Emergency Procedures for the Beechcraft T-34C Turbo Mentor

Maine, Miller drove to this “Cradle of Naval Aviation,” for her preflight indoctrination. At NAS Pensacola, under the umbrella of CNATRA (Chief of Naval Air Training), Miller found herself swept into the current of military acronyms as an SNA (student naval aviator), completing her IFS (introduc- tory flight screening), API (aviation preflight indoctrination), and PFT (physical fitness test), sweating through NAV (navigation) class, and pondering the airborne virtues of fixed- wing C-2s, F/A-18s, P-3s, and E-2s. From combat-seasoned lieutenants and captains with base names like Flemmie and Swannee, she learned which planes use what fuel, basic stick and rudder training, and how to navigate in a 50-mile-per-hour wind, as well as the physics of flying and weather patterns. She got used to being saluted by enlisted men and women with more years and more experience. She endured the barrage of techni- cal training, but it was her first, hour- long solo flight, with three takeoffs and landings, in the Cessna 172 that marked Miller’s most satisfying day. “I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be,” she said. “It was actually a lot of fun.” And she came out of it persuaded that she really did have the nerve to be a pilot. Like most pilots, the five-foot, five- inch Miller is compactly built. Her cherubic features are framed by long, light brown hair worn braided and pinned up like a Swiss milkmaid, in the prevailing Navy style. Miller, whose squadron of 50 was about a quarter female, formed fast friendships with her roommates in the apartment they shared off base. She grappled with, then quickly settled into, the minutiae of base protocol, including the quirky, historic prac- tices that seemed designed mainly to distinguish the Navy from the Marine At a ceremony in February, Miller (right) received her wings, which were pinned to her lapel by her sister, Lieutenant j.g. Sara Everett. Summer 2012 BOSTONIA !! Corps or Coast Guard. She learned who salutes whom, who in the Navy wears brown shoes (aviators) as opposed to black (surface warfare community), how to decipher enlisted men and women from officers based on insignia sewn onto their blue camis, and who wears their caps scrunched (winged pilots). She soon found herself using a pilot’s vernacular, which ranges from the urgently technical, such as NATOPS (naval air training and operational procedures standardization) to the darkly whimsical— ground troops, for example, are “crunchies.” A submarine pilot is a “bubblehead.” When it came to physical training, Miller’s strength—she’s a runner and was on her high school swim team— proved a major asset in water survival trials, ejection drills, and a mile-long swim in her flight suit. She found that the academic and physical demands of training served as antidotes to each other during the 10-hour days. At one afternoon’s NAV class, Miller fell into place with fellow naval officers, enlisted men and women, marines, and flight surgeons. As senior marine on base, instructor Major Chad Swan (Swannee) is the archetypal jarhead, with a linebacker’s build and hair shorn flat as a landing strip. Swannee kicks off NAV class with deafening Top Gun music and a carpet-bombing video. “Get ya at least awake,” he said as the bombs thundered down. “Does anyone here know what you call that many bombs?” Silence. “A shitload!” Swannee had his fun, but the subject was deadly serious and potentially lifesaving. A Cobra pilot by training, he completed seven operational tours: two in Kosovo, three in Iraq, and two in Operation Enduring Freedom. “Been there, done that a little bit,” he told the students. And then he plunged into the workings of the so-called whiz wheel, engine class, and a lecture on the virtues of JP-5 fuel (it’s cheaper). Later, the trainees headed to the NAS pool for the survival swim. Miller had already had to swim a mile after a simulated crash, and she was prepping for the mile-long swim in her flight suit. “I don’t want to sound cocky,” she said, “but I thought 80 minutes to swim a mile,” even with the drag of a flight suit, “was pretty easy.” She also learned how to float to conserve energy while waiting for rescue and how to avoid being scorched if there’s burning oil on the water. “I jumped off a 12-foot tower onto a float and dealt with simulated burning debris on the water,” she said. “That can happen in a plane crash, and it could be two or three days before you’re rescued.” Several weeks later, it was time to advance to the next level, called primary basic familiarization flying. And soon Miller was on her way to NAS Corpus Christi. CORPUS CHRISTI The June temperature in Corpus Christi hovered near 100 degrees, but Miller appeared cool and collected in her zip-up green flight suit. She spent the bulk of her days on the base’s vast tarmac, with Sikorsky prop planes, helicopters, transport planes, and jets endlessly aligned like troops preening for review. Helicopters, she said, were appealing. They hover, they grab, they swoop in and rescue people in the worst imaginable conditions. For the moment, though, it was all Sikorsky all the time. Although the division is arbitrary, Miller’s squadron—the Rangers—was in a good-natured competition with the other primary flight squadron, the Boomers. “The flying’s easy—it’s the takeoff and landing that’s hard,” said Rummel. The plane Miller was flying, a T-34C single-engine prop, is known as the Volkswagen Beetle of aircraft— endlessly reliable and easy to fix. Like just about everything on the base, time flew, and the daunting aerobatic solo came up fast. Miller knew the requirements—the aileron roll, the barrel roll, the wingover, the loop de loop—and she was ready, so ready she could taste it. When it was over, and Miller had nailed it, there was precious little time for celebration. She had to prepare for her first night flight the following day. That evening, she enjoyed a rare relaxed meal at a seafood place on Padre Island. Miller mused about the virtues of helos versus jets, a tough call for someone who still had a few months of training on T-34Cs. By the time she finished, at the end of last summer, a funny thing had happened. Helicopters had lost their luster. Jets no longer soared through her dreams. The machine Miller wanted to pilot was the famously reliable four-engine turboprop P-3 Orion, a long-range surveillance and reconnaissance workhorse that has served the Navy for 50 years. “I chose the P-3 for lifestyle,” she said. “I really wanted to work with a crew and be part of a team.” Miller will fly P-3s with a copilot and crews of up to 10 people. “And it’s more secretive. People on the ground in tactical areas will have no idea we’re up there.” On February 24, 2012, at her wing- ing ceremony at NAS Corpus Christi, Miller finally received her wings, which were pinned to her lapel by her sister, and fellow naval officer, Lieutenant j.g. Sara Everett. What was once a dream had become real—Miller was now a Navy pilot. And she’d have to order some brown shoes. p T H E F LY I N G I S E A S Y. I T ’ S T H E TA K E O F F A N D L A N D I N G T H AT ’ S H A R D .