Part Three: Parkinson’s helped resuscitate my soul.

“The Lost Intruder, the Search for a Missing Navy Jet” is largely about shedding old identities, which allowed me to create fresh characteristics and behaviors based on who I wanted to be. Wiping my identity slate clean was daunting. But merely existing without the foundation of an internalized self-portrait, as I did for some time after Parkinson’s Deep Brain Stimulation surgery, was profoundly disturbing, especially while trying to avoid being defined by the outside world.

Working through the emptiness, I experienced honest, unfiltered emotions for the first time in decades. Not since childhood had I felt such stinging gut reactions, real-time feedback that inspired serious reflection on what was important in life.

The solitary time spent on the water combing the ocean bottom encouraged introspection, and with my mind temporarily free of a lifetime of knowledge, logic, and reason, a pair of feelings filled the void: kindness and love. It became evident to me that nothing else mattered, that all man’s rantings and ravings served as distractions from our true nature. I didn’t choose a new identity; it chose me.

Science and technology, man’s tools of understanding, can answer complicated, practical questions, but only human insight—a soulful exploration of the essence of things—can shed light on why we exist and suggest how we might act to realize happiness. To disregard one as trivial is to risk losing the whole point of life.

I have no answers. I do, however, acknowledge my feelings as the most essential part of me, and kindness and love make me feel good. And after all, isn’t that what we are ultimately striving for as we embark on mindless quests for power, money, and fame? To simply feel good about ourselves?

#peterhuntbooks #thelostintruder #livingwithparkinson’s #dbssurgery

Memorial Day. Memory: apart from time and distance

I try not to dwell on things; whether good, bad, or indifferent. Focusing on one aspect of life for too long tends to warp perspective and turns what was likely a good and positive reason for considering a matter into an unhealthy topic with increasingly negative ramifications as the disproportionate attention continues.

But honest reflection – elevated with the nuances of individual personality, character, and sense of introspection – is almost always positive.

It is not always easy separating the two concepts and military service can make it more difficult, and also potentially either more damaging or more beneficial depending on the balance one is able to achieve during reflection.

During my ten years of active duty as a Navy pilot, I – like most in the military – had ample opportunity to test this dichotomy, but finally, I believe that I’m in relative balance emotionally and objectively with what each of the people listed below have brought and taken from life.

Not just my life, but life as a thought, process, conflict, and most of all – a series of relationships.

The following names, call signs, and nicknames represent real and complete people who have impacted me with their lives. Some I was close to, others were professional acquaintances. They are all remembered, not just this day, but every day – you are not forgotten.

John Calhoun: my friend through flight school and roommate while undergoing initial A-6 flight training. Killed during a night, low-level training mission in the Cascade Mountains.

Richard Hobby: John’s instructor B/N who perished that same night in 1988.

Jay Cook: fellow student in the A-6 training squadron at Whidbey. Killed in a refueling fire at Cubi Point airfield after his parachute failed to open in time due to being outside the envelope for the “zero-zero” Intruder ejection seat.

Jim Dunne: fellow student in the A-6 training squadron at Whidbey. Killed in a day, training low-low level flight somewhere in Japan.

Tom Costen: Casual friend in our sister A-6 squadron during Operation Desert Storm. Pilot killed on the second night of the war while mining the approach to the Umm Qasr Naval Base in Iraq.

Charlie Turner: Casual friend in our sister A-6 squadron during Operation Desert Storm and dinner companion for our last meal in the states before deploying. B/N killed on the second night of the war while mining the approach to the Umm Qasr Naval Base in Iraq.

“LZ”: Don’t recall his real name, but a pilot and acquaintance attached to the Marine Corp A-6 squadron on USS Ranger during the 1989 cruise. Eric Klug and I acted as wingman for him after his D-704 refueling drogue would not stow and had to be guillotined before shipboard recovery. Our job: too let him know if he was on fire and to eject. Killed conducting Close Air Support flying a Harrier outside Kuwait City, Operation Desert Storm.

Steve Garcia: Former instructor of mine during initial Intruder training who put forth great effort in helping me navigate the unknown waters of dealing with my roommate, John Calhoun’s mishap. Pilot killed during an air show practice at NAS Whidbey.

Rick Andrews: Former instructor of mine during initial Intruder training. We went on a memorable cross country to Centennial Airport in Denver. B/N killed during an air show practice at NAS Whidbey.

Charlie Braun: Former instructor of mine during initial Intruder training. I do not recall particulars of his mishap.

