The Time I Nearly Died in Pilot Training

On this episode of Our American Stories, during a high-stakes flight, pilot trainee Peter Braxton lost control of his aircraft and almost didn’t live to tell the tale. That near-death experience would prepare him for something no one could have imagined: becoming the first Air Force pilot airborne over the Twin Towers on 9/11. Here’s Peter with the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next a
story by Peter Braxton about his Air Force training, his
Air Force pilot training on the morning of September eleventh,
two thousand and one that would come into play because
he was the first military pilot in the air over
the burning twin Towers. Here's Peter with his story about

(00:35):
his pilot training at the Air Force.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
In the seven During training, it's a fully aerobatic subsonic trainer,
so you can like do loop de loops and immments
and cuminates and all these other tricks in the thing.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
You know.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Just think that's not thunderbirds or the Blue Angels. You
can do that stuff. We just do it way higher
in the air, Okay, we don't do it near the
Earth where there's zero room for air. So again, pre war,
I'm in pilot trending. I wanted to be a doctor.
I'm like flying around and then what they do is
they make you solo. You have to like fly this
thing alone, you know, very fairly quickly, within like ten

(01:13):
hours of flying, and you know, some of its confidence
and some of it's can you do it well? I
remember at that point I was like, well, I guess
I'm not going to fly a fighter because there's no
base near where I grew up, and I'll just I'll
go fly. I could see seventeen or casey ten. This

(01:34):
might be one of the last times I ever fly alone.
So I'm like, you know, I'm gonna make it. I'm
going to make it worth my while. So there's a
there's a problem with me is I'm more of a
Cadillac guy than a Ferrari guy, right, So I like
things a little loose, where I can move and not
restrict blood flow and all this other stuff. And you know,

(01:56):
and yeah, you got like g you get G suits
and you're pulling GE's just training. It was so funny.
I never used to this is embarrassing. I used to,
you know, you have the helmet on, and I would
wear the chin strap like it was a hockey, Like
it was just dangling, Like this doesn't even need to
be there, but it's got to be connected because that's
part of the rules, right, Like if it's not connected,
your breaking safety law. So I would connect everything, but

(02:19):
I wouldn't tighten it, tighten it, tighten it down to myself.
And so I'm flying alone, I'm like, all right, here's
your chance. Do all the get it out of your system,
do it, do it all. So I start whipping this
jet into full speed, entering all of these maneuvers, and
then I get this bright idea that I'm going to

(02:39):
try to fly like top gum like upside down for
a like sustained period of time. And I know I
forgot I forgot one thing. I didn't like strap in tight.
So like I flipped the plane upside down. Gravity took
over and I like fell out of the seat. And

(03:00):
I remember I was like laying on the cockpit on
the glass upside down. Can't reach the controls, and the
oxygen hose isn't built for this, so it's like yank
in my head to the side. It's still connected. I
was like, I mean, I'm like, I'm not immortal. This

(03:21):
is how it ends. I can't reach the ejection handles,
I can't reach the stick or the throttles, and just
like it, like you see the altimeter, just it starts
going down and I'm at I think I was at seven.
I had the block fourteen to seventeen thousand feet and

(03:43):
I mean, I'm I'm going straight down and the jet
is accelerating and the vertical loss that you must have
been ten thousand feet a minute. I probably had a
minute in eighteen seconds left to live. And it's funny
these the base I was that was it was a
student pilot training base. It was also a student air

(04:05):
traffic control base. It was a zoo. It was a
bunch of little kids. And so the the kind way
to ask a pilot, like what what are you doing
is they say say your say intentions. That's the way
they do it, say intentions. It means what are you doing?
I see on my screen that you're not You're gonna write.

(04:28):
It's like one of those things where your life lashes
in front of your eyes and a millisecond, I remember
my grandmother, like I don't know, feeding me or pushing
me on a swing, and my brain instantaneously took over
and said I'm gonna fix this. We need to survive.
It was like, we need to live, we can live,
we can do it. And I did this like neck
push up and I kind of like slid my leg

(04:51):
on the stick instead of going straight down, I kind
of sliced down through the air and the gravity kind
of like helped me shim me back in the seat,
and I'm approaching like the speed limits of the airframe,
and I remember, I mean throttle's idol speed bricks out,
there's no speed limit on that, and pulling what's called

