Episode 54: The Jet Jockey: Supersonic Stories: Flying the CF-188 Hornet in the Cold War Part 2 - Dan "Alf" McWilliams

What was it like to be one of the first cadres to fly the might CF-188 Hornet? What did it feel like to operate in Europe on the edge of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War? What was it like to deploy in support of the Gulf War? Dan "Alf" McWilliams is a retired RCAF Fighter pilot who operated during the Cold War. Today we sit down and talk about his operational life and focus on some stories from his book, "Supersonic Stories".

Dan's books can be here:

Tutor Tales

Supersonic Stories

Episode Transcript

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intro/outro (00:30):
Fuel and ignition switches. On. RPM switches. Set.
PD switches.
Normal. Doors and hatches.Closed. Lay down. Stroblade.
On. Research check-in. Completewith your left. Engineer. Start
number two.
Starting two. Wing three onezero ten, pilot project podcast.

(00:51):
Clear takeoff runway three oneleft.

Bryan (00:58):
Alright. We're ready for departure here at the pilot
project podcast, the best sourcefor stories and advice from RCAF
and mission aviation pilotsbrought to you by Skies
Magazine. I'm your host, BrianMorrison. With me today is
retired fighter pilot, Dan AlfMcWilliams. Dan, welcome to the
show, and thanks so much forbeing here.

Dan (01:14):
I'm happy to be here.

Bryan (01:16):
So listeners can go back one episode to hear about Dan's
book, Tutor Tales, as well as anin-depth discussion on his days
flying the tutor as both astudent and an instructor.
Today, we'll be talking abouthis book, Supersonic Stories,
chronicling his time as a ColdWar fighter pilot. So, Dan, you
experienced a few unexpectedturns in your career. Can you
tell us more about that?

Dan (01:37):
You always plan, and then the plan never happens. The the
cliche is that it does notsurvive first contact with the
enemy. And even though when youhave no real enemy, the enemy
can be technical problems withan aircraft, for example. So I
was super happy. I'd finished upin Moose Jaw.
I was on my way to Bagotville,Quebec, which was where I wanted

(01:59):
to be because I thought that Icould enjoy myself a little bit
more there because I speak thelanguage and everything else. So
I was posted from Moose Jaw tothe course in Cold Lake, and I
was supposed to go to Bagotvilleon the f five. Partway through
the f five course, wing sparscracked on the aircraft. There

(02:21):
was special inspection. Theyfound out that, like, two thirds
of the fleet had big cracks inthe wings spars.

Bryan (02:26):
Oh, wow.

Dan (02:27):
So they grounded the they grounded the fleet. They closed
four through three squadron andfour three four, the two
operational f five squadrons.Four nineteen where I was on the
training unit, there were 21 ofus on course. They they had,
nine or 10 students continuewith, just a tiny number of
aircraft that were actuallystill flyable, and they were

(02:49):
busy repairing the rest at thetwo other bases where they had
these aircraft and then justferrying them to Cold Lake. They
had about the other half of thecourse was delayed four months.
And myself and another guy whohad flown T Birds in Germany
before, Mario Gidmat, we bothgot delayed by one year. And

(03:09):
Mario was sent to base flight tofly T Birds. I was sent to North
Bay to take a two and a halfweek, not month, but a two and a
half week t 33 course because Ihad lots of, similar time in the
tutor. And I came back to baseflight in Cold Lake and I flew t
birds for six months, and then Iredid the entire f five course
and then the f 18 course. Andeventually, two years, three

(03:32):
months, four days, and twominutes after I got to Cold Lake
because I love Cold Lake somuch.
I, ended up back in Bagatelle onApril, but opening it with the
new jet with the f 18. So lotsof bad things happened to the
course, but we all rolled withit, and, there was nothing we
could do. So we we just, did ourdid our best.

Bryan (03:53):
You mentioned a stint there on the t 33. What were you
guys doing on the t 33?

Dan (03:57):
T 30 threes were what we called, utility aircraft. So we
did things like, for example, Iwould take an oil sample from a
for the rescue helicopter inCold Lake, and I would fly it to
the Edmonton Municipal Airport,and I'd drop it off so that they
could get it tested at the labsthere to make sure that the
helicopter was safe to fly.There were no chips in the, no

(04:20):
metal chips in the engine oil.And that was an urgent thing.
The lab was in Edmonton.
It was a 300 kilometer drive. Sojust fly the T Bird there, drop
off the soap sample, and at thatpoint, they could have a rapid
turnaround because during thattime, the fighters couldn't fly
because it was the middle ofwinter and, without the rescue
helicopter, there was no flying.We did stuff like that. We

(04:43):
carried people from place toplace. I picked up a full
colonel in Calgary, took them toOttawa for a meeting.
And then we did exercises withNORAD. We were the targets for
say f fourteens off the coast ofSan Diego. So that was real
hardship. And and then we'd we'ddo also local target things for

(05:05):
the f eighteens. We would betargets for them as they're
doing the student training.

Bryan (05:09):
So that actually sounds like a pretty good go. Like, at
least, you know, it's not whatyou had planned, but in the
meantime, you had something kindof fun to do, a fun little jet
to fly and and work to actuallyperform with it.

Dan (05:21):
Oh, it was great. We went all over the place. I flew three
hundred hours in six months. Itwas a and it was a vintage
airplane. It was it was quite anexperience to, fly that old jet
around.
It was older than I was.

Bryan (05:33):
That's awesome. So with these unexpected turns in your
career, a quote that I reallylike from your book is that
during these times of unexpectedchange, it takes a special
person to respond withresilience. So how can someone
develop an attitude ofresilience?

Dan (05:48):
Sometimes you have no choice because you just keep
getting hit and you have to getback up again. You can't just
stay down and moan and whine andcomplain because if you do that,
you're not progressing. I thinkmy parents taught me that as
well. My mother especially as aspouse of a military member with

(06:08):
my father was gone for three orfour years during the period
where I was about 12 years oldand my youngest sister was four.
There were four of us at home.
My mother was by herself whilemy dad went all over the
prairies and learned how to flyand become a one hundred four
pilot. And she ran thehousehold. And so she taught us

(06:31):
a lot about resilience and aboutbeing self reliant and also
teamwork, working within thefamily unit and, doing
everything we could while dadwasn't around.

Bryan (06:42):
Okay. And it it's funny you say sometimes the hits keep
coming. It reminds me a littlebit of something we talked about
in our past episode, which wasthose students waiting for their
turn to get on the flighttraining. And and that attitude
of resilience, I think, is gonnabe really important for them.

Dan (06:57):
Oh, it's it's critical. If they don't have that kind of an
attitude, I I don't wanna becallous and say they shouldn't
they have no business being inthe military. But in reality,
military life is difficult. It'sextremely rewarding, but it's
not easy. Mhmm.
So it takes a special kind ofperson to exceed or to excel in
the in the military.

Bryan (07:18):
Yep. %. So when you write about learning how to air to air
refuel, it's very tense. What isit like the first time you fly
up to a tanker and attempt thismaneuver?

Dan (07:29):
For years and years, I've been taught not to hit
something. Now I'm supposed tohit it. And the basket, it's not
this it's not made of unicornfeathers. It's a 300 pound steel
basket and is bobbing around inthe wingtip vortex beside or
behind the seven zero seventanker. And the particular day

(07:52):
that I did it for the firsttime, I had we were in the
ground attack phase and, ofcourse, the great white cow, the
seven zero seven, showed up atthe worst possible time when our
aircraft were super draggy andsuper heavy and really not
suited for flying at slowspeeds.
And you're gonna laugh when Isay this, but 300 knots at

(08:14):
20,000 feet is very, very slowfor an F5. It just barely hangs
in the air at that speed. Wow.Because it's it's it's got this
wing that demands a lot ofspeed, like 400, four 20, five
hundred. Those are the speedsyou wanna fly the thing.

Bryan (08:27):
Okay.

Dan (08:28):
So so you're behind the power curve a little bit. So as
you get the tiniest bit slower,you need a whole bunch more
power. And the the instructorsbriefed us about this. And the
other thing about the f five,the two seater does not have a
refueling probe. So the firsttime you do it, you're in a
single seater by yourself andyou have an instructor flying a

(08:50):
dual who's next to you justcoaching you over the radio.

Bryan (08:53):
That's crazy.

Dan (08:55):
So it was a real challenge. But after a few pokes, I managed
to get it done. But the onething I also did was I got a
little bit out of position. Thebasket is swinging around and
it's going to hit the bottom ofmy fuselage and I'm thinking, oh
no. So I instinctively pulledback a little bit and then I

(09:18):
immediately stuffed the nose wayforward and hit the rudder to
move away from this big basketthat's gonna put a dent in my
airplane.
Why did I do that? Well, becauseif you go up a tiny bit, you're
in the vortex on the wing tip.

