High School Student to the Top Secret USAF Red Eagles Soviet MIG Squadron Part 1 (444)

0:00Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

0:05Rob Zettel:And I'm not exaggerating this, Ian. He had to be less than 50 feet away. He was so close I couldn't even see his wingtips. But in a nanosecond, all I remember is going through my mind, I thought, I'm dead. Have no fear. Chosen Foods is here to defend your favorite foods from the forces of seedy oils and sketchy ingredients. with cooking oils, salad dressings, and mayo, all powered by the good fats from 100 % pure avocado oil and simple, delicious ingredients. Chosen Foods. And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the matchday spread. He's reaching for the buffalo wing. Perfect. Hang on, what's this?

0:42Oh, he's going for a can of Pepsi, too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion! This is Cold War Conversations. If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to Cold War history. Please make sure you follow us in your podcast app so you don't miss future episodes. Lieutenant Colonel Rob Zeman Zettel is the author of American MiG Pilot Inside the Top Secret US Air Force Red Eagles In part one of a two-part episode he reveals how he made it to the top secret US operation that wouldn't feel out of place in Top Gun He joined the US Air Force progressing to an aggressor squadron where his unit replicated enemy tactics, techniques and procedures Rob shares anecdotes of training, close calls in the air and the intense journey through pilot training.

1:49He provides a vivid account of training engagements that put you right in the cockpit. I'm delighted to welcome Lieutenant Colonel Rob Zeman Zettel to our Cold War conversation. My family had no background in military or aviation whatsoever.

2:07Rob Zettel:And back when I was a junior in high school, I guess I probably would have been about 16 years old, a guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to do a year from then when I graduated from high school, whether it would go on to college or whatever. And my two other brothers are going to the University of Notre Dame. And so in my simplistic mind, I just thought, I'll just go to college and do what they did. And the guidance counselor looked at me and he said, well, I'm really more interested in what you want to do after college. And mind you, I'm only 16 years old, so five years from then is like an eternity.

2:45So I blurted out the one thing that was stuck in me. Again, I say this having never even been on an airplane, much less fly one. But I told him, I think I'd like to be a pilot. So he looked at me, puzzled, like that was probably something he had never heard before. And then he asked me another hard question. He said, what kind of pilot? And I inherently knew that people had, of some means, bought and paid for their lessons. But I didn't have any money. I really didn't even know how to go about it had I had the money. So I thought, I guess Air Force or Navy, because they'll teach me how to fly.

3:25And he sat back for a minute and thought about it. And I'm sure he meant, and I'm serious about when I say this, I'm sure he meant well. Maybe he just didn't know the processes that were involved or avenues to let somebody get the pilot train. So he thought of three or four reasons why that would never happen. So he deflated my balloon right away. And I remember walking out of his door. I can still picture exactly the office in that high school. turning left down the hallway and thinking, okay, now what do I do? Again, I'm 16, so what's here today is gone tomorrow, right? So go on a few more months, and it's probably July.

4:09This would have been 1971. My older brother, who's just getting ready to start college at the University of Notre Dame, he got this big packet in the mail from the Air Force ROTC detachment. it. And luckily, I just happened to be standing in the kitchen when he got it, and he promptly threw it in the bin. And I asked him, what was that? And he said, some stuff from the Air Force. So I asked him, you mind if I look at it? Because I'm thinking, Air Force, what's that have to do with University of Notre Dame and College? So I picked it out, asked him if I could open it, and he said, sure. So I opened it and dumped out the contents on the kitchen table.

4:48And there were all these nice, glossy pamphlets and showing wings, fighters, all kinds of things. And I read the information and I handed it to him and I asked my brother, Mark, I said, am I reading this right? If I go to college, this program is called the Air Force ROTC, Reserve Officer Training Corps program. If I go to college and I qualify and I finish in four years, they'll send me to pilot training. So he looked at it and goes, yeah, looks like me. So that's what started it. And obviously, I go into a little bit more detail in the book and how I actually got there because it was so many forks in a road where I could have gotten left, but I ended up going right.

5:31And it turned out to be the right, correct direction for what I wanted to do. And little by little, I ended up at a university. It wasn't the University of Notre Dame was the College of St. Thomas up in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I showed up as a brand new 18-year-old, had shoulder-length blonde hair, looked like a kid off the beaches of Southern California more than the farmlands of Wisconsin. But I knew I wanted to join the Air Force and ROTC was my ticket there, so I thought. So after two days of being there, I went to the barbershop, told them, cut it off into a military kind of style haircut.

