Ejection at Mach 0.95: The Unbreakable Spirit of Kegan Gill

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Welcome back to the Pilot Network podcast, theplace where we connect aviators with tools,
resources, and stories to help them navigatetheir careers and lives.
Today, my guest brings a story that is trulynothing short of extraordinary.
Kegan Smurf Gill joins the pilot networkpodcast.
And if you've ever needed a reminder of theresilience of the human spirit, this is it.

(00:41):
Smurf holds the record for the fastest survivedejection in naval aviation history, a feat that
could easily have ended his life, yet it wasjust the beginning of a grueling and incredible
journey.
From surviving an almost impossible scenario atover 600 knots to battling through the depths
of recovery, Kagan has transformed hischallenges into a mission to help others.

(01:03):
In this episode, we explore his path tobecoming a naval aviator, the dramatic details
of his ejection, the mental and physicalhurdles he faced in recovery, and now how he's
helping veterans and pilots overcome their ownobstacles and challenges.
So buckle up.
This conversation is raw, insightful, and fullof lessons for anyone chasing excellence,

(01:24):
facing adversity, or just trying to be 10%better every day.
Let's dive into the cockpit with Keegan SmurfGill.
I hope you enjoy.
Keegan, welcome to the Pilot Network podcast.
Thanks again for joining me so much today.
We talked, a little bit before we started, andI I'm just thrilled to have you.
I found you, via LinkedIn.

(01:46):
Very nice.
Yeah.
Thanks
for reaching out.
It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Yeah.
Totally.
I mean, this is one of those stories where itcaught me so quickly because, yeah, I was out
there looking to see friends and friends offriends who I'd like to have on the show, who
have interesting stories, and who tell who areable to tell their story well, because it's

(02:09):
sometimes it's tough to find the story is easyto find, but the storyteller, is sometimes a
challenge.
And sometimes people can tell a good story, butthey don't want to.
Keegan was kinda all those things.
I saw that he wrote this.
He was writing a book.
I'm like, I wonder what this is about.
Immediately, I got sucked in, with with yourrejection story, which you'll get to.

(02:29):
And and you've been on tons of other podcasts.
But what I I wanted to start off because thisis a pilots for pilots podcast.
And you and I have these origin stories.
Right?
Like, we, we all looked up one day and said,yep.
That's it.
That's what we're gonna do.
That's the that's the be all end all.
How did you where was your origin story first,the first beginning, the first chapter?

(02:52):
Yeah.
So so as a kid, you know, some of my earliestdreams were of being Peter Pan and flying
around.
I love the movie The Rocketeer as a little kidwith all the cool aircraft and getting her
blast around in a rocket pack.
And Cliff Secours is like the coolest dude withthe hottest girlfriend ever.
So I'm like, you know, always in the back of mymind I was like being a pilot seems pretty

(03:13):
cool.
And when I was maybe 10 or 11, there's a littlea little community college where I grew up in
Northern Michigan that had a like, a collegefor kids program.
And so my parents enrolled me for this, youknow, I think it's just like a couple week long
course in the middle of the summer where youget to go in, you get to do some ground school.

(03:34):
So got to do a little bit of basic weather,aerodynamics, you know, just a little bit of
introduction into the world of aviation.
And in at the end of the event you got to go upfor a flight in a little Cessna 152.
And you know, I remember blasting off in thatthing and it felt like I was in full
afterburner.
This little kid climbing at 500 feet per minutejust being like, woah like freaking out.

(03:57):
This is the coolest thing ever.
And then just looking down over the turquoiseblue waters of, Northern Michigan and just
being like, wow this is this is somethingreally cool.
And that stuck with me.
And and as I grew up, graduated high school, Ididn't really have like a big direction that I
was really motivated for but I had alwaysremembered that discovery flight.

(04:19):
And there was that little community collegeright in my hometown in Traverse City,
Michigan, called Northwestern Michigan College.
And so I decided to enroll and start the flighttraining.
And I started earning my, my certificates as Iwent through and earned my college degree.
And within a couple years, I'd earned myprivate and instrument, my commercial, I got my

(04:42):
multi.
And by the time I think by the time I was ajunior, I'd become a CFI, CF Double I.
So I was flight instructing, building hours,you know, finally got to quit waiting tables
and and busing tables.
So that was kind of a nice upgrade, althoughthe pay was better, than the $7 an hour or
whatever we were making flight instruction atthat time.

(05:02):
But I loved it.
I I really enjoyed teaching, and I wasfortunate.
I had a actually, I had a student.
He was an older gentleman, actually a formernavy guy, and he had a a a business out in
Traverse City.
And he ended up hiring me from being a flightinstructor to be his company pilot, basically.
So, he bought a brand new Mooney Acclaim withbrand new G1000 avionics, integrated autopilot,

(05:27):
you know, Bose headsets, leather seats.
It was like a pretty nice upgrade from flyingthe little Cessnas I'd been kicking around in,
for all those years.
And I spent the next year getting to fly allover the United States.
Well, I flew with him and his wife quite a bit,taking him to business meetings all over the
place.
I got to do a decent amount of just singlepilot flying and, and got to learn a lot just

(05:52):
by being out there at the stick and just flyingall over the country, making my own decisions.
You know, a few times I got into some closecalls with, with weather and icing and
thunderstorms and trying to pick my way throughembedded thunderstorms with a with a a lagging
update rate on the the radar that was comingthrough, the radar images and, you know, I was

(06:16):
fortunate to make it through all of that andand still be here to tell the tale.
But I really I really enjoyed it.
The pay was good.
I was at the time, you know, the the airlineswere not really hiring anybody even if they
were guys were spending, you know, years makingmaybe $15.
They're all living in these little crash padsdown in Detroit sharing a bunk room with like 5

(06:39):
or 6 other guys that are making like nothingjust to get flight time.
So this isn't that, like, 2,002, 3, 4 timerange?
It would have been it would have been around2,008 that I was
Okay.
Oh oh, that was real that was the real
It was awful, man.
Like, a lot of guys were just not getting jobsand and so I was really lucky to get the the

(06:59):
gig, with my student, Larry, and get to do thatflying, because most of my other buddies were
just kinda stuck at the college, which thecollege was kinda like, alright, guys.
We need to get you out of the nest and, like,keep moving you and get newer guys in here.
But,
would that be was that the impetus to move onto the next phase of, like, your life where
you're like, alright.
This is cool, but or was there some sort of,you know, that journey to hero, some divine

(07:24):
intervention where all of a sudden it was like,oh, you know, Larry and and and Larry obviously
being Navy, I'm sure had some sort of influenceon the next phase of of your journey.
Yeah.
I mean, he he has some incredible stories.
I also had a a professor in college, commanderMike Stock.
He was a retired Navy test pilot.
He'd flown Huey gunships back in Vietnam in,like, the most gnarly conditions.

(07:48):
He he helped set up the Seawolves, which werelike the 1st military special forces helicopter
unit that just had a commitment to the guysthat they took out day or night.
We if we drop you off, we'll come pick you backup, which, you know, these guys didn't wear
uniforms.
They didn't wear rank.
They just, you know, were just there becausethey had a passion and they cared about the

(08:09):
dudes that they were taking care of.
And he had been in some crazy scenarios.
In that career, he had been in crazy test pilotscenarios.
He had been a bush pilot in Alaska.
I think he's been in, like, over 7 differentserious mishaps through his aviation career.
He's now a he's an FAA master pilot award hereceived, not that long ago, and he's actually

(08:32):
written several books.
I think one of his big ones is Chasing the FourWinds.
There's a History Channel special on the guyabout him flying this Payaseki heavy lift,
rotorcraft blimp contraption that's the largestaircraft ever created that went horribly wrong.
So this dude had just incredible serve storiesthat had always stuck with me as well.

(08:55):
So I kinda had these little things about themilitary, But still, I I had a really cushy
job.
I was getting paid well.
I was getting to, you know, they we'd I'd goout to dinner with these business people and
they're buying like $500 bottles of wine.
We're eating steak and like, it was very cushy.
But I also kind of felt like I needed more thanthat.

(09:16):
I wanted I still had this craving for adventurebeing a young dude in my twenties.
And what really did it for me was I had afriend, named Mark Hall, who's a pilot, up here
in Northern Michigan.
I think he flies for NetJets now.
But, he was applying to go to Navy OCS.
And at the time I was like, what?
You mean you can fly for the military as acommunity college kid?

(09:38):
He's like, all you need is a 4 year degree.
You don't even need flight time, but the flighttime will help.
And so, he kind of set me straight.
I was still like, well doesn't your dad have tobe an admiral?
Don't you, you know.
I didn't know how it worked at all.
He's like, no.
There's this thing called Officer CandidateSchool.
All you need is a 4 year degree and you canapply.
And so initially actually I was interested inthe coast guard.

(10:00):
I'd read the book called The Last Run, which isabout guys flying these rescue missions in
H60's up in Alaska that were just crazy.
And so I was like, I want to do that.
I want to go rescue people out of the ocean.
And, turns out I ended up being on the otherend of that scenario later in my career.
But, the board for the for the coast guard waslike 6 or more months that I was gonna have to

(10:23):
wait.
And so I was like I'll just apply to Navy andsee what happens.
And, you know, being a kid who grew up, the theBlue Angels still come up to Traverse City
where I grew up and I remember seeing them andbeing like, wow, can you imagine blasting
around in one of those things?
But it never like been something that I waslike that's something I could do for all the
different reasons like there's no way I coulddo that.

(10:45):
And, but Mark set me straight, I applied, Iended up getting accepted.
And then before long, I was heading to,Newport, Rhode Island to go through Navy
Officer Candidate School, getting yelled at anddoing push ups with a bunch of marine drill
instructors.
And, and then it went from there.
So one of the funny parts that you talk aboutin there that I mean, all of us have some sort

(11:08):
of I don't know.
There's that intervention piece.
But you had people who I I I never met anybodylike that until much later in my life.
Like, my grandfather was a big influence in mefor joining the military.
No nobody else really in my family.
They were part of the military, but we neverreally talked about it.
My dad was not.
My mom wasn't.

(11:29):
My grandfather never talked about World War 2.
And so I just, like, I remember seeing, I Ithink it was it was probably I think it was a p
38.
This is long many years ago when they flew.
So this is, like, when I was, like, in 1st, 2ndgrade, early eighties, and they saw the
Warbirds that flew the 38 p 30 eights.
There's not many left, if any, that's stillflash.
Words.
Yeah.
They're sweet.

(11:49):
I remember seeing one, and I was like, that isamazing.
And then I saw an f 16, and I was like, I'm inlove.
And then I saw and then I saw Iron Eagle, and Iwas like, yep.
That's it.
Not Top Gun.
It was Iron Eagle.
Eagles with the edge.
Yeah.
So really, it really tripped my trigger.
That was that was it, dude.
So I'm in.

(12:09):
But, you know, the foot so I didn't like untilI got later in my career.
So I just thought I was I was wide eyed.
You know, I was a wide eyed lower middle classkid from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
It was like, boom.
This is what you go do, and I'm gonna try tofigure it out.
And now there's all this other stuff, andpeople have listened to the pod before and know
my story.
There was a I had obstacles that were selfimposed of great, concern for most of my young

(12:36):
adulthood to get to where I got to in pilottraining.
And then I sucked in pilot training and Igraduated, but I wasn't I wasn't, ace of the
base, that's for sure.
And the thing was is not until later in mycareer did I meet those people who did the
things that you talk about.
Like, I remember when I got to my first reserveunit, we had a guy who was a marine, and, and

(12:58):
I'm I'm hijacking this truck because I don'tthink I've ever gotten to tell these stories.
We had a marine who was a boom opera became aboom operator.
But before that, in Vietnam, he was one of 6 or8 enlisted infantrymen who were selected to be
right seaters in the, a 6.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And he flew in Vietnam a couple of missionsbefore he was he came back.