Bryan (09:31):
Oh, yeah.

Dan (09:32):
And it actually happened. An F5 was picked up by this
vortex and flung over the tailof the seven zero seven upside
down and almost snapped the tailoff the aircraft and killed
everybody on board.

Bryan (09:45):
Oh my gosh.

Dan (09:46):
So you never never go up into the vortex. And I
instinctively pulled backbecause the basket was gonna hit
me from below, but then Ithought better of it. And the
instructor was not happy withme. He said, no, over the radio
as I as I did that.

Bryan (10:01):
Yeah. I bet. For the listeners, do you think you
could quickly explain whatwingtip vortices are?

Dan (10:06):
So behind aircraft, under the wing, there's really, really
high pressure air. On top of thewing, low pressure air. But at
the end of the wing, the highpressure air leaks out to the
side and then spills up. Andthen because of the forward
speed, it ends up in this hugething like a horizontal tornado.
That's the best way to think ofit.

(10:27):
So it's this spinning air. Andif you get a tiny aircraft and
the f five is not that tiny, butit only weighs about 33,000
pounds, but it can get tossedaround like a toy if it gets
caught in one of these vortices.And you could feel it when
you're just in the rightposition in the f 18 and the f
five, you can feel a little bitof vibration on your tail as the

(10:52):
top of it just kind of skirtsthe bottom of this horizontal
tornado. And it's extremelypowerful air and has been known
to flip aircraft upside down.

Bryan (11:02):
That's gotta be intimidating.

Dan (11:03):
Oh, it's pretty scary.

Bryan (11:06):
So the CF five Freedom Fighter is one of my favorite
jets in terms of looks. It'salways been a favorite of mine.
How did you enjoy flying it?

Dan (11:14):
It was a lot of fun. It was a challenge to fly. It, it
didn't it was not forgiving likethe tutor was. The tutor was
able to fly very low speeds andit was very, very conventional.
When you stall in a lightaircraft or a tutor or something
like that, it shutters and thenthe nose pitches down.
It's very, very conventional. Inthe f five, it doesn't really

(11:39):
stall like a normal aircraft.What happens is, as the
instructors put it, you go fromhaving a slight tickle on the
controls when you're maxperforming at a high excuse me,
at a tight turn or a high angleof attack. And when you start
stalling, that's when theelephants start jumping on the

(11:59):
wings. And it's just the wholething shutters and shakes, the
nose is pointed up in the air,but you're going down like
crazy.
And it's really dramatic whenyou're just above an undercast,
like a solid cloud layer, you'reabove it, you're doing some air
fighting and you're gettingreally slow because you've
pulled too hard and you're outof energy, you're in full

(12:21):
afterburner and the nose ispointing up in the air and all
of a sudden this cloud justcomes shooting up from below and
now you're in the middle of thiscloud and you've just gone into
it in this big, like a brickfalling from the sky. And the
airplane still feels like it'sflying. So it's a very, very
different kind of machine. Goessupersonic, you don't even know.

(12:43):
I heard in your previous podcastwith the active Hornet pilot
from Bagotville, he said, yeah,it's basically a non event in
the F5.
First time I was supersonic, Idescribe it in the book. Dad
said, you want to go supersonic?I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Want to
go supersonic. He goes, well, weare.
Just we're we're at 1.1, onepoint two. And I said, really? I

(13:06):
didn't feel it. He said, that'sthe point. You don't even know.

Bryan (13:09):
It's kind of anticlimactic.

Dan (13:10):
Exactly. But it's it's a cool airplane. If you take it to
an air show, you get a lot morechicks with an F five than you
do with an F 18 because it's asexy looking machine.

Bryan (13:21):
Yeah. It's always been a favorite of mine. What was it
like to transition fromrelatively early jets like the c
f five and the t 33 to flyingthe f 18?

Dan (13:31):
Both of those aircraft were they're very manual. Everything
was there was round gauges,very, very standard old school
instruments and and flightcontrols and everything else.
The f 18 was all electric, andit was, we called it the plastic

(13:53):
jet at one point. Flightcontrols were all fly by wire,
so you didn't move any physicalcables or anything. You just, we
said the pilot was the, was theleader of the committee who
decided what to do.
So you would move the stick andthe committee would say, ah,
what does he want now? Let'svote. What should we do? And

(14:15):
they would decide what to dowith the control surfaces. And
you'd move the stick in certainflight conditions.
You had no idea what thecontrols were going to do.

Bryan (14:21):
Wow.

Dan (14:22):
It it had all this fancy electronic displays. Oh, and you
also had a radar that you had touse to find other aircraft and
to attack them. And you had awide variety of systems and
missiles that you had

intro/outro (14:39):
to

Dan (14:39):
manage. So I went from flying very basic aircraft where
it was pretty simple, the actualmission you could do with it, to
an airplane that was so complexthat it was really, really hard
to keep track of it all. If Ican just tell the story when I
was in Germany as an air cadet,we'd visit the base. The 104

(15:00):
pilots would explain theirweapons and everything else. And
they knew how many bomblets werein this cluster bomb.
They'd know at what speed they'dbe ejected, what the pressure
was and everything else. When Iwas on the F-eighteen course, we
never learned that stuff becausethere was so much to know about
the airplane that the clusterbomb, it just works. Okay. You
don't need to know that.

Bryan (15:20):
Yeah. There's no room for that knowledge.

Dan (15:22):
Yeah. It just spills out of the ears.

Bryan (15:25):
Yeah. Yeah. My days on the Aurora, there's so many
systems and so many tactics andso many things to know. Some
people would be memorizingextraneous facts and I would
just say, Man, I don't have roomfor that.

Dan (15:37):
That's I completely understand that.

Bryan (15:40):
Transitioning to a new aircraft will always involve a
learning curve. Can you tell usabout any incidents that
occurred early with the F 18?

Dan (15:47):
When you get onto a squadron, normally, Canada
rarely has new aircraft. So whenyou get onto a squadron, usually
there are a bunch of peoplearound who've been there and
done that, they know exactly howto do stuff. When we arrived at
04:33, there were about 18 ofus, brand new aircraft. The
technicians were also new. A fewof our pilots had been with the

(16:10):
other unit in Bagotville 425 andgotten six months experience
operating the aircraft, but 425was new added as well.
So we arrived there and there'sno what we call corporate
knowledge. So we don't have alot of really good procedures
and they tried to adapt some ofthe ones from the previous
aircraft, the f five, butdoesn't always work. So I'll

(16:31):
give you an example. Flightcontrols. It's minus 90 on a
normal Baggettville morning Andyou park the aircraft and now
it's cold soaked outside.
So all the hydraulic systems,everything is super cold. And
when it was shut down and towedinto the hangar the night
before, the person left the theflaps on the front of the wing,

(16:54):
which are called the leadingedge flaps. They left those
things in the up position sothey're horizontal and straight
out from the wing. So now youstart the aircraft up and one of
the first things you do is youpress the reset button on the
flight controls, which tells thecomputers, okay, go into normal
flying mode. So what it does isit senses where all the control

(17:15):
surfaces are, and it moves themaround.
But the problem is the hydraulicsystems, the fluids are all
super cold and like slush. Sothey don't respond quickly. So
what happens is the computersays, okay, I'm going to reset
the flight controls but becauseit doesn't respond right away,
it says, oh, this one failed. Soit takes it out of the equation

(17:37):
and says you can't use that. Oh,now what?
Reset again. I still failedbecause it failed before and
it's not coming back.

Bryan (17:46):
So Okay.

