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What Is It Like To Be A Fighter Pilot?
Kurt Dittmer • 2023-09-05
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. The question for this episode is, what is it like to be a fighter pilot? You will learn in this episode, the rigorous training required to become a fighter pilot, insights into the specific combat strategies employed during the first Gulf War, and the unique capabilities of various fighter planes. Our guest served in the United States Air Force for 27 years, achieving the rank of colonel. Participated in numerous missions, quantified by 4,500 USAF flying hours, 13 combat sorties, and 169 combat hours during operations such as Southern Watch. Received significant awards and honors during their military career, including a distinguished flying cross for saving a valuable airplane during their first combat sortie, an award from the Association of Old Crows for Electronic Combat Planning of Proven Force during Desert Storm. I introduce to you Kurt Dittmer. My first introduction, if you will, to aviation was quite some time ago. I was a grade schooler, and I had took a trip with my parents to see my uncle out in Colorado. And one of those days that we were out in Colorado, my uncle took me up in a plane, and we kind of flew around for a bit. I remember we looked at his house from the plane. And that was kind of my first aviation experience outside of, you know, obviously knowing or flying, being in a plane and flying to a destination like a vacation. So I'm curious, Kurt, what initially drew you to aviation and what were your first experiences?
Kurt Dittmer:Well, my dad was a fighter pilot, a three war veteran. So he actually, as a kind of getting into his background, so he enlisted into basically the aviation cadet program World War II. So he got selected at the time. He graduated high in his class, but he went to bombers. So he actually went to the B-17, but he walked into the wing commander of the B-17 and said, Hey, sir, I want to be a fighter pilot. He was 19 years old. So they said, Lieutenant, I like your spunk, but you're not going to be a fighter pilot. It's 1943, because all the bomber pilots were getting killed. So that was attrition was 6%. I want to kind of look in the history books. So he said, I'm going to do you a favor, Lieutenant. And he ran him through the course twice. First time he went through, he was a copilot. Second time he went through, he was a 19-year-old aircraft commander. So he took his B-17 over his crew, and the nine crews that went over with his, this was the only one that came back. But while he was there, he couldn't leave. He finished his, they went from 25 missions to 30. And that was essentially a death knell, because those extra five missions at 60% attrition is pretty ugly. So his odds were against him, but they made it. So his crew made it. And then he was looking around for something to fly. So he flew fighters. And he was delivering them to the bases because they were bringing them off the boats. And so he ended up walking into a P-51 base and say, hey, you need pilots? He goes, I'm a volunteer. So he's going through training, AWOL. And they're training him in the bomber command comes, hey, what are you doing here? He says, I thought you sent me. No, we didn't send you. Well, I'm almost done. They said, OK. And so he became a fighter pilot. And he flew P-51 Mustangs. And so he was basically, they had so many combat hours, they gave him, he became a flight lead and was flying for combat. And he got his first kill by diving down from 25,000 feet, rolls out behind an MB-109 and shoots it down. And he went home, landed and, you know, celebrate all that kind of stuff. But that night his chest was hurting and he had collapsed along. So they told him he couldn't leave before, bomber command, told him he couldn't leave because of the invasion. It was, you know, super secret. But now they sent him home because he had a collapsed lung. And so anyway, went to Oklahoma and ended up getting back to flying again. So his one lung ended up being better than a normal man's, you know, two lungs. And so he got back into flying, was flying the P-51s for the National Guard in Oklahoma. And they activated and they told him, hey, they're looking for volunteers or whatever. They wanted to take him back active duty as a bomber pilot. He said no. So he volunteered and went in and it's an F-51 now. So it was a fighter ground attack, went to Korea and fought in Korea. And then while he was there, they said, hey, if anybody wants to be a jet pilot, F-86s, you got to go active duty. So he volunteered and went to active duty and flew the F-86. So that was the one that had about 14 to one or 12 to one kill ratio. So he ends up getting three kills. So now he's got one in me, one or nine. He's got three kills. He's trying to be an ace. But he called my mom and said, hey, stay on my last flight. He actually got two, shot down two. And so he wanted to stay. And she said, well, you'll be a bachelor if you do. My brother was born a year later and I was born a year after that. So that's how we got introduced to being able and being with my dad. So he took us flying a couple of times as kids. But the best gift you could ever give any kid, we didn't understand it or know at the time. But we're in El Reno, Oklahoma. And this guy, we go out to the airport every so often. We try to get some flights and that type of stuff. So we're out there with my dad. And this guy, he's got a Satabra. So it's an acrobatic paperwood airplane. And he's hitting the headwind. So he's probably doing about 30, 40 knots of ground speed. He lands and he goes, who wants to buy an airplane? My dad goes, how much? Shows 1800 bucks. He goes, I'll go get the checkbook. So we jump in the car, drive in to town. Knox is doing, hey, mom, I'm buying an airplane. She goes, how much? 1800 bucks. Okay, gives him the checkbook and we went out and bought an airplane. So I learned how to fly before I could drive a car. And my brother, so I was 14. My brother was 15 and liked it nearly as much as me, but he didn't like the yelling. My dad would, keep your head on the throttle and you're gonna keep your head on the throttle. My hands get tired. So he'd do things and he was kind of teaching you seat of the pants flying. So to me, it was just, it was the most fun you could possibly have. There was nothing better than, other than, keep your head on the throttle. Well, I found out later as you're reading his memoirs that he was shooting a MIG, but he had both hands on the throttle. The F-86 had six 50 caliber machine guns in the nose. So he's hitting it and pieces are coming off, but he's not closing because he's, and someone starts shooting at him and bullets come over the cockpit, he reaches down, the throttle had rattled back. So he was in almost idle power. That's why he wasn't gaining on this airplane. That was his fifth kill. So I learned how to fly and you never took your hand off the throttle. I'm going great. If I ever get a chance to shoot one down, I won't let the throttle rattle back. So anyway, so that was my dad's, you know, he had war stories out wazoo and he never told them in front of my mom. We always, but if he was ever with a bunch of other fighter pilots, they'd be telling these stories. And my brother and I would be hiding behind the couch listening because he didn't want us to know all that stuff. What he did is he he said, this is the best gift ever since unlogged flying time. Because he wasn't an instructor. He was just letting us fly. He put us in the front seat and he taught us everything about flying. But when the Air Force first sees you fly, they're going to think you have golden hands.