(05:12):
to the buffet right max performing the plane. They're trying
to pull out of this dive that I've never been
in and never been in since, and I'm like, I mean,
I mean the whole thing is shaking, like in the
right stuff like the right The whole thing is shaking,
and I'm pulling out and still flying and I pulled
back into the area and I remember responding to the

(05:36):
control I was like, you know, tiger to I requests
a river recovery, which is like I want to go home.
I want to go home no more. I've had enough.
That was enough fun. And here's the issue. The issue
is these planes are so old. I mean, I think,
Chuck Yeger, I mean, these are like nineteen fifties era
training jet. They have a T six now and you

(05:58):
have to fly the plane straight and level for one
minute holding this like fast slave button to get like
the I ins and the and the compass to snap
into place after you're doing all these maybe because it
kind of tumbles, and so you're like, I want to
go home, and I request the recovery and I hit

(06:19):
the button and I hit it for like, I don't know,
forty five seconds, not a minute. But it looked like
it snapped into place. It like it kind of tumbles
and then it goes like this and it goes and
the snaps and I saw that happen, so I was like,
all right, let go. And the controller, who's probably also
a student, you know, it was like, you know, turn
right zero three zero, and I'm like, you know, I'm

(06:42):
I'm going zero three zero. Like what do you mean
you're talking to me? Tiger three zero three zero? That's
all you say? And they say, turned again right now,
zero six zero. Yeah, great, so you do that and
then they're like, say intentions. The compass never fully snapped back,
and no, by the way I was looking at the window,
I didn't recognize any of the stuff on the ground.

(07:04):
I was like flying into Mexico. I was going the
wrong direction. Well here's the problem. Well, if you don't
know you have something called no gyro. You know, I
don't have any dry I need I need, like you
need to tell me when it start. My turn and
stop my turn. So we're trained to do this like
in an emergency. So I'm like, look, I need I

(07:25):
have no gyro. I need no gyro. Vectors back to
and they're telling me. And then it's it's coming to
me that my compass is so I re slave the
compass straight and level, hold the finger down and it
snaps back into place, and now all everything's making sense. Well,
here's the problem. I'm so far away that I'm running

(07:46):
out of gas. And in the T thirty seven, we
have these these light we call the disco lights. There's
a red light and a yellow light. When you're getting
low on fuel, they start to like dance. They'll flash
on an off, like an ambulance or something. And so
I'm coming back, coming back, come back, and I'm like,

(08:08):
oh my gosh, I'm run a field. I need direct
to initial. I need a vector direct to initial, which
is where you fly in fly with field and land.
And I had obviously already said, I mean I knowed gyro,
so they knew something was wrong. And I'm running a
gas and I'm like, you know what, better strap in,

(08:29):
You better put those seat belts back on, because if
you have to eject. You know your body's gonna be
torn to shreds. You want to go out as one piece,
not like a bunch of different pieces. So I really,
I mean, I buckled everything up and I landed Wan
to a full stop, pulled into parking, and one of
my engines started flaming out, like just automatically shutting down

(08:54):
when I was on the ground. I think fuel starvation,
I guess, or fueld cavitation, I don't know, but I
was out of gas. I was literally I was out
of gas. So I come in and it's funny. The
flight commander has like a little radio and he listens,
especially to the students that are so low. He's like,
what was going on up there? And we have a

(09:15):
saying and then and it's I will tell my kids,
does mess up? Fess up? You mess up? You fess up.
So I told him this is what happened. And I
remember this is back in the day. I mean, these
guys are like gruffy fighter pilots that are training kit.
He had like a like dipped in his mouth and
he takes it out and he puts it to this

(09:36):
cup and it's disgusting, right, so disgusting I think it's
discussing habit. People will do it, enjoy your nicotine. I
don't really care. And he's like, you ain't gonna do
that again? Are you never ever ever again?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to
Peter Braxton for sharing his story with us. He also
shared us the story of being the first pilot over
the Twin Towers and that he was the last to
find out what happened there, and it was a lesson
in just doing your job and doing what's ahead of you.

(10:14):
And we heard a lot about that pilot training in
this particular story, and I love that line, you mess up,
you fess up. If only we all live by that credo,
how much simpler our lives would be and better. And
the story of how the training well it has to
sort of get kicked into you sometimes through a crisis,

(10:34):
for pretty soon the protocols and the training, well they
turned you into a professional. The story of Peter Braxton
his near death experience here on our American Stories