Rocket Child (Slight Return)
Prose: Nicholas Pascarella
Photography: Nicholas Pascarella, Jonathan Derden, Ryan Kelly, Richard Souza, James Woodard
Amongst the constellations scattered in the cobalt blanket, through the naked, waving trees, someone had turned on a light. It looked like a night-light, glowing dimly red under a long factory awning that spanned the length of our entire left side. It was confusing and slightly disorienting; we were a few thousand feet up a mountain, looking down into the darkness at this light. It grew brighter slowly as snow crunched under our feet, and with the grace only our Earthen mother could display, the light spilled into a smear of blood-orange along the line that we all started to understand was the horizon.
Dawn, as gentle as she ever was.
Let me rewind a bit - we had just driven through the night across six states, some of us (including myself) leaving straight from work on Wednesday. We were exhausted. I can't remember ever checking the weather, discussing the weather, fretting the weather, losing sleep over the weather, and getting updates from buddies about the weather, this much - at any point - in my entire life, prior to this journey. The whole event hinged on a slim open weather window Thursday morning for us to potentially witness my good friend Buck's FINI, his very last flight in the F-15E Strike Eagle, on a low-level training sortie, just before a winter storm system moved in.
A big storm had already covered the region earlier in the week with heavy, wet snow, creating a magical winter wonderland. It had also made the roads impassible. With that next system already inbound, the only chance we were going to have was Thursday, just after daybreak. If they flew the route. If the timing didn't change. If the ceilings held. And if we could get up the mountain. If, if, if.
I had met Buck working with the 336th Fighter Squadron "Rocketeers" on a piece for Wings magazine, and his presence was effortlessly warming and encouraging. I was also privleged, honored, and humbled, to catch him flying with another good buddy, Strap, on Strap's FINI with the Rocketeers, the day before my 35th birthday.
They were flying my grandfather's flag in the cockpit.
My grandfather was a 4-star in the US Army, instrumental in shaping both Marine and Army doctrine and establishing NATO as part of the US delegation, rubbing elbows and playing golf with Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, and Colin Powell in the same lifetime. During his 10 tours in WWII, amongst his many, many medals and awards, he earned the Distinguished Service Cross shortly after fighting the battle of Anzio, Italy. Buck and Strap flew the big man's flag on Strap's final flight with the Rocketeers, and the photos I have of them, under the same Strike canopy, with General William Bradford Rosson's flag up front, will always hold a very special place in my heart.
The flag went supersonic with Buck on an FCF (Functional Check Flight) sortie. "It would've hit [mach] 2.0 but [I] had a canopy unlock light at 1.79 mach," he told me later, my eyebrows climbing in alarm. "It was almost lost in a million pieces along with my body, at least that's what I was thinking at 48k and 1.79M." My mouth was agape. "We were all good, didn't dump pressurization and she kept her lid on. I was sucking some seat cusion on that one though!" he said. "I'll never forget that sortie till the day I die!" he laughed. If the military still admistered "mission whiskey" after a rough flight, I think that sortie qualifies.
Not lost in all of this is the simple fact that for over a decade, like thousands of other frontline men and women, he's been at the tip of the spear. "The most fulfilling aspect was probably helping to roll back ISIS," he said, thoughtful for a moment when I had asked about his service, "[however]...you get to see some crazy stuff. I'll say that one of the coolest parts of this job is that you get the opportunity to see and live global politics first hand. After all, that's what the military is - an extension of national politics...sharing the skies of Syria with Russian Flankers, to being in pretty close proximity to Turkish Vipers as they do some interesting things pushing south into Syria as well, to providing support for some of the most elite individuals this country has to offer, to capping over the Strait of Hormuz and watching Iranian boats try to instigate our Naval forces, then to have Iran shoot down a Global Hawk in the same airspace you were in just a couple days before..."
Crazy things, indeed. As it often goes with these incredible types of people, what he thinks he'll remember most fondly isn't the unbelievable moments he was a part of in the sky, it's the people he shared them with. The job is obviously intense and demanding; "The days are often long and the time away from home is often a lot...This career demands a lot out of you and your family, and rightfully so. Now, that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it. It was," he said, "...if I have the ability to do so, I'm going to engage in that line of work."
But looking back, he told me, shining through are "...all the memories I have made with all the bros that I have served with. When I say "bro", they know who they are. It doesn't mean guy or girl, it means awesome individual who you are willing to go through some sh*t with. They make it all worthwhile...That's the thing I will miss the most." The tip of the spear.
