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Military Aviation

What Makes an Ace in the 21st Century?

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When it was revealed in a BBC interview, The Fighter Pilots Hunting Houthi Drones Over the Red Sea, that Marine Captain Earl Ehrhart, an AV-8B Harrier pilot aboard the USS Bataan, had downed seven drones, subsequent stories on this action hailed him as America’s newest ace, the first since the last helo left Saigon in April 1975.

“The Houthis were launching a lot of suicide attack drones,” says Ehrhart, and to be effective against this rebel group, the marines needed to adapt, the BBC story reports. “‘We took a Harrier jet and modified it for air defence,’ Ehrhart tells me. “We loaded it up with missiles and that way were able to respond to their drone attacks.'” In the next sentence, the experienced fighter pilot said he intercepted seven Houthi drones.

Nowhere in the BBC article is the word ace. It seems that aviation editor and authors applied this appellation without fully contemplating the necessary attributes of becoming an ace beyond five victories. For some concise insight, I turned to the American Fighter Aces Association, founded in 1960 to recognize the over 1,450 combat pilots from World War I to the present that achieved the status of American Fighter Ace by destroying five or more hostile aircraft in air-to-air combat.

Given their intent and mission, the Houthi drones are, without a doubt “hostile aircraft.” And Capt. Ehrhart and all the other AV-8B and F-18 pilots have certainly destroyed these pilotless drones. But the key ingredient missing in earning the title of ace is, as the American Fighter Aces Association clearly states, is destroying these “hostile aircraft in air-to-air combat.”

Downing a drone with a missile does not meet the definition or spirit of aerial combat, “a fight between individuals or groups.” Yes, the Houthis are a group, but all they are doing is programming their drones to hit terrestrial targets and ships, not defend themselves against a Harrier or Super Hornet. When artificial intelligence matures and undertakes a drone’s defensive capabilities, destroying it in air-to-air combat will count toward the title of ace. And if AI destroys its opponent, it will be one tally closer to the title.

Until that time, lets appreciate and recognize our aviators for the multitude of risks they face on every sortie but reserve the accolade of ace for those who achieve it in a competitive arena. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Wings Set Aviation Movie Standard in 1927

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Much has been made of the actors portraying naval aviators in Top Gun: Maverick being filmed in the aft seat of an F-18 Super Hornet to capture the sagging distortion of real-life g-forces. Compare that to the challenges faced by Charles “Buddy” Rogers who, in 1927, learned to fly so the camera operator, sitting backwards in the front cockpit of a World War I-era biplane, could capture him stick-and-ruddering his way through the dogfights choreographed for Wings. (And he kept flying and was a World War II Navy flight instructor.)

Wings was the last of the great silent movies and the first to win the Oscar for Best Picture at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929. To recoup its $2 million cost ($33 in 2022 money), Paramount released it three times in three different years: The New York premiere in August 1927, in Los Angeles in January 1928, and across the United States in January 1929. Paramount released it a fourth time in 2012 with the restored original.

Available from several different sources, I recommend the DVD because it includes a special feature. To more fully appreciate this remarkable film, watch the special feature before the 144-minute restoration. While Rogers learned to fly for his role, the film’s director, William A. Wellman (right), and Richard Arlen, the other male lead, were already pilots. Wellman was a World War I pilot who saw no combat but earned the nickname of Wild Bill. Arlen flew with the Royal Canadian Flying Corps.

The drama focused on the two men, one rich, the other middle class, who were in love with the same woman, who was not Clara Bow, who had top billing. It introduced the world to Gary Cooper, whose first 90 seconds on film as a flying cadet who perished on a training flight flying figure eights, led to his star-crossed career. But the real star was Harry Perry, the cinematographer who figured out how to overcome the challenges of air-to-air movie making. And then there was the squad of “stunt pilots,” led by Rod Rogers. One of them, Hoyt Vandenburg, credited only in IMDb, taught Rogers to fly for Wings and went on to become the U.S. Air Force chief of staff from 1948 to 1953.

Vandenburg was a lieutenant stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio, where Wellman filmed Wings with War Department support. Thomas-Morse MB-3s stood in for most of the good guys and Curtiss P-1 Hawks wore the Iron Crosses of the bad guys. More than 300 pilots participated in the aerial sequences, most of them active-duty Army aviators. And so did more than 3,500 soldiers from Fort Sam Houston (now part of Joint Base San Antonio), who recreated the epic Battle of Saint-Mihiel, on the five-acre training range it lent to the film. To prepare the battlefield, the army dug trenches and used the range for artillery training to give it an authentic shell-cratered surface.

