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Have you ever had an experience so intensely frightening that your a$$hole clinched up involuntarily? When you do, and your sphincter is so tight that you couldn't pass a fine sewing needle through it, that's pucker factor zero.
One day back in the late 80s, I was politely minding my own business working on isolating radio targets on the ground from 30K feet in the air when I peeked out the window and saw a Casa 101 jet fighter with a full complement of munitions flying less than 100 ft off our right tail rudder with its wheels down. On further observation, the pilot was giving the thumbs down signal indicating that he would like us to follow him to the airport and land.
I alerted the pilots so the situation and they thanked me for the heads up and requested me to relay that information to the mission controllers back at the air base.
Allow me to clarify a few things about "the situation"
- We operated in a pressurized cabin at roughly 30K feet
- There were only 2 operators and 2 pilots on the aircraft.
- Our particular airframe was a Beechcraft with twin turbo-prop engines and no weaponry affectionately referred to as the Crazy Horse platform.
- We were each (the pilots and crew members) armed with a whopping .38 revolver and 6 rounds.
- In addition to our peashooter revolvers, we were equipped with thermal pads on top of each operator equipment rack, with a pin to pull to melt said equimment rack down in the event that anyone attempted to board the aircraft.
- A Casa 101 is a fighter jet with missiles and onboard machine guns.
- We all (including the jet pilot) originated from the same airfield.
- The jet pilot had been dispatched from a control tower connected to our own by a hallway less than 20 ft long.
- Basically, we were f*cked from a tactical perspective.
So - pucker factor zero was in effect, and we proceeded to comply with the intercept and RTB.
By the time we landed at the airstrip, there were Honduran military in jeeps with uzi's machine pistols and ring mounted machine guns everywhere. Our hands were on the pins for the thermal packs and we were ready to explode with the plane if required.Per instructions from MC and had covered all windows from the inside. Mission control advised us to "stand by".
In the end, no one attempted to board the plane and we were informed that this was only a drill being conducted by the Honduran Air Force.
It was pretty exciting and more than a little scary not knowing that from the onset.
