I pushed the throttles up slightly, increasing power and I banked ever so slightly to the left and then back to the right. This put a little extra lateral space between me and the lead aircraft. As I passed him—another T-38 student pilot named Drew—I gave an exaggerated head nod, throwing my chin all the way down to my chest to make sure Drew could see it from his jet. With that head nod, I had taken the lead. I pulled the throttles back slightly to return to the original power setting and airspeed. I led the other aircraft to the high pattern above the Oklahoma farmland. Then I tapped the palm of my gloved hand—open, so he could see my fingers outspread—up against the canopy glass a few times. The hand motion looked almost as if I was pushing him away. And that’s what I did. As soon as Drew saw my hand tapping the glass, he banked slightly right and fell back, repositioning from the tight fingertip formation we used for the formation takeoff to the more flexible route formation.

You see, I had over-sped my aircraft’s flaps on takeoff and there were several procedural steps I needed to take in response to that mistake. And so far, Drew and I had done all of them without saying a word to one another.

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