(13:23):
Fred Getche, amazing amazing human being.
There's offline stories about this guy that arenot suitable for any airwave.
Dude's amazing.
Fred's awesome.
There was another, another guy named Reginaldi,who was a, he was a boom with us, but he flew
Vietnam Air America.
And his stories, you know, as a load master,his stories are wild as well.

(13:47):
And then there was Larry Wyland who's, who'spassed.
And Larry, was a door gunner on a, Huey inVietnam.
And for the air force, I believe haddistinguished flying cross.
And these guys are all boom operator enlisteddudes, and I'm this, like, 26 year old who
shows up in a reserve unit.

(14:08):
And it opened my eyes and it changed me as ahuman being with I didn't know it at the time,
but I thought, well, these guys did stuff thatI'll never do.
Like, I I'll never none of this is gonna happento me.
It really can't.
I'm not put in the situation where it couldhappen.
I mean, not I mean, maybe there's an offchance.
But the like you did, I took so muchinternalized and later, it it popped out at

(14:35):
times throughout my career in my life that Ididn't realize were in there, like, that had
nestled somewhere in my little brain.
And, I used that a lot.
So when the point of that to all those outthere who know my rambling is, realize that
you're learning something through every personyou meet, whether you think you're you are or
not.
Oh, yeah.

(14:55):
And they're gonna they're gonna injectsomething in your life that won't come out for
10, 20, maybe 50 years, but it will come out atthe right time.
It's like that.
We and we're gonna get into this.
What do we always learn in military training?
Trust the training process.
You don't think it's doing anything.
It will do something when you most need it.
Mhmm.
And and both of us, your situation much, muchmore different than mine.

(15:18):
We I I had training and I had incidents that Ineeded to fall back on training procedures that
I thought were I didn't know them.
I did.
So same thing that happens when these thingsembed in your in your memory.
Back in that stem power.
Right.
Really when shit really hits the fan, it's likeit just kicks on that automated mode and you
just do it.

(15:38):
Yeah.
I I I try to tell people, outside of aviationthat when you when you go fly on an airline,
you're not paying for what the pilot is doingat that particular point.
You're paying for what they can do when stuffgoes sideways.
Oh, yeah.
And that's why they get paid a good salary.
Like, you want them to be able to handlewhatever is gonna happen.
Now it may not happen every year in your life,but if it does, you want that person to be a

(16:00):
top notch and you want them to be compensated.
And the other reason they get paid so muchmoney is because they're always away from home.
So that's the that's the other joke we say.
We get paid to be away.
So so you so you go down, you you do your youdo your OCS, and obviously you get selected for
flight school.
Was that a competitive process at that time,and then Oh, yeah.

(16:22):
Yeah.
Like
Yeah.
Yeah.
So so before I even went, I found I think it'sstill in existence.
It's called air warriors.com.
It's run by a bunch of military aviators andthere's it's, you know, it's monitored.
There's all these forums and you can go onthere and you can learn how to be a military
pilot and the different routes to do so.
And so I I spent like 2 weeks just like readingevery single article I could find on there

(16:48):
which guided me on like how to prepare to takethe entrance aptitude test, how to prepare your
body, like what the physical requirements aregoing to be.
And I learned everything I could just like asponge.
I bought all these prep books, before I tookthe test.
And it really guided me through just theapplication process and then what to expect and
how to prepare to go to Navy OCS.

(17:10):
So you can show up and and not just be an assclown that's out of shape, which there were
still a very huge proportion of people thatwere that.
But I was glad not to be one of them, thanks tothat air warriors site.
So if you are aspiring military aviator, Ihighly recommend checking out air warriors.com
if you haven't done so already.
But that really guided me, and and it made OCSa lot easier for me.

(17:34):
I'd I'd started going to a CrossFit gym beforeI showed up that was run by a marine.
This dude kicked my ass, you know, into reallygood shape, so I showed up and the PT was super
easy for me.
I had already studied a lot of the militarystuff, so I already had a lot of the rope
memorization handled.
And I felt, you know, that helped tremendously,just the preparation going into it.

(17:58):
And I'm like the opposite of a procrastinator,at least back then I definitely was, which was
like, I just wanted to get everything in mymind that I could and and and lean forward.
And that definitely helped me as I went.
I wasn't the smartest dude.
I wasn't the most academic prestige dude.
I was this community college kid, but I didbust my ass, and I and I was always planning
ahead, and that paid off.

(18:19):
And so I made it through OCS, you know,unscathed.
I actually thought a lot of it was a lot easierthan I was expecting.
But, you know, if you show up out of shape andand you don't pre study some of this stuff,
people struggle for sure, and there's a lot ofattrition there.
But I made it to aviation preflightindoctrination.
Another big hurdle is just getting through themedical process at NAMI, and they call it the

(18:43):
NAMI WAMI.
So I signed up, but I only signed up to be a,for a pilot slot.
So but that still meant even once I wentthrough OCS and became an ensign, o one in the
navy, I still had to pass this medical orotherwise my flying career was gonna be over.
But I was fortunate.
The the the nammy wammy didn't knock me out,you know, but a lot of people again there get

(19:08):
cut out, for sometimes really unexpectedthings.
Then there's anthropedic measurements.
They measure your arm length, your torsoheight, your distance from your butt to your
knee, and there's all these things you have tobe able to fit in the cockpit of the aircraft
you're gonna fly.
So that was yet another, you know, point wheresome people who wanted to go fly jets were cut

(19:28):
out just by the way their body was built.
And when I got down to API in Pensacola, therewas actually a huge backlog.
They had just drastically reduced the fundingfor pilot training in the navy.
And so they ended up having way more incidentsthan they were gonna be able to train.
There was, number of maintenance issues withthe t 34 Charlie turbo mentors that we were

(19:51):
gonna fly in primary that was causing a backlogas well.
So there's just kind of all these factors thatturned it into a bit of a shit show when I got
down to Pensacola.
And they started getting desperate to cutpeople.
Initially, they just offered, hey, would youlike to redesignate into another community?
Do you wanna go intel?
Do you wanna go supply?
You know, you'll get a shorter commitment, youknow, if you wanna go on into the professional

(20:13):
world outside the military.
And when enough people didn't do that, theyended up increasing all the grade requirements
where historically all you needed to get topass was an 80% on all the tests through
aviation pre flight indoctrination.
All these ground school lecture classes.
And they ended up boosting that up to where itgot into the mid nineties.

(20:34):
What?
So if you weren't getting like a 94, 95 averageon all your tests you were cut from the
program.
Dude, that's the wait.
That's the military way.
It was it's always 80%.
Without 80%, like, 90% of us wouldn't be here.
So oh my gosh.
That's crazy.
I didn't Yeah.
Yeah.
It went from it went from Pensacola kind ofbeing, like, a really fun time where you got

(20:56):
to, like I mean, you got all these guys comingout of the naval academy that didn't have a
real college experience that were just cuttingloose on the town of Pensacola with the, you
know, a decent little instant pay in theirpocket and just going nuts and having a good
time and and getting to socialize and go outand, you know, enjoy life a little after 4
years of, condone tasing that they do.

(21:16):
And, or the ROTC guys too.
And, but anyways, it was not that anymore.
Very quickly, it got very serious and themorale plummeted.
And even when they couldn't cut enough people,they did what we jokingly called nightmare
Oprah.
So people would show up to muster that wereabout that hadn't classed up yet for API, and
they're like, please look under your seat,which everybody just randomly sat down wherever

(21:39):
in this auditorium.
And they all pulled out envelopes.
And if you had a pink envelope underneath youryour chair, you were kicked out of the program.
For What?
I mean, you could have been the the biggeststud at the naval academy or whatever.
And they were just like, sorry.
See you later.
Oh my gosh.
It was crazy.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
That's nuts.
Yeah.
I think I think that the leadership that putthat in place kinda gotten some got some hell

(22:04):
for it.
But they were desperate to cut us and I I feltvery fortunate to get through that.
Then you go through Waddle survival training,so you get to swim a mile in your flight suit
and boots.
So again, more attrition there.
Selected, to go to Corpus Christi, Texas to flyin VT 28, the Rangers where I learned to fly

(22:24):
the T 34 Charlie Turbomentor, which themilitary kinda just throws you right in a
pretty big boy aircraft, you know.
It's a turbine, high performance aircraft thatis fully aerobatic and and and you just, you
know, all the avionics in this thing are oldschool steam gauges and nothing is in a place
that's terribly ergonomical.
So, you know, you're like looking down behindyour back to change the transponder codes and,

(22:48):
like, all this kind of goofy shit that thatmade it, you know, more challenging, I think.
But my previous flight experience, I thinkdefinitely helped at least, you know, talking
on the radio, stick and rudder skills.
But then I had to relearn everything the navyway which oftentimes was more challenging than
it probably would have been to just, you know,come in with a fresh start like a lot of the

(23:09):
folks do.
But, I did well enough there that I I was ableto select tailhook which meant you had to be in
the top 50% of your class.
And even then it was luck of the draw with theselection process as as I'm sure you're aware
what the air force probably does it similarly.
Like, you can be a stud in your class, but theydon't need any guys to go jets that week.
Well, you're not going jets.

(23:31):
Yeah.
So to there it's funny you mentioned thatthere's 2 things that really jumped out when
you talk about, like, luck of the draw on howon where you get select and how you get there.
So one was, you so you could have your wholeclass could be fighter used to be called far
qual, like, fighter attack or, reconnaissance.
And I think it was also like instructor, but Idon't really remember how they what the

(23:55):
terminology was for our, era because they werechanging it.
And you could have the whole class that thatmade the grades to get to a t 38.
But if there was 2 t 30 eights in the trackselect, it was whoever wanted to do it.
And
a lot of times when we were when I wasstarting, when I was going through an 03, there

(24:17):
were guys who didn't wanna go fighters who werefinishing number 1 and number 2, and they would
get, like, they would get hell from the boss.
Be like, what?
No.
You're going 38.
So, like, no.
Do you don't wanna fly c 17?
C 17 was the new big airplane on the block, andit was some locations were better.
Guys didn't wanna go to, like, nowhere NewMexico.
They wanted to go live on the coast or, youknow, go fly the KC 10, blah blah blah.

(24:39):
So there was some of that going on, but thenthe other thing that was happening, shortly
after I got I left, not shortly, but probably acouple years after I left, is the need the and
just like you needs of the Navy needs of theAir Force, the Air Force said, Hey, we've got
all these drones.
And we need we need people to fly them.

(25:02):
And they thought it was gonna be a bunch ofpeople off the first off first tour who are
gonna go take these these slots for him.
That didn't happen.
They didn't have enough people, so they juststarted shoving brand new winged aviators into
that world.
Well, you and I both know if you have wingedaviators that are just showing up.
Hey.
Come on out.

(25:22):
Come on off.
Sit on down.
Say hi?
Yeah.
Come on.
Say hi.
For those of you who can't see it, that's,that's
my little dude.
Yeah.
He's checking us out, making sure we're makingsure we're keeping we're, we're we're
maintaining standards.
But needs of the air force, you know, it waslike, hey.
We're gonna send you off in 3 years of flying aa drone.

(25:44):
What does that do for you?
Nothing.
And now they're that they're almost unable togo back into flying, fixed wing or or any
aircraft without going through some sort of bigtraining cycle.
Or when they do, they they have problemsgetting back in the airplane.
So, that was a big thing in the air force.
So the fact made it to that part and the luckthat sometimes even if you are the ace,

(26:08):
sometimes it doesn't matter.
Sometimes you're you're just hosed.
And you you were able to do that, and then yousee your your your flying tail, which would be
cool.
I always wanted to land on a carrier, but, youknow, that was never in the cards for me.
Yeah.
I
fly Red Crown a couple times, I guess, but thatwas about it.
The, the the daytime stuff is is really fun.