Dylan Carnahan:So Kurt, you, I mean, what a what a rich history, first off, right? And you're kind of born into that. You're hearing all these stories. You're getting unlogged flying time, right? And you're you're being indoctrinated and you you enjoy that. You enjoy flying. Can you tell us about your journey to becoming a fighter pilot?
Kurt Dittmer:Sure. Yeah. And by the way, if you want to read the stories about my dad, Nancy got a book. Every one of the grandkids and all of my uncles, all the kids across the Dittmer family got a book. It's called Old Tap. Just ask her about that. You can read it. It's a 99 pages. It's a quick read, and TAT stands for Tired As Tiger. So one of the things that happens with fighter pilots is they never call you your name. So like my call sign, TAT call sign, is two lips, and everybody goes, why two lips? You know, that's not the flower, because my brother was lips, and he had big lips. And then we would fly on the same schedule, and they put lips and lips, too. And I became two lips. That's one of the things about flying fighters. So to get to the fine for me, the bottom line is I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. My dad took us early on while we were going from El Reno to Colorado Springs, just step out 58,000 acres of this pristine, beautiful chapel against the mountains. It was beautiful. I mean, it was just one of those places and you're kind of having to work through to be an athlete, to be a leader, to get into the Air Force Academy was at the time was called the whole man concept. We kind of bastardized that to the manhole concept, but it was how you could, you know, be this best person that you could be because you had to compete for an appointment to the Academy and so the Air Force Academy to me, my brother got in first. So he was the lead in the pack. He got in. And I remember when you graduate from high school, the recruiter came and said, you know, you probably haven't seen Carl Dittmer around very much because he's been working hard on this stuff. And I know you've seen a couple of some of these $2,000 scholarship and, you know, this one, his scholarship is equivalent of a $71,000 full rides for your scholarship. You know, well, and their draws are dropping. So I'm waiting for my graduation that they're going to, the recruiter is going to come and say the same thing, but he didn't. But the bottom line is, is you go to the academy and they pay you. And you know, the restrictions are you can't be over 27, you can't be married, you can't lie, cheat or steal or tolerate amongst you, anyone who does, you can get kicked out for missing a class. I mean, so it's not, you're getting an education and they're paying you, but it's, it's a lot of, I'll just say pain. So I mean, it's, it's there to test you, but it's also building you into an Air Force officer. So having some flying experience, you're kind of just looking at is that all you're thinking about as a freshman is you're getting yelled at, you're getting yelled at because you got to memorize all of the, every fighter in the US inventory, you have to memorize, you know, do Hayes quote, the discipline was made some free nation, you know, soldiers are a free nation reliable in battle, you had to do all this stuff. And while they're yelling at you and you're, you know, skivvies. But I have one of these upperclassmen says, look, I, first of all, they couldn't hit you. And so I was extremely happy because I've been beat up by my brother all my life. And here he just yelled at me and beat me up. Now they can't beat me up. But this guy goes, look, if you were in F4, you got a backseater and you're on fire, here's all the emergency procedure steps that you have to have memorized. Do you think you're going to be more stressful than what I'm doing right now? And you kind of look at the guy and you know, no, you're probably right. It is more stressful. He says, this is easy. And he goes, just learn how to think, how to memorize and repeat things from rote memory when you're under stress, because that's what's going to take. That's what it takes. That's what you have to look for. So when you have that mindset, that's your first year, and you're just trying to get through it. And my brother said, look, and he was a jerk to me because he would leave notes in my box and he was thinking about quitting. But he got through his, you know, his freshman year and he said, look, do good, do really well, do do well on academics and do well with the military order of merit. And you'll get on the superintendents list and you will get into the soaring program. And I said, okay, you know, what's the soaring program? Don't worry about it. Just do well. So I worked hard and I did well. And sure enough, I got in the soaring program. What that meant was they had these sailplanes that the cadets, the instructor pilots were cadets. And so you come in as an underclassman and you are now on your summer in a three week period, you end up with a private pilot's license in the glider. So the tow pilots were all Vietnam vets flying these super cubs because they had to be super charged. But they would launch and you were essentially learning how to fly against a piper cub because you were flying behind it like you were gunning it. You're being towed by a rope, but you're learning the actual all the things that you need to do to go into combat. But here I am as a first time I fly, the instruction goes, damn, you're a natural. And I go, well, yeah, it's just something that comes naturally to me. So anyway, bottom line is I got in the soaring program. I got my pilot's license for soaring. Then I became an instructor. So I flew 600 sorties in my four years at the Academy, flying with students and taking cadets. It was just what could possibly be better is you're getting your education and you're flying. Now, they also force you to do T-41s, which is a Cessna 172. And this was to make sure that you could fly a powered airplane. There was a very select few that got to do the gliders and be instructors. A lot of guys, every cadet got in a orientation ride to see what gliders were like, but only a few got selected for the program. So I got a good deal. It was one of those. OK, thanks, bro. Well, by me. But anyway, but the T-41, now you're flying with instructors that are, they're not cadets, so they're actually academy academic instructors. And I happened to have one, it was a fighter pilot. So this guy was going, ah, the hardest thing about flying is getting the radio calls and all the other dumb shit that the Air Force forces you to