6:13And mind you, this is like at the height of the Vietnam War, 1972, fall of 72. And these barbers looked at me like, are you sure you want to do that? I said, yeah, take it off because I'm leaving here. I'm going right over to the Air Force ROTC attachment to sign up. So 20 minutes later, with my golden locks laying all over the barbershop floor. I march out of there, go right to the Air Force ROTC detachment. And four years later, I graduate and get my commission and degree. And I'm off to pilot training about 10 months later. It's really the short of how it happened. Wow. Wow. That's an incredible story there.

6:54So you're sent for training. Did you find that you had an immediate aptitude for flying it just came naturally to you i would say in the sense it did

7:07Rob Zettel:and i kind of gauge that and from the standpoint for a lot of things i think that most people will go through if you really have a passion for something what may seem like work to others to you is just a labor of love. So, yeah, I soloed fairly soon. And then once I got to undergraduate pilot training in the Air Force, I still remember to this day when I went over to the T-38 section, the supersonic trainer, which was basically the second half of your one year in Air Force pilot training. I remember the first time walking out to the T-38 on the ramp and the instructor, he took two or three of us out there.

7:50And I remember sitting in the front seat of that supersonic trainer. And immediately I thought, this is where I belong. I'm home. This is it. And just from there, it just took off. I guess I'd rather be lucky than good, but it all worked out.

8:06Rob Zettel:But yeah, it didn't seem to come. It was a lot of work. I was pretty disciplined on it and didn't screw off because I knew I had really one chance. You get one shot in pilot training to graduate near or at the top of the class. And so I thought, better give it your all because if you mess it up, you'll end up in something other than a fighter. So that's what I did. I put myself to it. And luckily, surprisingly, maybe to some people, but I did finish at the top of the class and got my first choice out of pilot training. So that was it. Wow. Being a fighter pilot is probably the main reason somebody would want to be a pilot in the U.S.

8:44Air Force, what percentage of your class didn't end up being fighter pilots?

8:50Rob Zettel:We had a class of 32, and it was less than 10%. So now there was a lot of people who were rated as qualified to fly a fighter, but they just didn't get one because there were so few that came down. In fact, my first choice was to fly an F-15, but the F-15 at the time, again, I'm graduating in March of 1978, the F-15 had only been out for about four years. And F-15s weren't handed out to every pilot training graduating class. They would come down, I think in the previous year that I'd been there, I'd maybe seen four or five get handed down that entire time. So it seemed like every other class might get an F-15 and only one.

9:37And to get that, you had to be the top graduate. So while I put down an F-15 at the direction and guidance of my flight commander, I put down the F-4 as my second choice. And that's what I ended up getting out of pilot train is an F-4 Phantom. And I was the only lieutenant, only second lieutenant to get a Phantom out of there. Yeah, very fortunate. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And how did that compare flying the F-4 Phantom to the T-38?

10:07Rob Zettel:They're two different, obviously two different airplanes. And I've kind of used the comparison if the T-38 is a sports car, then the F-4 Phantom was a muscle car. They both had their means of agility and that sort of thing. But they were two really completely different airplanes. And I love each of them. They were just great. And the F-4 was a fantastic airplane. It's the go-to right out of pilot training. It was an iconic fighter at that time and had been a frontline fighter in the Air Force for the previous 14, 15 years. It had been a heck of a record in Vietnam. And it was a warfighter. So when you strapped it on and you started those engines, you knew it right away.

10:47Rob Zettel:And that's quite something, yeah. Yeah, and a fondly remembered aircraft in the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm as well, the Phantom. What was your first overseas operational assignment? Yeah, that's a good question, Ian. My first one, I was fortunate enough to be selected to go to the Pacific. So even though I had requested to go to Europe, I actually got one of my last choices, but it was very fortunate. it. So I ended up going to Okinawa, Japan, to the 18th Attack Fighter Wing in the 12th Tactical Fighter Squadron at the time, and at Kadena. And that was my first tour, operational tour in the Phantom, which brought me there.

11:32Rob Zettel:And I was there for 18 months in Okinawa at Kadena. And then we were flying F4D models at Kadena at the time. And it's there that you get your first experience of flying against the aggressors. Can you just describe to me who the aggressors are? Yeah, another good question. The aggressors, for those of you who are listening that aren't initiated to what it is, but the aggressors were a dedicated similar air combat training squadron throughout the Air Force. And we had the Air Force, U.S. Air Force had four of them, two at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, one at RAF Hulkenberry in the U.K., and then the one at the 26th Aggressor Squadron at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, which is the one that I would later go to.

