The Tale of "Two Bags"

Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. He details his experiences when given the opportunity to fly in an F-14 Tomcat.

"Now this message is for America's most famous athletes: Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have ... John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity...

Move to Guam.
Change your name.
Fake your own death!
Whatever you do ..
Do Not Go!!!

I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach.

Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He's about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way. Fast.
Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ..." Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff."

Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning.

"Bananas," he said.

"For the potassium?" I asked.

"No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do going down."

The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot .. but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail Nicole Kidman, this was it.

A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked unconscious. Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We levelled out and then canopy-rolled over another F-14.

Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, snap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute. We chased another F-14, and it chased us. We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph,creating a G force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.

And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before. And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing stuff that did not even want to be egressed. I went through not one airsick bag, but two.

Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down.

I used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool. Cool is guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and Freon nerves. I wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand.

A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on a patch for my flight suit.
What is it? I asked...

"Two Bags."

Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated

Sounds like a great ride.
Saw "Top Gun" for the tenth time last night.
I love that plane.

If ever offered the opportunity, you could call me "One Nut" because I would give my left one for the ride!

Thanks for posting this great write up.....I re-read it so as to enjoy someone elses experience....And I laughed out loud both times.....Great was to start my Sunday....Mark

What a great story. I would LOVE to have tried that. I used to go to the fairs all the time and tell the ride operators it was worth a $20 if they could make me sick. Never happened and I got the BEST rides!

I got a ride in a T-38 once. My dad was a career Air Force Officer and when I joined the army he asked if there was anything he could do, and that was my request. One hell of a ride

My brother in law (who is a genius in my eyes) was on the design team of the F-14 look down radar systems. He took me out to Pt Mugu where I got to watch some test flights and meet the pilots. As a 14 year old I was like a deer in the headlights. That is an experience that is burned into my memory.

That was great.

I would love to try that. However hanging upside down in a kayak while running a Class 5 rapid, with the river picking you up and throwing you around like a toy, is a lot of fun too. Especially when you know you cannot breathe for another 30 seconds, and that you have 15 more miles of this fun ahead of you.

I remember going to Oceana and watching them do practice carrier landings years ago, touch and go's.
They would come in at a steep angle of decent, slam down on the runway then hit the afterburners and go right back up. Nighttime was the best because you could see the purple flames they made with the afterburners.
Off the beach they would come back in in groups of three and do a synchronized turn as the wings swung out to reconfigure for lower speed and landing.
I guess I'm showing my age but the F-14 and F- 4's are the best looking planes, a real classic jet fighter look.

Can’t imagine that. It would make every coaster at Cedar Point look like a ride for a kindergartener.

Sounds like fun. I couldn't do that anymore, from his description of egressing and my propensity to get sick even on a merry-go-round I would probably be egressing from something my mother ate in 1946.

Two Bags. He he he.

I like a lot of planes but the F-14 is definitely one of the more endearing and notable ones. Top Gun and The Final Countdown are always enjoyable to watch for that reason. Having had the opportunity to see them flying and maneuvering in person on a couple of occasions, they never ceased to leave me in awe.

As a kid, I was lucky enough to get a G.I. Joe Skystryker F-14 for Christmas and enjoyed playing with it immensely, with the wing sweeping lever making it easy to go from low speed maneuvering to full afterburner bullet with a short smooth motion of the hand. It's so large that it is hard to find room to openly display it, but I actually still have my Skystryker stored away in a huge box full of some other cool 80's toys.

No celebrity, sports star, writer, or other civilian should get a fighter ride until EVERY LAST AIRMAN and SAILOR, who wants one, gets a ride.
These fat-assed generals get star-struck by these entertainers.
Disgusting.

quote:

Originally posted by BlackAgnes:
No celebrity, sports star, writer, or other civilian should get a fighter ride until EVERY LAST AIRMAN and SAILOR, who wants one, gets a ride.
These fat-assed generals get star-struck by these entertainers.
Disgusting.

Army aviation was kinda the same way.

They'd take up everybody and their brother before letting the guys who armed and maintained the birds go up.

This all ended early on for our squadron when a kid from the infantry caused a bird to crash on the pad. No casualties but also, no more rides.

That article reminds me what a douche-nozzle Biff King was / is.

Not to mention doing that to a rider is a dick move. While getting sick is 'normal', abusing a VIP rider is just rude.

But like I said, Biff was / is nearly universally considered a tool in the Tomcat community, so the fact he did that is not remotely surprising.

More accurately the writer was just along for the ride.

Also, being that it was Blacklions, my spidey senses would've been off the chart. For the superstitious in the crowd, that squadron was not known for having the best of luck in the 80s and 90s.

I would like to experience a Catapult launch!

lol two bags....