do. He says, but that's just a penalty you have to pay. It's not a big deal. I said, OK, got it. So anyway, so I'm flying with him and he's going, ha, you know, you're steep turn. You keep dropping like 200 feet. So he flies over top of a plateau where he's pretty high in altitude, you know, 7,000, 8,000 feet. But we're 200 feet over top of this plateau. And he goes, now do your steep turn. Well, 200 feet, you crashed. No, I'm climbing on this thing. He goes, no, I want you to stay low. Look out the window. And that's what you eventually learn about flying, is looking out the window is your best horizon. It's the best, you know, best reference for seeing whether you're descending or, you know, rather than trying to look in at the instruments. And that really was, you know, it was painful because all the radio calls and all the procedures. But that is exactly what you had to do when you got to pilot training. So from so when I graduated, you went to pilot training. Your first airplane is a T-37. So it's a twin engine jet Cessna. So Cessna, they call it the Tweet because it was the most productive that you could ever have of a system that took jet fuel and turned it into squealing noise. It's just this noisy. So you always you had to wear headsets and round them. They were just nasty airplane. But anyway, so I'm doing really well in the class. And I ended up getting my instrument check early, which was good because I was at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma. And it got to be wintertime and there's ice and the T-38s, which is your next airplane, can't fly in the ice. So they would send one airplane up to go fly in the ice and see if it was clear enough for the T-38s to fly it. And I happened to be the only student with the instrument check done. So I've gotten all these extra sorties until one day, we went to move and the ice on the wheels actually, I'm trying to move the airplane when it finally moved, the tread rolled off of the tires and the instructor goes, okay, we're not flying, let's go in. And then the instructors for our class finally said, all right, it's been icy, it's been snowy. You guys are going to be the dealers for Monte Carlo night and you're going to be learning how to play. For us, it was craps. And so we taught, you know, it changed from a really difficult, horrible experience to they finally became our buds. But after they finally got us through the instrument checks, then the next thing you got into was the T-38. So you graduated about it was probably about six months of T-37 and then you were into the the T-38 for the last six months. And the T-38 was supersonic twin engines. The engines weren't very, I won't say they weren't rugged because they were actually from cruise missile engines. So they were only supposed to fly one time. The cruise missile goes in and blows up. No engine. Who cares? But now you put them into this delicate airplane. But it was, man, it was like being in a race car. So everything you did, you were working towards getting the structure pilot out of the back seat. The T-37, you were working to get them out of the right seat, but even flying, you're on the sideways. That's a crew concept airplane. When you turn one direction, you're below the horizon. When you turn the other, you're above the horizon. In a T-38, you're on the horizon all the time because you're in the middle. So a tandem airplane is just so much nicer than a side by side. You're flying the first flight, you're doing an afterburner climb, you're going super side and you're going, dude, I got to do this. Really stubby wings, so you had to fly it all the way around. And so it was a dream. So that was the T-38. And now you're competing against your classmates the whole time. So the T-37, a lot of guys were really good from being light aircraft. Once again, the T-38, it was a make or break. Because in the final turn with the stubby wings, you didn't have a lot of lift. So you had to, you're working right on the stall as you're coming around. I loved that airplane. And in formation, you're a rock solid. So the key pieces that they're trying to teach you is, hey, can you fly with another airplane? Can you judge closure and not hit them? And then stop and get in your formation. So your rejoins and all that stuff. And those were things you had to have depth perception. You had to be also aggressive without being stupid. And then they're flying me with like the squadron commander was a lieutenant colonel fighter pilot, hey, let me fly, you know, hey, sir. I'm the one getting training, but we would do tactical formation. He loved, I mean, he's going, oh, come on, please, let me fly, you know, hey, sir, I'm the student. He goes, okay, all right, all right. So anyway, but you could tell he just loved flying. And so the fighter pilots that I flew with, it was just one of those things. My dad told me, he says, son, when you're going to the academy, tell them you want to be a fighter pilot. So well, what is that? Because someone who flies fighters, but just realize people will hate you because you say that. They're just. But now I'm starting to see it. The T-38 truly was wonderful. I mean, it was just, I mean, it was like, okay. And so when we got our assignments down, you got to pick, well, I was the number two. So you put in what you wanted to do and the top guy wanted to be an instructor in the T-38. So he was going to stay. And so now I'm the top, top one in the class. So I wanted an F-15. And at the time, the F-15 was brand new. This is the first class that was going to get an F-15, one F-15, but not for Vance Air Force Base, but for Vance Air Force Base, William Air Force Base, Reese Air Force Base, Laughlin Air Force Base, Wichita Foss. So I'm competing like 10 of these UPT bases and one F-15, and I didn't get it. So because I didn't get what I wanted, they looked at everybody else had put F-4 first, and they got their F-4s that were fighter qualified. And I got a T-33, and T-33, it's actually, I'm sitting here going, my dad goes, what did you get? Did you get an F-15? No, sir. Did you get an F-4? No, sir. What did you get? I got a T-33, he goes, oh, son, I flew those before you were born. And that was his lead in to the jet. So coming out of a P-51 where if you put the throttle up, it would torque roll and you could kill yourself. You had to take off and modulate the power on it. You call it a T-33, and there's a throttle, and you have to keep the exhaust gas temperature is all you care about because it could go overheat. So you're walking the throttle up, and there's the thrust