Filming Wings took nine months, mostly because of the weather, specifically the lack of cumulus clouds that provided the necessary contrast and scale for the spectacular aerial footage. All the aviation films that have followed have been mere shadows of what Wings pioneered. And it might all have been lost, like the film’s originals negatives, had not Paramount found and restored a spare negative found in its vaults.

In 2012 Paramount released a meticulously restored hi-def version of the film on DVD and Blu-ray. They remastered and re-orchestrated the original score (remember, this is a silent movie). There’s also a pipe organ music option, which played around the nation’s smaller theaters. Skywalker Sound used archived audio tracks for the sound effects and the restorations includes the Handschiegl color process for the fires that consumed the aerial casualties. If you haven’t seen this masterpiece, treat yourself. You won’t regret it. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Review: YouTube’s Ward Carroll, F-14 RIO

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A pandemic addiction to YouTube has delivered consistently interesting, entertaining, and educational interludes when its selection algorithm introduced me to Ward Carroll, a retired naval flight officer who spent most of his career as a radar intercept officer, aka RIO, in the F-14 Tomcat.

Based on my past searches and binges, YouTube’s algorithm served up “21 Cringeworthy Errors in the Movie TOP GUN.” This film sustained me during my recovery from Hepatitis A in 1987. Having worn out my VHS copy that summer, I’d noticed a few errors, and I was curious to learn what I missed, and I had 9 minutes and 35 seconds to spare.

It was a worthwhile investment of time, and I subscribed to Carroll’s channel when the episode concluded. I won’t spoil, but I will tease. What hooked me was his conversational finite detail. Only someone intimately familiar with the F-14 would know the dimensions of the Tomcat’s vertical stabilizers and that they would have tangled with the fuselage of the “MiG” in the famous inverted dive scene where Maverick “communicated” with the bogey’s pilot.

Intrigued by its title, I cued up “The REAL Truth About Kara Hultgreen’s F-14 Tomcat Mishap.” In the same conversational style I learned about that the F-14A was prone to compressor stalls and how that affected the Tomcat aerodynamically. But what got me to ring his channel’s notification bell was a discussion and display of the BOLDFACE recovery steps that aviators must memorize because these NATOPS procedures “are written in blood.”

For those unfamiliar, NATOPS is the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization, the Navy’s aircraft specific general flight and operation instructions. Safety seems to be a consistent theme in many of his episodes, and this made sense when explaining “RIO Responsibilities” using examples from his career. It turns out he did a tour as editor of Approach, “The Navy and Marine Corps Aviation Safety Magazine.”

Having interacted with a number of aviators during my six years’ service in the Navy, I respected their abilities, but I have new respect for RIOs and their successors, WSOs (weapon systems operators, pronounced “whizz-oh”) after Carroll expanded my knowledge and understanding of their duties and responsibilities. And he’s earned my respect and admiration for not spewing an endless stream of Mil-speak and aviation jargon.

But I guess that’s not surprising, given that Carroll is also a novelist published by the Naval Institute Press. (The Punk’s War trilogy is now on my to-read list.) When he utters an acronym, he spells it out in English, and as applicable, he gives a topic deeper context by relating it to a scene in Top Gun or other film. (Don’t miss “The Truth About the F-14 and Goose’s Death.”)

Carroll’s YouTube channel will satisfy more than an individual’s Tomcat curiosity. It offers valuable insight for anyone interested in pursuing military aviation, including those considering the US Naval Academy or US Military Academy. A 1982 graduate, and later in his career an instructor at the Naval Academy, his episode on “The Real Story Behind the West Point Cheating Scandal” is a concise summary of a challenging educational environment that any prospective student should watch before seeking an appointment.

But I’ve gone on too long here. Check out Ward Carroll’s channel for yourself. I’m going to see what he has to say in “Chuck Yeager and True American Greatness.”

If you enjoyed this story, why not SUBSCRIBE to JetWhine, if you haven’t already, and please share it with anyone who might find it interesting. — Scott Spangler, Editor