(26:30):
I I I love flying at the carrier during theday, but the nighttime stuff is, is terrifying.
I never got I never got where I was comfortableflying at night Sure.
In the boat.
I I can't I can't imagine you would.
I mean, I I remember reading about, I was atMcCain who saw the or, McCain's got some nice
stories.
I mean, that's a even a different period.

(26:52):
Like Oh,
yeah.
Those get caught.
Nuts.
Yeah.
Hey.
Just, you know, we what a we're flying an NDBto a boat that's out in the middle of black
ocean.
Like, come on, dude.
Not that that ain't my jam.
I I'm interested in that.
You're you're you're in the process of goinginto, picking, like, what you're gonna fly.
So tailhook, track starts up, and you've gotthese opportunities.

(27:17):
Like, I had friends who flew the c 2e2, andI've there's some funny stories from how they
got picked, like, how they figured out who'sgonna fly what.
I always have great stories.
And in you're in this process of and it soundslike a guard reserve process, frankly, where we
interview people when you come into the guardor reserve from a, from an active duty squadron

(27:40):
or wherever, maybe they're off the street, tosee if they're gonna fit the the culture of the
unit that they're joining.
Mhmm.
So you have these boards because I agree, like,you're on a team, man.
You know, you're not you're on a team for 6months straight in the squadron out on a boat
living in tight quarters and trying to enactand prosecute missions, all over the world.

(28:03):
That's a that's a tall order.
So you you go through these interview process,and that and then is that when you start like,
that's when they're like, alright.
Your pointy nose, we're gonna we're gonna startgoing down that road of of flying fighters or
Yeah.
So so at that point, you go throughintermediate training in the t 45, then you go

(28:24):
to the selection board, and you can select, e2c2.
You can select, tactical aircraft, which wasprimarily the f 18 Hornet and Super Hornet or
the Growler at that point.
I think they've actually changed it now.
So you actually can select e 2c2 or the fightercommunities out of primary flight training now.

(28:45):
Because a lot of guys would select Tailhookwith the dream of going to flight jets, and
then they get their dreams crushed, inintermediate.
And and there's a lot of disgruntled guys.
So they ended up shifting how they did it.
But, I was fortunate I selected the the strikesyllabus after that, which meant I was gonna
get a chance to fly tactical aircraft if Icould pass, advanced flight training and earn

(29:08):
my wings at gold.
I spent, the next I think it was another 6months after that.
You go to the boat for the first time, so youland one of these little clown jets on an
aircraft carrier during the day, which wassuper exciting, but terrifying at the same
time.
Just the acceleration force off the front ofthe bow of these things is just like nothing

(29:31):
that I had ever experienced.
It's beyond any sort of carnival ride or sportscar, just the going 0 to a 180 miles per hour
or whatever it is in 2 seconds is just I mean,you can't breathe.
You're smashed so hard back in the seat.
But ended up doing well in that phase oftraining and graduating out of Kingsville as a

(29:51):
wing naval aviator back in, this would havebeen 2012.
And, at that point, I had completed 2 and ahalf to 3 years of flight training to get to
that point.
I guess it was about, yeah, about two and ahalf years.
And, then I selected Super Hornets in VirginiaBeach, Virginia.
So I headed to NAS Oceana to join VFA 106Gladiators and go through a year of training in

(30:18):
the f 18 to get NATOPS qualified and and earnmy, level 1 SWIFTY syllabus certification,
which meant I could go to a fleet squadron andthen be deployed.
And that training over the course of that nextyear was beyond the way beyond the difficulty
of anything that we had experienced up to thatpoint, in my mind.

(30:39):
And and I really you know, you get wings put onyour chest after completing the the advanced
syllabus.
You're like, I'm a winged aviator.
I, you know, I made it.
And then you show up at the reg and you'relike, no one gives a shit about those gold
wings at this point.
Like, you you have not made it in any way,shape, or form.
And that training was brutal, but, I wasfortunate to make it through, a pretty

(31:02):
elaborate complex syllabus that is drinking outof a fire hose nonstop and and the practical
application of knowledge that you're having topull out of dozens of different publications
and and, you know, it's it's it's completelyoverwhelming a lot of the time, you know,
especially when you're like me with a freakingsquirrel brain trying to keep up.

(31:23):
But I selected, VFA 143, the puking dogs, outof, out of the rag there and, then headed to
the fleet.
And, again, you show up at the fleet squadron.
You're like, well, now I'm there.
Yeah.
I did it.
Fleet pilot.
I'm a real I'm a real f 18 pilot, and yourealize very quickly you're at the bottom of

(31:44):
that totem pole again.
And, and and you're right back into moresyllabus.
You gotta get your you gotta get your, combatwingman.
You gotta get your section lead.
You gotta get your division lead.
So there's all these qualifications and you'reconstantly under these the scrutiny of grades
and and, you know, long debriefs and and andthe super type a personalities that are

(32:06):
attracted to those jobs.
So but it molds you and it shapes you and ithelps you deal with pressure and and you build
this community and camaraderie.
And after about 8 months in the squadron, I wasfinally, you know, starting to feel like I had
earned at least a shred of respect to be there.
And and I was well liked in the squadron.
I was I was performing well at my ground jobsand my and my flying duties.

(32:30):
And then, January 15, 2014, my life made adrastic a drastic, change, for the remainder of
my life, really.
Yeah.
Let's so let's let's get into that.
You no.
Your place in the squadron at that point, so2014, you were my guess is probably a section

(32:50):
leader or what we call flight leader or wereyou I
was I was working on my, I was about to finishmy combat wingman qualification, about to start
my section lead training.
Yeah.
Because we all know any military pilot, thereis no such thing as, hey.
Now I'm an aircraft commander in the k c 135.

(33:10):
I'm all done.
Nope.
It's the day you start the day that you'requalified as an aircraft commander, the first
instructor you fly with or talk to is gonnasay, hey.
Cool.
Now you need to think like an instructor.
And this isn't the 135.
I can't imagine what it's like in the pointynose communities around this, in in in all of
the DOD.
It's it's the thought process is you better bethinking like the next position that you're

(33:34):
gonna be in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even when you're going through a syllabus,you're thinking ahead, like, okay.
What's this gonna be like when I'm the lead?
You know?
Thinking like what that dude is thinking aboutthe jet on the left there.
Like, okay.
See, he's because, like, in our world, it wasokay.
I'm the systems expert when I'm the copilot,and then when I'm the aircraft I'm the mission
expert as the aircraft commander.

(33:56):
You know?
So my assumption is it's it's similar in in inin your column that you're in or your your silo
that you're being put in is like, here's thewingman.
I'm thinking I'm thinking this, but you're alsoneed to be thinking what that guy's doing
because that's what I'm gonna be.
And then he obviously has to be that expertover here for mission lead stuff, but he also

(34:19):
needs to know everything that you're doing atall times because if you're screwing up, he's
gotta put you in your place
Yeah.
And get back to prosecuting the missioncorrectly.
So I again, the the whole reason I didn'tbecome a fighter pilot in many cases is, I
heard this once from a friend of mine, so Istole it and I'll keep it is, I didn't have

(34:40):
the, capability, or work ethic or drive, andthose three things combined make you a very
average Air Force pilot.
I mean, that k c 135 is McConnell.
Raise my hand, off I go.
It's funny though, after you get in, you startto realize what you're good at and what you're
not good at, and, you change the way youoperate.

(35:02):
And I did, and that I I'm hoping that I, youknow, maybe I can influence one person that was
that I flew with.
But, enough about that nonsense.
So that day in, in January, let's go, let's gointo the ready room.
I mean and then also, I know there's gotta bepieces of this that are just they've kind of

(35:23):
vaporized the time and with, you know, all thetraumatic trauma that you went through.
So I I'd like to go from the beginning becausethat's
where Yeah.
Of course.
Yeah.
So at this point, I'd been in in my first fleetsquadron.
We're preparing to go out to the Middle East ondeployment.
And, and, you know, things are getting veryreal at this time.
2014, it's very active warfare in the MiddleEast.

(35:49):
Stuff starting to kick up in Syria.
Afghanistan's full blown.
And, and so we're we're really looking at we'regonna go over there.
We're gonna be doing very real casts and shit'sgonna be going down for real.
So that as a pilot was very exciting.
Like, okay.
We're gonna actually get to go do this job forreal.
It's not gonna just be training anymore.

(36:11):
I, you know, I'd I'd played the small mouth bigears card very well up to this point.
I hadn't even earned a call sign yet despitebeing in my 1st fleet squadron for nearly a
year.
There's, like, 4 or 5 newer guys at that point,that had joined after me, and they had all
almost all gotten call signs already.
But I just hadn't done anything to really standup and one of the senior pilots that day,

(36:32):
Basil, came up to me and goes, I mean, you justhaven't done anything dumb enough yet during a
call sign.
Since, you know, our call signs are usuallybadges of dishonor, you know.
What is the thing you screwed up the worst orsome physical or mannerism about you that is
embarrassing that you hate, you know.
That that's gonna probably be your call sign.
But I just didn't really have, you know,anything that had stuck.

(36:55):
And my buddy, Fisty, was at the the duty deskthat day.
All the pilots would rotate through, you know,running the radios and coordinating the flight
schedule throughout the week.
And as a joke, Fisty had put up on thewhiteboard behind the duty desk, all the
airspace we were gonna utilize that day outover the Atlantic Ocean called the Whiskey 72
off the coast of Virginia Beach.

(37:17):
And, he used the shark tracker app to mark allthese GPS locations of all the sharks that were
out in the area as a joke.
And he was joking with me.
He's like, oh, did you check out the airspaceyou're gonna be in?
There's a 16 foot 35 100 pound great whiteshark named Mary Lee.
One of these massive great white sharks rightunderneath my airspace, no shit.

(37:39):
And, he's like, oh, it'd be a terrible day toeject.
There's this big shark, the water temp was at37 degrees Fahrenheit, so near freezing ocean
temps, you know, things were churned up in theocean, below freezing air temperatures.
So go through the brief, go down get all mygear on, you know, I put on a dry suit because
we're gonna be flying over this cold water toprotect us if we actually had to go into the

(38:03):
ocean.
Over that you got your g suit harness, youryour survival gear vest, And then I was I just
got my qual with the Gehemix helmet, which ispretty cool piece of kit.
It's like this space age visor that, shows allyour your flight information as well as a lot
of your weapon system informations, radarinformation and such for for using in combat

(38:28):
and and tactical purposes.
It's super cool.
Wherever you move your head, those displays gowith you.
But just like any piece of new gear, it takes alittle bit of time for that to become
intuitive, which I wasn't quite to that pointyet.
But, walked out on the flight, took off, wentout over the Atlantic.
And our first, part of the day, we were justchecking a refueling pod that had just come out

(38:50):
of maintenance.
So we got these aerial refueling, pods that goon the bottom of a Super Hornet.
That way we can do what we call organictanking.
So just getting air to air refueled by anotherSuper Hornet.
So we go out, do a few plugs on that and it'sworking.
And with the extra time in airspace, my flightlead and I break away from the tanker jet and
we set off into this airspace right over MaryLee, and we start doing air combat maneuvering

(39:15):
or, BFM.
Most people, that aren't in that world thatcall it dogfighting.
So a couple aircraft or more trying to shooteach other down within visual range.
Kind of the epitome of what people probablythink when they think fighter pilot.
And, we're lucky in the Superhard that we gotto do a really wide array of of missions with
CAS, close air support, probably being the thebiggest one utilized over that 20 years of the

(39:39):
GWAT, global war on terror.
But we still practice BFM or dogfighting forproficiency.
It's such a challenging, you know, really anart form that's incredibly physically and
mentally demanding.
If you don't practice it regularly, you losethat skill set.
And so, any chance we got with extra fuel inairspace, we'd go out and do some air to air

(40:00):
kind of stuff in in BFM, which was, you know,it was my favorite thing to do in that jet.
So we set up, we do several flights.
And, on this particular day, I was practicing anose low maneuver that put me in sort of a
disadvantaged merge presentation, where I wascoming up from the bottom, and then I would
practice this reversal timing to get behind theother aircraft.