Dan (17:46):
How do you get around that? What are what are the things? So
we develop techniques. We alsochanged the way we'd shut them
down. We shut them down with theflaps down so that they would
not fail.
So there are all kinds of littletricks we learned. Rudder pedals
would get frozen. They just hada spring to bring them back. So
if you get some guy who is notvertically challenged like I am

(18:08):
and the rudder pedals are way inthe front, well, I'd get in and
I'd want them to come back so Icould actually use the brakes
and taxi safely. Well, I'd pushthe lever down, but it was all
frozen and cold.
So the tiny spring that wassupposed to bring them back that
worked fine in the US Navy whenthe water's liquid, they would

(18:28):
just stay full forward. And itwas really almost impossible to
get them back till the cockpitheated up a little bit. So as an
SOP is a standard operatingprocedure, we would before you
shut down, you'd bring therudder pedals all the way back
by the seat, leave them thereand then it was easy with your
big thigh muscles, you couldpush them out to the right spot,

(18:48):
but they wouldn't come back witha spring. So we learned all
kinds of little things andthat's just a tiny example of
the hundreds of things we had tolearn to operate new aircraft.
There was a mystique around theflight controls and it was a it
was a little bit of we don'tquite know how it works.
And the guy who taught it inCold Lake on the course was Cash

(19:09):
Poulson, an old one zero fourguy. He just made it he was
hilarious. He he made it soundlike it was some magic system
that nobody could possiblyunderstand. So with this
mindset, four zero nineSquadron, and we talked about
how things never go as planned,that squadron was supposed to be
the first NORAD squadron, sodefensive North America in Cold

(19:32):
Lake. They did that for a fewmonths, but then we were delayed
for other reasons with equippingother aircraft or squadrons that
were going to Germany.
So now we were short on our NATOcommitment. So we said, okay,
the training squadron is gonnacover NORAD four zero nine in it
was a very short time period, aperiod of a few months. You

(19:55):
bought houses, you establishedstuff in Cold Lake, now you're
gonna move to Germany. Oh, wow.Make it happen.
So off they go to Germany. Thefirst four plane that was
supposed to go to Germany, thetanker aircraft takes off. It's
circling around and the first f18 rolls down the runway flown
by the leader of the squadron.Unfortunately, this is the first

(20:17):
time they'd flown with threeexternal tanks because they were
crossing the Atlantic and theyneeded all the fuel they could
carry. And when you had a reallyheavy aircraft configuration,
you had to trim.
So set the, angle of the thestabilizer in the back to plus
10 degrees. Well, he made amistake and he trimmed it to

(20:38):
minus 10 degrees. And, the waythe flight controls work, even
if he pulled all the way back,it wouldn't go up high enough to
be able to get airborne at theproper speeds. So he goes
blasting down the runway, fullafterburner, pulls back, nothing
happens. And in the f five, whenyou pulled back too early, it

(21:00):
would stall.
It would take the lift away fromthat stabilizer, so you had to
push full forward and then pullback again. So he does that.
While he's doing that, he'saccelerating, accelerating,
accelerating, And he's doingalmost 200 knots on the ground,
still not getting airborne. Andhe says, uh-oh, this isn't
working. So he does, he rejectsthe takeoff.

(21:22):
So he goes idle, nails thebrakes, and then he realizes
he's coming up on the arrestorcable at the far end of the
runway. He throws the hook downbecause if you grab the hook,
it'll stop you before you runoff the end. Right.
Unfortunately, he was breakingso hard that the arresting hook
was skipping off the ground andit missed the cable. And he went

(21:43):
blowing by the cable doing morethan a hundred knots.
And now he sees the approachlights coming up. He says,
that's it. I'm out of here. Sohe ejects. And he he comes out
of the airplane with a littlebit of forward momentum.
However, the wind from thebecause he's an into wind
takeoff blows him back towardswhere the aircraft has exploded

(22:06):
in a big fireball and is nowburning with black smoke from
the toxic fumes from thecomposite material. And his
parachute is going down almostin the middle of the flames.

Bryan (22:16):
Oh my gosh.

Dan (22:17):
And meanwhile, CBC and CTV and everybody else are filming
this because this is the firstdeployment to Germany of an f
eighteen squadron. So oops. And

Bryan (22:28):
So I assume he landed okay?

Dan (22:30):
He he wasn't injured. He he was a victim of just basically a
lack of aircraft knowledge, andwe all were in that position. In
fact, when I was arriving atfour three three, similar things
happened to us. And after I leftthe squadron and retired,
similar things happened, and wehad similar incident all because

(22:54):
of just a a turnover ofpersonnel and a lack of
continuity in the training andknowledge.

Bryan (23:01):
What was, like, the lesson learned from that
incident from him having toeject?

Dan (23:04):
I actually became the simulator instructor for the f
eighteen in Bagotville because Iwas, the most experienced
instructor from my time in MooseJaw. So what I did was I I would
run people through that scenarioand I would force their their
flight controls to not rotate.And usually they would screw it

(23:26):
up and end up going way toofast. And so I just freeze the
simulator and then we talk aboutit. Let's say, okay, what you
need to do, you go make sure yougo full afterburner, full aft,
trim all the way back.
That's the key. Because if youdon't trim all the way back, you
might have prevented the flightcontrols from giving you the

(23:46):
rotation to get the nose off theground. So I talked them through
how to respond to that. Andlike, oh, okay. So it was not an
official emergency.
I lobbied forever to try to getit put in as a failure to
rotate. We never did, but atleast during the time I was
there in the simulator, I wasteaching people how to recognize
it and how to respond to it. Soit became a lot safer.

Bryan (24:08):
Okay. Right on. So you were
part of forming four three three squadron in
Beggaville, Quebec. Howchallenging was it to stand up
or reform a squadron with newaircraft when a majority of
personnel had very littleexperience on the Hornet? And
we're not just talking aboutpilots. We're talking about the
techs too.

Dan (24:25):
Yeah. The tiniest thing would happen. You'd be starting
up and a code would show up inthe nose wheel well. There was a
little computer in there thatwould had a screen with codes
and the tech would go in thereand he would read the codes,
come out and he'd show you anumber of fingers. We couldn't
talk on intercom or anything,but horizontal fingers, so like

(24:47):
two fingers horizontal meant aseven.
Two fingers straight up and downmeant a five or a two that is.
So we had codes like that. Soyou'd look at the code, you'd
repeat it to the tech, you'dwrite it down, and I'd call back
on the radio to operations andsay, I've got this code. What do
I do? At the same time, he's onhis walkie talkie doing the same

(25:08):
thing, but nobody knows.
We're all looking at lists andgoing, oh, it says this. What
does that mean? Can we fly withthis? I don't know. So a lack of
knowledge everywhere was very,very difficult.
And every once in a while, oneof the senior techs would go,
oh, I heard about that. Yeah.He's good to go. And then, Are
you sure? Yeah, probably.

(25:28):
So off we'd go.

Bryan (25:30):
How did that feel?

Dan (25:31):
Well, it was a pretty safe aircraft. So we weren't that
concerned. In fact, it was like,it was annoying. This code shows
up and like, everything seemsgreat in here. Like, what's
what's up with this?
So that that was one of thethings. Of course, there was the
knowledge of the aircraft andthere were the techs, so the
tiniest thing would go wrong andthen the troubleshooting would

(25:53):
take forever. So clearing aproblem with the aircraft, if
you get experienced technicians,they'd they'd listen to you
debrief the symptoms, they go,oh, okay. And they'd know which
black box to change or there wasa connector or some other
problem. But when they were sonew and we were so new, it just
made things a lot moredifficult.

(26:14):
And that's why ourserviceability rate was very low
at the start.

Bryan (26:18):
Right. And something you've mentioned is turnover and
the subsequent lack of corporateknowledge this can cause. It's
no secret that the Hornetcommunity has experienced some
turnover in recent years. Whatchallenges do you think they'll
face as a result of this, andwhat should the community be
doing to overcome them?

Dan (26:33):
That's a very difficult thing to do because what happens
is as soon as people becomeexperienced and skilled, other
job opportunities open up. Andduring a period where we didn't
have a new fighter selected, wewere drawing down the number of
aircraft we had available, wewere restricting what they could
do with it because the aircraftare getting old and cracked and

(26:55):
everything else. It's prettyhard to motivate people. And
when you can't motivate them,it's hard to retain them. And
when you can't retain them, nowyou get a bunch of young people.
The other problem is, and you'veseen this in the training system
yourself, Brian, now you need toreplace them. But you need
instructors. You needexperienced instructors, but,
oh, those experiencedinstructors are also needed to

(27:17):
fly the operational aircraftbecause we have taskings to do.
So now you can't generate newpilots and replace people that
are leaving. So it's it's like avicious circle.
It's a it's a very difficultposition to be in.

Bryan (27:31):
What would you say is a potential solution?

Dan (27:33):
Well, certainly, the announcement that we're getting
a new fighter, finally, the f35, which is the best fighter
for Canada, is going to motivatea lot of young people to, to go
and do this. It's going to be alittle bit of a difficult
transition, mainly because thetraining will take place
remotely. It'll take place inplaces in The USA and things

(27:55):
like that. You'll also have, thesame kind of teething pains that
we had with the new aircraft, in1982, '80 '5, around that that
era. That's and will also bestretched thin because we'll
have some people maintainingcommitments to NORAD and other
operational commitments whilethere are other people being

(28:15):
sent to, learn on the newairplane.
So the strain on the resourcesthat we have is going to
increase during the transition.But once we get the new
aircraft, things should improve.And I'm very optimistic for
that.

Bryan (28:30):
Yeah. I hope so. I hope that that does make an
improvement. And like you said,it should. Right?
Like, think that's a huge drawfor young people who wanna be
fighter pilots to say, hey.Like, we've got the newest best
fighter in the world, so let'sgo fly that.

