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The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Karl “Korky” von Kessel · The Flyboy Podcast

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Flyboard Podcast where we bring you just one thing cool to fly for it.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Carl on C.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: He is a retired Air Force Colonel who served for 25 years in the Air Force flying the F-4, the F7, the F-117, and the F-15.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: He is an equadron commander and group commander.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Currently he lives in Colorado Springs and is one of the three co-owners of an indoor skydiving adventure called IFLY Colorado Springs.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he is a bandit 221.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Corky, welcome to the flyboard.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Deborah.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Great to talk with you.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about your first night solo in the F-117.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as you know, there's no two-seat F-117.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: So your first first solo and your first night solo uh is all by yourself.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: First time I'd ever done that in my career.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'd flown two-seat airplanes being the F-4 up until that time.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's uh it's memorable just because of the fact that uh they're putting a lot of trust in you and you're putting a lot of trust in yourself.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: How many different airplanes have you flown?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned a couple, but I gather you've flown several more.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I was the ops group commander at the airfield at the Air Force Academy, and so we had a uh several different airframes there, some of them powered, some of them sailplanes.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I got to fly all of them.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So uh T-41s, which is a Cessna uh 172, uh a variety of different types of sailplanes, and then the twin otter, which is the jump airplane.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: How many jumps do you have skydiving?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I had to quit early because uh after 25 years of pulling 9Gs, uh they discovered after I started the training I had uh herniated disc in my neck.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so they uh you know you gotta really bow your neck whenever you're whenever you're free falling.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that that irritated it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was a Daniff for a period of time, so I really didn't get that much uh jump in.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I did get a little bit.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about you flying the A7, the F-117, the F-15E, and the F-4.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: How are those planes different?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can you put us in the cockpit of what it feels like to be flying each of those airplanes?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a little sense of each one.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, F-4 was uh the perfect first airplane for me.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Two-seater, uh, so I had somebody there to say, you really sure that's a good idea?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, which I at that age, uh, you know, Lieutenant and Captain's years, uh, slick wings, uh, I really needed that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so the F-4 was a great airplane.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh obviously, first a Navy aircraft and mostly air-to-ground.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: We did have an air-to-air mission when I was stationed in Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base, and uh so that was pretty fun.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, not a great deal of power, not a great deal of turning ability, that type of thing.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: It would certainly lose a dogfight with uh the newer generation of fighters that were online by then, F-15s and F-16s.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but uh flown properly, it was a it was a very effective aircraft.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And how about the other airplanes?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: How did you, you know, by comparison to the F-15E or the F-117, how are they different?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: The F-1 the F-117 was interesting because it's really a a pretty unremarkable airframe.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the stealth capability aside, uh, it doesn't have afterburner, it doesn't have a radar, it carries two bombs.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's fairly unremarkable in that sense.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: However, it's very effective because it does it can do what it's designed to do very well.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that it was single seat uh was a change for me.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I kind of enjoyed that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh A7 as well, single seat.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then back to the F-15E with two-seater, uh, which you really need.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a great weapon system officer is again uh worth his weight in gold uh back there doing everything, particularly when you're flying night low levels uh, you know, through uh terrain following radar and that type of thing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it makes it a lot easier to task manage that way.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about your most challenging uh sortie.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the most challenging airplanes are probably the little ones, you know, the T-41s, the Cessna 172s, uh, because you're really by design, fighters are not difficult to fly because they don't want you putting a lot of your brain power into the stick and the rudder.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it comes pretty natural after you after you get some experience with it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's never the case, or is never the case for me with the Cessna's and the sailplanes, uh, because that is true stick and rudder.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's all you're doing with it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we know flying has uh got its dangerous moments.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us about your worst in-flight emergency?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I was uh getting checked out, local checkout, uh in the A7 at Nellis Air Force Base.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm leading a night formation takeoff in a K model, which was a two-seat, but there wasn't anybody sitting back there.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we do the night formation takeoff.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm leading an instructor.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we get airborne, and I pull away from him.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just pull away from him.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of looking over my left shoulder to try to get a tally on him so we could get the gear and flaps up.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to do a configuration change without knowing exactly where he was.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel this incredible vibration in the airplane.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I turn around and every morning light in the cockpit's lit up, and then I can start seeing a glow of fire uh behind me.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on fire.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I hear the soft uh over the radio say, A7, eject, eject, eject.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was a massive compressor stall.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm still airborne, uh, and I'm thinking that uh I do need to eject.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: In the A7, the ejection handle was between your legs, uh ergonomic design so that you if when you eject, uh you're in a tucked position.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I kind of, you know, I'm pulling back on the stick.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any thrust now, uh, or just very little.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I'm pulling back on the stick to keep the nose up for all I'm worth.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is every time I came a little bit forward on the stick to reach the ejection handle, the nose dipped.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did that dance a couple times and I hit the ground.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: I hit the runway.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: What saved me was my gear was still down because I had never changed configurations.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so now I'm on fire on the ground.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I skipped the cable.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I did slap the hook down, but uh it skipped uh over the cable.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so I go out into the overrun.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm gonna go off the runway.