in idle was the same as an F-16. Anyway, the thrust in idle was the same as the mill power for it. But the highest thrust was like an F-16 in idle. So I'm looking at this, so the guy that was running my class, my instructor, he goes, look, if you want an F-4, we'll get you one. But call the guy at the T-33 squadron because it's a lead in to the F-106. So I called this, and it was a major firm, and I call him up, and I say, hey, sir, Lieutenant Dittmer, I'm just, they're telling me to call you because I got a T-33, and they were offering me an F-4. And he goes, son, you come here, and you're going to fly twice a day every day. You're going to fly your ass off, and you're going to go in the best fighter in the inventory. So come down here. And it was Tyndall Air Force Base. I said, okay, got it. So here we are, and it's up, I mean, it's no kidding. There's 30 lieutenants, and no squadron just has lieutenants. This one does. And they all come in to the T-33s, and our missions were to fly and do intercepts against each other. We were training ground-controlled intercept officers on their radar scopes, so they would just do intercepts and intercepts. So we learned, you worked your eyeballs out, because that was 2010 vision. I could see the T-33 at 14 miles until he turned on, nose on, and then I couldn't see him again until six miles. But you knew exactly where they were, and you're following the directions of the GCI controller. So it was all innate. But what our boss was a lieutenant colonel, Buffalo Rome. So Richard R. Rome, call sign, Buffalo. So Buffalo had been in Vietnam and he had been watching the T-28 that landed. This guy got a Medal of Honor because one of their guys crashed. He landed on the runway, grabbed the guy, put him in the back of his airplane, single seat airplane, stuffed him in there, took off. And this guy, Buffalo Rome, was going, boy, he's crazy, but he was strafing all of the Viet Cong that were trying to race in and stop him from taking off. So he watched the guy get a medal of honor. And his mantra to us is, even though we're just doing training, we're going into fighters, and you need to be a fighter pilot. And this was really their chance to look at who was really going to be fighter pilots, because some of the guy, some of the lieutenants, the 36 lieutenants, they didn't go on to fighters. But you got selected and you did that. That was it. So bottom line is, I did T-33s for two years, it's unheard of, but I averaged 60 hours a month. And that was like unbelievable flying. You're flying twice a day, every day, just like you said, and then just across country one weekend every month. Now, the wife's not too happy about that stuff, but it was like, dude, this is lieutenants in heaven. So anyway, bottom line is, and then I got selected for the F-106. And that was also at Tyndall Air Force Base for the training. So we got to watch the F-106s all the time. We were their targets when they were doing their intercepts. We learned everything about them. But so the first time I got in an F-106, they told me, hey, you got an F-106. I'm in Phoenix, and I'm with another T-33 pilot. And there's a 106 that's a B model that's going back to Tyndall. He said, hey, I heard you just got an F-106. And I go, yes, sir. And he goes, want to ride with me? I'm going to Florida. So I got my first ride in the backseat of an F-106 B model. And it was unbelievable. 1,895 miles unrefueled. But he's coming in to land, and he's going, does this place have three runways? I go, yeah, good. Because it comes in at such a high angle of 10, you can't see what's in front of you. So it has three runways. He's got two on either side. He's hoping there's one underneath him. But that was just one of those. You're kidding me. No, no, this is the way it is. Anyway, so I got to go into the 106. And so when you're learning to fly, it's called a B course, basic course. So it takes about six months. And you fly all of the, first of all, you take the airplane, you max performance, see how well it does in the high alpha, where you're having, you know, close to stall and that kind of stuff. And then you eventually learn the radar, and then you learn the tactics working together as a lead trail to go after an adversary. And so F-106, you're defending the home. So we were Air Defense Command. And so typically, well, my assignment was going up to KI. Sawyer, Michigan, Upper Peninsula. And I went there for four years. And while I was there, you basically had to pull alert twice a week, where you go in to work in the morning, you go on alert, and then you come off the next day, and then you'd fly. So I was gone a lot. And then one week every month, you'd go on alert at your debt, which would be down in the south. So we initially were at Tyndall. And we had a place where you had two airplanes on alert. You had a third was a spare. But you had two airplanes on alert, and you had three pilots. And so one pilot would have a day off, and then you have two days on alert. Then you had a day off. So you just kind of flopped in and out of this thing. So the alert was kind of disappointing. Until we moved to Charleston, and then there were bear bombers. Russian bombers would go along the coast. And they would tip their nose in on the air defense identification zone, make the fighters scramble. Then they'd turn out and see how much, run you out of gas, they'd turn back in. So you got to see bears and actually go and scramble on adversary airplanes. And they would go from over Iceland and then go down to Cuba and land. And then when they come back, they'd do the same thing and harass all of us. But we got to fly. You had to take off from a sound sleep to airborne in five minutes. So imagine that kind of the heart rate that you got to go. So you had your boots, you had everything lined up. So you'd jump out, pull on your flight suit, jump on your boots, race down. And then the crew chief has already taken everything off the airplane for the launch. Do you need help strapping? No, I'll strap. Pull in the straps, put your helmet on, and you're starting the airplane. And your heart's racing, but you only had about 85 seconds from the time the engine started till you were launching. And then you're on battle stations and gone. So the scrambles were awesome. I mean, it was just something that, dude, this is, this is, ew. So that was the 106. Did that for four years, which got me into the Interceptor Weapons School. While I was there, they took your best instructors and they sent them down to the weapons school. And the weapons school is like a PhD