Dan (28:44):
Oh, definitely. Like, we've always been proud as a fighter
force of what we can do. Butwhen you have an old aircraft
and you're struggling to keep upwith the the status quo, it's
it's always difficult.

Bryan (28:57):
Yeah. For sure. So as time
goes by, cultures and practices change amongst pilots.
What do you think are thebiggest improvement in culture
or practices from your time inthe fighter community to current
day?

Dan (29:09):
Well, the military is like, we talked about RMC in the
previous podcast. RMC is, like,fifty years behind society. The
military is about twenty yearsbehind society. But we're
becoming a little more, I guessgrown up is the word or a little
more mature in our approach topeople. And there's less of a

(29:30):
suck it up buttercup, make ithappen approach.
And there's more of a holistic,okay, we understand you as a
person and we need you to beyour best possible person. So
what do you need for us to dothat? I saw one example when I
was this is about February. Iwas in Bagatelli as a civilian,

(29:51):
and I was attending a Fridaynight beer call at at a
squadron. And it was one of thepilots who stood up to to talk.
And the tradition is everybodysings the, the drinking song,
and the pilot who stands up hasto down, like, chug a beer
entirely. So she stood up, and Isaid she, that's another

(30:13):
extremely positive thing is thefact that now we have female
fighter pilots, which it's along time coming and it's about
time it happened.

Bryan (30:21):
%.

Dan (30:22):
She stood up. They started singing the drinking song. She
shook her head, no. And Ithought, uh-oh, this is not
going to go well. And then shemimed the steering wheel.
Oh, she had to drive home andshe didn't wanna chug a beer. So
they kept singing the song andthe young pilot who was over by
the beer fridge grabbed a Coke,opened it, and handed it to her,

(30:46):
and she chugged the Coke andeverybody clapped and cheered.
And it was just normal. And Ithought, wow. That that is a
major improvement in approachand a added attitude amongst
fighter pilots.

Bryan (30:57):
Yeah. That's something we've seen, I think, a culture
that's coming in with newgenerations that we're seeing
now is there's a lot lessdrinking. We see that in the
students now. They just it's notlike necessarily the center of
their social lives and thecenter of their weekend
activities. And, it I think it'sgood.
It's a good thing. It's ahealthy thing to to maybe have

(31:18):
that to be a little bit less ofthe focus.

Dan (31:21):
Yes. I I addressed that a little bit in my book, but I was
careful about how I did itbecause I didn't wanna become
preachy about it. Oh, for sure.But I am encouraged. I see the
my students at PQFA in theShikutami area.
I went out last Thursday with agroup of 10 of them. They
invited me out for a hamburgerand a drink in a burger bar. One

(31:43):
person had a beer. The rest ofus were drinking mineral water
and iced tea. I thought, wow,this is a real change.
And my kids who are 30, 30 onereiterate that to me that, yeah,
it's a it's a change. It's anevolutionary change in, like,
younger generation, and it's avery good thing.

Bryan (32:01):
Yeah. I agree. Things came full circle for you as you
were deployed to Baden, Germanywhere you spent your formative
years. What was it like toreturn as an f eighteen pilot?

Dan (32:12):
I thought it was a dream. It was like the best possible
thing. I I took the commercialflight to Frankfurt and then a
bus and a train down to Baden.And I just looked around and
this place that was home to mefor four years as a kid, and now

(32:33):
I was coming back here to flyfighters. And I thought this
this just can't be real.
It can't be happening. It wassuch a fun thing. But walking
into the squadron at 409, whichas I said, it was deployed there
to be the first squadron there.My job was to go and learn how
to fly with them as if I were asquadron pilot. But it was fun

(32:53):
because I walk in the door andlike, hey, Alf, you know, Dan.
And I was like, I knew justabout everybody there because
it's a very small community.They welcomed me in and they
took me on. I was already aqualified NORAD wingman, And now
they said, you'll be up to speedin no time. We'll we'll help you
out. It was it was a lot of funin that sense.

Bryan (33:16):
Did you find that the fighter force SOPs that you had
learned at home meshed well withhow they were doing business in
Europe?

Dan (33:24):
They were a % different. We NORAD operates entirely
differently from NATO in Europeat the time. However, within the
air division, we call it the airdivision there at the time, the
three squadrons that were there,they had common standard
operating procedures and it wasstrict. And they would exercise

(33:45):
it. They would take a pilot fromone unit.
They'd have three people or fourpeople plan a mission. They take
a pilot from another unit andsay, okay, Bloggins is now
flying with you guys. You,you're out. And after the
briefing. So that he hasn't evenseen the briefing and how he

(34:05):
takes the mission card andeverything and he flies as one
of the formation members.
And the idea was to see couldthey do it. And what we did in
Baggottville with four threethree, Cold Lake had four
sixteen, which was the secondrapid rapid reactor squadron
that was also tasked for CentralEurope. Both of our squadrons,
when it came to NATO training,we applied European SOPs to what

(34:27):
we did at home. So we createdour own environment where we
practiced them and made surethat we could seamlessly
integrate with them when wedeployed.

Bryan (34:36):
Okay. You've flown F-18s over the Atlantic Ocean to
Europe, picking up fuel alongthe way from a tanker. What was
that experience like?

Dan (34:45):
Yeah. All kinds of things happened on those flights. It
was first of all, you're byyourself. I didn't dare to drink
too much. I had this it's likean IV an intravenous medical bag
that was filled with orangejuice and a little straw that I

(35:05):
could slip in under my oxygenmask and have little sips.
I was terrified of having toomuch to drink because the little
pea pack, and you asked the guyin your previous podcast about
this, I tried to fit it on andI'm not saying why it didn't fit
on, but I just it was like ithurt so much. Said, I'll forget

(35:26):
this. So I didn't have my p packhooked up. So I was dehydrated.
I arrived in Germany.
It's pitch black. It's 04:30 inthe morning. We've been flying
at night and I'm exhausted. Andthe formation lead without
telling us says, Okay, we're allgoing to practice instrument
approaches. I was number four.

(35:47):
He said, Number four, you gofirst. I was expecting to do a
visual approach and just likeland visually an easy approach.
No. So I had to find theapproach plate, dig it out, look
at it. I practiced it in thesimulator before we left so at
least I was familiar with it.
But they're complicated. Thehigh-tech and approaches in

(36:08):
Germany are complicated. So hereI am completely brain dead
trying to fly this thing. Andluckily, the weather was pretty
decent, I could just lookoutside and make sure I didn't
hit any hills in the BlackForest and I managed to land.
That was tough.
The other thing about flying enroute, it's dark. We didn't have
the tanker aircraft on radar. Wehad an airspace reservation. And

(36:32):
the question is, we're supposedto be within 6,000 feet or a
nautical mile total formationsize, but we've got air to air
tachand running and sometimesI'd be like seven miles away
from somebody else and go, Oh,how did I get that far? Because
all I can see on the horizon isflashing red lights and then the

(36:53):
occasional green or something.
And I go, Okay. So I'd be onaltitude hold and heading hold
and airspeed hold, true airspeedhold. I just turned a few
degrees and then I'd be lookingto see, am I getting closer? And
I can't tell because it's reallyhard to judge closing at those
distances when it's pitch blackout.

Bryan (37:15):
Right.

Dan (37:15):
And all of a sudden the other airplane gets big fast. So
I have to kick off theautopilot, squat the airplane,
turn it hard so I don't hit him.And then, okay, now I get into
close formation and then I,okay, what is his heading?
What's his speed? Set theautopilot again.
And it was just reallychallenging to stay in position

(37:36):
for this long transit betweenrefueling, brackets.

Bryan (37:40):
Did you folks, like, talk much over a common frequency or
something to keep each otherentertained? Or

Dan (37:45):
We didn't have any trivia games. We, we weren't really
good at, at doing this, but,yeah, we did. And it was one of
the guys who, at one point, hegoes, that's better. So we
asked, what's up alien? Hisalien review was alien.
He goes, I finally got thatstupid piddle pack off and now I

(38:08):
feel good. He'd gottenunstrapped. He'd unzipped his
immersion suit.

Bryan (38:14):
Oh, wow.

Dan (38:14):
He'd opened up his flying suit and everything and he
pulled this thing off and thenhe got all strapped up again. It
took him about ten minutes to dothis and he's going, Oh, thank
God I got that thing off. Butthat was our transit. We were
all excited. We were the firsttransit of F-18s on a rapid
reactor reinforcement and we'relanding in LAR to do the real

(38:37):
job.
It was fun.

