, a military operating area.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: We were two ships going against two F-15s, and I had three bags on board.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a center tank and two wing tanks, and we were heavy on fuel.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: The whole idea behind that was to try to sneak up on the F-15.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: These guys were brand new.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: They were out of Eglin Air Force Base, and we were gonna sneak up on them and rattle their cage and get away from them.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think I was at like 10,000 feet when I did this, but I was very heavy on fuel.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I did a beam attack on an F-15, and he saw me just about the same time my attack was finishing.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he went vertical and I went and did a split S.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: When I did that split S, I was I've never forget, I was with a guy named Cole in the backside.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: We used to call him Nat King Cole.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we did the split S, and at right about the vertical point, I realized this is not a good idea because if I pull too much, I'm gonna stall.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: If I don't pull enough, I'm gonna hit the ground.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm pulling right at the feather edge of AOA.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we go right by, I never forget this.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was the the MOA was right by a logging area where there was trees, where people were logging and all that.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a guy in a blue pickup truck on a road as we go by him.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, I'm looking out the side of him, and there's that pickup truck.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's how low we were.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we came out.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the F-15 that was following us, he decided to go vertical and come back on top of us.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he saw that and he said, I'm getting away from this.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he got away from it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: He can't believe we survived.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And after that, we called it a knockout.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So those were the two times where I thought, where I should have bejected.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I'm like this, I'm saying, eject or keep pulling.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I think I can make it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the the one time where I said, uh, probably as soon as I rolled vertical, I could have ejected and then that would have been it.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, it was a 50-50 thing.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: But those are the two times where I almost claimed close to pulling the lower handle and doing the silk letdown.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Glad you made it.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, Clyde, let me just say thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was a pleasure.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I hope I didn't bore your audience.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you, you did not.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you very much, David, for the invite.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was an outstanding experience speaking to you, and thanks for bringing back all those memories.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've fulfilled that mission today.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes of the Flyboy Podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.