(40:22):
So just a skill set that was really challengingthat I was trying to master.
And so in the back of my mind, I was like, Ineed to see that presentation again from that
that low to high merge presentation, so I canwork on the skill set.
I'd just gotten qualified with this helmet.
Anyways, the fights progress through the day.

(40:42):
Very quickly, you're out of fuel.
When you're blasting around in fullafterburner, I don't think the mission was more
than maybe 40 minutes before we're hit Jokerfuel.
So we reset down to bingo, meaning we had justenough fuel, to kinda get maybe one short set
of fighting out before we exited the airspacefor the day and headed straight back to
Oceania.

(41:03):
And so we set up for the fight a little bitlower and a little bit faster than standard, by
the Top Gun recommendations.
But, we were feeling froggy and that we couldhandle that situation.
Flight lead called flight's on.
We pitched our aircraft in at each other from amile of beam up at 12,500 feet.
So over 2 nautical miles straight up.

(41:25):
The ocean not being an immediate concern ofmine at that point.
Pitched the aircraft in and I hit the merge,I'm already 30 degrees nose low and partially
inverted, and in the back of my mind thinking Iwant to see that low to high merge mechanics
again to practice it, I maneuver the aircraftinto this dive.
Now, having just been qualified with theJahemics, I didn't quite realize as I'm messing

(41:46):
around with the HOTAS to control the radar thatI had actually gotten quite a bit faster air
speed, than desired to go nose low at themerge.
I went nose low anyways within the back of mymind thinking a Super Hornet can do this
vertical maneuver within 5,000 feet of verticalairspace no problem.
I was at 10,500 feet when I started thatmaneuver, meaning I should have still had 500

(42:09):
feet to spare before I'd hit the the hard deckthat we set at 5,000 feet for training
purposes, is the is, you know, the trainingdeck, to give us a little bit of room in case
something were to happen.
And, as I pull the aircraft, I start, you know,pulling the stick into my lap, I'm pulling 7
and a half g's through that turn.
You know, you can feel the force of say justthe the weight of my head in that Gehemex

(42:32):
helmet is probably around £20.
Sitting at 1g, now up at almost 8 g's, that'slike having a 150 plus pounds just on my head.
You're looking up, you're doing your AGSM,breathing, anti g straining maneuver.
You can feel the weight of your body.
You've got with all the gear and everything youweigh like £1600.
So imagine trying to pick up, you know, £600dead lifting while you're looking around with a

(42:57):
£150 of weight on your head, trying to thinktactically and ahead and operate an aircraft
and weapon systems and defensive systems.
There's a lot going on.
And as I'm pulling, trying to keep sight of myflight lead or my, you know, my adversary in
this training mission, all of a sudden I justfeel the aircraft ease up and settle.

(43:17):
And I'm in a dive straight at the ocean and nowall of a sudden the jet just stops turning.
So it was like going around a sharp corner in asports car and then have the steering wheel
kick back halfway.
I went down to maybe 4 and a half 5 g's fromthat 7 and a half g pull.
I'm pulling the stick in my lap.
Very quickly, I hear my radar altimeter go off,meaning I hit the hard deck at 5,000 feet AGL.

(43:40):
As I hear that, I pull the throttle to idle,put out the speed brake in a desperate attempt
to slow the aircraft.
And again, this all just happens in a fewseconds, and now the ocean is just rushing up
at me.
And, and instinctually, as we had talked alittle earlier, you you rely on your training,
and and when it needs to kick in, it kicks in.
And without even thinking about it, I put mybody in the proper body position, grab the

(44:04):
ejection handle, and pull.
And, a normal ejection is very violent, youknow, you get this instantaneous 50 g explosion
under your ass as that seat kicks off andwithin 0.4 seconds you've exited the cockpit of
the aircraft.
The canopy is blown away, And just that forcealone and then and then riding a sustained 12
to 14 g rocket boost as you exit the aircraftis enough that a lot of times guys will get

(44:30):
permanently compressed spines.
They'll lose like an inch of staturepermanently after an ejection.
You get flail injuries.
Ideally, to eject you wanna be below a 180knots, which is still, talking to skydivers and
such.
If you jump out of an aircraft at a 180 knots,it'll fuck you up.
And and and in this case, I was at 695 milesper hour.

(44:52):
604 knots indicated airspeed, 0.95 indicatedmock.
Good god.
Which is, which ended up setting a record forthe fastest survived ejection in naval aviation
history.
Fortunately, you know, I'm a shorter dude.
I've been doing a lot of lifting.
I was strong, and that gave my body thedurability that I survived that.

(45:13):
But, the, you know, if you look at the NATOPSchart, the manual for the f 18, there's a chart
that shows the survivable envelope if you wereto reject based on your your angle and your air
speed and altitude.
And where I was at at, you know, 51 degreesnose low, 2 seconds before impact at 2,000 feet
above the ocean, going almost the speed ofsound, there was no way I was supposed to be

(45:37):
able to survive that.
But, as I came out, that blast of the rocketseat, impacting the airflow at that speed was
like hitting an explosion a 100 times the forceof a category 1 hurricane, impacting my body
simultaneously.
It just ripped off my helmet, smashed my headto hell, traumatic brain injury, broken neck,

(45:58):
broken scapula in my shoulder, bilateral upperarm fractures in my humerus.
This arm, the humerus broke and tore through mybrachial artery causing rapid internal
bleeding.
My left forearm shattered the radius and ulna,severing the median nerve that controlled my
left hand.
The compression of my spine damaged my brachialplexus, which is the nerves that control my

(46:19):
upper body.
The gear on my vest, all my survival gear,radio, signaling equipment, all just ripped
apart.
My dry suit shredded apart.
My legs were flailing so violently that mysteel toe boots on my feet were smashing my
legs open, like medieval maces.
Smashing, lower leg fractures, open tib fibfractures in both legs, chunks of my bone

(46:43):
falling out.
And so, now I'm bleeding out, impact into theocean.
Fortunately, my parachute deployed in the fewseconds that I had before impacting the ocean
stopped me from dying at impact with the ocean.
And very quickly, that parachute that had justsaved my life sunk underneath the the churning
ocean swell and started to pull me under in thecurrent.

(47:03):
And we have a system called the SeaWRS, it's asaltwater activated explosive device that's
supposed to automatically disconnect theparachute.
Well, a lot of our survival gear in themilitary is, I'm sure you guys know, it's like
Vietnam era stuff, man, and it doesn't alwayswork.
And at this point, my helmet had ripped offwith the reflective tape.
All my survival gear had ripped off.

(47:25):
I couldn't use it anyways because my arms weredestroyed.
And now my parachute failed to disconnect, andso I'm just getting drowned alive.
My beacon failed to go off.
So I'm just a little dark head that's spendinga lot of time underneath the surface of the
ocean and so my prospects are not looking goodat this point.
I'm bleeding out.
There's a freaking big old great white sharkthat in my mind I'm thinking is just gonna it's

(47:49):
gonna smell my blood and come and finish meoff.
Fortunately, my flight lead, Diego, he spotsthe parachute opening.
He quickly drops a GPS mark.
Realizing that there's an emergency, he, hetries to contact a fishing vessel that he spots
about a mile away.
Maritime Guard, they're not answering.
So he gets down really low and really fast andhe thumps over the bow of their vessel.

(48:12):
They end up switching up Maritime Guard andhe's able to direct them over to my position.
And what little fuel he I mean, this guy's likeon fumes at this point.
But he ends up bingo profiling back to Oceaniaand handing off the, the on scene commander to
another aircraft overhead, and coordinatingwith air traffic control.
And very quickly, there's a coast guard vesseland 2 navy h 60 Seahawk helicopters en route to

(48:36):
my position, in a huge part thanks to his quickthinking.
But what really was the saving grace was thefact that he coordinated this fishing vessel to
get over to my position.
Because without that fishing vessel, while theyweren't able to actually pull me into the, the
boat because I was just such a mess, I couldn'tgrab the rope they threw out to me and it was

(48:56):
just getting tangled in the paracord, but theyat least provided a rough visual location in my
position.
Had they not been there, I would have driftedout into the ocean and never be seen again.
One of the h sixties that was heading en routefrom HSC 28, the rescue swimmer on board
Cheech, just the week prior, there had beenthis Navy h 53 Sea Dragon crash, in almost the

(49:21):
exact same spot.
And at the time, the Navy policy was anybodythat's in an aircraft mishap or crash, that's
being rescued out of the ocean has to be putonto a back board before they're lifted into
the helicopter in case they have a spinalinjury.
While most of the crew of that helicopter, Ithink all of them, survived the initial impact
and crash, it took so long to put each personindividually on this back board and get them up

(49:45):
that several of the crew members perished fromhypothermia.
So Cheech is just coming off.
He didn't get counseling.
He didn't get a week off to process all that.
He's already back in his, you know, his gearready to jump back in and save my ass.
But in the back of his mind was that little bitof information, like, this guy's been in the in
the ocean now for an hour and a half, almost 2hours.

(50:06):
If we take the time to put him on a backboard,that's just exposing him to that cold water.
He may have a spinal injury, which I did.
I had a broken neck, but, he made a quick callwhich was, hey, we're not gonna we're not gonna
bother with the backboard.
Another kind of twist of fate, the other navy h60 that showed up actually before them from h s
11 had been directed to take me back to thenearby aircraft carrier, not realizing the

(50:31):
extent of my injuries.
And their rescue swimmer jumped in, and due toa miscommunication, he thought I was on the
fishing vessel, and they actually swam right byme.
But had they actually picked me up they wouldhave taken me back to the aircraft carrier
where I would have likely perished on boardwithout the proper trauma care.
Luckily Cheech got in the water.

(50:51):
He said he hooked into my titanium carabiner onmy harness, and he had done this training in
the pool where you hook up and you get pulledunder, but he said when he hooked into me the
force of that parachute pull us beneath thesurface, and he looked down and he just saw
this tangle of paracord in this dark blueabyss, and it was very, very intense.
But his training kicked in.

(51:12):
He was able to cut me free, get me back to thesurface, and get me up into the Seahawk
helicopter.
You know, they said that flight, I had codedseveral times in route to the level 1 trauma
center in Norfolk, Virginia.
And, they were able to resuscitate me again andagain.
One of the crew members, Meatball, he hadstarted eating his meatball sub before the

(51:33):
mission when they got the call and he kindathrew it in the remnants of the wrapper.
And in the chaos of me being in there andthrashing around in shock, his meatball sub
broke loose and so I was covered in likemeatball and marinara.
So as they're as they're wheeling me off of thehelicopter to the hospital staff, they're like,
he's in bad shape, but that's just Joey'slunch, you know.

(51:55):
But they they miraculously got me to, the thetrauma center, and they had, like, the surgical
dream team on that day that fortunately wasable to to keep me alive.
You know?
They took my core body temperature.
I was at 87 degrees Fahrenheit, so I shouldhave been dead from hypothermia.
But then they also said had I not hadhypothermia, had my dry suit actually worked

(52:16):
properly, I would have bled to death way beforeanybody got there because that cold water
constricted the blood flow to my to my internalorgans, vice my extremities.
It also helped preserve my brain with thattraumatic brain injury that I had.
They pumped water out of my lungs.
They they they gave me, multiple bloodtransfusions for all the blood loss.

(52:37):
I was having kidney failure from theoverwhelming amount of, just, you know, like
you can get rhabdomyosis doing CrossFit orwhatever, where your muscles just get
overwhelmed and that protein overwhelms yourkidneys and causes serious issues.
Well, that was going on in extreme levelsbecause of all the tissue breakdown in my arms
and legs.
But once they got me semi stable, they induceda coma and rushed me into surgery.