Bryan (38:38):
Yeah. That must have been really cool. You flew throughout
the height of the Cold War. Alot of our listeners are too
young to remember those times.What was it like to be a fighter
pilot during the height of theCold War?
And were you ever worried thatfighting would break out?

Dan (38:52):
I was quite concerned because we knew that the odds of
surviving in a World War threestyle scenario were very, very
slim. Surface to air missiles,masses of aircraft on both
sides, anti aircraft artillery,low level tactics. Also, we

(39:13):
don't choose the weather whenthe war starts. So it could have
been like really low visibility,hanging cloud, black forest,
other mountains around thatpeople could be running into
them all over the place. Wedidn't think we could survive
that long.
So I hoped it didn't happen. Onthe other hand though, we knew
that that's what we had to do.So we just basically crossed our

(39:37):
fingers and hoped.

Bryan (39:39):
What did you think your chances were in a c f 18 against
top Soviet jets and pilots atthe time?

Dan (39:44):
No problem.

Bryan (39:45):
Oh, yeah?

Dan (39:46):
Those oh, yeah. The the Soviet and this is not just
hindsight. In hindsight, I'meven more confident. But at the
time, we knew that the Sovietswere very, very rigid in their
tactics and in their approach tothings. They were being vectored
by ground control.
They had very little initiative.Our aircraft were just as

(40:08):
capable. Even the MiG 29 and thethe SU 27, those were the worst
adversaries. But we practiced somuch against f sixteens, f 18, f
fifteens, the best of NATO'sfighter pilots. We held our own

(40:29):
and in fact did really wellagainst them.

Bryan (40:31):
Okay.

Dan (40:31):
And we knew that we could attack the Soviets without a
problem.

Bryan (40:34):
Wow. You flew near the buffer zone with The USSR. Were
there ever any tense momentswith Warsaw packed aircraft?

Dan (40:42):
My uncle actually told me about this. He was in a 104 and
he flew. He got temporarilyunsure of his position, which is
pilot code for completely lost.And so he's he's flying over an
airfield. He looks down andgoes, uh-oh.
Those are MiG twenty ones. So herealized he'd flown into East

(41:05):
Germany by mistake. Oh, wow. Sowhat what he did was he turned
around, he pointed west, he wentdown to about 30 feet above
ground, plugged in theafterburner and went out
supersonic and didn't slow downor climb up until he knew he was
back in West Germany.

Bryan (41:24):
Oh my gosh.

Dan (41:24):
When I did it, I was I'd gotten into some bad weather on
an evaluation trip. We werebeing evaluated to get
categories to fly in Europe andI couldn't stand just how murky
and dangerous it was at lowaltitude. So I pulled up into

(41:46):
the cloud and I kept going upand up and up and the cloud just
kept continuing higher andhigher. Finally above 18 or
20,000 feet, I break out intosome semi clear weather. Then I
remembered, oh boy, I'm notsupposed to be here.
So I made sure I turned parallelto the border and I also turned

(42:08):
off my transponder so thatnobody could see me unless it
was on primary radar. And then Iput my own radar down and I
started looking for the blips ofmy own formation. I found them,
then I saw a little bit of ahole. So I just kind of like
spiraled down through it andfind my way down. I slid into
the formation and nobody noticedthat I'd been gone because the

(42:32):
weather was so terrible and thevisibility they hadn't seen me
disappear.

Bryan (42:35):
Oh, wow. Did you tell anybody?

Dan (42:38):
Not until about twenty years later.

Bryan (42:40):
And

Dan (42:42):
I was on pins and needles for the longest time waiting to
be called into the commandingofficer's office to explain
myself.

Bryan (42:49):
No doubt. Of course, as a fighter pilot, you took part in
several large exercises such asmaple flag and red flag. Can you
tell us any good stories fromthese experiences?

Dan (43:01):
They were both really eye opening exercises because all of
a sudden, there are targetseverywhere on the radar. You
know that it's it's it's goingto be very, very difficult to
know who's a good guy, who's abad guy. So in itself, when
things are going smoothly, it'schallenging. And that's why they

(43:21):
hold these exercises. The wholepoint was if you can survive
your 10 simulated combatmissions in a flag exercise,
your chances of surviving a realwar go up exponentially.
So here I am in Maple Flag. 1 ofthe fun things we decided our
job was to go and shoot down theAWACS. Okay. So because the

(43:45):
F-15s were on, they wereprotecting the AWACS and they
were running a combat air patrolabout thirty, forty miles
between us and the AWACS. Andtheir job was to shoot down
anybody who got close to theAWACS.

Bryan (43:59):
Can you quickly just explain what an AWACS is?

Dan (44:02):
AWACS, airborne warning and control system. It is a big
transport aircraft with a hugeradar in the back. It's a huge
force multiplier because it candetect low level, high level
targets out for like two or 300miles around it. And it's a
really, really critical piece ofthe air picture. So if you can

(44:23):
take out the AWACS, you'veblinded the enemy.

Bryan (44:26):
Okay, great.

Dan (44:27):
So we decided we'd do this not quite kamikaze but almost a
one way mission. What we did waswe cleaned all the tanks and
everything off the aircraft sowe were as light as possible
with very little fuel on board.We climbed out and we're in bad
guy territory. We were the badguys. Climb up as high as we

(44:50):
can.
We're about fifty, fifty fivethousand feet. And we're headed
east towards where the AWACS is.He's about a hundred miles away.
So we find him on the radar, andwe know the f fifteens are gonna
be looking at us and that AWACSis telling him, hey, I've got
hot targets high and fast. Whatdid we do?
Plug in the afterburners. Weclimbed up even higher to over

(45:14):
55,000 feet supersonic, and wewent right over top of the
Eagles. They couldn't shoot usbecause they weren't high enough
or fast enough. Their missilescouldn't fly out towards us and
then turn the corner and go up.They were out of range before we
got past them.
So we flew right over top of theEagles and then a couple of us

(45:35):
got down and I managed to get acouple of missile shots at the
AWACS as did another guy.Meanwhile, two other ones who
were targeted by the Eaglesturned around and ran to keep
them busy and think we weregetting scared and running away.
So we shot down the AWACS andthen I look at my fuel quantity
and go, uh-oh, this is really,really tight. So I just sucked

(45:56):
the throttles back and climbedup as high as I could get and
then did like a maximum glideprofile all the way back home
and I made it with just barelyminimum fuel when I got there.

Bryan (46:06):
I might be misremembering, but didn't you
say the f 18 is actually adecent glider?

Dan (46:11):
It's surprisingly good. It's it's not as bad as some
other fighters. Not as good asthe Tutor. The Tutor was an
excellent glider.

Bryan (46:21):
But Or maybe it's the Tutor I was thinking of.

Dan (46:23):
Because I I was able to actually turn in thermals in the
Tudor and climb up with asimulated zero thrust.

Bryan (46:31):
That's crazy. I

Dan (46:32):
was able to gain altitude below a cumulonimbus, which is
kind of a dangerous cloud to bedoing that under.

intro/outro (46:38):
Yeah.

Dan (46:40):
Red flag was another experience. It was super hot.
August of eighty nine.Temperatures were like in the
low forties Celsius. We hadspecial techniques where we
would turn on some of avionicslike the radar and things that
generated a lot of heat.
We turned them on last minutebefore we took off and that kind

(47:01):
of stuff. So off we go. And withthe desert, the problem is there
are no trees. There's verylittle vertical definition
anywhere. So it's really hard totell your altitude.
And at one point, Jeff Boyd andI are flying. I'm his lead. He's
my wingman. And we're at ahundred feet. I've got my radar

(47:22):
altimeter set so it'll go off at80 feet if I get below 80 feet.
And I'm getting the occasionalaltitude altitude. So I pull it
up a little bit, but it's reallyhard to judge how high you are.
We're doing over 500 knots,almost 600 knots indicated. And
I look over and I see a sandrooster tail behind Jeff. And he

(47:43):
looked to me like he was lessthan a wingspan above the
ground.
So less than 25 or 30 feet aboveground. Wow. Jeff pull up. And
so he pulls up and he goes, Ohcrap, sorry about that. I said,
Set your rat out to about 80feet.
And he goes, Okay. Because hehad it set really, really low.

Bryan (48:01):
Oh, wow. Yeah. That's close.

Dan (48:03):
That could have been bad.

Bryan (48:05):
Yeah. No kidding. In 1990, there were a spate of five
crashes with three fatalities,including one where Kirk Ludi
was killed in a trainingaccident when two CF eighteens
collided over Europe. You flewas the missing man in the
missing man formation for thefuneral. Can you explain what
that is and why you wanted to doit?