Considering all of this, I wasn't about to pass up the chance to roll the dice in the snow and try to catch a glimpse of his FINI, in the hopes of getting some shots for him to remember this monumental flight; "something to show the grandkids," he would say. Especially given that we were going to be hiking into the smallest of windows to achieve a prohibitively difficult task on the east coast: photos of an operational jet in training, maneuvering, below us, amongst a snowy scene. We had all left with enough time to overcome any suprises. We hoped.
The clouds cleared as I rowed the gears, and stars started popping out between the bare trees. The deeper south I got, the more snow appeared along the interstate. It occurred to me, about three hours into the 10-hour, overnight drive, around the time I'd usually be getting ready for bed, that I had gone quite mad. Why do I put myself through this? I cracked the window; a blast of cold air swirled in the cabin, and I slapped my face a few times.
I linked with James Woodard (@3.61media) and he continued driving on through the night; I continued checking the weather every 15 minutes. I had flashbacks of our Canyon trip together as we consumed mile after mile of darkened highway; driving out to the middle of nowhere in the pursuit of creating fast jet art. This trip had special meaning, however. We had the roads to ourselves for the most part, but the deer must've thought that too. We had several close encounters through the wee hours of the morning, weaving through southern hills. As we spun our tires up the last of the iced-over tarmac, we thought we'd made it without incident.
A silly thought. Naturally, about halfway up the long gravel road to the trailhead, we were met with our first big suprise. A huge tree had fallen across the road during the storm earlier in the week, and it now blocked our path to the trailhead. The road ended for our vehicles there, but not for us. We parked. The rest of the bleary-eyed crew collected at the downed tree and started gearing up.
Fully suited and with headlamps ablaze, we nervously ducked under the fallen tree and started walking up the snow-covered access road. Our walking sticks punched through the snow and into the mud while the wind howled through the trees above us. Our hiker train rubbernecked once we finally reached the trailhead parking lot; another journey milestone achieved.
Jonathan Derden (@jderden.photo) and I had debriefed some unforgettable hikes here in this parking lot. I'd also dropped my phone face-first onto the gravel here, breaking my phone screen, when we first met years ago. It was a little warmer in those memories. My spine shivered involuntarily. I pulled off a glove and slid my phone out of my pocket to check the time; half the screen was foggy from sweat, but we were right on schedule. The crack in the screen was still there. We were getting closer.
We stopped to rest up the trail a bit, gasping for frigid mountain air, and Richard "Zulu" Souza (@zulu_xray_photography) presented the question I had asked myself earlier, but with slightly increased exasperation; "Why are we doing this again?"
"You'll see," I responded, with a wry smile. That wasn't good enough. There was a pause. Someone adjusted their pack and a light danced around the haggard gathering. Zulu shook his head; "Whyyy are we doing this again?" he wheezed.
"Because someone wanted to take the longer route," a disembodied voice up ahead of us on a switchback said; it was tough to tell who was who in the dark. The comment was in reference to Zulu's preference of the gentler grade, based on the snowy incline and the time we had. We all laughed, but continued resting in the darkness. My headlamp followed my eyes as I looked around at the crew, landing on Ryan "Ryguy" Kelly (@ryguyaviation) beside me. He became obscured as my foggy breath drifted up in front of my forehead light and into the forest.
It was around this point we noticed Dawn arrive, with the sweetness of a lover's carress. We fell silent. A few of us took photos.
My thoughts drifted back to Buck, and the range of emotions he would likely feel later in the day. It was the end of an era, after all. With nearly 3000 hours at the stick, home is the sky. 1300 of those hours were Strike Eagle hours, and further still, 400 of those Strike Eagle hours were spent in combat. "I'm just your standard one-each dude," he would always say, but I know there's so much more to that statement than reaches the surface.
The FINI would be doubly special for him; he was going to be flying the airframe he first flew into combat. "It ended up being a 7.4 hour sortie, we dropped 8 weapons off the jet and did some pretty solid work that night," he had told me. "I flew the same tail back across the pond from that deployment, made it back to my wife who was over 8 months pregnant just in time for the birth of our first kid. We didn't even know she was pregnant when I left... I've got a great relationship with this jet," he mused.
I had asked him about flying the jet itself and got the answer every kid wants to hear: "Flying the Strike Eagle is probably the coolest thing I'll ever get to do in this lifetime," and I could hear the smile in his response. "It's an incredible honor to take such an amazing machine out and take it to the edge of its operating envelope...I used to race cars when I was younger, before Active Duty, so I was used to operating a vehicle near its limits. To fly a fighter, it's that same theory, just adding an additional dimension of motion to it," he said.