(53:00):
And I underwent over a dozen trauma surgeriesover the next week.
Fasciotomies to salvage all of my extremitiesfrom amputation, titanium rods, steel plates
installed in my arms and legs.
So now I've got a full up, like, Wolverine XMen skeleton going on.
And after that week, my squadron, my squadronmates, my family, friends from flight school,

(53:24):
they're all at the ICU over at Portsmouth wherethey had transferred me, Naval Hospital
Portsmouth.
And they're just waiting to find out if I'mgonna live.
And, and the same guy who before my flightBasil had said, you know, he hadn't done
anything to earn a call sign yet.
Kind of pipes up and goes, he's a scrappymotherfucker.
He'll be fine.
And that kinda lifted the mood of the room andthey took scrappy motherfucker and they

(53:48):
shortened it down to Smurf.
And to have a politically correct cover storyto get it approved they said I was a short guy
that had turned blue from
hypothermia.
Amazing.
At least I finally had a call sign out of thewhole deal.
Well, there I don't even know where to go fromthere.
That is unbelievable.

(54:09):
The fact that you hold a record that you don'twant to hold.
Sure.
Yeah.
And that, you know, knock on wood, fate'swilling nobody ever comes close to again
because nobody's gonna survive that.
So I wanna ask some questions, probably stuffthat you never got before because it's gonna be
pilot pilot stuff.

(54:30):
Yeah.
Alright.
You're you're new into this.
Right?
You're I mean, you're just getting comfortablewith your with your gear and your kit being
like, alright, dude.
I'm starting to figure out this helmet.
I'm not totally I'm not a 100% yet.
But we're also in the world where we gottapush.

(54:50):
I mean, not I didn't have to do this as much,but, like, you try something out and it's new.
You kinda gotta you get accustomed to it, butthen you've gotta get proficient at it.
The only way you get proficient is to test thelimit just a little bit more every single time.
Right?
Right.
So you're going up.
You're you're in this nose high maneuver, toget used to that aspect angle and the and the

(55:15):
presentation that you're seeing in the merge,where you're coming from low to high.
And when you're doing you're doing all the allthis stuff's going through your head, and
you're now you're you're at the end of the day,I love that deal.
You know, the okay.
Joker, we can adjust that down just a littlebit.
Just get a little more work in the oldstandard.

(55:35):
I mean, ever we all did it at some point.
And, you're so you're doing that and all of asudden, like, this is where my when you're
pulling back, did they now my my guess is theairplane was completely destroyed.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it it just vaporized upon impact.

(55:55):
The biggest piece they found of it was like acrumpled up license plate.
Yeah.
It's kinda what I thought.
I mean, hitting the hitting the water at speedof sound is not gonna do a lot to, keep keep
things intact.
Now so you're pulling an like, it's in it'sintuitive.
Right?
You go from full back in in your lap to wait asecond.

(56:19):
Why did the airplane go from pulling 7 and ahalf g's to all of a sudden the the nose came
down?
Did they have any clue what happened there?
Why all of a sudden
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, I didn't realize all this in thefew seconds that had happened.
But throughout the, the FNAB investigation,they really picked it all apart.

(56:39):
They were able to recover the aircraft, datarecorder, the black box, so that they could,
you know, what were all the parameters when youejected?
What were the flight control systems doing?
Was there some sort of malfunction?
And what what they found, this has actuallybeen a common issue in the Super Hornet.
When they designed the g limiting system andthis feature called the g bucket, it was

(57:00):
designed to protect the aircraft from a minoroverstress in the case that the wings were
loaded with heavy stores as you reach transonicairspeed.
So right before you break the speed of sound,there's this spike in parasitic drag.
And so the engineers being super smart said,hey, you know, if you hit that transonic

(57:21):
airspeed, you need to have a reduction in the gthat's on the jet when you have loaded wings
with say bombs or whatever kind of ordinance onthem, so that you don't overstress the wing.
And and, you know, other aircraft have thatsame system, other gen 4 and gen 5 fighters
have that system, but they also have acommunication with the ground proximity warning

(57:42):
system.
So if they detect a pending collision, it'lloverride that system.
Now the problem with the way the g bucket isdesigned in the Super Hornet is it's very
insidious, and it doesn't communicate with thatground proximity warning.
So basically, what had happened, the guy whohad flown the aircraft just before my flight,

(58:02):
we did a hot switch.
I didn't get to check behind, it's called theVDET panel that's located in front of the right
engine because we did a hot switch, you keepthe right engine running.
So at the time, you'd have to go over there,lift that flap, that panel, is like the number
9 panel or something like that, and there'sthis little electronic box and you program what

(58:23):
stores you want to have on the wings.
And so for his mission, he had put in a code tohave simulated ordinance on the wings, which is
something we commonly do, and then close thatpanel back up.
Now, at that time with the software, the SuperHornet, there wasn't a way to manipulate that
once you got into the aircraft.
And honestly, it wasn't even something that I'dreally considered.

(58:45):
But what that did is as I hit bull's eye noselow and the Super Hornet accelerated to that
transonic region, it detected there's bombs onthe wings and so it limited how much g you
could put on the jet.
And, you know, I didn't know all of that in acouple of seconds.
All I felt was why is the jet not turning?
And very quickly the ocean's getting very big.
So kind of this insidious system that hadunfortunately caused mishaps and deaths prior

(59:11):
to mine by in much more senior pilots with moreexperience.
And even after my mishap, I know a pilot, thatwas killed out in California doing a low level.
And he was a Top Gun graduate kind of at thepinnacle of his career and proficiency, you
know, an awesome pilot.
It it got him going around a corner in a lowlevel in a canyon.

(59:32):
It just overrode at the worst possible moment,and and it happened so quickly and so
insidiously, you don't get to recognize it.
So, you know, while while I had a I had acomponents of other factors that were involved
from, you know, my proficiency with the helmetbeing distracting, my decision to maneuver the
aircraft nose low above the top gun recommendedair speed, the decision of my flight lead to

(59:55):
set us up at a lower and higher airspeed alower altitude and higher airspeed than than
per the norm of the Top Gun recommendations.
There were all of these little things that sortof, you know, the Swiss cheese model of safety,
You know, for all the avionics or all theaviation guys out there, Swiss cheese, you
know, all these little holes lined up justright

(01:00:15):
Perfectly.
To create this terrible situation Yep.
With all these different factors Yep.
Kinda building on one another.
Yeah.
And I wanna hammer that home right now becauselet's talk about that for everybody out there.
This is so it doesn't matter whether you'reflying the 5th gen fighter that's got all the
whiz bang, shit on it that can do everythingthat you can possibly dream of to, affect what

(01:00:37):
you want to do against an adversary or whetheryou're flying in that Cessna 152 that Keegan
started in.
The the Swiss cheese model applies to every oneof you out there.
It can kill you.
It can mess your day up.
It can wreck your it can wreck your your niceairplane that you're flying, and everywhere in
between.

(01:00:57):
So even if you no matter what because there'ssometimes that you can't control it.
The it's it's in this situation, there waslittle to no control that was, able to stop
this.
And you can look at a lot of other incidences,accidents, that have happened throughout

(01:01:18):
aviation history, and there the control is notin the pilot's hand.
Your goal as an aspiring or an aviator outthere right now, and I'm I'm, you know, I'm
preaching to the choir for all the guys who flyprofessionally and beyond, is you do as much as
you can, because that as much as you can inyour in the training aspect will save your will

(01:01:39):
save your life more times than it than it willnot.
So, like, this is just one of those crazystories that that was the Swiss cheese model
in, like I mean, if you wanted to write a fakeversion of something to show how the Swiss
cheese model screws people, yours is theperfect version of it.

(01:02:01):
Yeah.
It really is.
Like,
Yeah.
They, you know, they started using my my story,my my mishap as a case study for all sorts of
stuff.
And, actually actually later went back through,water survival training, and they were using my
my story as, like, the case study for thesurvival class.

(01:02:21):
And the guy teaching the class didn't realizethat was me.
And we got to the end of the the lecture, andhe saw that I had a puking dog, you know, the
squadron that was involved in the mishap, stillon my on my jacket.
And he's like, oh, do you do you know anythingabout these guys that this all happened to?
And I was like, yeah.
That was me.
And he's like, what?

(01:02:42):
You're alive?
I I would
have been mad as the instructor.
I'm like, you let me stand up here and talk foran hour lecture about all this for your own
entertainment so you could see what I got rightand what I got wrong.
I was I was, like, I was real quiet, and I wascurious what what he was gonna say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure.
A little bit of a he was, like, you know, hewas, he was an aviation physiology guy, and I

(01:03:04):
think he, he was a little poopy pants at thepilot sometimes.
So he was kinda like and here's where, youknow, he made a mistake, and here, like, a
little a little mightier than thou kind ofattitude.
So I was kinda like, alright.
I wanna see this guy dig a nice deep hole.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, I mean, you know, like, again, nothinglike you.
Had a few incidences here and there where therewas it was like, hey.

(01:03:27):
You know what?
You got the rest of your life to think aboutwhat's gonna happen, if you don't fix this
problem.
And I went up and gave a debrief.
And, I said, alright.
Get your, get your slings and arrows.
Get ready to throw all your barbs at me.
And I go, but guess what?
I'm standing up here briefing you guys.
So I'm real happy with all the decisions I madeto get here.

(01:03:48):
So bring it though because I will tell youexactly all the mistakes that I personally made
throughout the, the sequence that I remember.
And then, and the I think when we do that,especially pilot to pilot, it truly benefits
the aviation community because 20, 30, 40 yearsago, people didn't admit to their mistakes.

(01:04:09):
They kept it kind of to themselves.
I mean, the fighter community was a littledifferent.
Guys were they didn't have a choice.
Like, your instructor would would bring it outof you.
And I think the rest of the community in theair force and beyond, and when you have
captain, a first officer in your civilian side,I think that that's come full circle or or
finally broken free from that.

(01:04:30):
The captain is in charge holier than thou, andeverybody else is, subservient to that.
The CRM model is alive and well, and I thinkthat's a good thing.
And for us types who were who are or were,professional aviators, we need to keep that
that kind of mindset, for the aspiring aviatorout there who's taken their 1st discovery

(01:04:53):
flight to to understand from day 1, be able toadmit that you are wrong and learn from that
mistake because that makes mistake.
You're gonna make it again in the future, butdon't let it hurt you.
Like, you don't wanna yeah.
It's the whole bag of experience versus bag ofluck thing.
You want one to fill up before the other oneruns out.

(01:05:13):
So Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No no doubt.
I mean, I I think that maybe when you're new toaviation, you kinda have this idea, like, oh,
well, I'm just gonna be better.
I'm not I'm not gonna make any mistakes.
I'm just gonna study harder and be smarter.
Well, as you find out, especially as you getinto the world of military aviation, like,
every flight, everybody in that flight had madea small mistake or done something that they

(01:05:35):
could do better.
And in the debriefs, you know, in the navy, wewere very open about that.
And and the the flight lead would start off thedebrief oftentimes by going through everything
that they kind of fucked up or could've donebetter.
And and granted those things get smaller andsmaller, but you're constantly honing that
edge.
And so, for anybody out there that thinks inthe world of aviation that everything's just

(01:05:59):
always gonna be perfect.
It's just not how it is.
It's too dynamic.
There's too much going on.
And and and even if you're the smartest, bestpilot out there, there are always things that
you can improve and learn on, on every singleflight.
And and fortunately, you know, that was thementality in the military and the navy, and and

(01:06:20):
and that's how we grow and get better.
Not by pretending that our shit doesn't stinkand none of us make mistakes because that get
incredibly dangerous very quickly if you ifyou're in a community like that.
Yeah.
And and I think, I I wanna transition into thisnext phase.
So you talked about being in the hospital inthe ICU, getting your call sign, which I mean,

(01:06:40):
you got the best call sign story in the world.
Like,
nobody's hard earned one.
That's Yeah.
Yeah.
You could, you know, dude, you could have donethis a lot easier.
Like Yeah.
You you
could Of course.
Significantly easier.
Yeah.
I mean, but, you know, I it it sounds like byjudging from what what kind of what we talked
about in the beginning too is your your nonprocrastinator type.