Dan (48:24):
Kirk was a coursemate of ours on with the majority of
pilots at form four thirty threeon the f five. We we've worked
together during training and hewas such a super nice guy, got
along really well with him. Andthen when when we went back to
deploy to Germany, we wouldsometimes run into him and
reminisce and he was a reallygreat guy to be around. Then he

(48:51):
had an air to air collision overtop of Karlsruhe, which was a
city about 50 kilometers northof Baden and extremely sad. In
fact, the guy that he collidedwith who survived was another
really good friend of mine, RegDecost.
So we heard about this and therehad been so many bad things and

(49:14):
it had gone, we'd gone formonths and months and months
with nothing. And then all of asudden, bam, bam, bam. And they
were all unrelated, isolated.There's no common thread. But
because his funeral was in theroughly around Collingwood, I
think somewhere in the SouthwestOntario area, Bagotville was

(49:36):
tasked, four thirty three wastasked to do the fly pass, the
missing man.
Number three, as we approachedthe church, number three would
pull up with afterburner to beout of the formation as if you
were flying up to heaven sort ofthing. So of course, being
number three was a big honor. Sowe basically drew straws and I

(49:56):
won. Because the four of us thatwere in that formation were all
really good friends of his andwe were fighting each other to
see who would get in thatformation and then who would be
number three. So I was the luckyone to pull that.
And I may have got something inmy eye as I pulled up. It was
quite an emotional moment.

Bryan (50:16):
Yeah. That must have been really, really hard.

Dan (50:19):
It was really, really hard, Brian.

Bryan (50:21):
Yeah. Yeah.
Did these several incidents cause you to second
guess your career choice at all?

Dan (50:30):
Surprisingly not. And once again, it came down to the
flight safety program in themilitary. Why did this happen?
Okay. So that.
Okay. Good. I understand that.This one other one, we all knew
that it was possible, yet we allfelt that we had the skills and
the ability to avoid thatsituation. I don't know how much

(50:51):
was wishful thinking, how muchwas bravado, but I never did
question anything.
I was sad for what happened

Bryan (51:00):
Of course.

Dan (51:00):
To other people, but I also had confidence in my own ability
that I could avoid badsituations.

Bryan (51:08):
And I think that's a natural, hopefully, the way
you're going to feel as a pilot,right? Confidence in your
abilities, confidence thatthat's not going to happen. If
you don't feel that way,frankly, you can't do the job.

Dan (51:23):
Precisely. The the only situation in which I would not
be confident if there wassomething mysterious going on
with the aircraft, some somemechanical or other fault that
was unresolved and like, why isthis happening? Nobody knows.
But when you when you see thecause factors and you go, okay.
Now I understand.
Then you can put that into yourtoolkit of what am I going to do

(51:47):
or not do to avoid this in thefuture. That's all you can do.

Bryan (51:50):
Yeah. A %. You were married in 1990, and the
following week, you were sent toEurope for an exercise. The hits
kept coming, and a few shortmonths later, you were sent to
the Gulf War for a jointheadquarters staff appointment.
I can relate to getting deployedto The Middle East shortly after
getting married.
How was that for you and yourwife?

Dan (52:08):
I was very rough. First of all, one of the one of the
circumstances was that, justlike everybody else, I was
toying with the idea of flyingfor an airline. And this
happened right around the timethat I decided, okay, I'm gonna
put in my request to leave themilitary. So I was on six months
notice. Didn't happen.

(52:29):
Airlines weren't hiring. Iextended another six months.
During this time we got married.No stress at all.

Bryan (52:37):
No kidding.

Dan (52:37):
I got married, potentially no job. And then finally I
decided after I had an interviewwith an airline anti IMTAIR in
Montreal, they said, Okay, if wehave a course, we'll hire you.
This was in August of ninety,like early August, just before
Iraq was invading Kuwait. AndI've read the financial papers,

(53:02):
said, you know what? Thisdoesn't look good.
So I withdrew my release. Mywife was working full time
evenings as a nurse. So I'd beat the squadron during the day.
I'd get home. She's already goneto work, she'd show up at like
1AM after a long shift, I'd besleeping because I have a 6AM
wake up for a 07:00 Met Brief.

(53:22):
We didn't see each other formonths at a time except for
maybe once or twice every twoweeks.

Bryan (53:27):
That's tough.

Dan (53:28):
So it was a really, really tough time for newlyweds to live
through. So now I've withdrawnmy release and they said, Okay,
you're posted to wing operationsin Baggettville, was a good
thing. But then a couple weeksafter that, got a phone call on
a Wednesday night from my bosssaying, hey, we need to send

(53:49):
somebody to Bahrain to be in theGulf of Gulf War, the not the
Gulf War, but in the Gulfheadquarters. And you're it. I
said, really?
You can't send anybody else?Because my wife and I discussed
she was gonna quit her job andlook for a position that was
more during the day so we'dactually see each other. We were

(54:09):
just about to do that when I gottagged to go to The Gulf. And I
asked how long I'm going to begone? It's like, we don't know.
It was an indeterminate time.Instead of being like when the
fighter squadrons rotated in andout, they were there for three
months at a time. I was justsent with no end date in sight.
And I ended up being there forfive months. So it was not a lot

(54:29):
of fun.

Bryan (54:30):
Yeah. So many similarities there to the
experience I had. We'd beenmarried for about a month and we
also had no idea how long wewere gonna be gone for when we
left. It ended up being aboutfour months, but for the first
one and then back again forthree months after a three
months stint home. But when weleft, we had no idea.
And and that's a crazy feeling,especially as newlyweds.

Dan (54:54):
Yeah. And that's that's what the military does. They
they don't they don't considerthat sort of thing because
frankly to them, it's notimportant. Whereas to the
individual person, it's likenumber one importance.

Bryan (55:08):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how can I
put this? It would be difficult for them to do their
business if they were constantlytrying to consider everyone's
personal circumstances. That'spart of the nature of service is
sacrifice. Right?

Dan (55:23):
That's exactly it. And and how then if you're going to be
considering people's desires,constraints, everything else,
how do you prevent abuse ofthat? How do you make sure that
you don't get somebody who'sjust gonna whine and complain
all the time when he's notpulling his weight? So this is
the way they do it. And that'sthe sad reality of a fighting

(55:46):
force.
You have the exigencies of theservice and you have no choice.

Bryan (55:50):
Sometimes you just gotta go.

Dan (55:52):
Yeah.

Bryan (55:54):
While you were deployed to Bahrain, there were threats
that had to be endured. Can youtell us a little bit about
those?

Dan (56:01):
It was odd because there were armed people everywhere.
There was the Bahraini DefenseForce was everywhere. Every
street corner, there was a guywith a uniform and a submachine
gun. And so I would walk throughthe the market called the Souk,
and I feel relatively safebecause there are all these
armed guards everywhere.However, you never knew what was

(56:23):
the threat, who was not athreat.
And that's one of the problemsbecause you know nothing about
the culture and you can't tellif somebody's just being weird
because you're a white guy inWestern dress or if they're
being weird because they want toslip a knife into your back. So
there was always that concern.And then as tensions ramped up

(56:45):
and the war was about to start,we had a pretty good feeling
that things were going toescalate. Then we were concerned
about chemical warfare attacks.And so we walked everywhere with
a duffel bag and a little maskin another container.
So you put your gas mask onfirst and then you pull your

(57:07):
chemical suit out of the duffelbag and put that on and then try
to seek shelter somewhere. Sonerve gas, mustard gas, all this
stuff, it was all a real threat.And to compound that, was
somebody going to put a bombunderneath my vehicle? So every
time we took a car, you take amirror and you look around the

(57:29):
undercarriage of the vehicle andmake sure there were no strange
wires or things attachedsomewhere that would blow up
when you turn the ignition. Soit was five months of stress and
it took me months and monthsafter I got home before I
stopped worrying about threatsthat I couldn't see or control.

Bryan (57:50):
I can't imagine that feeling of coming home and still
feeling like you're ramped upfrom that. I bet it felt weird
to get into a car withoutchecking it.

Dan (57:58):
It was. Also, of course, I wasn't seeing the same
environment in Canada or The USthat I was seeing in The Middle
East. But at the same time, I'dbeen paranoid for so long that
it was so hard to just go backto thinking I'm normal. Nobody's
going to attack me and try andkill me right now. It took a

(58:19):
long time.

Bryan (58:20):
Yeah. I bet. Towards the end
of your time in the air force, you started to specialize
in simulation. How didsimulators then differ from
modern simulators we use today?

