Shock and Awe at 20 Years
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fifty-seventh episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast! This episode is an anniversary episode. This past week marked twenty years since the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom's Shock and Awe air campaign, a term those of us involved never used. To those planning and executing air operations, it was Air Tasking Order Oscar or ATO O. The Combined Air Operations Center Air Refueling Control Team which I led went through six weeks of hell preparing for the opening A-Day and H-Hour, Friday night 21 March 2003 at 9 pm local Baghdad time. In this episode, you will hear...
info_outline
Low Altitude Air Refueling Operations
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fifty-sixth episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast! I really appreciate all of you tuning in and downloading this and previous episodes of the show. One of the great memories of my KC-135 career was flying at low altitude with a receiver behind us. My first introduction to the planning and execution of low-altitude refueling was at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. All of our 909th Air Refueling Squadron tanker crews were certified to do this technique and procedure. This episode discusses the whys and hows of low-altitude air refueling with examples from training and...
info_outline
The World's only Air Refueling Graduate School
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fifty-fifth episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast! Thanks for downloading and listening. A three-inch thick manila folder on my desk in my new assignment to the Air Mobility Command Director of Operations or AMC/DO staff ended up being the worst four years of my career and yet the most rewarding looking back on it. This graduate-level curriculum changed the way the US Air Force air refueling community did business... right before 9/11! And nobody wanted us! I was second in command of the Initial Cadre of eighteen airmen tasked with creating the KC-135 Weapons School,...
info_outline
Busting the Chinese Spy Balloon
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fifty-fourth episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast. I've waited to post this one because so much aviation history is happening over the US! Over the last weekend in Joint military operations, US Air Force F-22 Raptors and F-16C Vipers shot down the Chinese Spy Balloon and three additional objects, one over Lake Huron with an interesting description. This episode contains the audio from the Spy Balloon shoot-down on 4 Feb and the object "decommissioned" on Sunday 12 Feb. A lot of questions I raise are still unanswered, like where did these last three objects come...
info_outline
Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fifty-third episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast, the second in a series of Strategic Air Command bomber and tanker operations during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October and November of 1962. Strategic Air Command's Cuban Missile Crisis After Action Report was declassified years ago. I did not find it until researching the chapter of my book called Klaxon! Klaxon! Klaxon! on nuclear operations in the Reagan Cold War. In the days leading up to President John F. Kennedy's landmark speech on the evening of 22 October telling America nuclear missiles are on the island of...
info_outline
Intelligence Ops during the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fifty-second episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast, this will be one of those extreme aviation moments! My Mom and Dad were very worried when I was just a kid starting school. They watched television a lot a month and a half into my first school year, a guy named Walter Cronkite particularly. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had begun. Strategic Air Command's Operation during the Cuban Crisis of 1962 was declassified years ago and details the intelligence collection operations during the spring into winter of 1962. Lockheed U-2 spyplanes photographed...
info_outline
TOPGUN and Tomcat Days with Navy Commander Dave "Bio" Baranek
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to episode fifty-one of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast! This is an interview I've wanted to do for a long time! Commander Dave "Bio" Baranek as an F-14 Tomcat Radar Intercept Officer or RIO had a great Naval Aviation career. Leaving college with a passion for flying, Bio got into the Tomcat community shortly after the F-14's introduction into the fleet as the Navy's premier air superiority fighter. Bio saw the Tomcat grow from an air superiority fighter to a precision strike platform when Tomcats began carrying air-to-ground weapons and the LANTIRN targeting pod. While teaching...
info_outline
The Kill Chain and Time Sensitive Targets
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to the fiftieth episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast, a new milestone for our show! All of you have heard of an airstrike or raid on something or someone in hiding who popped up in a valley, a downtown building, or a facility along a river. My Air Refueling Control Team planning and executing operations were involved in some of the highest profile attacks we call Time Sensitive Targets or just TSTs. This episode gives listeners a foundation on why and how they happen and a behind-the-scenes look at some of these very news-worthy TSTs. Most of these were extremely intense...
info_outline
The Doctor's Five Rules of Flying
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to Episode 49 of the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast! I've wanted to do this one for a while. My USAF Pilot Training experience was pretty rocky. I almost did not make it through. Fortunately, one really good instructor we called "The Doctor" helped me get through. The Doctor could fix just about any student's ailments with his incredible teaching skills. To this day, I still remember The Doctor’s Five Rules of Flying and have used them flying KC-135s all over the world and in my personal life too. The Lessons from the Cockpit podcast is supported by , custom aviation art for the...
info_outline
Refueling the Northern Iraq 2003 Air War
Lessons From The Cockpit
Welcome to episode forty-eight of the Lessons from the Cockpit Show! Reading about how the Iraqi Freedom North War was planned and executed in March and April of 2003, I realized there are a lot of mistakes in the narrative out there. As Chief of the Air Refueling Control Team for the 2003 Iraqi Freedom Shock and Awe campaign, I felt it was a great time to tell what the Air Refueling Control Team experts had to overcome to accomplish some incredible feats, one of those being two of the longest strike missions in Naval Aviation history... 2800 nautical miles roundtrip! The Lessons from the...
info_outlineThe link to Colonel Halvorsen's great webpage with great Berlin Airlift information is here.
The link to a great article on The Candy Bomber at St Mary's Research Scholars can be found here.
Wall Pilot's rendition of the Douglas C-54 Skymaster, the plane Colonel Gail Halvorsen flew in the Berlin Airlift available in four, six, and eight-foot vinyl prints for the walls of your home, office, or hanger can be found here.
This is the 1948 Douglas Aviation advertisement based on the Berlin Airlift:
Thanks to Tanker Pilot: Lessons from the Cockpit for sponsoring this episode of the show.
Thanks for listening, downloading, and sharing this and other episodes of Lessons from the Cockpit found on my webpage.