(01:07:03):
You're like, just get it done.
Those guys always seem to do really well in inin all these training, evolutions, you know,
whether it's the seals, combat pilots, pilottraining, any anything they put in who just so
like to get it done now guys seem to do really,really well.
I wanted to get into I mean, the the moments ofphysical and mental adversity that you face in

(01:07:30):
that 2 hour block of time sitting in the waterand then for all this time afterwards, You're
like the fear and vulnerability that I wouldhave felt.
I mean, at the time, when you're in a survivalsituation, I don't think that that's
necessarily there in when you think about itfrom the exterior or just this training stuff

(01:07:54):
that we've been through where I go, you justgot to like you're just putting one foot in
front of the other just to sort of live likeyou don't like.
But but I wanted to get into the were youafraid when you were sitting in the in the
water?
Were were you were you were you feelingvulnerable?

(01:08:14):
Did you or were you just sitting there going, Igotta get the hell out of here, dude.
I gotta live.
Yeah.
So as far as like a clear linear memory
Yeah.
I only have that up until the point where I wasabout to reach for the ejection handle and pull
it.
I remember seeing the ocean rushing up at mevery quickly and just getting this overwhelming

(01:08:35):
sinking of my stomach, and just going, oh,shit.
And then everything after that, my body justwent into freaking stem power mode operating
off of training.
I still, over the course of years, I wasgetting flashbacks of little clip clips of
memory, of being in the ocean.
A lot of that, I don't have, like, this clearlinear memory through from the head injury and

(01:08:58):
everything, the stress and the trauma and theshock.
But I've gotten lots of little clips of thatback.
And the things that I was experiencing in thewater that I've recalled were just this
overwhelming sense of dread and tear as I'mbeing pulled beneath the surface, trying to
gasp for air, inhaling salt water.
The thought that there's a shark that's anyminute just gonna come and bite me in half.

(01:09:22):
You know, there was just this deep overwhelmingtear, but somehow my body just kicked into the
survival mode.
And and despite being drowned alive andinhaling salt water, and and for every for
every reason I should be dead.
But somehow there was something that kicked onthat my system just would reengage when I float

(01:09:46):
back to the surface on occasion and and coughthat water up and get another breath and just
keep fighting and holding on there.
And I think I mean, there had to have been somesort of, like, spiritual level that was going
on where I was at the gates of probably helland and being like, well, I wanna go back and,
like, at least try it one more time.
And I think that might have happened severaltimes.

(01:10:07):
And, well,
it it then
I'm gonna But it was full of survival mode.
Oh, yeah.
Then fast forward.
Okay.
You know, you're you're in the ICU.
You're in this coma.
People are seeing you when you come out of thecoma, and it's looking like, alright, you're
you're stabilized, man.
Everything that you remember, your past is isis this is not going to be who you are now.

(01:10:33):
I mean, for for me Yeah.
Never have been in this situation.
Just it sounds like the shittiest thing anybodycould say to me.
Was this where, like, did you find a momentwhere you were like, alright, man.
I have to embrace what's going to happen here.
I mean, it probably wasn't right away, but Iwanna walk through that a little bit because we

(01:10:56):
have shit that happens in our life that wegotta learn from and get better.
Yeah.
That that was actually, I think, probably oneof the most valuable lessons was kinda what
happened as I came to, you know, from acomatose state after 2 weeks in a coma.
My body completely destroyed.
I remember, you know, waking up like I waswaking up from a dream.

(01:11:18):
But for some reason, I was in this beeping ICUroom with wires and stuff stuck all over me.
My whole body's in this sort of, like, vacuumsealed plastic wrap.
I've got staples and sutures running up anddown my arms and legs.
I look like freaking Frankenstein, and I can'tmove.
You know, I thought they had tied me down ontothe bed, but it's because I was paralyzed.

(01:11:40):
And, and eventually the medical staff came inand said, you know, as I'm still, you know, I'm
suffering from a severe brain injury.
I've I've got so much medication in that IVwith Fentanyl, Dilaudid, and who knows what
else that's, you know, I'm pretty out of it.
But eventually they come in and they startexplaining like, here's what's happened, you've

(01:12:01):
been in a high speed ejection, we don't yetknow the exact cause, but you're likely never
going to walk again, you're not going to beable to use your arms again, and your military
flying career is over.
And there was something inside of me that wasjust like, fuck that.
I'm gonna prove these people wrong.
And and I started to visualize what's it gonnabe like when I get to come back into this ICU

(01:12:26):
in my flight suit with my wings back on mychest and be like, hey.
Guess what?
I'm flying again.
And, you know, I had all these other reasonsthat I could have latched off on the negative.
I could have said, you know, just beencompletely defeated at that point.
But I remember that turning point in my mindsetwhich was just how am I gonna prove these
people wrong?

(01:12:46):
What if I did get better?
What if I overcame all these impossible odds?
Because that's what I told myself and that'swhat other people would have said about me
becoming a fighter pilot to begin with.
This crappy little kid from a communitycollege, you know, like, you can't be a fighter
pilot.
Well, it was kind of the same thing, and and II had this fire to to prove him wrong and get

(01:13:06):
back on the horse that had bucked me off.
And so I just kind of tended to that littleember of hope, and and, you know, my life was
coming down on me.
You know, I was in a disastrous relationshipwith the woman that I was dating at the time.
I had a FNAB over looming over my head, like,how much of a responsibility am I gonna take
for this mishap?
There's an $89,000,000 aircraft that I hadsigned for that has now been vaporized.

(01:13:31):
My career's on the line.
What's gonna happen?
How much was my fault?
I was dealing with the paralysis of my body.
I can't even wipe my own ass.
I'm sitting a lot of the day, you know, coveredin my own feces, pissing myself.
I can't eat when I wanna eat.
I can't brush my own teeth.
I can't clean myself.
Can't even I'm not even allowed to take ashower.
Like, there was so much going on around me thatI could've just, like, crushed me.

(01:13:55):
But I was fortunate that in that moment, I hadthis, like, ember that I fed.
And and there was this sort of mental image ofme, not just thinking that I could do it, but
just visualizing it happen.
And that gave me enough hope that I was able tomove forward.
And I actually had a, you know, that same guy,Commander Mike Stock, that was this incredible

(01:14:17):
Navy gunship pilot, and test pilot, and Bushpilot with this crazy career in aviation,
taught a survival class when I was at college.
And he said, he asked the whole class, he'slike what what's the most important thing in
survival?
And, you know, people are like, oh, water,food, shelter.
He's like, no, it's hope.
You have to have hope or you are not going toeven try to get the water, you're not going to

(01:14:39):
even try to build the shelter.
And that's what I found in that moment was thatlittle kernel of hope, and I tended to that,
and I, you know, built the embers around that,and I fed fuel into that, and every day my
driving force was how am I gonna get a littlebit of movement today.
And little by little over the course of months,I slowly started to regain function because I

(01:15:00):
was working at it and I was disciplined and Iwas optimistic.
And little by little, you know, I started toget a little bit of movement in my legs.
I started to get a movement of my torso, but itwas because I was working at it diligently.
And, you know, over the course of 3 months, Iwent from paralyzed to saying I never walk
again to getting around in a walker.

(01:15:21):
I then spent the next 2 years undergoing, youknow, more surgeries, intense rehabilitation,
overcoming prescription drug addiction to allthe pain management stuff they had given me,
and it was miserable the whole way.
And the big thing was, you know, going throughthe FENAB, the Field Naval Aviation Evaluation
Board, which was this massive investigationinto everything about my life, about the

(01:15:44):
mishap, you know, and having to face the manand have some very intense conversations about
what had happened and where did I fuck up.
But I had I think something that saved methrough that process was that I was very quick
to admit my error that was involved in it.
And I think oftentimes people get into a FNABsituation, and they want to try to deny that

(01:16:07):
they had any part of it, that it wasn't theirfault.
And those are the guys that oftentimes have aFNAB not go in their direction.
Now, if you if you've just done somethingblatantly stupid or illegal, you know, yeah,
you're probably gonna lose your wings.
But in my case, this is something that hadhappened to far more senior aviators with more
experience.
It wasn't just something that I had done, youknow, it was complex from the way we had set up

(01:16:32):
the fight, the way that, you know, all thesecomponents built.
And I remember going into the final FENAB,after months of investigation of this just,
like, my life just felt like I had thiscrushing force coming down on it.
And I went into the admiral's office in Norfolkand sat down at this huge wooden board table

(01:16:54):
with flanked on either side by all theseseasoned, senior aviators from all different
communities.
But I was very fortunate that the people whoget to make the decision about your future are
other aviators who understand the complexnature and how difficult, you know, what the
job is we do.
I think, you know, it might be common place forpeople to think if you're a military pilot or a

(01:17:17):
pilot in general and you make a mistake,they're gonna just hang you out to dry.
Well, it turns out, you know, a lot of theseother pilots in that room with, you know, birds
and stars on their chests, They had beenthrough their own mishaps before.
They had made mistakes, and they understood thecomplex nature of it.
And so, it all culminated with me sitting onthis board on the opposite end of the admiral

(01:17:37):
as he comes in, and he looked across at me andgoes, lieutenant Gill, are you fearless?
And I didn't know what to say, but somehow cameout of me was, sir, I don't remember everything
from the ejection, but I'm certain what littlecushion there is on the ejection seat was
puckered up inside me real tight.
And he didn't smile, you know, he didn't haveany expression whatsoever.

(01:17:59):
All he did was he stood up and walked out ofthe room.
And I was like, shit.
Well, there goes my flying career.
And then as kind of everybody starts to clearout of the room, it seemed like a lot of
consternation.
1 of the one of the more senior pilots comesand grabs me and pulled me into his office, and
he hands me this little jar of mint lifesavers.

(01:18:19):
He pops 1 in his mouth, I pop 1 in mine, hegoes, Congratulations, Lieutenant Gill.
If you can get your body working, we're gonnaget you back into Super Hornet.
Wow.
And that was just more fuel onto my recovery.
I still had to get a stack of medical waiversfor all my ailments, and I had to physically
get back.
But after a couple years, I was back maxing outthe Navy's PRT again.

(01:18:41):
Physically feeling good, mentally feeling good,and, and then was blessed to get to return to
flying Super Hornets after all that.
Jeez.
So did you know, again, this is these thesequestions are so, like, medial in my head.
But there it's the curiosity of you know, it'slike a pilot's gonna ask another pilot, like,

(01:19:01):
the most dipshitty question, and this is kindaso you get all the way through all this.
Do you have to go back to, like, square 1, rag,or do you have to go back further than that?
Like, what kind of it came in in house upgrade?
No.
I ended up I ended up going back to the rag.
I had to do a cat other syllabus.

(01:19:22):
So I largely did the vast majority of acategory 1 syllabus.
I think I was considered a cat 2.
So I went it had been 2 years since I'd beenflying an aircraft, so I was happy that I got
to go back through that.
Yeah.
I bet.
So you'd like learn all these skills again andrefresh them.
But I was met with a tremendous amount ofsupport from the strike fighter community.

(01:19:43):
Guys were so stoked that I was back, you know,after this crazy comeback that I had been
through.
And I had a tremendous amount of support goingback through, you know, and and I very quickly
gained back my confidence and felt superstrong, graduated as the top stick in my class,
got the River Rat Award, meaning I was the mostfun to hang out with outside the cockpit too.

