AF Secretary has no stomach for her job
Blaine sends us a link to the Washington Times which reports that Air Force Secretary, Deborah Lee James took a ride with the Air Force Thunderbirds while they were performing at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and it turns out that she wasn’t quite prepared for it;
But Tuesday’s F-16 flight did not go as planned in the cockpit for Ms. James, a former House defense staffer, Pentagon official and defense industry executive.
“Someone got the bright idea to invite her on the airplane,” said a source familiar with the incident. “She got violently ill.”
[…]
[Secretary James said] “While at Nellis, I also was fortunate to fly along with ‘Thunderbird #4’ and actually participate in a scheduled practice with the entire USAF Air Demonstration Team. They are tremendous Ambassadors in Blue, performing in front of more than 100,000 in Oklahoma last weekend. I also learned to wait to eat lunch until after Thunderbird practice is complete!”
Category: Air Force
At least she’s got a sense of humor about it. Zooming through the air at 10 g’s ain’t for everybody.
MustangCryppie…You got that right! She was a good sport about it though. She owned it.
Sounds like she was good sport about it.
She had the guts to get in the cockpit, not many people can say that.
Good for her having a sense of humor about it. Hopefully it all went into the bag because I wouldn’t want to be the air crew that would have to clean it up.
My thought exactly!
When I flew on P-3s, we had something called “breaking the code.”
That meant if you just couldn’t hold it in on a minimum of a ten hour flight, you could “break the code” which meant you could do “number two” to your heart’s content.
Of course, there was a catch. There always is.
When you broke the code, that meant the other 17 crewmen on the plane could break it too. If you were a code breaker you better pray that your shipmates liked you or that they hadn’t eaten something spicy at preflight. That bag of…we’ll you know…could get awwwwful heavy.
Saw an O6 drag the bag of shame and another time a LT had to drag many, many bags off. She was loved that much. She gagged the entire time but she did it. Didn’t make us like her any more though. Shame about that.
The point of this bombast being that if SECAF cleaned up the chunks I would vote for her in any election she ran in…twice.
Better that she had something in her stomach if she’s prone to motion sickness, dry-heaving is really, really bad for you.
She’s a good sport, and supports the T-Birds even if they did make her look “bad.” So what the hell is a classy lady like her doing in an administration like this?
Isn’t she the one who’s allowing drag queen shows and things like it on AFBs?
Why do you hate Bob Hope?
As I learned on “A” school on an assignment to get a photostory, do NOT load stomach with something that might come up and embarrass you if you’re on a small fishing boat on the Gulf of Mexico.
By the same token, don’t go stunt flying with an aerobatics pilot if you’ve just had a sandwich.
At least she does have a sense of humor about it.
Having suffered from motion sickness my entire life, I know better than to get in a jet, at least without taking Dramamine!
Shit, what did she think was gonna happen. Don’t those guys purposely try to make people lose their lunch? She was a good sport about it all though, so that’s good.
Well, at least she tried. I’ll give her credit for that. And I hope that whoever cleaned up the mess realizes that it is NOT abandoned prperty. It still belongs to her. My recommendation is to let it dry in the sun and then send it back to her as a momento. (Whatever she last ate she won’t want to eat again for, oh, two or so years.)
My advise to noobs on FAM Flights was to
eat bananas.
“WTF AW1Ed, bananas?”
“Yup. ‘Cause they taste pretty much the same coming up as they did going down.”
😉
Another reason to keep the A-10 – it won’t pull enough Gs to make the SECAF hurl.
Learning from the experience of others:
Never fly cross country on the helicopters hungover. Don’t fly on the helicopter that has a hungover passenger.
Sincerely,
Eggs (Haven’t puked yet…)
I sometimes was that guy (hung-over), but I have a cast-iron gut and never seem to get airsick.
Heck a few of the times I was hung-over was from drinking aircrew beer, won when they thought they could make me airsick…
I recycled a meal once – an Air Force “sack lunch” during a nine-hour flight in a C141 from South Carolina to Alaska right after we did in-flight rigging for a jump. I jettisoned the air-sick bag over Fort Wainwright’s airfield after clearing for lower jumpers.
Back when I was in Recruiting I put together an incentive where the top 2 Recruiters of the Year got rides in an F-16. I had the pleasure of escorting them on the day. Both Recruiters were total studs. Infantry guys. One having been an RI (Ranger Instructor) in Mountain Phase before coming to Recruiting Duty.
Anyways. First guy goes up. Comes back and gets out of the plane. Collapses to his knees and hurls. And had to be helped by the flight crew back to the crew rest area. SFC Ranger is sweating now watching his buddy throwing up and looking like 5 shades of death. He gets in the plane. Takes off. Comes back and does the exact same thing. Both slept all the way back to Battalion.
Needless to say both came away that day with a new found respect for fighter jocks.
Gotta hand it to #2. He watched his buddy blow and still stepped into the plane pretty much knowing what was in store.
After the F-16 ride, I wonder if she’ll get a call sign? I vote for “Ralph”….
How about “Earl”? Or “Buick”?
Army fixed wing pilots always try their best to have at least one on board puke. Never ever tell them you’ve never flown on a Sherpa before.
I’ve seen those guys perform. No way in H*ll I’d get in one of those aircraft for a ride; I’d probably get queasy standing by one when they were on display!
Yep, pretty much what everyone else has said. Gotta give her props for being a good sport about it.
Had the “honor” of having may pilots try to make me hurl. No one succeeded. Ahhh, those “good old days.”
Damn OWB. That’s not quite fair. I bet you never told them that you had more air hours than they did–and probably ever would!
Ya think there might have been an occasional unorthodox training thing going on between the senior and junior pilots? Naw, couldn’t happen. Never were any pranks among flying machine folks, right? 😉
btw, the closest I ever came to losing it was in a Marine rotor machine. Something about going straight up just doesn’t feel natural at all. I was grateful to be invited up into the cockpit shortly after take-off, and from that perspective, the digestive tract resumed normal operation.
Haha, that’s just the price of admission.
I made it all the way back to the base and hadn’t puked, I was so relieved to see the runway. Then I heard the pilot tell the tower “we’re gonna shoot some practice approaches” and that was it.
Felt like the worst all day hangover I’ve ever had for the rest of the day. Would I do it again? Hell yes!
I honked 4 times during my ride just going straight and level. Pulling the G’s wasn’t the problem for me.
I got almost 1K hours in a C-130J. I still yack from time to time, especially on low levels!