Wings and a Prayer

In the second it took for my spleen to wrap around my spine, I realized this adventure was going to be even more exciting than I anticipated.

Like a lot of people who work behind desks all day, I keep a mental list of exploits I’d like to pursue, given the chance. Got an extra seat on the space shuttle? I’m your guy. Any more room in that diving bell headed down to take an up-close look-see at the Titanic? Let’s go.

So when the chance came to take a ride in the back seat of an F/A-18 jet fighter, with one of the Navy’s Blue Angels at the controls, I wasted no time in making a bid for the assignment. Talk about a classic case of watch what you ask for because you may get it.

The Angels, the Navy’s premiere precision flying team, headline the final El Toro Air Show this weekend. And Blue Angel 7, piloted by Lt. Doug Verissimo, arrived early to take three media types for the ride of our lives.

Early Tuesday morning, the marine layer was still in place when Sgt. Barry Pawelek, the El Toro public information officer, met me and San Diego television reporter Mike Castellucci at the main gate. We collected early-morning L.A. radio personality Brian Phelps, who had arrived earlier, and headed for the VIP lounge.

At the safety briefing, Crew Chief Peter Ford got to the point.

“Did you all have a big breakfast?”

No way I was going to make that rookie mistake. I had a nice glass of water.

Ford assured us there would be little white bags on hand, but quickly warned us that if we used them, we must seal them tight--in a flight jacket pocket. He then carefully explained how to eject, should the need arise, and how to avoid ejecting accidentally.

If it became necessary to eject, Verissimo could do it for both of us. A warning, “Stand by for ejection,” would be followed by a blast into the wild blue yonder--both seats leaving the plane within three seconds. Unless all my blood had drained to my feet, I figured, I would be ready.

As I mentally reviewed the techniques we had heard for controlling a parachute to avoid power lines and an untidy demise, Peter allowed as how pilots hate to leave airplanes. Me, too, particularly when they are falling out of the sky.

On the tarmac, Verissimo introduced himself. If you called central casting and asked for a fighter pilot, this is who would show: lean from weight training and running, matinee good looks and possessed of an offhand confidence.

The Angels, however, are much more than eight men like Verissimo. More than 100 support personnel with a $13-million budget work behind the scenes, caring for the planes and moving gear from place to place on a schedule that will take the team to 68 shows at 37 locations this year.

After a 1,100-gallon fill-up, Ford helped me slide into the nine-point harness and reviewed all the gauges and performance indicators. Most could have been in a runic alphabet for all I could figure, with the exception of the air speed indicator and a reading I would watch carefully the entire flight: the G meter.

Anyone vaguely familiar with Tom Clancy or Tom Wolfe knows about G forces. But briefly, sitting at your desk you’re pulling 1 G, or your own, say, 125 pounds. At 2 Gs, you would feel the equivalent of 250 pounds; at 3 Gs, 375, etc.

As Verissimo increased power for takeoff I was aware only of a faint rumble--nothing so dramatic as a violent tremor, more like a huge spring slowly coiling. I knew what to expect from our briefing and watching the two others leave, but no preparation is enough.

When we began to roll, the plane weighed about 33,000 pounds. Its two turbofans produce about 16,000 pounds of thrust, leaving us with a one-to-one power/weight ratio--more or less like riding a bullet.

Before I had time to wave goodbye, we rocketed down the runway and lifted about 50 feet. The landing gear retracted and then--nothing but sky. I’m told it looked like an 80-degree ascent, and after the initial shock those Gs began their work.

At first I thought there must be a couple of linebackers concealed somewhere in my flight suit. As the G meter leaped past 2, the most distinct feeling was of someone trying to pull the skin off the bottom of my face.

Not if those Magic Mountain boys sat up all night could they come close to conceiving a ride like this.

Wing-overs (pointing the wing end straight up), loops, vertical loops (corkscrewing straight up into the sky) a progressively faster, tighter turn that ran the G meter to 5 shot my adrenaline level off the scale.

Even the less spectacular moments were exhilarating. We flew inverted (negative Gs, just suspended there in the cockpit) over a ship whose crew must have been preparing the hook to fish us out of the water after the inevitable crash. While just cruising along in what I though was a break in the action, Verissimo called my attention to the air speed indicator--350 knots, 400, 450, 500, 550, and through the sound barrier without so much as a ripple.

Toward the end of the ride, Verissimo suddenly asked if I was ready to fly the plane. Certainly I was if he was, and abruptly the stick was mine. I used to think my car, an old Porsche, was fairly nimble. Here, even nearly imperceptible movement sent us off in a different direction. Great, one sneeze and we’re hurtling toward the ocean in an $18-million airplane with nothing to keep us from going to the bottom faster than the Edmund Fitzgerald but Verissimo’s considerable abilities.

But he wasn’t worried. “Go ahead and do a wing over to the left,” he said. After a pathetically tame imitation of what he had put us through earlier, he suggested I try another one, but with a little more verve. “Go ahead and jam that stick hard, all the way to either side.”

Thatfast we were streaking along, headed in what direction I have no idea.

“There’s one more thing I’d like you to try if you feel up to it,” Verissimo said. “I’ll take us into a 7.5-G turn just so you can say you did it.”

Now there’s an invitation an adventure seeker can’t resist. Moments later it felt like there was an anvil in my lap and someone was trying to pull me through a six-inch hole in the bottom of my seat. My 170 pounds turned to 1,275, and the strain was simply crushing.

Like any good showman, though, the Blue Angel saved the best for last. As El Toro control OKd our approach, Verissimo explained we would go in with a carrier break, a maneuver pilots use when they have to get down quickly onto a deck. Sounded good to me; it’s hard to imagine anything more exciting than a carrier landing.

Here, for the first time, in the middle of a 7-G turn, I experienced what happens when the blood leaves the brain too quickly and the visual cortex begins to become disinterested in any further toil. Although I remained fully conscious, a gray film began pinching my vision from each side until it was something like looking through a straw.

Back on the ground, I realized for the first time the incredible physical stain involved in this kind of flying. I was drenched and physically spent. When Crew Chief Ford came up the ladder to help me out of the cockpit, he asked, “Think you’ll go to the gym tonight?”

I’d be lucky to find the gym.