President Obama finally authorized the use of lethal force. Crocket read aloud from the chatroom feed, “ISIS is encroaching on Irbil.” A call came in. He was just in the right place at the right time. Later, he would go on to become one of the Navy’s best test pilots, but in that moment, he was in the spotlight in Iraq.īobcot hadn’t been handpicked to fly that day. He was the technically inclined JO in our squadron who fixed the computers that ran our planes, programming and coding them himself. While we weren’t necessarily good friends in school, in the squadron, I’d come to know him as one of the good guys. At the Academy, he’d been a member of the Navy marching band, called the Drum and Bugle Corps as a matter of fact he was the king of the D&B, aka, the drum major. He was, however, your stereotypical nerd. He was not your stereotypical fighter pilot. Bobcot, one of my classmates from the Naval Academy, joined the squadron a few months before me. I quickly checked the schedule and saw that Bobcot and one of our lieutenant commander WSOs were flying as Hellcat 23 for the day. Two F/A-18s are circling high above the target, standing by, with weapons solutions on the artillery, waiting for clearance from Washington, DC, to strike it. an ISIS artillery piece is aimed at the city. “Hellcat 23 is overhead in the town of Irbil. He rattled off the feeds like a seasoned NFL commentator, calling the play by play. Crocket read from a classified chat room, reminiscent of the days of AOL Instant Messenger, except all the transmissions were top secret. “That artillery piece is definitely going to cross the line.” Standing on tiptoe, I saw that the SDO had all his screens dialed into the live feeds from Iraq. “Dude, today’s the day! It’s going to happen.” I heard someone shouting from the horde of JOs hovering around the duty desk. Still, after getting a good morning of sleep, I went up to the Ready Room to stand my short duty of the day in the tower, surprised to find the place was abuzz. Since I’d just been on duty for twenty-four hours, crew rest regulations mandated that I could not fly for eighteen hours after finishing my all-nighter. Bush into combat.ĪugEmbarked USS George H.W. In the following excerpt from Jet Girl, F/A-18 Weapon Systems Officer Caroline Johnson gives an intense and thrilling account of her first contact with ISIS in Iraq.

X wing cockpit targeting screen