The Bliss of Flying Fighter Aircraft

I'm a bit melancholy tonight.  I saw a picture of some young Naval Aviators having a good time after doing a flyover at a recent LSU Football Game.  That brought back a flood of memories when I flew what was, at that time, considered the most powerful airplane in the world, holding all of the speed and time-to-climb records world-wide, the McDonald-Douglas F4-D Phantom II Fighter/bomber.  Most of you probably know I flew fighters in the USAF from '69 to '74.  I was a Navigator/Weapons Systems Operator in the back seat of the aircraft shown above.  (That's me in '71 when I was "younger!" with the 9th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, about a month before we were deployed to Southeast Asia.)

I was trying to describe to my friend with the Naval Aviators that having once done this, there is really nothing that can replace that sensation, and that I miss it terribly.  I've tried to describe it, but up until tonight, I felt like I've always fallen short.  But tonight, I remembered something I learned in OCS and Flight School; a famous poem that is sort-of the theme poem of the USAF.  It is called "High Flight".  What follows is what that poem, and what I wrote to my friend(s) to try and put some of the wonders of flying such an aircraft in my own words.  

I hope whoever reads this enjoys it and, hopefully, can get just an inkling of the sensations that flying something like this provides.  I have not flown this aircraft since July of 1974, but I think about it every day, and the memories are as vibrant and exciting as they were thirty-eight years ago.

"High Flight"

by  John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
I learned this poem when I was in flight school back in '69 and '70. I've never read anything before or since that captures the love of just being in the air in a magnificent flying machine, unbridled by earth or boundaries. To feel the burst of speed when afterburners ignite, slamming one back into the ejection seat; to see billions of stars not twinkling, undimmed by fog or shimmering lights from cities while soaring over a totally dark jungle at midnight over some unknown jungle in Southeast Asia. To feel the force of eight times one's own weight pressing you down into your seat, then in a moment's time, hanging in the straps as the maneuver transitions into negative g's and any loose object is flung against the canopy, only to be cast back down in another second as the positive g's are re instituted. To fly at five hundred miles an hour with an airplane on each side of you with three feet of overlapping wings, doing loops and dives and rolls; to feel the sensation of knowing the slightest mistake will send multiple millions of dollars of airplanes hurtling towards the ground, but yet know that you will not make that mistake, because you are trained better than any aviator in the sky. 
Nothing can, or will ever compare...and I was blessed by God to actually do it! To be part of the best, and to beat that airplane into submission, and survive. GOD! That was living...and I miss it with ever breath I take.

To watch an awe-inspiring rendition of "High Flight", click this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx3WueJWlb4&feature=related

To learn more about John Gillespie Magee, please, click this link:  http://www.highflightproductions.com/high_flight_productions/JohnMagee.html