for that airplane. So you learn everything about the radar. You learn everything about all the different weapons. You employ all of them. And so as a young captain in the 106, I had gone down to, used to have now, you'll find this hard to believe, but for air defense, we carried a nuclear tipped genie rocket that was designed to knock out Russian bomber formations. So the reason you had all the bases on the northern tier, like Minot, North Dakota, Griffiths, New York, KI. Sawyer, was because that was the shortest route for them to come bomb the US., Chicago, and hit the, so that's how everything was lined up. And so these rockets, this is in the doors on the, they actually had internal weapons like the F-22, the F-35. The 106 had internal weapons so it could do Mach 2 on takeoff, so there was nothing hanging out to slow it down. But the doors would open and this nuclear rocket would pop down and it would pull a lanyard and your airplane had to be perfectly steered because it was going to be an arrow going about eight miles in front of you and blowing up. And so when it came out, it passed, when it passed your nose, first time you saw it, it was doing Mach 3. So it was just this explosive, wow, and then they had a 50 pound phosphorus charge that would mark it where the nuke had just gone. I mean, go boop. And if you were looking at it, you were blind. You were supposed to turn and pull five and a half G's and be heading the other direction so the nuclear blast pushed you out of the fight. But it was the only air-to-air missile that had a PK of one. So it was the probability kill of one. And there's no other weapon that had that because they figured some of them would get two or three bombers. So anyway, so that was the 106th. All right. That was so my first fighter, my first love, I had 1069 hours in that airplane and a weapons instructor and then our it was obsolete. So they were shutting down our base, they were shutting down the airplane. And we got promised that we were going to get fighters. And so the first couple of guys got air liaison officers who were going to do non flying jobs. And so we got some some help from the Secretary of the Air Force. Hey, these guys took they stayed open a little bit longer for this town. You guys give them assignments. So I ended up getting an F-16 and the F-16 was to Kunsan in 1985 and Kunsan F-16 was a model. That was a Block 15. We flew Block 10s, Block 15s. And then so I ended up going to school in the middle of February. We left KI. Sawyer in a snowstorm and we got to Luke Air Force Base. And no kidding, there was snow on the Saguaro Cactus and snow on the welcome sign for Phoenix, Arizona. But the next day we were swimming in the swimming pool because water was a lot warmer than Lake Superior. And it was like, wow, what a great place. So got in the F-16. It was fantastic. Unbelievable. But I had never dropped a bomb before. And everybody else had been doing bombing and strafing and all sorts of stuff. We did air to air missiles and air to air gun. And I was qualified on all that stuff. But everybody in my class had done bombs. So they said the instructor goes, oh, we're just going to get just go ahead and skip the bomb academics. And I go, excuse me, what's this VDU-33 thing? And they said, oh, conehead. And they call us coneheads because we had our radar was our big, big threat. And so anyway, one of the guys goes, he was my classmate, was a weapons instructor in the F-4. So he knew everything about all the bombs and all the weapons. He goes, I'll teach you. So anyway, I went through and ended up getting top gun for low angle bomb. I won't even tell the story of how that all happened. But then I go over to Kunsan and now I have basically 30, 40 hours of F-16 time, a thousand hours of 106 time, 1200 hours of T-33 time. So I got a lot of hours, but I'm a wingman. So that's just how you show up. And so when you're flying and fighting the F-16, everything is done as a pair. And then that pair belongs to a four-ship and that four-ship belongs to a squadron. And so you'll have four or four, typically about 12 fighters in a group. And then you'll have Eagles to protect you. And the 106s, we used to protect the F-16s. The interesting thing was they would, man, everybody was ignoring us to go after the F-16s. Why? Because they carry the bombs that are going to hit their base. So here I am in, we're going into these mass exercises, and you'd be flying, you're going, gosh, here comes another bandit. And so you got more kills because they were all coming to you to try to stop the bombers. After one year, local remote in Korea, I went back to Luke and taught, and I taught for three years. And then I was about to get out of the Air Force, long story. But I had 800 hours F-16 time, and they said, hey, you know, gosh, we're opening up a squadron in Netherlands. And I said, Netherlands? And the guy that's going through it, I'm teaching him how to fly the F-16, and he's going, gosh. And I was a hunter, and he's a hunter, he's talking, oh, man, we'd love to have you. This is going to be great. And he comes back the next day and he says, you're not going to get the job. And I said, oh, why, he says, well, apparently, the colonel's wives on this base don't like your wife. My wife, she does, like, takes everything on as a debate, so anyway, bottom line is, I put my papers in to leave, and the new wing commander invited me and my wife in, he said, and his wife was there, and he says, hey, I've been looking at your record, you've got a really good record. Don't get out because of this one incident. I would never have let that happen, and I said, well, you know, all right, sir. But I would like to, you know, get an F-16 to Kunzahn, or, you know, to Germany has been my first choice, and I never get what I want. And he goes, well, I know a guy over there, and I said, that's a problem. That's the point. You always have to know somebody to get the jobs instead of just doing good work. Not only you're doing a great job, don't get out. So I'm going, oh gosh, okay. So I stayed in, and I pulled my papers. I just made major. So they had to take my red line and take it away because I went in and got promoted. And so I finally called the assignments guys, and I go, hey, yeah, I don't know if you've heard of the pathological lawyer from Saturday Night Live. This is a, I like to, I have a major bovanizer. I'd like to speak to major bovanizer. Oh, may I ask what it's about? Well, yeah, I need him to give Major Dittmer an F-16 to Germany. He goes, oh, may I ask who's asking? Oh, yeah, it's General