Naval Air Station Whiting Field

The airplane continued south, but it, I think it ran out of fuel or it got lower.

And one evening after returning from a cross-country training flight on a Sunday evening at Whiting Field in about 2008, two F-15s flew over the base at about 1,000 feet doing about 400 knots trying to chase this guy down.

And, uh, of course, they, I'm sure they were wearing goggles.

But I looked at that and went, "Wait a second, that's probably two guys losing their wings," not realizing they were on a valid intercept trying to get this guy.

We were flying T-34s back then, um, and completed that maybe early fall of nineteen ninety-two.

Uh, I selected helicopters and went down the street, um, this is all Whiting Field.

There's kind of North Whiting and, and South Whiting Field.

Down the street to the helicopter training units, and there completed helicopter training and got my wings on June fourth, nineteen ninety-three.

And with the Marine Corps, when you kind of get your wings, you're, you're in a selection process also, where they give you, um, you kind of select, and they give you the aircraft you're gonna fly, uh, in the Fleet Marine Force, and I selected CH-53 Super Stallion, uh, helicopters.

at

NAS Whiting Field in Milton, Florida.

But the Coast Guard takes only a tiny handful of pilots each year, making those seats among the hardest in all of military aviation to win.

After earning his wings, he went to the Aviation Training Center in Mobile to master the HH-65 Dolphin, as he affectionately called it, the Tupperwolf.