Steve Hazelrigg: First Commanding Officer in my fleet squadron, VA-145. After command went on to be CO of Pax River test facility. Killed on an A-6 test flight due in part to the lack of a command ejection system in the Intruder.

Dan Dewespilere (sp?): Acquaintance and previous instructor in A-6 training squadron. Killed flying day training low-level along Columbia River.

Mike Norman: Friend, went through AOCS and primary flight training in T-34s. Next door neighbor in Pensacola who used to regularly come over for dinner. Killed in F-4 demo flight at a California Air Show.

Bug Roach: Famous LSO who came out of “retirement” to wave for Ranger aircrew during Desert Storm. Killed during ejection over Southern California waters after parachute failed to open.

Bill Braker: Friend and fellow A-6 instructor. Killed during a night vision goggle rendezvous after transitioning to F/A-18s.

Tilting at Windmills: Limitations of the professional aviation safety model in sport diving

In 1985 I joined the Navy. After a 14 week stint at Aviation Officer Candidate School (“An Officer and a Gentleman”), I began pilot training.

Military life was a different world in all sorts of ways (I still fold my “skivvies” in a 6” X 6” square, but at least I no longer iron them), and the changes in routine ranged from confusing, to frustrating, and occasionally even to the welcome.

Naval Aviation’s attitude toward safety fell into the welcome category, and it was immediately apparent to me that sport diving could benefit from some of the lessons learned operating from the carrier deck.

But, as the saying goes, “The devil is in the details,” and I had to wonder which aspects of Naval Aviation’s methodical “systems” approach to safety were transferrable to sport diving, and which were not. What appeared at first glance as an easy task in 1985 became more complex with each passing year.

Naval Aviation’s safety program permeates every aspect of both training and actual operations; it is not open to negotiation. In contrast, it was clear to me that for practical purposes a single, cohesive “dive community” did not even exist.

Each dive certification agency at the time (and maybe still?) was in active competition for new students, there was little standardization, and recreational divers lacked a common goal or purpose.

Because the Navy’s rapid training cycle did not allow for the accumulation of significant experience (experience being the single greatest contributing factor to proficiency, in my opinion) prior to operational deployment, the training system had to pick up the slack from day one.

No such sophisticated safety system exists or probably can exist in sport diving, where the primary incentive for participation is recreation.

It was still puzzling, however, why so few individual components of Naval Aviation’s successful safety program had translated effectively to diving. It appeared that even the most fundamental of safety lessons learned by the Navy, such as the disciplined use of briefing checklists, had not been widely adopted outside of the military.

There’s a saying in Naval Aviation: “You need a plan to deviate from…” Without a baseline of coordinated expectations prior to a flight, a reasoned response to the inevitable surprises that crop up is impossible, especially if limited in experience.

With that in mind, I saw an obvious place to start. It seemed a no-brainer to me that a reasonably thorough briefing before a dive would be an obviously worthwhile safety enhancement for virtually every diver.

In 2004, I decided to mass produce a dive safety briefing checklist based on my experience flying A-6 Intruder carrier attack jets. The goal was to create a short, easy to use checklist that would take an experienced buddy team of sport or technical divers a nominal 30 minutes to brief the first time it was used, and then perhaps 15 minutes to review prior to subsequent dives.

The checklist was purposefully short because it was assumed that a truly comprehensive “Naval Aviation style” brief (minimum of one hour; as long as four hours for a complex strike – this does not include planning time) would meet resistance from participants in a sport motivated primarily by a desire to have fun. Whether “fun” was defined as a relaxed tropical dive on a shallow reef or a deep, highly complex wreck or cave penetration was moot. In the final analysis, sport divers share no common mission other than to have a widely varied definition of “fun.”

The checklist served as a briefing tool between dive team members as well as with surface support personnel to clearly define basic responsibilities and procedures utilized in the most common aspects of open-circuit diving. Briefing examples included such varied items as an in-depth discussion of each diver’s gear configuration and the plan for transferring an incapacitated diver from the water back into the boat.

The briefing checklist was a total failure.

Granted, it was designed for function over glitz. Printed in black and white on a hard, durable two-sided plastic card with rewritable blank spaces, it was not especially pretty. It certainly did not fit in with gear purchased by divers who cared about the color of their fins.

But I believe the failure was due to more than a lack of curb appeal. I had grossly underestimated the average diver’s willingness to slow down the “fun” long enough with what could be perceived as a 15 to 30 minute “downer” of a brief talking about all the things that could go wrong.