"And let's be honest, when you're doing a quick climb, jacking the nose straight up and watching the world rapidly shrink beneath you as you look over your shoulder - that's one of the coolest views you can get in the world. Flying a low-level through the mountains - that's one of the coolest views you can get in the world. Being in Max AB, supersonic in a commit up above 40,000 feet and looking left and right and seeing 3 other jets in the cons line abreast with you - that's one of the coolest views you can get in the world." I tried to imagine what must've been an incredible montage of memories from his perspective.
Someone quietly said, "Alright," and snapped me from my reverie. We started up the path again.
As we reached the clearing, we were met with our second suprise. The wind had not died like the forecasts said it would. It was relentless. The cold leeched between our jacket layers and seeped into our bones; we hid behind the jagged rocks on top of the mountain for any semblence of shelter. The act of simply taking a photo was a painful endeavour. And yet, the sky had brightened from its navy to a muted periwinkle.
We watched the Earth spin the sun into the sky from the top of the mountain.
Despite the brutal cold, this was a special moment. The blood-orange swelled to overtake the distant mountains and stretched out along the full eastern skyline, while the western sky's gradient blossomed into the entire blue-purple spectrum. Visibility seemed infinite. The surrounding undulating hills cast frosty shadows as the sun peeked out; the very mountain we stood on threw a significant shadow into the hills. Jonathan waved at our blurry selves a few thousand feet away. Despite the wind, the scene was perfect. We had arrived, out of breath and frozen but unscathed, unbelievably, at the weather window. All we needed now was healthy jets. And some luck.
The radio crackled to life and conversation abruptly stopped. The calls we were hoping to hear sizzled through; the moment was upon us. The flight's timing, as anxious as we had been about the weather, approached perfection. All of us, blinking back tears from the bitter wind and fighting to retain feeling in our extremeties, stared off into the windy distance to try and spot the first glimpse of Buck on his warhorse. One last ride. This was it. A smile split across my frozen face.
The dark Strikes were difficult to see below the horizon, amongst the barren trees. The biting wind immediately froze our ungloved fingers and buffeted our long zoom lenses, making the very act of pressing the shutter button a dubiously hopeful event in itself, much less ambitiously trying to find and achieve a good autofocus lock with our bouncing frames of reference on a tiny, dark-gray, head-on Strike Eagle, displaying very little relative motion, floating in the vast scene splayed out in front of us.
I heard him... but as my anxiety quickly rose, I couldn't find Buck until he was nose-high and climbing through the horizon with the blowers lit, right in front of my face. Embarrassed and disappointed in myself doesn't begin to describe my shock-feelings as I had blown nearly the entire pass. Later on, I learned (to my relief) that it wasn't just me having problems; the others admitted to similar difficulties in their battles with the wind and the cold. #2 nearly got past me before I saw them too, and I was positively beside myself. Was this going to be the biggest failure of my photography career? Did I just blow my one chance??
Bless those Rocketeers, Buck ran the low-level route with his #2 in fluid trail once more, and to my great elation and relief, I was able to get a good lock this time. The two Strikes weaved along the contours in the land, connecting peaks with their lines the way inspired artists give meaning to shapes.
Seeing Strike Eagles raging down in the snowy hills of the east coast, my childhood home, gave me chills. They squeezed the dry air, trailing vapor ribbons as they ripped through white Appalachian valleys. Without external fuel tanks, the fighters jinked and sliced like snarling hunting dogs, released from their chains and hot on a trail. I noticed Buck had a folded flag up front as he went screaming past us. Special flag, that one is going to be.
As the pair exited the low level and climbed away into the rising sun for the final time, we watched in reverence. The rumble of the engines was eventually overtaken by the wind; we continued watching until the two fighters melted entirely into the sky. There was no cheering or exclamations; only respect. Gratitude. Afterglow. We could smell the jet fuel in the crisp morning air. I could not feel my fingers.
As we packed up, the wind quickly died and the mountain became much more comfortable. We all made frustrated jokes about how much easier it would've been if... if, if, if. We came down off the mountain displaying a few extra mud stains thanks to the slushy trail.
We made our exhausted goodbyes, and went our separate ways. Then the overcast moved in. I spent the rest of the day racing the next storm system back home, carving out just enough time to have lunch with my brother and parents and fill my machine with fuel. The leading edge of the storm had its finger on me the entire 10-hour drive back, getting progressively more overcast and darker the farther north I went.
28 hours after leaving, I walked back in my front door. The first flakes had already started falling.
Full Disc Aviation would like to humbly and sincerely thank Buck for spending the time with us to make this piece truly memorable. Special thanks also goes out to the other aircrew in the flight, and to Meg Cheap Photography for the priceless champaigne shower photo.