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm on fire, I emergency grind aggressive, I jump out.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing, the the only slight injury I had was as I was backing off of the uh the overrun, uh I fell down and I fell right on a cactus uh out there at Mellis Air Force Base.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Flight surgeon was picking uh cactus needles out of my ass for the next three months.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: One of my good friends, Brian Wright, B.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wright, uh, he was the SOF in the building at the time, not in the tower, but in our squadron building.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the soft is the supervisor of flying.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he hears all this over the over the chatter.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: He gets in a truck, comes out, and picks me up.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting because uh our commander, our group commander at the time was a guy by the name of Mike Harris, Colonel Mike Harris.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I win an award for this.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I was just trying to survive it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I win a commendation medal, something like that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And at the award ceremony, he you know, he pins it on, he shakes my hand, we salute, and he kind of leans in and said, Corky, I can't tell you what a great job you did saving that airplane.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: That airplane flew again, by the way.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they changed out the engine, the airplane flew.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: The old adage, you know, any air any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Any air air uh landing where you can use the airplane again, it's a great landing.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he leans in, he goes, Corky, I want to tell you what a great job you did.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was some uh remarkable airmanship, and uh you really you really handle that nice.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Boss, I was just trying to eject.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he leans back in again, he goes, Let's just keep that between you and me.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well played.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: In that flight, how high do you think you got above the ground?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or above the runway, I should say.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was at least 20 feet, maybe higher.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: But just I didn't run out, totally run out of runway, so it couldn't have been too, too high, or I'd have, you know, landed uh I'd landed out in the caliche.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: What's the highest you've ever flown?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've flown right up to 50,000 feet.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: In what airplane?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: In the A7.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: In the A7?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: We were deploying to Korea.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a uh deployment to see how if we had to deploy the 117, what we would do if we were going to go to to Coonsan.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so we went over there in A7s just to check it all out.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we take off out of Nellis, we we in-flight refuel, land in Hawaii, land at uh Hickam Air Force Base, and we're getting ready to go the next day and my plane breaks.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so they had to keep another pilot with me, so they, you know, we had already briefed this.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: If anybody breaks, here's the designated guy who's gonna stay with you.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the rest of the guys take off.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I missed the entire deployment.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was stuck in Hawaii instead of Koonsan Air Force Base for the entire deployment.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was an FCF pilot, so they had to repair mine and it required a functional control flight.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he was an FCF pilot, so one of the things he had to do was he had to go up to above 45,000 feet and uh and do some of the stuff.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they even shut the engine down and all that.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I caught the last tanker uh before the tanker that had all the other A7s coming back from Koonsan was going to land.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I did not want to be a part of that group, having spent my whole time on the beach while they were living in tents.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Good judgment.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you about the beginning of my flying career, and it has absolutely nothing to do with flying.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was uh I was an accidental pilot probably.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I graduated from the academy, didn't really know what I wanted to do, had a pilot training slot.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was it was it was appealing to me.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was not a lifelong dream.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh all my buddies were going to pilot training, and I thought, yeah, go to pilot training.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Willie, you know, Phoenix, Arizona, Williams Air Force Base.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and there that that then obviously it kicked in.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh as your most of your viewers probably know, you gotta finish pretty well in your class to get a fighter in the first place, so it all kicked in from that.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh after I got through, uh uh I got married, and then we went to Holliman Air Force Base for fighter lead-in in the AT-38.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Graduated from that.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was Christmas time, went home for Christmas, and now it's January of 1981, and I show up at Homestead Air Force Base.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they assigned me a sponsor.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: His name is Mark Doherty, who was also on your Flyboy podcast.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he's a bachelor at the time, and we had a little dog.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: My dad had given us as a wedding present a little puppy.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I asked Mark if the dog could stay in his garage, we'll come over, we'll clean up after him, all that, a little schnauzer.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Mark said, Yeah, sure, come on.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it was a weekend, and uh we were gonna go visit the dog and visit with Mark and say hi and all that.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we go over, we pull up, we we're getting out of the car, and his dad comes bounding out of the house.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Hey, Corky, I love that dog.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is the cutest little dog.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he comes over, puts his hand out, and says, Russ Doherty.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Corky von Kessel.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Uh, that's just the cutest dog.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: We chat a little bit, and I go, Well, what do you do, Russ?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I'm the commander of Sack.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So here's first Lieutenant Von Kessel talking to four-star General Russ Doherty, calling him Russ.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I had so little situational awareness.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's uh it's amazing they even let me go any further after that.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he was the nicest guy in the world.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: He did not, there was no correction, there was no uh belittling, it was just kind of a hearty laugh on our part.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Mark was my sponsor, uh, he was my instructor at F-4s, and later on we overlapped in the F-117.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you spend any amount of time flying, you're likely to lose friends.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us about any of the uh fellow aviators you've lost that we should remember today?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh Major Mike Stewart.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: We were flying at uh the 117 on the Nellis Range.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: That night we were doing a bombing competition, we called it a turkey shoot, uh, and Mike was probably about 15 miles in front of me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we were, you know, we always flew single ship at the on these.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Mike leaves the IP, the initial point, you know, for his target run.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: He goes into a big turn right there.