Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993 TAG: 9309260231
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GOLDSBORO, N.C. LENGTH: Long
It can be easy, even bland, flying for experienced pilots and navigators in the Air Force's most sophisticated flying machine.
That's why the practice route that takes them from Seymour Johnson northwest toward Virginia and the mountains is such a cherished sortie.
"Let me put it this way. If you had a Porsche, would you rather drive it on a country road through the mountains, or on the interstate?" asks Capt. Brian Killough, a bombardier. "You get the idea."
We live beneath the airborne country road, the twisty, turny cow path with the hairpin turns and the steep ravines. The F-15E is the $48 million Porsche.
Our mountains are the adrenaline route not just for Seymour Johnson, but for all the military airstrips that dot the Southeastern coastal plain - Oceana Naval Air Station and Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Cherry Point Marine Air Station in North Carolina, Beaufort Marine Air Station in South Carolina.
Our mountains are not reserved for F-15Es. They're used by a cornucopia of military jets - bombers, mostly - from the smallish A-6 used by the Navy to the mammoth, eight-engine B-52 the Air Force occasionally routes through our valleys from bases as distant as upstate New York.
And our mountains aren't used just to thrill the pilots. In fact, say commanders - though low-level mountain flying is much more demanding than zipping over the Carolina coastal plain - that's not a factor. The fact is that low-level flying is an integral strategy in wartime; hiding behind natural topographical features is an ancient, common-sense military tactic.
Flying below the mountain ridges, military pilots can hide from the probing sight of enemy radar. Like eyeballs, radar can't see around corners or through mountains.
"Let's face it," says Air Force Major Larry Coleman, based at Seymour Johnson, "you take one look at the world's hot spots and they're not all flat. We need practice flying in the mountains."
Mountainous, yet near the jets' home airstrips on the flatlands, Western Virginia is cross-hatched with a web of low-level military routes.
That's why everyone from Smith Mountain Lake to Paint Bank and from Harrisonburg to Bristol has a low-flying military jet story to tell. Just about everybody, especially out in the country where flights are most frequent, has seen a streaking, camouflaged jet zip through a valley, or over the river or the interstate.
Because the jets don't drop leaflets in their wake, explaining what they're doing, or who they are or where they're from, they're the subjects of widespread rumor, complaints and even suspicion.
Col. Ron Hindmarsh, stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, knows the image: "Here are these flyboys who go out, kick the tires, light the fires and go out to terrorize the natives."
It's an image, he says, perpetuated by popular culture - movies like "Top Gun" that portray jet pilots as high-tech cowboys riding roughshod in a lethal rodeo at supersonic speeds.
It's an image, too, that's unfair.
The pilots of the low-level jets that frequent the mountains aren't rookies; many are combat veterans of the Persian Gulf War. They aren't flying when and where they choose; their commanders are directing them toward specific training routes with specific rehearsal instructions. And their mission isn't to drive the fear of God or the U.S. armed forces into the hearts of humans or Herefords immediately beneath their flight paths.
"Low-level flying is a very perishable skill," said Hindmarsh. "If there were no radar, we wouldn't have to do it. But there is, and you can't just do it once a year."
Bruno Millonig, for example, practiced hiding his F-15E jet in the rocky folds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The dress rehearsals prepared him well.
A captain and a formation leader with the 335th Fighter Squadron based at Seymour Johnson, Millonig flew 36 sorties against enemy fire over Iraq, and 75 missions all told in the Persian Gulf - many at low levels, many at night. With his squadron colleagues and his counterparts from the 334th and 336th Fighter Squadrons, Millonig still stands on duty in the gulf area several months a year. He was one of the pilots who made a retaliatory strike against Iraq in January, as Saddam Hussein tested incoming President Clinton by locking in with radar and firing at U.S. warplanes.
As a formation leader, it's Millonig's responsibility with his bombardier/navigator to make sure that the crews of F-15Es flying low-level missions through the mountains are familiar with the areas over which they'll be flying and the tasks they'll be performing.
The Air Force pilots fly practice sorties three times each week. Not all of them come to Virginia's mountains. Navy A-6 pilots from Oceana may fly as many as two practice missions a day as they prepare to leave port on their aircraft carriers. The more Navy jets we see, the more likely that an aircraft carrier is preparing to depart - pilots hone their flying skills most often as they're preparing to lift anchor.
The fliers are briefed with air-traffic and topographical maps to familiarize them with the mountains, radio towers, power lines, noise-sensitive areas such as lake resorts, and even bird activity they'll be avoiding.
Though there are specific routes approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, low-level jets can use a corridor that stretches five miles to either side of the route - so the pilots will try to vary their flights within that lane to keep from annoying the same residents time and again.
They'll talk about turning points - groves of trees or railroad trestles. They'll discuss the weather and will abort the training flight if they encounter fog. They'll alert the FAA of their plans, and the FAA will advise private and commercial pilots that a military jet is coming into their airspace.
Finally, they'll streak down a runway and lift off.
It's a 244-mile drive from Roanoke's City Market to the tarmac at Seymour Johnson where most of the 70 F-15E jets stationed there are parked. It's a 25-minute flight from Goldsboro, 20 minutes from Norfolk.
Pilots will fly to the mountains at ordinary altitudes and speeds - about 400 mph at 20,000 feet from Goldsboro to Fort Lewis Mountain, where one popular low-level route begins. The F-15E will then drop through the 10,000-foot range at a slower speed, about 300 mph, because of increased air traffic in that zone, and finally enter the practice corridor. The route that begins over Fort Lewis Mountain ends at Sumter, S.C., near Shaw Air Force Base.
With the FAA's blessings, low-level military trainers can get as low as 500 feet off the ground. For comparison's sake, the Dominion Tower in downtown Roanoke is 364 feet tall.
Different jets fly at different speeds; an F-15E probably is moving along at 500 mph, an A6 a bit slower than that.
They will all try to tuck themselves in about two-thirds the height of the adjacent mountains - that's the "military ridge line," according to Killough.
Flying that low, the jets inevitably prompt complaints: A Smith Mountain Lake woman once told the FAA that a military jet had sheared the television antenna off her roof. More common are the antique teacups knocked from the hutch and shattered by the vibration, the frightened cattle, the petrified people.
"The last thing we want is an adversarial relationship. We try to be good neighbors and good stewards, but hey, we're human. Sometimes the adrenaline gets pumping," said Hindmarsh.
Citizen complaints, forwarded to the branches of the service by the FAA, are taken seriously.
"We pursue them," said Hindmarsh. "If we find it to be true, we ground the crews. We're dead serious about our rules.
"If there's a possibility we had a flight in that area, we'll 'fess up. We have nothing to hide," he said. "But if the crew was at the proper airspeed and altitude, we've done nothing wrong."
The wrong stuff is flying beneath power lines, or close enough above them to clip the wires; igniting powerful thrusters called afterburners to lift like rocket ships; or flying beneath railroad bridges.
The wrong stuff is hitting mountains.
But it happens. On July 23, two crewmen were killed when a Navy A-6 jet from Oceana smashed into a Craig County mountain.
The cause of that crash hasn't been determined.
The message, though, isn't lost on airmen.
"All of these rules are written in blood," says Killough.
Staff writer Dwayne Yancey contributed information for this report.
by CNB