There was an obvious conclusion to draw: an honest understanding and desire for a culture of safety simply did not exist in diving as was enjoyed by professional aviation. Thorough briefings provide pilots with the “warm and fuzzy” of being truly prepared for any contingency. Sport divers seemed to consider a thorough briefing checklist alarmist at best and overall a nuisance of limited value.

This story serves as an illustration of the fundamental difference between diving and professional aviation that makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to incorporate the central beneficial feature of an aviation safety program into sport diving: the structural ability to develop a professional culture – or “system” – of safety.

Please do not misunderstand; there are definitely transferrable practices and procedures in professional aviation that have been or will be (and most definitely should be) adapted to diving. My point is that the limitations of utilizing an aviation safety model in total are significant and probably insurmountable.

Not recognizing this fact could conceivably lead to misplaced confidence, complacency, and potentially new, unforeseen types of mishaps to begin to develop in diving. The law of unintended consequences comes to mind.

Here’s an example.

Required aviation skills such as maintaining adequate situational awareness, or “SA,” serve as an example of a developed aptitude that might only be possible to widely implement in an organization that possesses a culture – or system – of professional safety.

SA as a practical skill can be thought of as a pilot’s mental picture of the location and attitude of his or her aircraft and all surrounding aircraft in three dimensions, the status of an aircraft’s mechanical systems, the aircraft’s progress along a navigation plan, weather considerations, communication requirements and status within the cockpit and with all outside players (for example air traffic control or other jets in a strike package), and other mission-specific considerations such as enemy threats, all updated constantly in real time.

Finally, this cumulative awareness needs to be preserved while flying an aircraft under extreme stress due to mission requirements (i.e. getting shot at) or system failure (e.g. engine fire).

When an emergency arises, none of the above listed SA components can be automatically jettisoned to accommodate a pilot’s mental capacity to handle the new situation. When a pilot is overwhelmed by new information and rapidly changing circumstances, an automatic prioritization process of identifying and disregarding the least important input at that particular point in time must occur.

“Task saturation” is the technical term for this feeling of being totally overwhelmed, of literally drowning in a sea of inputs (the sensation can initially make even breathing difficult), secure in the unsettling, deeply seated understanding that multiple complex decisions need to be made right now, and that choosing the wrong course of action will likely lead to your death or that of someone else in the flight.

There are numerous catchy phrases for task saturation, such as making room in a pilot’s “bucket” (i.e. head) for surprise decisions and tasks.

Seamless delegation and prioritization of the tasks required for mission completion, first, and survival, second, are routinely practiced by Navy pilots in extremely complex simulator sessions and during actual training flights.

A true safety system ensures that every pilot spends a significant amount of time in scheduled, recurring training with a “full bucket.”

When task saturation then occurs in the real world, as it inevitably will, the pressure of being overwhelmed is mitigated by lots of intense practice spent in this regime. Experiencing the sensation of a “full bucket” in a life and death situation is certainly still stressful, but it definitely does not come as a surprise, and it is in fact a familiar feeling.

Having the opportunity to spend time with a “full bucket” is not fun, and many pilots would probably skip the training if given the choice, that is, until they encounter a real-life situation where their “bucket over-flow-eth.” But they are not given the choice.

Many aspiring pilots wash out because they simply “can’t hack it”: they do not possess the “right stuff” to get the job done. The only way to know this for certain is through rigorous, highly complex simulations followed by closely monitored – and at times extremely dangerous – actual flights.

There’s another Naval Aviation saying, a bit hackneyed, but applicable all the same: “The more you train in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

And when all is said and done, despite hugely expensive, mandated recurring practice and testing in complex simulators, “Loss of SA” is still a frequent causal factor for many Naval Aviation mishaps.

Virtually no determined sport divers need fear being barred from diving altogether because he or she is unwilling or unable to adapt to a model approach to safety.

Operating within the unyielding confines of a true safety system offers other advantages as well. Professional aviation’s success in not making the same mistakes twice is well established. This is made possible by the requirement to document every incident and disseminate this detailed information to a centralized body for future training improvements, with the process being guaranteed by a system of strict accountability enforced by an established chain of command, either military or civilian.

DAN does a phenomenal job as a limited central clearing house for sport diving mishap summaries. Could you imagine how busy DAN would be if every sport diving incident, big and small, was required to be reported?

Now add in what if every recreational diver were required to read every single report in a timely fashion, prior to every single diver being thoroughly trained in any new procedures or policies introduced as a result of lessons learned from the mishap?

