Riding Rockets

The most dangerous aerial play was “one-vee-one,” or one-versus-one dogfighting. In a flight of two ’38s we’d cruise a few miles over the water, then switch to company frequency, an unused frequency nobody would be monitoring. At least wehoped nobody would be monitoring it. Then each aircraft, flying in formation at the same speed and altitude, would simultaneously break 45 degrees in opposite directions. After flying for a minute on the new headings, we would turn into each other on a collision course. This maneuver ensured a neutral setup, one in which neither pilot had an advantage when the dogfighting started. There were obvious dangers in this arrangement. First, it put two virtually invisible objects on a head-on course at a combined speed in excess of 1,000 miles per hour. The other danger was more subtle. Pretending air-to-air combat with identical aircraft makes it difficult for either pilot to gain an advantage. Pilots are more tempted to push their vehicles to the edge of their performance envelopes to gain a simulated “kill.” In my air force career there had been numerous incidents of dogfighting pilots crossing that edge, losing control, and having to eject—or dying when they didn’t. It happened in my squadron in England. In fact, it happened so often worldwide the air force ultimately banned the practice of identical jets simulating a dogfight.

But in our Gulf of Mexico playground, the only rule was, “There are no rules,” another witticism of Hoot Gibson. Pilots would make that final turn toward each other and slam the throttles into afterburner. It was a game of chicken and we strained to pick out the dot representing the competition. When the “tallyho” call was made, the game was on. Our jets would pass canopy to canopy, sometimes no more than a couple hundred feet apart, and the pilots would jerk their ’38s into a vertical spiraling climb, keeping each other in sight and trying to maneuver for an advantage. Usually the first “vertical scissors” would end in a tie with both planes standing on their nozzles and the airspeed dropping lower and lower. When an out-of-control tail slide was imminent, the pilots would have no alternative but to pull the nose over. With the ocean steadily filling the windscreen, another scissoring dance to gain advantage would begin. Only after several of these up-down vertical helixes would one pilot finally gain a small advantage and a tail chase would begin. The pursued would twist in various escape maneuvers. The planes would shudder violently in high-speed turns that crushed us in our seats. Sweat would pour from our scalps and sting our eyes. Unintelligible grunts would fill the intercom as we strained to tighten our guts and prevent blood flow out of our brains. Unlike fighter pilots we did not wear anti-G suits, which added the danger of G-induced unconsciousness to the games. In a high-speed turn the G-forces could momentarily reach seven, which would pull the blood from our brains and bring on tunnel vision. Just a little harder pull and our vision would have gone to black…unconsciousness. Death at water impact would have followed. But we always managed to grunt our way through the yanking and banking to eventually hear the “rat-a-tat-tat,you’re dead” call over the radio. A victor would be proclaimed and another game would begin.

How we survived this idiocy without an aircraft and/or crew loss, I have no idea. On several occasions the extreme maneuvering would lead to a flameout. A “break it off” call would be a certain indication the other crew was restarting a failed engine. It must have been the Almighty watching out after us. As I would later hear John Young say in reference to near disasters on early shuttle flights, “God watches out for babies, drunks, and astronauts.” He certainly watched after dogfighting TFNGs.