Target fixation

He has. Go time. We pop a bundle of chaff and pull our noses down in a pure vertical 90-degree dive toward the Gulf of Mexico. I have just a moment to admire the sun sparkling on the emerald green water far below. My wing pilot and I are in a pure vertical dive to “hide” from “Blue Air.” The Blue Air wing pilot, a student in the F–15 upgrade course, has been working to master the radar, and employ the proper armament, while flying formation and learning the art of flying a combat wing.

Like all radars at the time, the F–15 had a built-in “notch” to filter out ground clutter. The “notch” hid targets that did not show opening or closing velocity in reference to F–15 ground speed. Our tactic was to distract Blue Air with a large fake target (the chaff), while diving in the “notch” to lose some 40,000 feet. The Blue pilots would eventually detect the chaff, but with closure speeds of 18 miles a minute, by the time they learned of our ruse, we’d be much closer to them, much lower, placing us at an extreme look-down angle. They would be clambering to find us. The wannabe Eagle Driver might start to panic and lose the radar search discipline we have worked hard to instill in him.

Upon reaching 90 degrees nose low, we unload and roll 180 degrees to place our lift vectors (an imaginary line running out of our cockpits, perpendicular to the wings) in the direction of our pull-out and toward our adversaries. Throttles in idle, we dive, accelerating and constantly pushing on the stick to counter lift, increasing with speed, and keep ourselves pure vertical and hidden in the “notch.” We’ll lead our pull-out altitude by a couple of thousand feet because of altimeter lag; the whirring dials can’t keep up with the speed of our descent. There’s little depth perception staring straight down at the Gulf, so the dive is largely an instrument procedure: Our cross-check narrows almost exclusively to altimeter, airspeed, and glances to confirm a pure 90-degree dive and a proper lift vector, so we will pull out in our intended direction.

Reaching our target pull point, I again zipper click the mic and start a 9-G pull to horizontal—vision narrowing slightly from the quick and high G onset—but once a safe pull out is confirmed, we loosen the pull and begin looking high and to our left for the Blue Air. Now, we just need a visual. “Tally-ho left 10 very high!” I set my lift vector toward Blue Air, slam the throttles into full afterburner, and begin a hard 9-G pull up in a climbing attack.

This is going to be a bad day for the Blue Air student, I think.

“Knock it off.”

I’ll take the far bogey and give my wing pilot…

“Knock it off.”

…the near bogey and we’ll…

“Knock it off, knock it off…”

“Red One, knock it off,” I finally respond to the call, snap out of afterburner, roll wings level, and glare out at my wing pilot, thinking, Our deception worked and we were about to wreak havoc, this better be good. Sensing my frustration, my wing pilot stammers, “Your right wing, you’re missing three feet of your right wing.” I look over and see a ragged edge where the outer portion of the wing ripped off in the pull to attack.

I start a climb, move my wing pilot to a chase position, and with altitude for recovery if needed, fly a controllability check, slowing, configured, until approach speed or abnormal flight control deterioration, whichever occurs first. We always performed a controllability check anytime we suspected structural problems with our aircraft. The indomitable F–15 was unphased and showed no signs of deteriorated control. I flew a straight-in approach, on speed, and landed uneventfully.

I was so focused on our targets—something military pilots call “target fixation”—that it took me three times to hear the knock-it-off call. In debrief we could plainly hear it on the tapes. Target fixation can happen to anyone—flying in a VFR pattern, sight-seeing, in a GA formation rejoin, or on an instrument approach—anywhere that we can get so focused on an activity that we tune out other important inputs and we drop our cross check. In the military, on attack runs, target fixation has proved deadly. In GA, it’s helpful to remember that no matter how important any single task, we can never afford to focus on one aspect of our flying too long, at the expense of all other inputs that affect the success and safety of our flight.

As for the Blue Air student, well, we offered him more flight time for the opportunity to work on his radar search discipline.

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