Creech. Yeah, that's the ticket. And he's laughing, he's going, all right, Major Dittmer, I'll pass the message on. And he hangs up, calls me like five minutes later, how about an F-16 that's banged on, Germany? Well, yeah, but I mean, let me talk to my wife, but yes. And why or how? And he had said, they had a guy go into their weapons school and he busted out. They needed a weapons officer. And I had just done the weapons, you know, weapons school in the 106, but I got re-glued, so they sent me to Germany. That's when I got to go to the war. So when I got to Germany, my brother was my sponsor. So here's Lips, and I became two Lips because, but he was already flying F-16s there. So I'm flying F-16s in another squadron. And the Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. So my boss was the chief of weapons. I was weapons for the F-16. There was a weapons officer for the F-4. So we're all sitting there going, how the hell did we get in the war? When Saddam Hussein invaded, everything went to Saudi Arabia, to Oman and down to Bahrain. So they were putting all the stuff, and it was tactical air command. So everything from the United States was based there. And we're going, but wait a minute, Turkey is a NATO ally. We're in Europe, we're in NATO, we're their allies. So we worked up a plan, no kidding, back in Napkins, that we could come in and actually get all the way to Baghdad because all those defenses were to the south. They had nothing from the north. We could come in from the north and have a back door to Baghdad that would disrupt their ability to defend themselves. And so we briefed this up, and no kidding, take this, and we're going up to the, end up with a four-star general going, all right, you go to Turkey. So I go to Turkey. You start writing the go plans or war plans for how we're going to do these attacks. And the Turks have said, look, they're going to be our neighbor 5,000 years from now. But if you go to war, we'll let you go to war. So if as soon as the shooting starts, then we will give you permission to attack. So I'm there at Christmas and I'm working through all this stuff. And sure enough, on January 17th, boom, we got the go ahead to cross the border after they did the first attack. So anyway, I'm working on all the plans. But I can't even, they wouldn't let any more airplanes into Turkey until the war started. So now finally, the wild weasels, and wild weasels are important kind of, and it's a whole other story, but wild weasels are surface-to-air, we attack the surface-to-air missiles. So wild weasels go in first, stir up the sands to bring up their radars. We shoot anti-radiation missiles at their radars and knock them down so the bombers come in and drop their bomb. Works pretty good. So anyway, so I'm there writing these war plans. And now there's a squadron coming I've never flown with, but it's my brother's squadron. So he's there and they show up. And they're going to let me fly eventually. But anyway, I'm going to be flying nights because I have to work nights. And so my first combat mission is on January the 21st. 17th was when the war started. And my first combat mission was, let's just say, wasn't great. So the way it happened is we knew where we were going to Mosul. We had these B-52s were going to drop bombs, F-111s were going to drop bombs. We had to go south of Mosul. And to get there at night, you're flying in air refueling in the weather. And I hadn't flown in a long time, but I didn't tell anybody. Probably out of currency. But anyway, so I'm doing all the air refueling and everything's going like it's supposed to, except when we cross the border, you're hanging on the wing of an F-4 because he has a guy in the backseat, the electronic warfare officer, that has the electronic order of battle on the size of a dinner plate. And the nose gunner is just, he's the taxi driver to get this guy close enough where he can shoot the missiles at these radars. And so you had to be hanging with him because we didn't know where the radars were. And he was going to tell me a heading and a type of radar and I was going to shoot. And my brother said, whatever you do, you know, don't look at the harm. It's really bright. You'll get night blindness. Okay, got it. Here, have a gun, you know, all this stuff. I'm going, gosh, you know, this is combative. I've done a lot of combat in red flag, but nobody ever dies. And the interesting thing is, is you all get better because you land and go, wow, that was a good tactic. Let's do that. You know, and you try new things, but we went in to combat and that crossed the the border and it's dark out. There's no lights on. There's nothing. And we go all the way down south of Mosul. I'm hanging with my F4 and and then we turn north because there we're well south of Mosul. The bombers are coming in from the north and they said, man, when the bombs go off, all hell breaks loose and sure enough, the bombs hit and what they were doing, this Iraqis weren't stupid. They wouldn't turn the radars on early because we shoot them, but they knew whoever dropped the bomb was in within five miles so they could bring the radar up and shoot them. So that was their time to get the kills. So here we are looking, waiting and they're all waiting too and as soon as the first bomb hits, AAA shoots, missiles are going off, my F4 goes, slap shot, roll in, 310 heading, I turn 310 heading, I select a roll in, I pick up a button, I close my eyes, I open one and look down at my knee board. It's got white paper. That's not so bright. I look up and then the missile fires. So I guess I had time, you know, lost track of time and so now I'm blind. And no kidding, the F4, I call, hey, two's blind, and it's nighttime, it's hard to see, and he's got all his lights off except the little green ones. And I look and I go and he has shot a missile a few miles away. I point at him and I lock on and I say buddy lock, and he doesn't answer and I go, oh, I locked the wrong guy. I'm on the wrong F4. But he's happy because I've locked on to him. I didn't know that. I wish he had said something. But anyway, so I'm working my way out and I'm now, single ship in red flag, if you were by yourself, you're dead. And I'm by myself at night in a combat zone. There's no airplane flying. There's nobody going to shoot me down. But I finally get to the, getting close to the border. I'm going, I'm going to make my first on that so I go, warning, warning, fuel love. And I look down and I go, holy shit, I've got still like 4800 pounds of gas. Oh, that's all in the wing tanks. And they stopped