(01:20:06):
And, and I went back to the fleet, and and Iwas back with, VFA 136 Nighthawks and NAS
Lemoore flying Super Hornets again.
And it was like, you know, this Disney dreamcome true happy ending.
Yeah.
But then she gets even crazier.
And that's alright.
Let's, let's keep going.

(01:20:26):
So you're now you're back.
You're flying, dude.
You're I mean, if it was sweet the first time,this is, like, 10 x that.
This is like taking, a pack of, like,Nutrisweet times 10 and just dumping it in your
mouth through racking, man, like, mainliningthat shit.
So, I mean, that had to feel so good.

(01:20:48):
Like, I I can't I can't even it like, I wouldput it up there with right under the birth of a
child kind of a thing.
Like, there is no experience quite like that.
So It was profound.
Yeah.
Perfect.
What a perfect term.
So the profoundness of that event, now you'reback.
Where does where does it go from here?

(01:21:10):
So I had been back flying for about a year anda half, you know, feeling good with I started
to notice these little mental lapses, like,just little things that I just kind of brushed
off as, oh, you know, I had my bell rung prettygood.
This stuff's gonna go away eventually.
Combination of I think just the high paced lifeof being in a fleet squadron, you know, working

(01:21:31):
really hard, not sleeping maybe as much as youshould, and, and then I had an event on a
detachment down at Tyndall Air Force Base.
We were down there doing a live fire missileexercise.
And I came back from a flight where I got to,shoot a live AIM-nine Mike Sidewinder and a
drone a heat seeking missile, and then I got togo fight a F-twenty 2 Raptor and do similar air

(01:21:54):
combat training.
So 2 guys in their late twenties, earlythirties flying around in some of the freaking
coolest warbirds that have ever been created.
And, I came back from that flight and while Ivividly remembered fighting the raptor, as I
was watching my tapes in the debrief I realizedthere were all these gaps in my memory and
confusion surrounding what had happened in thethe missile exercise.

(01:22:17):
And I kinda was, you know, I was like, oh,maybe I just need a good night's sleep.
Went back to the hotel, couldn't sleep.
Terrible insomnia, like these panic attacksthat I had never had.
The next day I was just on duty, you know, Iwas running the radio and coordinating the
flight schedule.
I just kinda toughed it out through the day,but I did not feel well.
And that night, I got back to the hotel again,and I sat down on the bed, and the room just

(01:22:38):
tumbled around me with vertigo, which I hadnever experienced.
My heart was racing, and and I I couldn'tremember stuff.
I was, like, struggling just to, like, findwhere my hotel room was on the way up.
And I, again, laid down to try to sleep,couldn't sleep.
I was setting my alarm on my phone, and Icouldn't figure out how to use my cell phone or

(01:22:59):
do the math just to set my alarm for when I hadto get up and fly in the morning.
So I knew something was seriously wrong.
I didn't know what it was exactly, but therehad been a rash of incidents in the in the
Hornet and Super Hornet community ofdecompression sickness.
We had this issue with the environmentalcontrol systems causing rapid pressure
fluctuations of the cabin that it actually, youknow, it had full up put a couple people into,

(01:23:24):
like, a vegetative state in a growler.
They were starting to put hyperbaric oxygentreatment facilities on the aircraft carriers,
so that if guys came back, they could go intothe and get squeezed.
But for those don't know that aren't scubadivers perhaps, decompression sickness is just
what can happen.
Say you come up from a dive in the ocean tooquickly, or in this case, the the pressure

(01:23:47):
changes so rapidly in the cockpit that thenitrogen that's in solution in our blood can
come out of that solution and form littlebubbles.
If you get them in your joints, it's verypainful.
It's called the bends or type 1 DCS.
You can get those little bubbles in your brainthough, and it can cause serious problems, like
aneurysm or stroke like symptoms, or evenkilling you, if that circulation gets cut off

(01:24:11):
to your brain.
And so, what was suspected is I had gotten someof these bubbles in my brain.
There was maybe a environmental control systemmalfunction.
So I was rushed to a dive base.
I was put in a hyperbaric chamber overnight,and treated.
I felt a little bit better.
But the next day, I came back in to see thedoc, and he's like, you know, considering your
history, when you get back from thisdetachment, you should really consider going

(01:24:34):
and see the flight surgeon.
And, you know, in the world of aviation, youdon't go talk to the doc because if you do,
it's like that's your job.
And I'd earned all this, you know, I'd beenthrough all this shit to get back.
I had to stack of medical waivers and so I was,you know, in contemplation the whole the whole
flight back.
Like, am I gonna am I gonna go in and see thedoc?

(01:24:55):
But I knew something was still wrong when I gotback.
Like, I was really struggling just to do basicdaily functioning, let alone fly a fighter jet.
And so I went in to see medical and the docvery quickly got me a delayed onset PTSD
diagnosis, which led to the psychologydepartment.
Had a very frustrating experience there ofbasically just feeling like this was all just

(01:25:19):
in my head.
I just needed to get over it.
You know, it was just this emotional thing.
Well, it turns out what was really going on isthe combination of traumatic brain injury from
the ejection and then and then potentially thisexposure to decompression sickness and just the
the continuing wear and tear that my body andbrain had taken from all of everything that had

(01:25:39):
happened, and then being back in the strikefighter community had just taken a toll to the
point where the physiology of my brain was nolonger working properly.
And what the focus of my healing should havebeen was traumatic brain injury that that can
be dealt with and reversed and and fixed andoptimized till you get back to health.
Unfortunately, the route that all too commonlyhappens, not only in the military community

(01:26:03):
that I was in, but in the the special forcescommunity especially has to deal with this,
which is you get all these traumatic braininjuries and culmination of this extreme
stressful environment that you've beenoperating in, or combat and emotional distress.
You get physically injured, and then you get aPTSD diagnosis labeled on you, which sends you
down the realm of the psych world, which, youknow, quickly led to more pills, SSRIs,

(01:26:29):
medication to help sleep.
And and as that continued to mask the symptomsinitially, the underlying physiology of my
brain just spiraled out of control.
And I went from, you know, some of the ailmentsI described earlier to dealing with
hypervigilance and paranoia to full uppsychoses, man.
Like, it started like I felt like I was in TheTruman Show, where, like, everybody was actors

(01:26:51):
and watching me, and then that quickly degradedinto thinking I was being hunted by government
assassins.
I stopped eating, I stopped drinking, and endedup having to go through a medical board to be
separated from the military.
And, things got really dark, man.
I I got very depressed.
I felt like I was letting everybody down thathad helped me get back to the cockpit.

(01:27:13):
I had become suicidal, and, you know, the onlything that had stopped me from putting my glock
in my mouth and pulling the trigger was, youknow, those cute little kids that you just saw
earlier.
You know?
I was sleeping next to my little boy after hehad been born.
He wasn't even a, a few months old yet.
And, I looked over at him and my wife'ssleeping peacefully.
I didn't wanna wake him up.

(01:27:35):
But I I eventually, I was, medically retiredfrom the military after going through what I'd
call the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom version,or the bureaucratic version of that.
Like, that process was so riddled with boobytraps and problems.
And despite having all this medicaldocumentation and and everything, it was still

(01:27:56):
a shit show.
But, eventually, I was I was, medicallyretired, moved back to Northern Michigan, and
then that same treatment continued with thewith the psych meds.
And it when they stopped working, it just meantI needed more of them, and this crazy insane
cycle just continued to the point where I endedup, my wife came home from a job interview one
day, and she found me, completely naked, shavedoff my hair.

(01:28:20):
I'd shaved off my eyebrows, my facial hair forsome reason.
And the only thing I had on was a black plasticgarbage bag tied around my neck like a cape
because I thought I was gonna go out into thesnowy Michigan weather and fight crime like a
superhero.
She, she rushed me to the emergency room.
I ended up spending a couple nights therebefore being transferred down to a VA inpatient

(01:28:41):
psych facility living in a freaking loony bin.
And and and the treatment of veterans I sawthere was, you know, it still pisses me off
that that's the way, you know, all these thingsyou would do to an enemy combatant in a
prisoner of war situation.
You confine them, you sleep deprive them,malnourish them, treat them less than human.

(01:29:04):
Well, there are components of all of those inthis facility that was supposed to be to help
you heal.
Every 15 minutes, you're awoken with aflashlight in your face and someone bursting
into your room to make sure that you're safe.
The food is just ultra processed junk food thatyou get to eat.
You're lucky if you get to go outside once aweek into a concrete yard surrounded by brick

(01:29:25):
high rise buildings and and metal fencing.
A lot of the staff isn't well trained, and andif you're into psychosis, they really forget
that there's a human being under there.
You're dressed in prison scrubs, so and they'rein their white lab coat, so there's a sort of
element of, like, Stanford prison experimentstuff going on.
You know, and so it's just it's not a healingenvironment.

(01:29:48):
The only thing they have are more of thosepills.
And before you know it, I was taking cups ofthese things all day long, and I don't know
what they were.
And, I was very fortunate after about 40 daysin that facility.
My family got me out, and and I was prettybroken human being.
And I was really fortunate to stumble acrosssome other modalities to help with that healing

(01:30:10):
and found my path back to mental and physicalwellness.
But it was very I was very fortunate.
Unfortunately, so many people don't get thatexperience that, but I'm here to tell you there
is a way to heal from all the shit I justdescribed without having to go down the path of
psych meds and psych wards in in years years ofturmoil.

(01:30:31):
And it's by addressing traumatic brain injury,through healing modalities that can actually
help heal that, be that hyperbaric oxygentherapy, traumatic brain injury clinics.
A big one was psychedelic assisted therapy.
There is a whole world of nutraceuticals,peptides, hormonal therapies.
It's just not available at the VA.

(01:30:53):
It's not available through insurance.
A lot of the stuff you have to pay out ofpocket or find a nonprofit organization willing
to help you gain access to it.
But, you know, it all again started with thatkernel of hope that was still glowing within me
somewhere.
And and I was able to latch on to that, improvemy lifestyle, get exercising again, get a

(01:31:13):
eating really well, you know, cutting outalcohol and and everything that was taking away
from my physical well-being that my body justcouldn't handle anymore.
It gave my brain a chance to heal.
And it's really amazing, what the brain canheal from when it's given the right conditions.
Your story is I mean, it's I've never had achance to talk to somebody who's been through

(01:31:36):
something like you have.
I mean, again, I don't think anybody has.
Like, you're you're one of 1.
You're you're you're
too crazy.
I I wouldn't believe it if it didn't happen tome.
Yeah.
Right.
And even that chances
all that shit happened.
Yeah.
I bet you attempt to look in the mirror andyou're like, this is like, some of it like, it
I can't believe this happened to me.

(01:31:56):
And and I think one of the things that, Iwanted to hit I mean, there's so like, I've
already, I've so for those of you don't know,we normally keep the show to, like, less than
an hour.
I've kept Keegan for literally almost an hourpast how long, I I wanted to keep him for
because he's just you're such a fascinatingguy.

(01:32:16):
And your story like, it's cool because it's Iget to talk to another pilot about something
like this.
Like, if I heard this story from a firefighter,I can kinda parallel it a little bit.
But, like, you know, you when you have the whenyou have the same beginnings, you can kinda
understand, or at least empathize with some ofthe stuff that you were thinking about.
Because I mean, I I can't I remember justhaving the idea that they were gonna kick me

(01:32:41):
out, or or I was gonna get med medically hitfor something, especially when you're younger
in the middle of your career.
That's like the biggest fear you have.
Like, you'll do anything to avoid seeing adoctor or doing anything that might jeopardize
the fact that you could you could no longer beflying jets anymore.
Because there is nothing else.
Like, what what else you gonna do with yourlife?

