Nightmare joins “co-horsts” Fig & RePete and reveals how he got his call sign in flight school. It stuck with him for the rest of his career; which is a good thing! Then he told us how and why he came to want to fly in the Marines and how he “impressed” his LSO when preparing for carrier qualification. Hence this week’s title!

Nightmare talks about the challenges of teaching VSTOL flying and how sometimes mistakes aren’t obvious. By having a student close his eyes and listen to the audio portion of the HUD tape, he was able to hear that he pulled the throttle too early during a landing, which caused them to abort the landing and try again. 

You will be on the edge of your seat when you hear what happened when his engine flamed out (quit) while flying at 33,000 feet about 25 miles off the coast of NJ. Nightmare’s experience ejecting from the plane, feeling each vertebrae compress as the seat pushed him out and the plane doing something unexpected after he ejected are only part of this wild ride.