feeding when I tank inverted. I did the fence check and everything right, but I never looked at my gas. Otherwise, I would know they weren't feeding. And now they can't feed. And so I'm going, oh, no, I'm about to lose an airplane. And so I snapshot called AWACS, could you give me a snapshot to a tanker? And I'm seeing a rotating beacon off to the north of me as we're turning towards, we're kind of cutting the corner on Syria to head back to Insulik. And he said, oh, no, you got a tanker's three, oh, it's a 270 for 280 miles. I go, oh, that ain't going to work. Our primary divert was the Yawber crew, it was 225 miles. No, that's not going to work. I go, but maybe someone, the backseater that the F4G goes, standby for coordinates of Batman. So he sends me the coordinates of Batman, I type it in. And by this time, I've gotten rid of my tanks. I got rid of the, so I'm climbing and I'm up at 45,000 feet. And I get to 45,000 feet and I type in Batman and it says I'm going to get there with zero fuel. I go, yes, because if you got zero fuel at 40,000 feet, it means you're going to descend, you'll have enough fuel to land. So I stand by for frequency for Batman, so I call Batman. Batman, Batman, this is Gen 04, I'm emergency fuel. No, cannot land here. No, no, no, I'm emergency fuel, I have to land here. Now, by this time, I'm looking down into a valley of mountains, and I'm seeing clouds that I'm not sure if they're fog or clouds. And there's black holes, and none of them are lit up. And I said, could you turn on your airfield lights? You cannot land here. So they turned on the lights, and I can see the trees light up. So I go, okay, it's not fog. And now I'm descending in, and I've got to find it. And I have no idea which way the runway is. I pop through the clouds, and it's pretty low. That is really low. But fortunately, it had just rained. And off in the distance, the town of Batman, the lights are on. So the bottoms of the clouds are lit up, and I see the reflection of the runway in the water, because it had just rained here. I put my gear down, the lights come on, the guy starts screaming, you cannot land here. I said, I have to land here. I have 250 pounds of fuel. I'm just about to flame out. I'm coming around the corner. And the rest of the story was, you see, never say you cannot land here. There's men and equipment on the runway. They're doing repairs. Well, those men and equipment are running like off the runway. They're moving vehicles. I come through and I land. I still, you must hold your position. I will hold my position. I'll do whatever you want. Go ahead. You know, what do you need? And this guy drives up in a truck and he looks at me and he goes, the international signal for what the hell? And I said, I need fuel. He goes, follow me. And he's a follow me truck. So I'm following him. As soon as I clear the runway, the engine goes and it's out of gas. So I turn up to hide all that stuff so it doesn't do emergencies. But my airplane stops. The lights go off. This guy's driving and he comes back. What? Yeah. Give me my chocks. He chocks my airplane. And by the time I crawl out, the place is surrounded by Turks and the Turks weren't in the war. They were, but they were very interested because they were the closest base to Iraq. And so they didn't know if they were going to be attacked. And they were, I was very lucky I didn't get shot down because they had AAA and a bunch of other hair-trigger gunners. So the bottom line is, we get the General Tuxoy, he says, Major Dittmer, what kind of missile is this? I say, well, that's an AGM-88 high-speed anti-irradiation missile. Well, where's your other one? I said, sir, that's in a Roland right next to Mosul. He goes, slaps me on the back, he goes, come with me. We go to his command post, he sits me down, he opens up the big board, pulls up the map, and I go, oh, gosh, you're way behind. And I show him all the radars that we've killed. And then he goes, what can I do for you? And he's giving me tea and some donuts. I said, I need fuel. Oh, your airplane is fully fueled. I need a flight plan. Oh, you have a flight plan. I need a ride to my airplane. He says, come with me, puts me in the car, take off. I can catch the airplanes that were landing as I got to the airfield. So they were still landing when I came in. And they said, is your airplane broken? I said, no, it's code one. I got rid of the fuel. The tanks weren't feeding. Oh, it's fixed because those are gone. So anyway, so that's my first war story and the hardest one ever. But anyway, so sorry about running you over your time.
Dylan Carnahan:No, no, this is no, this is perfect. That's perfect. I mean, what a what a great journey and what a, you know, intense kind of recount there at the end. I mean, that's that's a lot.
Kurt Dittmer:I mean, you know, it's called war stories and they have to have 10% truth. Fighter pilots. That's kind of the way we work. So you can embellish. But you got to have at least some truth. But yeah, no, it was actually I sent them a case of the booze. I went over the guys that would actually go to Batman or our special forces. And if we ever punched out, they would go in and rescue us. So they would fly into the Batman with the night vision goggles on a C-130. So I gave them a case of the booze and I sent a note to General Toxway. Thank the controllers. Please share this with your guys. They saved my airplane, quite possibly saved my life. And then three nights later, knocking on the door, I opened it up. It's one of the spooks. He's got beard. Hey, are you Major Dittmer? Yes, sir. He goes, I'm not a sir, I'm a sergeant. He goes, got a birthday present for you. And it is a birthday present from General Toxway. And I opened it up. It's four bottles of wine. But the thing is General Toxway says, in Turkey, we say when a man's life has been saved, he is reborn. And your new birthday is now, 21 January.
Dylan Carnahan:That's pretty good.
Kurt Dittmer:Yeah. And my brother and I drank the worst wine I've ever had. But yeah, it was worth it. So that's being a fighter.
Dylan Carnahan:You're reborn that day.
Kurt Dittmer:Oh, yeah. When I do it over, everything we've done, you know, from all the assignments, yeah, I do it over every bit of it. I do it over again. I mean, I'm so jealous of the guys going into F-35 and F-22 now. You know, it's just a whole, yeah, once you're in it, you're there for the, it's just a life.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. Well, you know, to what advice would you give to aspiring fighter pilots who might be listening to this podcast?