12:23Rob Zettel:But those are the ones that was a squadron that provided the dissimilar air combat training throughout the Western Pacific to all the U.S. Air Force fighter squadrons out there. And the aggressors, being a dedicated dissimilar combat training squadron, flew the F-5E, which simulated the MiG-21. And it had basically very similar in size and performance. So it was an excellent aircraft to emulate Soviet tactics. So it's at that point that you decide you want to move into being an aggressor. Is that correct? Yeah, I did. I'd been there about five months. And again, the 18th Tech fighter wing was predominantly, when I first arrived, they were all F-4s.

13:14I think we had five squadrons of F-4

13:16Rob Zettel:Vantoms there, including one which was a reconnaissance squadron. And they were slowly starting in the summer of 79, they started transitioning to the F-15. But in the meantime, the primary role of all the F-4s there at Kadena was air-to-ground. Consequently, we spent the bulk of our training doing air-to-ground missions, dropping bombs, that kind of thing, special munitions. And we spent very little time, I think I recounted, went back through my logbook, and of the entire year I was there, I probably averaged less than two sorties per month. This is out of probably an average of 15 to 20 sorties a month.

13:58Rob Zettel:total, less than two of them were dedicated to anything air-to-air. So, yeah, you were probably current flying air-to-air, but you certainly weren't very proficient at it, especially when your primary job is dropping bombs. Fast forward, after about five months on there, the aggressors come up to Kadena, and they're going to fly with the 12th Tactical Fighter squadron for a solid week. So this is my first introduction to the F-5 and flying against something other than a big, noisy and smoky F-4. And what led me to want to pursue being an aggressor is my very first sortie flying against the aggressor.

14:43Rob Zettel:I went out 1v1. And for whatever reason, I think this is how they set it up. And I look back at it and I go, this just didn't make any sense. But they had myself and my back seater out in front in a hard wing F-4D with external tanks on it, 9 ,000 feet offset to the aggressor who's going to be attacking me at about 400 knots. And at the fights on call, go ahead and start defensive maneuvering and try to defeat this attacking F5e, who is very agile, weighs about a third of what I do, and he can just fly rings around me. Needless to say, having very little experience flying air to air, and the first time I get an F5e, I got my behind pretty well kicked twice.

15:30So I came back very disappointed because I knew I had the talent. I just didn't have the training to do very well, and the setup wasn't very conducive. So I remember walking out of the debrief and luckily the operations officer, a guy, a gentleman at the time who was a major, Pat O 'Brien, no kidding, that's his name. POB was his nickname. But he pulls me aside after I leave the debrief and he says, hey Z-Man, come here. And he pulls me aside out of earshot of everyone else and asked me, he says, what do you want to do in your career? Do you want to fly air to air or do you want to continue dropping bombs and hauling iron?

16:15And I looked at him and I was surprised that he asked me that because I had just gotten my behind waxed pretty well. I told him, I'll tell you what I like to do. I like to be that aggressor who just led us through a debrief. I want to be that guy in a year or two years, but I don't know how to get there from here. So he had some sage advice for me, and it was an interesting, I can still picture again the hallway exactly where it was, there in the 12th Tactical Fighter Squad in the hallway at the far end of the hall. And he told me some things that I didn't know, but he said, hey, if you want to do that, you need to learn how to fly air to air.

16:54And the only place you're going to do that is if you get a follow-on assignment out of here because I'd be leaving in a little over a year from then because the F-15s were replacing all the F-4s. And I was a single guy at the time. So he told me, hey, you can go back to the U.S. and go back to an F-4 squadron back in the States, but you're never going to learn how to fly air-to-air.

17:16Rob Zettel:They're going to send you to another air-to-ground squadron. You'll be a wild weasel. Maybe they'll send you some RTU, whatever the case is. You're never going to learn air-to-air, and because of that, you'll never be an aggressor. So here's what you need to do. if you want to. And he knew I was a single guy. So he said, why don't you try to get up to Osan, Korea, the 36-tack fighter squadron? It was the last F-4E air superiority squadron in the entire U.S. Air Force. But he said, you're going to have to call in some markers to get up there because if you call the people at assignments in headquarters back half at Hickam in Honolulu, they're going to want to send you.