(01:33:02):
You don't know anything.
It's your identity.
Yeah.
It's totally your identity.
So you will lie to yourself.
And and you will like and I think especially asa fighter pilot, you guys, you know, it's so
precision and control oriented, and it wascritical to what happened afterwards into the
survival, aspect of everything you did.

(01:33:24):
That loss of control, and and that it's likehow you feel that little flame, that little
ember to to let it burn brightly and get youback to where you've been twice in 2 kind of
reclamation projects that probably have farexceeded anything you thought you would ever
have to do.
But, like, that loss of control, especially thesecond time with the VA, and that really angers

(01:33:48):
me.
And and a lot of veterans who are gonna listento this, and we'll get into how we can help.
How did that reshape your perspective?
Now, I mean, now you come home and you startdealing with the recovery of all of what you
just went through the VA at home with yourfamily.
How did that change your perspective on onbeing not only, you know, a good husband, a

(01:34:10):
family member, but, like, the leader of thehouse, the dad, the the now you have to lead
these 2 little kids through, you know, theirwhole life perspective.
And they're gonna look and they all they see isdad.
They don't see the guy who, like, your bros whosaw who, like, dude, this guy should be dead
twice.
The kids look up at you as just, hey.
You're you're just you're just my dad.

(01:34:31):
You know, you're you're nothing more than justjust like me.
You're you're always a superhero, but, youknow, and I wanted, like, how did that that
experience of control loss and then bringing itback?
What was that what's that like?
Yeah.
It was it was brutal.
I mean, I came back from that inpatient psychfacility at the VA, and I was just deep sense
of betrayal from the government I had served.

(01:34:53):
I just felt just anger, you know.
I couldn't feel positive emotion anymore.
You know some people say PTSD stands off forpissed off, tired, stoned, and drunk, and
that's that's where I was at.
And and my kids would come up and try to playwith me, and I would just grumble at them.
I could I could barely do the dishes.
I could barely read a paragraph withoutforgetting it.

(01:35:14):
Like, my mental functioning, my emotionalfunctioning, everything was in disarray.
And then I was, you know, I was fortunate togain access to this entire world of healing
modalities that are off off the mainstream.
And through that, I was able to reconnect to asense of purpose.
I was able to heal, you know, the physiology ofmy brain.

(01:35:37):
I was able to build healthier lifestyle,healthier habits, healthier emotional patterns,
and just just have a profound change.
And it took years of of of several differentmodalities and and sticking with it, and then
even longer for my family to come back around.
You know, I was on the verge of divorce.

(01:35:59):
I was on the verge of losing my family becauseof who I had become through all of this was
just not the person my wife had married.
And and to see me, you know, out of my mind allthe time, running around naked with a plastic
garbage bag around my neck, like, that doessomething to your romantic relationship for a
long time.
Yeah.
I
do.
But I was really fortunate to to to actuallyhave huge change.

(01:36:22):
And and over time, my family saw that.
And and really, a lot of my family andespecially the folks at the VA were very
against me pursuing, especially the psychedelicassisted therapy.
It's like, no.
You just gotta take these psych meds the restof your life.
That's the that's the, you know, that's the FDAapproved way we deal with this ailment.
And I was fortunate that I had this, like, sortof rebellious instinct within me to say, well,

(01:36:47):
that's not working.
And I was able to to heal the damage that hadbeen done, not only to my brain, but also to my
soul, and come out the other side of it with agreat appreciation for everything that I had
experienced.
There's a quote by Carl Jung that says, inorder to grow to reach the heavens, you have to
have roots that have been deep into hell.

(01:37:09):
And I think my takeaway from that quote is theway I interpret it is, like, by being through a
really challenging hard experience in life, itallows you to have an even deeper appreciation
and to grow in gratitude and love in a way thatyou couldn't have achieved, had you not
experienced that.
And now I get the opportunity to share thestory, to maybe help other people that are

(01:37:32):
stark in in their own dark place, whatever thatmay be, you know.
And to realize that you don't have to have beenin a crazy high speed ejection, or been blown
up by a bomb, or or whatever to start toexperience troubles with brain injury.
You know, it can just happen from emotionalstress.
It can happen just from the grind of Westernsociety where, you know, you're working too

(01:37:53):
hard, you're not sleeping enough, you're, youknow, whatever, consuming alcohol, caffeine,
nicotine, all this stuff takes a toll on usover time.
And, fortunately, there's a way you can getthrough that and get your life back.
But it takes that discipline and it takes youto have you get to control that switch.
You get to be the captain of your own ship.

(01:38:16):
But I'm here to tell you that the greatestmedicine is teaching people how you don't need
any.
And there's a way forward that you can getwhatever you're dealing with, to get your
health back and well-being back, and it's notgonna have to be in a pill.
And it's not gonna be something that you'restuck in the rest of your life.
But, you know, it just takes working at it andworking towards it and keeping that hope alive.

(01:38:40):
Yeah.
I think you I think you nailed a lot of thesentiments of a lot of us out there, especially
veterans who, who wanna give back to,especially who are on the other end, of their
careers or even, you know, younger folk who arestill serving.
But, like, how would you save for us out therewho who wanna help out?

(01:39:03):
Like, you know, am I perfect?
No.
I don't think any of us ever will be.
I'm working towards something all the time.
And, I'm I'm I'm always trying to do a littlebit better.
You know?
I think that's the thing.
I love that one per like, not 1%, like, the 1tenth of 1% per day better makes you great.
There's a great book out there called 10Percent Better, and it's all about, the, I

(01:39:26):
forget the author's name.
He was, he was a news anchor at ABC.
And when asked why he meditates, he couldn'tfigure out what why he didn't have an answer.
So he said, because it makes me 10% better.
And I thought that what a great what a greatway to encapsulate all of your life.

(01:39:46):
If if you can put everything to get togetherand you're 10% better at the end of the year
than you were before, holy cow, dude.
Like, cumulatively, that's amazing.
And 10%, that's a great return on investment.
It's better than the S and P 500 financially.
So, I I really like that idea.
And I I think when we kind of get to that levelor or get close, it's I wanna give back.

(01:40:10):
The the pilot network wants to give back.
That's kind of the whole reason this thing waskinda started was to pay it forward from the
aspiring to the retiring.
So how can a guy like me or other pilots outthere can help veteran communities, people who
are in these situations, or just folks theyknow in general?
How can we get them turned on to some of theright therapies treatments to help them get

(01:40:31):
through these traumatic brain injuries or, ortraumatic stress in their life that they don't
know how to deal with?
Yeah.
One is just sharing this podcast, you know, sopeople know that this even exists, you know,
for the people that are stuck in a dark placeto maybe maybe if it's just one guy that's
stuck in a bad spot and he hears this podcastand realizes, holy shit.
I don't have to be stuck in this dark placeanymore.

(01:40:55):
A great resource, that's I've I've compiled acompilation of these organizations that have
helped me.
If you wanna try to help support those, pleasecome to my website, kegangill.com, which is
kegangill.com.
There's a whole list of the organizations thathelped put me back together that are, you know,

(01:41:19):
helping serve thousands of other veterans.
We've been very fortunate in this country thatthere's a massive amount of growing, veteran
service organizations that are stepping in tofill in this huge gap that is in the mainstream
medical system, that's in the VA, that's nothealing, guys, that deserve to be healed.
So if you wanna try to support that, pleasecome to my website.

(01:41:42):
You can select from any of those organizationsI have on there.
You can find out how to apply.
You can learn about what they do, and you can,you can donate to support those if you'd like
to do so.
Yeah.
For sure.
I would definitely, definitely.
I this is some I've been fascinated by this fora long time.
Play also playing sports, football, stuff likethat, concussions, things.

(01:42:06):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You know, this goes beyond your service recordand what happened to you while you're while
you're serving.
It goes back before that, and it it happensafter you're done.
I mean, dude, I work in, like, talk about justtraumatic or hitting your head.

(01:42:26):
Right?
I was out in the garage one day, and I had awood saw horse that I was trying to get down
from the rafters and pop me right on the top.
And I was out for, like, 4 or 5 just days, youknow, like, oh, man, the light stuff like that
because I'd had a concussion or 2 playingfootball.
And, this is stuff that we gotta track, like,you gotta watch this in, you gotta watch your

(01:42:46):
own behaviors.
And if you're not that Tim Ferriss always says,if it's what doesn't get tracked doesn't
change, you kinda have to watch this throughoutyour life to make sure that you're you're
keeping up on it.
You did a great job with that, obviously,because you recognize these problems were
happening and you you realized that you neededto change.

(01:43:08):
So I'll give you the parting shot, Kagan.
Just what else?
I mean, your story is so it's it's immense.
It's it's moving.
It has gravity.
It's got dude, you tell a great story withhumor too.
Thank you for thank you for
I mean, how
else you get how's it gonna do?
Have some of that in there.
Yeah.
Right.
Gotta laugh at this stuff because otherwise,it's just it's it's overwhelming.

(01:43:33):
If you can pass on one thing for for folks wholisten, to take away, what would that one thing
be?
You know, Tim Ferris has put it on a billboard.
We kinda joke and say it, the bold face ormemory items because, you know, we're we're
flyers.
So, what would be the bold face from thisepisode?
Man,

(01:43:55):
just realize the, you know, the sort ofincredible inherent resilience that's within
all of us to get through hell, and come out theother side.
And whatever darkness that you're facing,realize if once you get through it and come out
the other side you're going to be stronger forit, and and you can your body, your brain can

(01:44:16):
recover and heal and regenerate, and you canbecome the best version of yourself that you've
ever become even if you're at rock bottom.
It's just an opportunity to grow that muchfurther.
Wow, you know, perfect.
Tell them where they can find you again and thebook that's coming out and all that great
stuff.
So, yeah, my book is coming out January 21st.

(01:44:39):
It's called the Phoenix revival, the aftermathof naval aviation's fastest survived ejection.
Please preorder a copy.
It'll be available in hardcover, paperback,ebook, and on Audible.
Leave me a review if you pick one up and andyou enjoy it to try to help get that thing some
visibility.
You can find me on Instagram atkegginsmurfgill.

(01:45:03):
You can find me on LinkedIn, or you can comedirectly to my website that I mentioned
earlier, keggangill.com.
If you need a guest speaker for one of yourevents or your community, hit me up on there.
I've been blessed with the opportunity to speakat a massive array of different events over the
past couple years and absolutely love sharingmy story.

(01:45:23):
Can tailor it to time frames, venues,audiences, however you like.
But, yeah, please keep in touch with me even ifyou're just, you know, someone out there with
questions on how how to get started on your ownhealing journey.
Shoot me a message, a DM.
You can email me on my website or reach out onsocial media.
And I'll I'll back that up.

(01:45:43):
He'll get back to you.
And not only does he get back to you, he'll sayhe'll give you specific time frames if you need
to meet with, wanna chat with him.
He'll go, hey.
I'm real busy right now.
He won't left leave you hanging.
And I appreciate that, King.
And, again, thank you.
It's beyond words for joining us.
This is really enlightening.
It's super fun to chat about something that Iwas very interested about, and I wanna just

(01:46:07):
commend you again for everything that you didand everything that you're bringing to the
community, for not only, veterans and aviators,but people who just need to hear this.
And hopefully, this message grows far and widebeyond the pilot network and other podcasts out
there.
This gets out into every nook and cranny forpeople who really need, a little bit of help
and a little bit of, hope to move forward.

(01:46:28):
Because as you said, we both learned this day 1of survival.
You can have all the right stuff.
You can have the perfect environment, but ifyou lose hope, there's no chance.
And, I think that that that message is truly,one that you passed along, in flying colors.
So thanks again.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me on.

(01:46:49):
I really appreciate it.
Yeah.
And, and everybody else out there, as we alwayssay, hit us up at hey, guys, with pilot
network.com if you didn't listen to anythingelse and you wanna get a hold of Kagan or you
wanna chat with Matt or I.
Keep that shiny side up, grease side down.
Fly safe, everybody.

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