Why Smart Pilots Do Dumb Things is the title of Heater’s paper. It helped save the Red Eagles. However, this episode opens with a different lesson: never look at your ten o’clock at Groom Lake.

CJ “Heater” Heatley is back! We promoted him to four-star admiral on the spot. The check is in the mail.

So there he was, in a MiG-21 at the end of the runway at Groom Lake. Off his left side sat the weirdest-shaped thing he’d ever seen. Then the tower called: “Bandit 8, taxi back to the hangar immediately.”

He had just seen “Have Blue,” the precursor to stealth. Not even the vice president was briefed in. Consequently, Heater spent quality time in a pitch-black room inside a room, grilled by four men with no names.

First, though, Heater honors his lifelong friend Sam Young. As kids in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, they built rock cockpits on a red rock hill and flew imaginary fighters. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, Heater couldn’t throw rocks right-handed without clocking Sam.

So he threw lefty for years and became a southpaw pitcher. That’s where his call sign came from. Sam became a Marine gunnery sergeant, and his Purple Heart story from LZ Russell will stop you cold.

Furthermore, Heater closes the loop on a Sidewinder with locked fins that turned on his F-14. The admiral was in the back seat. He also tours Rosie’s Tomcat Ready Room in WaKeeney, Kansas. Its diorama is so detailed people think it’s a photo.

Why Smart Pilots Do Dumb Things: Inside the Red Eagles

Flying the MiG smelled like hydraulic fluid and an electrical fire. The gauges were Russian, except the altimeter and airspeed. The checkout took minutes, and there was no NATOPS.

Actually, the MiG-17 couldn’t even taxi like a normal jet. Its pneumatic differential brakes sent first-timers nose-first into the hangar.

After the program lost Hugh, the brass talked about shutting it down. Heater’s paper made the case to the general. TOPGUN’s best were dying in their first MiG engagements, distracted by the “gee whiz” factor. After debriefs and formation looks, they went home killing MiGs. The program survived.

Heater also shares a sobering tally: 348 of 512 Red Eagles have died. Plus: his lost Pentagon slides, his rejects on book covers, and 40 years of reader letters.

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“Clara Ship” is what A-6 Intruder pilot Duker radioed when he couldn’t even see the carrier. Forget the ball. He couldn’t find the boat.

Duker went from zero stick time to Navy jets through ROTC at USC. In flight school, food poisoning hit so hard his instructors debated flying him home in a baggage pod. Actually, he survived, then tail-slid an A-4 he was never supposed to tail-slide.

In the A-6, Duker and his bombardier-navigator got in a fist fight over a paper chart. However, they still hit the target on time. He also explains how six Intruders’ bombs registered on seismic instruments in Colorado.

How Clara Ship Became Duker’s Favorite Sea Story

As a landing signal officer, Duker graded every landing he waved. He breaks down hook slaps, the barricade, and why LSOs are called paddles. Furthermore, VA-176 was told the war would start when they arrived. Later, General Zinni sent them over northern Iraq with an unforgettable ROE brief.

Then comes a Case III night recovery to the JFK, southeast of Puerto Rico, in a downpour. The wind was so far out of limits the Intruder weathervaned left. He kicked in rudder, the bottom fell out, and he still caught an OK one wire. Consequently, it took him 20 minutes to climb out of the cockpit.

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Duker’s company, Flight Training International, does ATPs and type ratings at FTIRatings.com, and you can use the GI Bill. Our sponsor, veteran-owned DC Artworks, makes laser-cut steel art at dcartworks.net. Use code STIW for 20% off. Grab merch at sothereiwas.us/merch and leave five stars at sothereiwas.us/rate.

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Navy P-3 pilot Derek "DA" Adametz beat a collapsed lung and Hodgkin's lymphoma, then fought the waiver board all the way to squadron command.

F-100 pilot Ike flew 195 combat missions with an iron sight and nerves of steel. He takes us from night close air support to a 50-pound-fuel landing to the 1986 Libya raid.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Tim "Monk" Miller nearly punched out mid-nap over Ramadi, then built the Strike Fighter League, where guns are where it's at.

Vietnam-era Huey pilot RoadRunner joins RePete and Kemo for combat missions, near-disasters, and the Rope Trick — a Thailand R&R story he never fully explains.

A Thousandth of an Inch of Trouble is all that stood between one airline crew and an on-time departure. Actually, it was a worn brake wear pin, measured down to the thousandth, that a mechanic waved off as “technically good to go.”

This week’s episode is a lighter one. It’s just Fig and RePete, no guest, trading stories while juggling schedules and a certain eye surgery on the calendar. Before the flying talk starts, Fig recaps a fundraiser for YL-37, the effort to keep a UH-34 Marine helicopter flying as a living memorial. Vietnam-era crew chiefs, dubbed “Ugly Angels,” turned up to honor thirty-three squadron mates lost in the war. It was, by Fig’s account, truly spectacular.

Then the real theme of the night kicks in: airplanes you keep versus airplanes you refuse. RePete walks through a Low Altitude Tactics qual he pushed through despite a caution light, a Paris battery-discharge light that kept recurring for weeks, and an MD-11 jump seat jammed at a forty-five-degree angle that maintenance wanted to sign off as legal.

A Thousandth of an Inch of Trouble: The Refused Airplane

Furthermore, there’s the coffee thermos that popped three circuit breakers on takeoff roll, and two separate environmental control system failures that nearly cooked Fig alive, once over Camp Lejeune and once out of Darwin, Australia. However, the headline story is the brake pin.

On a 737 preflight, the first officer found no pin sticking out where one should be. Maintenance measured it anyway and found one-thousandth of an inch of clearance. Consequently, that counted as “in limits.” Fig refused the airplane, ate the delay, and bought drinks for the whole cabin. New brakes went on that night.

The episode wraps with thanks to veterans, their families, and everyone still serving.

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This week's episode honors Coast Guard rescue pilot John "Sticks" Hall with his brother-in-law's eulogy and son Tyler's letter, plus a night-divert tale from Stretch off the USS Midway.