Dan (58:30):
When I first got onto the tutor, it was a simulator that
was built in the sixties.Strangely enough by CAE
Electronics where I ended upworking after I got out of the
military. But it was totallyanalog. It was so rudimentary
that when we were able topractice at night, it had

(58:51):
instruments, there was no visualsystem. And what I'd do is I'd
set it up say at 20,000 feet ina cruising attitude doing a mild
turn in a circle, I'd hop out ofthe simulator, go down the hall,
get myself a can of pop, drinkit.
Ten minutes later, go back intothe simulator and it's still at

(59:13):
exactly the same altitude withina foot and turning around in
little circles because you hadto move it a certain number,
like a half a degree or threequarters of a degree before the
analog detectors would capturethat movement. Right. So it was
a little unnatural trying to flyinstruments with this thing
because you had to exaggeratethe movements. Later on, on the

(59:36):
F-eighteen, much more highfidelity but still a murky black
and white visual system. Therewas one type of aircraft
adversary.
It was always a MiG 21. So if wesaw anything like a ghostly
white aircraft, didn't even haveto identify it, you knew it was
a MiG 21 because that's the onlything they had in the library.
So but it was really, reallygood when it came to doing

(59:59):
checks and the radar andeverything else. So it was good
for that. But it was terriblefor doing traffic patterns or
and we couldn't do decent aircombat or anything like that,
just basic intercepts.
We upgraded the simulators tothe latest version, and they're
just awesome. They havesatellite imagery everywhere,

(01:00:19):
huge databases. You can pick upa map and fly at a hundred feet
above ground at 600 knots inthese things and use your map
and fly just like you would inthe real world.

Bryan (01:00:28):
Really?

Dan (01:00:29):
And they're all network too. I was able I had a student
in Moose Jaw named Dave, DaveStone. He went on to fly F-18s
in Germany and then he became aninstructor in Cold Lake. And
then he got out and he workedfor the same simulator company.
And I was in a simulator inBaggottville.
He was in a simulator in ColdLake. I taxied out with him down

(01:00:53):
the taxiway. We're talking onthe radio between us. He lines
up. I line up beside him.
We do a formation afterburnertakeoff using the radios. And I
could stay right with him. Andwe climbed up. I saw his landing
gear coming up, and then he hesaid, okay. Go route.
And I flew out to routeformation, and we did a tactical

(01:01:14):
mission together, 1,800 nauticalmiles or about, 4,000 kilometers
apart.

Bryan (01:01:20):
That is such a crazy evolution from those first
simulators you were describing.

Dan (01:01:25):
It's I just couldn't get over it. But the the thing you
have to do with simulation, usethem for what they're good for,
but use the aircraft for whatit's good for.

Bryan (01:01:35):
Yep.

Dan (01:01:36):
So we could do things like shoot missiles, avoid missiles,
practice with tactics and thingslike that in the aircraft.
Sorry, in the simulator that youcould not do in the aircraft.

Bryan (01:01:49):
Yep. And, emergencies are another good one in, the
simulator. You can do everythingwith with good fidelity and
there's no simulated I'm movingthis switch or any of that.
You're really doing it andbuilding the muscle memory.

Dan (01:02:01):
Precisely.

Bryan (01:02:03):
Yep.
So next, you were trained as a forward air controller or
FAC in preparation for adeployment to Bosnia. Can you
explain what a FAC does?

Dan (01:02:12):
A FAC is the is the little guy dressed in green who carries
a radio on his back. And hetalks to incoming fighters and
he tells them where the threatsare and where he should drop his
bombs. And sometimes he'll havea little laser projector and

(01:02:32):
he'll point it at a target, turnon the laser with a certain code
that the fighter can then detectwith his pod, say, okay, that is
the code from my forward aircontroller. That he can drop his
bomb and is guided by the thelaser projection from the fact
on the ground.

Bryan (01:02:50):
Wow. So it's the laser has a code and his when you say
pod, you're talking about thesniper pod, like the camera
system on the f 18?

Dan (01:02:58):
Yes. At the time I took the training, it was actually a
Nighthawk b pod, but it was inearly generation, but similar to
the sniper.

Bryan (01:03:07):
Wow. That's really, really cool. How did your wife
feel about this development?

Dan (01:03:12):
Oh boy. Was a make or break moment for everything. And I was
at just over nineteen years ofservice. I was told that I was
actually sent on the coursewithout my knowledge or like I
was told when you come back fromthis deployment, I was moving.

(01:03:35):
We're moving from Montreal backto Bagotville And I was told to
go to Cold Lake for a month foran appointment during the move.
My wife moved with the twobabies up to Bagotville and
lived in her parents basementfor a month while I was in Cold
Lake and our stuff was instorage. And then I got a phone
call while we're moving out ofthe house in Montreal telling

(01:03:58):
me, Oh, by the way, you're backup to go to Bosnia for six
months, but you're going to betrained. And the guy that's
going, if he gets injured, thenyou're it in July. And this was
May. So that did not go oververy well with either of us.
And then I was told as a majoron a fighter squadron within the

(01:04:20):
next twelve to eighteen months,you are going to Bosnia for six
months as a fact. So I said,Okay. I looked at the calendar,
I went to wing operations andfigured out our headquarters,
how many days of leave do I haveleft? So I calculated what date
I could leave and I left themilitary as soon as I could,
because otherwise, it would havebeen divorce time.

Bryan (01:04:43):
Oh, wow. So that was like you said, it was make or break?

Dan (01:04:46):
Yes.

Bryan (01:04:47):
And, you know, that's the thing. Right? When they ask you
to choose between your family oryour career, hopefully well,
your family or the air force, Ishould say. It's ultimately, for
most of us, a pretty easychoice. We're gonna pick our
family.

Dan (01:05:00):
First for most people, I agree. But for some, not so
clear.

Bryan (01:05:04):
Yeah. Not for everybody.

Dan (01:05:06):
Yes.

Bryan (01:05:07):
While you did that fact training, what was the biggest
thing you learned by reversingperspectives and being on the
ground for bombing runs?

Dan (01:05:14):
I gained a lot of respect for the the ground pounders, the
people in the ARNY. Have a roughlife. They don't control some of
the stuff. Their horizon, visualhorizon is very short. They only
see to the next tree or or tothe next ridgeline.
And it's very difficult forthem. As a FAC, on the course we

(01:05:39):
had two pilots, the guy who wentto Bosnia and myself, and then
there were four army officerswho were being trained to be
FACs as well. And we taught thema lot about what a fighter pilot
sees and how to get his eyesonto the target and how to talk
him onto it. So it was an eyeopener for both the Army guys
and us. We learned a lot fromthem about their procedures and

(01:06:01):
everything.
But just driving out to the areawhere we were practicing on the
range in Belcarce near QuebecCity, I was in a grizzly armored
personnel carrier and the dirtis being kicked up by the
wheels. It's hot. I'm sweaty.And I've got dust caked on my

(01:06:21):
sweaty neck and everything else.And a tank is coming in the
other direction on the sameroad.
And there's no room for both ofus to cross paths. So the
grizzly driver heads down theshoulder of the road and I'm
standing with my body stickingout of a turret and it's
starting to lean way over to theright. I'm thinking, I told the

(01:06:43):
driver, I said, Driver, stop.He's a corporal in the army.
Sir?
I say, Well, I'm just going toget out until you're past the
tank and you get back upright.And then, Well, it's Okay, sir.
And all I could think of was allthese things I've seen about
army exercises with armoredvehicles rolling over and
killing the two people who weresticking out.

Bryan (01:07:03):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the classic training exercise.
Unfortunately, fatalities youhear about from the army, right,
is those rollovers.

Dan (01:07:13):
Yeah. So it's a it's a different world and I'm very,
very happy I didn't do that.

Bryan (01:07:18):
Yeah. I wasn't built for it myself. I can tell I can tell
you that. I I have huge respectfor the people who do it and for
my buddies who've done It's,it's crazy. So as we've said,
you transitioned to the civilianworld.
What did you decide to do whenyou left the military?

Dan (01:07:32):
I considered flying for an airline, but our babies were
basically two years old, oneyear old or 14 apart. I did not
want to be away regularly forextended periods of time. And
especially since I wasn'tcertain whether I could get the
base that I wanted to. So I'dalready made contacts in Mirabel

(01:07:55):
near Montreal with the CAEsimulator company. I'd worked
with the people, the engineersthere, and I just picked up the
phone.
I called the manager down thereand I said, Danny, I'm thinking
about getting a job. Do you haveanything for me? And he said,
Give me half an hour. He calledme back and said, Okay, come on

(01:08:16):
down next week. We'll have aninterview and I'm sure we can
find something for you.
So it's all about contacts andnetworking. And I had a
background RMC, my appliedscience degree, programmed in
Fortran so I understood theprocess of software programming.
Experience. So he put me incharge for a group of eight

(01:08:38):
engineers who were programming f18 software. And I'd already
worked with people doing theaircraft and the simulator
software.
So it was a natural thing. Iknew the people. I understood
the operational requirements, Iknew how they were doing it. I
couldn't actually code in theassembler language they were
using, but I could give themhints and troubleshoot and

(01:08:59):
everything else. So it was anatural fit.