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know this at the time.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it at the time, I didn't see any of it, uh, and he somehow uh gets spatially disoriented, uh, loses control of the airplane, hits the ground, and is killed.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: By the time I landed, we kind of knew that there was an airplane missing, and uh we were starting to look at all this, and obviously in the next day or two uh we found the crash site.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Mike lived three doors down from me uh in Las Vegas on Sunrise Mountain.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we'd just gotten back from a hunting trip together where we were tentmates.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Mike was a good friend.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: They assigned me because I knew his family, I'd been over there for our deer hunting planning, and we were neighbors.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they assigned me as the escort officer.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Deb Stewart is his wife, and he's got two little boys, uh both grade school age.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we go over that morning to notify her, uh, and this happened in the middle of the night, two or three in the morning, and we wanted to be there before news source sources and she heard it on TV or something like that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we were over there first thing in the morning at her house.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we go in and I'm uh, you know, I I'm still in shock about all this, and the group commander and the chaplain are notifying Deb of what happened, and so now it's just kind of a bevy of activity around her, making sure uh they're taking care of her emotionally and uh comforting her the best they can.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: After that died down a little bit, I went over to Deb and gave her a hug and uh said, Deb, I'm so sorry.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And she said something to me.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Was this parachute packed?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I didn't say anything.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was thinking it wouldn't have mattered, Deb.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there it wasn't an attempt of ejection or anything like that.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we uh days pass, we have the memorial service at Nellis.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: She wants to bury Mike uh at their hometown in Port Arthur, Texas, down by Houston.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm the escort officer.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I escort her, the two little boys, and the casket, uh Mike's remains, down to Port Arthur, and she sets it up in a in a funeral home.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: We have two or three nights of uh uh visitation with a clothes casket, of course.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh then they had the the final ceremony for the burial.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: The day before the burial, uh Deb said, I would like to go out and uh visit the gravesite before we go there tomorrow.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Absolutely.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I was there with her almost 24-7.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: We had to get some sleep, and I stayed at a hotel, she stayed with her sister.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I was I every waking moment I was there with her.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I made sure I was at the house before she woke up, and I stayed till after she went to bed.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we get in the car, it's just her and I in the car, and we're driving out to this cemetery that's gotta be thousands of acres.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is miles just to get to his burial site after we've entered the cemetery grounds.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And she's telling me, turn for turn, where to go.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Turn here, turn right here, turn here.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, Deb, you haven't been out here.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've never left your side.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we get there, we're standing there, and there's a freshly dug grave, and I'm beside myself with emotion trying to keep it together.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I start looking.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And next to the freshly dug grave are two more grave sites with the last name of Stuart.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe one wasn't because it was her father, so probably not Stuart, uh, but another one was one of their children that had died as a toddler uh by a freak accident.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, This poor woman, she's standing in front of three of the closest people that she had uh her family, her the loves of her life.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And she's how she's even withstanding this, I don't know.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And she turned to me and I said, Deb, I'm so sorry, we're both crying.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And she said to me again, she said, It was his parachute pack.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this time I replied and I said, Deb, uh it wouldn't have mattered.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't attempt ejection.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if he would have ejected or tr attempted ejection, uh you know, it it just didn't matter.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, That's not what I'm talking about.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I've reflected on that uh many times over the years.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think my interpretation of it was uh have you done the things in your life?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're all gonna die, we're one for one with that.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Have you done the things in your life?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Have you packed your parachute properly to ensure that when you go, you are leaving the legacy you want and you're heading to the next destination that you want.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what we could possibly say that would be more profound.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks, Deb.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Corky, I have one more question for you.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You told us that you spent a lot of time out at the academy and you're still there in Colorado Springs.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know you've had a chance to talk to a lot of young people who want to become pilots.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: What advice do you give them?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this generation uh of young kids right now are remarkable.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um the kids at the academy, I I mean, I if I was a if I was a graduating high school kid today, uh I'd never get it in.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: If I get in, I'd never graduate.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: If I graduated, I'd never get a pilot slot.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: If I got a pilot slot, I'd never fly a fighter.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because these kids are just uh bigger, stronger, faster.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're so good, they're so remarkable.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: This generation as a whole, however, that it's different from our generation.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was it's a different social economic mindset than we have.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I tell them when they ask me, I say, first and foremost, make sure that you're doing this because you want to serve.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: You want to serve your country.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get benefits, you're gonna get a retirement if you stay in that long, you're gonna get a job right off the bat, you're gonna get uh health care benefits and all the other things that come with military service.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but make sure that that's not your motivation, because if that's your motivation, uh you're probably have your priorities wrong.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Your priority needs to be service to the United States of America, service to your country, service to your fellow service members, and uh and you need to go in with the attitude that that is your priority.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why for it?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much, uh Corky, for joining us on the Flyboy Podcast.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, been great to talk with you today.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure, Dave.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: The mission of the Flyboy Lab at Elevate Awareness and the presentation of Innovator Service for sacrifices and contributions of hopefully we've totaled that mission today.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes of the The Fly Boy Podcast are up every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website at the Flyboy Podcast.com.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Until our next story, or of course the market's the vertical for the slide title.