It is this type of uniformity that allows for the existence of a highly complex, but common and intuitively understood, language that reinforces a culture of safety in Naval Aviation and serves to self perpetuate these lessons as one of many intrinsic feedback loops.

A true safety system is structurally organized to constantly and automatically learn and improve.

In my opinion, the extreme demands of system standardization, training, and tested, consistent performance at the highest level, all overseen by a clearly defined and empowered chain of command with actual clout, can be described, but must be experienced to be truly appreciated.

This is in essence what produces a culture of professionalism in safety. These are the components that enable the development of a true “safety system.”

It’s my guess that the vast majority of divers do not have direct, actual experience participating in a relentlessly demanding organization such as professional aviation, and particularly military flying with its more evolved concept of allowable levels of risk.

This is the salient point: it is the entirety of many complex pieces that allow the professional aviation system to be so safe. In my opinion, a “system,” or culture of professional safety, as experienced in aviation simply does not and cannot exist in a sport conducted at the end of the day for enjoyment and lacking a chain of command, common mission or purpose, vast funding, and standards which preclude participation by a large number of aspirants.

There is much to be gained by divers in studying aviation safety practices, but as every pilot knows, complacency is the greatest danger. I would encourage sport divers to utilize the individual pieces of professional aviation practice that prove useful to safety, but also to recognize that these are but small components of the overall system and subject to significant limitations.

For diving to adopt a true safety system with the fidelity of professional aviation would require rules and resources that would defeat the purpose of the sport: to enable the average person to enjoy the underwater environment.

But that’s just my opinion; I’d love to hear yours…

The author was a Navy carrier pilot for a decade, spent another ten years flying for United Airlines, and holds a University of Washington Masters in Strategic Planning for Critical Infrastructure, a graduate program heavily reliant on systems theory and risk management.

Veteran’s Day

Being a combat veteran is not simple. A personal incident from several months ago comes to mind as an illustration. Please let me explain.
I had been invited to a dinner sponsored by the Northwest chapter of the Intruder Association in an effort to drum up support and build ties between Vietnam era aviators and those from follow on decades.

The thinking was that a local author might provide a bit of leverage to jump start the process and close the gap.

With the official presentations and introductions over, one gent immediately caught my attention as he weaved between diners in a bee-line directly to me in the restaurant of the Oak Harbor Yacht Club.

He carried himself with a confident yet relaxed stride that seemed to match his disheveled, but comfortably neat attire. He squared off in front of me.
“I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your book.” He looked at me with intelligent intensity.

Ten minutes earlier the guy had been alternating his attention between light-heartedly bidding on various A-6 sketches for charity and entertaining his grandson, although the man didn’t look or act old enough to be a grandparent.
He carried himself with the self-confidence of a well-liked and skilled aviator who also aspired to the class-clown mantle and frankly didn’t give a damn about any perceived inconsistency.

Instantly, I admired him. I mumbled something back about it probably being a pale shadow of his experiences flying Intruders in Vietnam.

“Killing people is killing people.” He replied.

He said it without hesitation. He didn’t lower his voice or offer a subtle apology, and of course there was no reason he should have.

After all, that was the common thread between most of us in the room – we had all killed people from the platform of the old A-6 Intruder, a retired Navy low-level bomber. Still, the straightforward honesty jolted me into refreshing alertness.

“Yes, that’s true.” I replied evenly. I liked this guy. I respected this guy a lot.
Veterans should be thanked at least once a year, but to those who have not served please be forewarned: things are not as simple or straightforward as they might seem. I am proud of my time in the Navy and my combat experience.

And that pride is deeply unsettling.

Life carries many contradictions. Combat magnifies that effect exponentially.
When you thank a veteran today, it’s okay not to know the full extent of what you are thanking him for, but please: pry only if invited and remember that compassion need not be familiar with circumstance to be honest.

Thanks to all my fellow veterans.

“The Swordsmen delivered more than 2 million pounds of ordnance and flew 1358.8 flight hours during Operation Desert Storm. VA-145 was officially credited with destroying or severely damaging 33 tanks, 48 artillery pieces, 41 naval vessels, 25 missile components, 23 conventional and chemical munitions bunkers, 13 oil facilities, 7 communications sites, 5 hangars, 8 piers, 2 barracks, a bridge, a power plant, and a rail yard. Additionally, the squadron mined 4 critical lines of communication.

The only number that was conspicuously missing was the one we would never know – how many people we had killed.”

– From the closing chapter of Angles of Attack, an A-6 Intruder pilots War