Bryan (01:09:01):
So it was a good fit in terms of not only were you kind
of a subject matter expert forthem on the aircraft and the
needs of that aircraft, but alsoin terms of your leadership
skills that you gained from themilitary?

Dan (01:09:13):
Yes. And there was actually the squadron maintenance
officer, a major with me thatwas at the same squadron. We
didn't know, but each of usapplied for a job at the same
place at the same time. And heand I both became group leaders
at the same time. And thenwithin a few months, he was
actually promoted to a directoror vice president position

(01:09:35):
because of his leadershipskills.
So that was quite something.

Bryan (01:09:37):
Wow, that's awesome. That speaks highly for the leadership
training we receive.

Dan (01:09:43):
Oh, definitely. It's I couldn't get over to how
different the culture wasbetween the military and
civilian life. And the teamspirit and the everybody is
pulling in the same direction inthe military is something that
is very rare in civilian life.

Bryan (01:10:00):
Well, that's interesting. It kind of brings up my next
question, which is that you hadcolleagues tell you that the
grass was greener in thecivilian world. Did you find
that to be true?

Dan (01:10:08):
100%.

Bryan (01:10:10):
What was better and what was worse?

Dan (01:10:14):
Control of your own destiny in some ways where you you could
you have way more control overwhere you lived, what kind of
job you were doing. If youdidn't like your job, you could
quit or you could try and changeyour job somehow by negotiating
with your super superiors. Whatif I did this instead? And quite

(01:10:34):
often, they could actually finda way to make you happy. So it
was much more human.
The hours could be longsometimes in civilian world, but
nowhere near like a militarylife where you belong to them 20
fourseven.

Bryan (01:10:49):
Was there anything you missed?

Dan (01:10:50):
I missed the flying. I missed some of the camaraderie
with some of my friends.However, a lot of my friends in
the military had left and theywere doing other things in
civilian life. So it's acontinual turnover in the
military as you know. But I'mextremely happy I did the
military thing.

(01:11:11):
I will never regret having beena fighter pilot. I'll always be
super happy that I got to do itand I really enjoyed it.
However, the time came when Ihad to prioritize my family and
move on with my life.

Bryan (01:11:24):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So you've had experience
being part of bringing a newfighter online and the
challenges and benefits thatcome with that. What do you
think the biggest challengeswill be as the RCAF brings in
the f 35?
What will be the biggestopportunities?

Dan (01:11:39):
I'd say the biggest challenge is you you have to
change your mindset. You can'ttreat it like the old aircraft
and and use it in the same way.The f 35 especially is a
complete revolution in the wayfighters are employed. It's it's
not at all the same thing. Sowhat's good is getting a bunch
of young, keen trainees.

(01:12:02):
They won't be burdened with the,oh, this is how we did it with
the old machine. They'll beready to learn, and and that's
that leads into the opportunity,which is they'll be able to
develop ways of doing thingsthat are in line with the
capabilities of the aircraft. Soour ability to defend Canada and

(01:12:25):
to project power anywhere itneeds to be is going to
increase, by a whole bunch byhaving the new fighter.

Bryan (01:12:33):
Mhmm. And that's something that's interesting.
You talk about kind of figuringout how to fight the new
aircraft, how to what are itscapabilities? How do we how do
we use this in a different waythan than the old aircraft? And
there's so many fleets that areabout to go through that in the
in the RCAF.

Dan (01:12:49):
Oh, definitely. And what's what's been good with the f
eighteen fleet, Baggottville hasa very close relationship with
the f thirty five unit inBurlington, Vermont. And we I've
been speaking with the guys fromthere as well as people from
Bagotville, and they'recollaborating on various

(01:13:10):
tactics, which may or may not beclassified. I don't know. But
with a fourth generation f 18and an f 35, they can work
together in certain ways.
And now as they transition tothe f 35, they'll have learned a
lot from the Burlington guys howto employ the f 35. And if they
have to work, say, with an f 15unit or something, they'll
understand how to do thatbecause they've actually done it

(01:13:32):
themselves.

Bryan (01:13:33):
That's awesome. So we're down
to our final three questions. We always ask these
questions. What is the mostimportant thing you do or did to
keep yourself ready for the job?

Dan (01:13:44):
Always be learning. Never be complacent. Like, I if I
wasn't always thinking, I'd I'dbe cruising along at 35,000
feet, and I know I've got anhour before I start my descent.
I'm not just in neutral. I'mthinking, okay, analyzing what's
going on.
Where am I going? What's goingto happen? What if? What if? I

(01:14:07):
never slow down and I'm alwaysthinking what comes next and how
am I going to react to it.

Bryan (01:14:14):
Yep. I like that. So I always ask what makes a good
pilot, but what makes a greatfighter pilot?

Dan (01:14:21):
A great fighter pilot is somebody who's skilled with the
aircraft. He's got excellentleadership skills because as I
transitioned onto instructing onthe business jets, I was quite
concerned because I'd neverflown in a crew aircraft. I'd
have been an instructor, but I'dnever been a first officer
captain relationship. And theguy who was in charge of it

(01:14:43):
said, Dan, it's simple. Whenyou're a formation lead and you
have two or three or fourwingman, you're the captain, and
these are your crew.
And you coordinate before andyou work together. So you have
to be a good leader and you haveto understand tactics and be

(01:15:03):
effective at them. And you alsohave to be open minded. If
somebody comes up with a bettertactic, don't just shoot them
down figuratively, but listenand then either explain to them
why it doesn't work or say, hey,that's a hell of a good idea.
Give them credit and move onwith a better tactic.

Bryan (01:15:23):
I think it's it's interesting and important that
you mentioned leadership first.I think there's probably a
subset of people out there whopicture fighter pilots as, you
know, lone wolves who don't needdon't need any teamwork, don't
need to you know, they can do itall on their own, but that's not
at all the case.

Dan (01:15:42):
Back in in the day, Buzz Burling, Billy Bishop, they were
actually sort of lone lonewolves.

Bryan (01:15:48):
Right.

Dan (01:15:50):
But they may have gotten a lot of kills, but they also kind
of got their own wingman killedor something. And the more
sophisticated the aircraftbecome, the less chance a lone
wolf has of actually beingeffective. You have to work
within the bigger picture.

Bryan (01:16:06):
Yep. What
advice would you give to someone today who wants to be a
fighter pilot given the changesthat are about to come to the
fighter world in Canada?

Dan (01:16:16):
Never give up. Go after it. Work hard. Don't get
discouraged, and be excitedbecause this is an exciting time
for the RCAF.

Bryan (01:16:28):
Yep. I I agree with that completely. So once again, we
said it in the first podcast,but I'd like to remind our
listeners where can they findyour books?

Dan (01:16:37):
My books are available on Amazon. They're either in the
Kindle version. They're printhardcover or softcover. You can
search my name, Dan McWilliamson Amazon and, or Supersonic
Stories. And it's a series oftwo books, Tutor Tales and
Supersonic Stories are availableunder MyDave on Amazon.

Bryan (01:16:57):
All right. Awesome. Listeners can also find a link
to Dan's books on thedescription of this episode. I
highly recommend you check themout. I really enjoyed reading
them, so please check out thesebooks.
Again, you can find that link inthe description of this episode.
Well, Dan, that was such aninteresting chat. I just wanna
thank you so much for taking thetime out of your day to, share

(01:17:18):
your stories, share your careerwith us. I'm really grateful for
that time and I'm, grateful forthe stories you've shared with
us. So thank you so much.

Dan (01:17:26):
This has been my pleasure, Brian. Great interview
questions. I love the way yourun this podcast. So thanks for
having me on.

Bryan (01:17:33):
Thank you. Alright. That wraps up our series with Cold
War fighter pilot, DanMcWilliams. For our next
episode, we'll be sitting downwith major general, Geno
Boucher, to talk about culturein the Canadian forces. Geno is
a CH one forty six Griffinpilot, and at the time of this
recording, chief of staff, chiefprofessional conduct and

(01:17:54):
culture.
Do you have any questions orcomments about anything you've
heard in this show? Would you orsomeone you know make a great
guest, or do you have a greatidea for a show? You can reach
out to us at [e-mail] or
on all social media at at podpilot project. And be sure to
check out that social media forlots of great videos of our RCAF
aircraft. As always, we'd liketo thank you for tuning in and

(01:18:15):
ask for your help with the bigthree.
That's like and follow us onsocial media, share with your
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blue side up. See

intro/outro (01:18:30):
Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four
engines.