Kurt Dittmer:Yeah. So if you want to be a fighter pilot, it's kind of changed. The meritocracy piece is huge. When I was there, you were fighting all the time to be number one. So they're kind of going, you know, this is not as important. You're going, well, you actually have an advantage if you had flying time. So they want to take that advantage away from you so that they can then judge equally from the pool of folks. And you're going, OK, you know, good luck with that, because the flying that my dad did was spins and a bunch of other stuff that, you know, that just won't you won't get in in the school. So but it's desire, but it's a mindset, you know, to fly airplanes. It's it's great. It's wonderful. But if you're flying an airplane, you want to get that other person out, you're a fighter pilot. I don't want to hear I don't want to say is the gear clear? Oh, yes. Go ahead and raise it. OK, I'm raising the gear. Yeah, you're raising the gear. You don't say anything. You don't even most of the airplanes, you don't even run the intercom. So it's just silent. It's and you can go back to, you know, the high flight poem, you know, but I've reached out and touched the face of God. I've been up to 68,000 feet because I could. But boy, I was still supersonic at 140 knots. And I'm going, man, that's my stall speed. And it's supersonic. Oh, but wow. I mean, anyway, there's you just there's things that you see. But one of the things I used to teach the young kids when they're coming into the F-16, oh, wow, this is F-16. It's wonderful. But being a fighter pilot means you're going to take the fight to the enemy. There are no points for second place. Your family gets a flag and a triangle. And your enemy got a spot in Arlington. So you're not playing for, oh, gosh, you know, I don't get a trophy for participating. If you're participating in the war and you want to support it, there's lots of missions. Flying a C-17 in and delivering stuff, flying a tanker and giving gas. But if you're going to go fight in the war, you know, there was an F-117 pilot that dropped. And I tell the kids this, that he dropped a bomb, and it was a hard and deeply buried target. And it was this, they knew it was a command post. But the families of the generals and the officers had been put in this thing. So he killed a couple hundred civilians with a single bomb. And you're going, that wasn't the hardest sort. The hardest sort is he had to fly the next night and go after another target. And that's a mindset that you got to understand. And that's part of what we, you're building a warrior, and all the training you do has to be focused on that. And there never was a chance. I've watched some kid was leaving the F-22 because everybody picked on him. And they're always, no, I can never do anything right. Dude, if they didn't talk to you, if they didn't give you feedback, if they didn't try to make you better, then that's when I would be worried because we always, I mean, the longest debriefs, two or three hours, even if you did something good, if you had a colonel, when I was a colonel, if I flew with somebody and they didn't debrief me on something because they, oh, you're a colonel. No, you got to tell me what I did wrong because I got to get better so I can go to war and survive. And to be effective, what I told my kids, and I had two boys, that, hey, I want to go to the war. I went to Desert Fox. I was a squadron commander and I took a squadron, I took all my pilots to do Southern Watch. And they're going, oh, God, don't do that. And I said, dude, everywhere I go, something happens. I was in Germany for the fall of the wall. I did Desert Storm. I did all of these things. Everywhere I go, something happens. And when we, three days after we got there, we went to war. And we dropped laser guided bombs at night, hitting these targets in Iraq, because they kicked out the UN inspector. But that was like, dude, you can, so they, I told them, look, if I turn and run, you can turn and run. If I'm going, you're going. So just follow me. And I took them in and flew the first mission in. We dropped our bombs. Everything, the guys come back and they go, sir, it was just like you said. I go, yeah, check your fuel. Because I didn't that one time, you know, but it's like harder than you'll ever be in combat because your adversary doesn't come back from the right. They don't get better because you don't debrief them. And most of the adversaries that we're against, you know, China, they don't debrief. There's that saving face, you know, oh, I'm still alive. I'm brief with Koreans that, you know, you didn't shoot me down. I said, well, my pepper's on your head. But yeah, I didn't pull the trigger. But if I'm gunning you, someone else could gun you. No, no, no, I'm not dead. Okay. That's there's a mindset that has to be in getting better. And it's just there is no points for second place.
Dylan Carnahan:You have to embody that.
Kurt Dittmer:Yes.
Dylan Carnahan:You know, you have to be willing to accept that criticism because it improves your proficiency. And if you're not proficient, it can mean the loss of your life.
Kurt Dittmer:And, you know, dude, tell me what the standards are. And I'm going to I'm not going to only meet the standards. I'm going to do better. And so you're always just constantly striving to get better. And the guys that they don't do that, they shouldn't be in fighters. And so I told them that brief every new class coming into Luke, I say, hey, go ahead, don't it's seven, eight million dollars to go to the class, you know, so per pilot. So you don't want you want them to go. Look, I want to do something else. OK, do it before we spend that amount of money. The money now is probably more than that. And again, you we were paying $5,000 an hour for F 16 time. And now it's probably close to $16,000 an hour because you got all the breakage and parts that have to be replaced in that type of stuff. So it's expensive. But there's your training the whole time. It's never the same. Every sortie was different. When you're fighting somebody and they told you, oh, yeah, never go up. All right, I'll go up. And if you can't beat me, then maybe it's not a bad thing for me to go up. Well, how did you do that? Dude, don't be, you know, sit there and just say, hey, give me something to work with. So anyway, it's so dynamic, you know, even with the bombs, just weather and winds and all sorts of stuff. But, gosh, like I said, I enjoyed every, I would not trade any of it for what we've done. So it was neat. So thank you for paying taxes. I really, really appreciate it. And the guys that are flying F-22s and the gals, they appreciate it too, because they get to keep doing it.
Dylan Carnahan:Kurt, a great story, a great hearing your stories. I just want to say thank you for sharing your knowledge and time today. We really appreciate it.
Kurt Dittmer:It's nice meeting you. I look forward to actually seeing you in person sometime. Watch some of your podcasts.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Kurt. We talked about how US fighter jets were scrambled during the Cold War, World War II bomber pilots, and the importance of implementing feedback prior to fighting an adversary. Go to this episode's show notes to see any resources Kurt mentioned during our episode. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast. Get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.