17:56Rob Zettel:If you tell them you want to go to Korea, They're going to send you to Kunsan, which is another air-to-ground wing flying F-4Ds, the same airplane you're flying right now. And you're going to make their job really easy because they're just going to take you, put you in there because you're already qualified air-to-ground, your flight lead. All the things that they're looking, this can be the easiest slot they have to fill all year. But you're going to tell them you don't want to do that. So anyway, I won't belabor that story, but that's when I decided that's what I want to do. I wanted to be better, but I just knew I had to go somewhere that was going to provide me with the training and the experience to get there.

18:36Rob Zettel:So, again, long story short, I worked it over the next six or eight months. Actually, the squadron commander was nice enough to loan me, if you will, an F-4 to fly up to Osan Air Base to meet the squadron commander there. I'm sure that's the first time anyone's ever flown up to meet him and tell them they'd like to come and work for him. And that's what I did. So it was a little over a two-hour flight from Kadena up to Osang, Korea. I remember getting there on Friday afternoon and walking into the 36th Tech Fighter Squadron. And I had already coordinated with the commander. The guy was by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Joe Hurd, a great guy.

19:17Rob Zettel:And he entertained this young lieutenant, listened to what I had to say. And I think he'd gotten some feedback from some other people as well over the previous months from both the aggressors and O 'Brien. And it worked out pretty well. Six, seven months later, I ended up getting a innocent orders to go to that squadron. Got a Sam's Cafe pizza order up. You know the best part about this spicy Italian sausage? I voted for this topping. Yeah, just another perk of being a member. Come join us. Sam's Club. I wrote a little song to remind you Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value.

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20:34Rob Zettel:Great question. And I do make it to Osan, and I spend a year there. And while I'm there, I get selected to be an aggressor, a by-name request to show up and be an aggressor and be assigned to the squadron there at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. But before I did that, I had to go back to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada, and go through the formal U.S. Air Force aggressor training program. So while I'm there, not only do I learn to fly the F-5E and go through all the tactics and dissimilar formations, but we're pretty well schooled on what current intel had on Soviets and what kind of formations they flew, how they flew the airplanes as far as tactics.

21:15Rob Zettel:And then, of course, the F-5E being very similar in size and performance to the MiG-21, now we just kind of replicate their tactics using the F-5, obviously, instead of a MiG-21. and then show those tactics to frontline operational squadrons in the U.S. Air Force. So whether it's against an F-4 squadron, F-15s, F-16s, what have you, we would typically start most engagements from probably the smallest we would have is a two versus two, two F-5 aggressors versus, say, two F-15s, or as we got into larger packages, sometimes as many as four or six F5s against four or maybe eight F15. When we do the larger packages, that's when we would show our adversaries, be it, let's for instance, say it's F15s that day, we would give them about a 40 nautical mile setup.

22:14Rob Zettel:And then in that, as we started running towards each other, we would show them some kind of a known Soviet tactic, whether it be a pincer with you have one bandit going high to the east, the other one low to the west, and maybe a two ship coming up below from the center and that sort of thing. See if they could sort that out and then, of course, target us pre-merge. And if they didn't target us pre-merge, see how well they did once we got to the merge and then really started turning with them. And once we got to the merge, that's when our training as U.S. Air Force fighter pals took over because we didn't really know how the Soviets, or North Koreans for that matter, in the Pacific, how they would do when they got to the MERS.

23:00Rob Zettel:Did they fly the airplane aggressively? How good were they at basic fireman rivers? That sort of thing. So all we could do is, hey, we're just going to fly this airplane the best we can, the best we know how, and we're going to show you right now the best we can in this FIV, which is trying to emulate a MiG-21. So that's what we did. And we would go out and a mission usually is about a 1.1, 1.3. And we usually give them two to three setups like that. And every time we'd have a different engagement, we give them a different look. On the first one, it might be a pincer. Next one might be some kind of lead around, whatever it might be.

23:39Rob Zettel:But they would get three good looks. And then, of course, we'd come back and we'd sit down and we debrief them face to face in their flight room with their leader and all their members. And we'd have a face to face. They'd have their video recorders going. We'd have ours going. and we'd basically go through each engagement and say, hey, this is what went well. This is what didn't go so well and are you going to do better in the future? So that was really the value of having aggressors. One, a dissimilar airplane that doesn't look like their airplane is very small, very agile, very fast and really gave them compounded some of their problems.

24:18So it was excellent training. and when you're flying those training missions are you electronically registering the kill in some shape or form is it being measured that way or is it purely in the debrief that you're telling them actually i shot you down twice or something like that early on again this is when i was flying