Fighter Pilots Say Very Little Is Routine

In the seconds before an F/A-18 Hornet catapults from the carrier deck, the fighter jet is locked in place with twin engines spewing blue fire like giant blowtorches.

The flames are several yards long and so hot that they scorch the cool night wind blowing across the bow. An observer can feel the powerful blast of heat more than a hundred yards away.

When a helmeted crewman squatting on the deck signals launch, the force of a steam-driven catapult and two jet engines hurtle the fighter off the ship.

And then the pilot is alone, in the darkness, over the northern Persian Gulf.

The years of training--day in and day out in jets, simulators and war games--are supposed to make mental focus automatic when a combat pilot gets a rare shot at the real thing. But the mind knows how to fight too.

“You have a lot of time to think, and we continually tell ourselves, ‘Pull it back, pull it back and focus on what’s going on, the task at hand,’ ” said Cmdr. Guy Varland, 41, still in hi1931476993khaki jumpsuit after returning to the Enterprise from a bombing mission late Friday night. “There’s so much concentration required. What you see on TV is the final stages of the ‘video game.’ But all the basics required to get there are so incredibly important as well.”

First, there’s just getting launched safely off the ship, then rendezvousing with 16 jets in the darkness, reaching an airborne tanker and refueling, staying in formation and getting the bomb to the target.

“But you can’t take your pack off as soon as your bomb comes off,” said Varland, a South Dakotan who leads the VFA-37 Bulls squadron. “Then you have to complete the rest of the task, which is: Get out of Iraq, get to the [airborne refueling tanker] and get back aboard the ship. None of which is routine.”

Less than a week before Christmas, with their commander in chief being impeached in Washington and protests against the bombing mounting around the world, it has been especially difficult for the Enterprise’s fighter pilots to concentrate.

It is even harder for Varland.

On Friday night, when he was striking targets in Iraq, Varland was supposed to be on his way home to join his wife, Rhonda, and their 7-year-old son, Tyler, for Christmas.

Varland was one of just two out of about 5,500 crew members on the Enterprise to get that privilege, and a replacement commander was standing by to take over. But Varland fought a battle in his own heart, and he decided to stay with Operation Desert Fox.

The Enterprise sailed out of port at Norfolk, Va., on Nov. 6. As a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, it has a normal tour of six months, so the crew lives by its own calendar.

After 19 years in the Navy, Varland knows that Christmas is the day when he finally gets home.

On Thursday, the second night of bombing, Tyler celebrated his birthday without his father. It wasn’t until halfway through the day, when Varland glanced at a calendar his wife had sent him, that he realized what was happening at home. He couldn’t allow himself to think about it.

“You can’t, because that’s when bad things happen,” Varland said. “You can see it at times when you’re flying. You’ll see mistakes that you know are the result of a lack of concentration.”

Much of what happened on their missions is still secret, and pilots were not allowed to say exactly what kind of defenses the Iraqis were throwing up.

Pentagon officials said Iraqi pilots did not dare take off from their bases, and the Iraqis did not fire any surface-to-air missiles either.

However, “there has been a little SAM activity,” or attempts to lock onto attacking fighter jets with missile radar, confirmed Capt. Tom Hagen, group commander of the Enterprise battle group’s 73 aircraft.

Like many of the pilots flying off the Enterprise, Hornet pilot Lt. Frank Marston was seeing combat for the first time. Just back from another sortie over Iraq with the Gunslingers squadron740294658he was pumped on adrenaline and talking fast.

Friday night’s run “was outstanding,” he said, because his group hit an estimated 90% of its targets, compared with about 50% on the previous two nights of Operation Desert Fox, he said.

Yet it was not as easy as it looks on TV.

Once he crossed into Iraq from Kuwaiti airspace, Marston was looking for an airfield as a target marker, and for excruciatingly long minutes it just was not there.

“For whatever reason, that airfield just had a ‘cloaking device’ over it, and I literally couldn’t find it,” he said. “There was a brief moment of panic because I was passing over the airfield with 20 miles, which is roughly 2 minutes, 15 seconds of flight time, to find something541663233have no other way to get to.

“What I had to do is stick to that point and just, basically, I was hoping that someone could see it. And sure enough . . . “

To drop his laser-guided ordnance properly, Marston had to keep the target squarely inside a tiny box on the small computer display that glowed in front of him.

He had to do it while flying at about 690 mph and listening for antiaircraft fire or warnings of threats that come over the headphones.

“You have to hold it right on, and sometimes it drifts, and if that [laser] energy drifts off, the bomb just falls right off [target],” said Marston, 28, of Portland, Maine. “So you’re just literally staring at the display [screen] and trying to hold it there.”

When a pilot’s heart is pumping that fast, and a slip of the hand can kill him or an innocent person on the ground, it is dangerous to think of anything else.