With Veterans Day approaching I wanted to include something in our podcast about veterans and Veterans Day, so Lisa suggested that I tell a story, possibly a funny story. Since I was dubbed “The Storyteller” a few years back during a trip to Venice, La., I’ve tried to live up to that title. I tried to think of a funny story that I haven’t already told a million times and a very funny story came to mind. I did something a little different for the podcast, but I still wanted to share this funny story with y’all for Veterans Day. Enjoy!

I wanted to use a video or two to serve as a visual aid for my story, and the video below is called low pass. Getting an up-close look at that is very rare but a couple of my squadron mates got a little more than they bargained for one morning.

It was the late fall of 2001 at a big Naval Air Base deep in the heart of the Nevada desert. Our squadron was spending a couple weeks at the air base dropping bombs from our F-18 Hornets. This is something just about every fighter/attack squadron does during the year to keep the pilots proficient in the delivery of weapons and most of it is done at desert bombing ranges while operating from the base. On this occasion, we were about halfway through our two-week detachment and it was getting boring. One thing that filled our time during the detachment was running. At the time I was competing in marathons and the base provided a lot of desolate roads to run on while training for an upcoming race. Two of my running team members were also on the detachment with me so we did a lot or running together when we were off work. One place we liked to run was an old dusty dirt road that parallelled the runway at the air base. The old road was separated from the runway by 20-30 yards and a high chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top. There were reasons for the barbed wire and if anyone wandered into the runway area it could be very dangerous.

My two running teammates were officers in the squadron, but they didn’t fly the jets and their jobs were more of a logistical nature. We had a few officers in the squadron that managed the maintenance effort and served as a liaison between us enlisted folks and the pilots. Both officers were younger than me and we really got to know each other during our training runs. Both officers were single at the time, and I loved to listen to their stories while we were on our runs. Even though their lifestyles were a little different than mine, I was constantly entertained by their antics while on detachment.

On this particular day I was coming to work at 12 noon and working a 24 on and 24 off shift. When I walked into our maintenance area, I saw my two officer running mates standing off in a corner talking quietly with another officer. My two officer friends were bandaged in different places around their bodies including bandages on their faces and exposed arms. They both looked like they had been in a fight with a bobcat, so I walked over and asked them what happened. What followed next was one of the funniest things I ever heard and saw in the Navy. They explained to me how they had met a young single pretty lady that worked as a bartender at the officers’ club. They really wanted to impress her so they invited her to drive out to the fence at the very end of the runway to watch a couple of our jets take off up-close and personal. The plan was for my two officer friends to enter the coded gate at the end of the runway area and walk out to the runway itself to video the take-off with a video camera. Their new lady friend was going to stand on the other side of the gate and observe the takeoff from afar for safety reason.

My two officer friends also talked to a few pilots and told them that they would be at the end of the runway filming and would like them the showoff a little since their new lady friend would be watching. Now, if there’s something I know about fighter pilots, it’s the fact that they don’t run across this level of stupidity too often and when it does occur, they take full advantage of it. Little did my two officer friends know that pilots are pros at showing off and they put on a show alright. My two officer friends told their lady friend where to stand and they both entered the runway area. They walked out to the end of the runway and waited. Soon you could hear the jets taking off from the other end of the runway and they started recording the takeoff. As the first jet came towards them, I’m sure they were in awe at the jet flying so low and so fast right at them. Unfortunately, the pilot could see them as he approached them standing at the end of the runway and he decided to give them a show like they’d never seen before. The pilot approached them at about 20 feet in altitude and screaming at around 300-400 mph. Just before the pilot and his screaming hornet got to my friends, he pulled back on the stick and popped the two big engines into full afterburner. The jet stood up on end and just a few feet below was my two officer friends. It was like an explosion when the jet blast hit them, and they both went tumbling down the runway and pinned them both against the fence near where their lady friend was standing in a state of shock. The two officers were covered in road rash and bloodied from tumbling on the concrete. They were in need of medical attention, and they dropped their lady friend off so they could go get changed and bandaged up.

They were a site when I first saw them and I laughed hysterically at their story. What was even better was the video. The video was deleted shortly after I viewed it because of the embarrassment and also, I’m sure the pilot would have been in a little trouble for intentionally blasting my buddies down the runway. The video was everything I thought it would be, complete with the fast and low approach and the subsequent cursing and tumbling friends and camera. When I watched the video and got to the part when they went tumbling with the super hot lady friend standing by, I nearly had a aneurism from laughing so hard.

The video above kind of gives you an idea of what it would have looked like that day if you could just imagine the two dudes in the video standing at the end of the runway instead of the safe side of the fence. The video below is an example of what jet blast can do on the aircraft carrier. The video below shows a final checker that got to close to the action. One of my jobs on the flight deck was final checker and I spent a lot of time around that jet blast.

“Blood was streaming through Dave’s hands that covered his face as one of the AME’s brought him through the hanger and back to the shop. I was coming from the shop, on my way to the flightline to help with the launch when I saw Dave’s slumped over body and the bloody mess all over the front of Dave’s clean pressed dungarees. I knew it was bad right away from the amount of blood loss, so I peeled off my t-shirt to help wipe away the blood and see if we needed an ambulance or just a car ride for Dave to medical to get him sewn up. We got Dave to the shop after I shoved my t-shirt in his face to capture some of the blood that was dripping all over our nice clean shop floor and I went to work to find out what happened and access the damage to Dave’s face.  Dave was our supervisor and rarely went out to the flightline. That was for his own safety because he was old and wore coke bottle glasses. Not a good mix for working around a moving aircraft that will cripple or kill you in a split second if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seems ole Dave had been told to get off his butt and get out to the flightline to deliver a part that the shop needed during a launch. Dave was able to get the part needed but when he went out to the flightline to deliver the part he walked directly into a lower antenna blade protruding from the belly of the Tomcat. That’s why we didn’t let Dave get around aircraft. You see, in the Navy every squadron rule was written in blood, and we all knew to abide by those rules but every once in a while, some goofball in charge would forget about our rules and try to be a hero so someone with a nice clean uniform ends up being carted back to the hanger with a chopped off face. Once I got Dave calmed down and cleared the blood that kept streaming down, I realized that the cut was between his eyes and about a quarter inch in size. Seems old Dave must have been hopped up on blood thinners and with his heart racing it looked much worse than it really was. It only required a few stitches to get old Dave back to the shop and doing what he did best, paperwork.”