So There I Was

Bonk, Top Gun, Marine MAWTS-1 and Test Pilot Stories kick off with him bobbing in the Pacific after less than 500 flight hours in total flight time! Actually, that’s just the warmup.

This week on So There I Was, Fig and RePete sit down with Bonk, a former Test Pilot School graduate, Top Gun instructor, and MAWTS pilot whose career somehow became more ins...

This week kicks off with Kemo back in the saddle, and it goes sideways immediately!

Actually, this one starts fast. No warmup. No easing in. Just straight into stories that make you stop and go, wait… what?

Kemo’s back. And if you’ve heard him before, you already know this is going to be ridiculous. If you haven...

Doober comes back to tell of his acquisition of former US Marine Corps H-34 helicopter, YL-37. The helicopter restoration story starts with a mission that sounds simple. It is not. Actually, it quickly turns into a “wait, what?” situation.

This episode picks up with Doober and the ongoing saga of bringing YL-37 back from the brink. The aircraft is ...

This is part two with Al Cisneros, and this time, it opens in a hurry. No notice. Grab the jet. Haul critical intel. Get it to Saigon—fast.

Actually, what starts as a straightforward courier mission quickly takes on weight. The tasking is urgent, the stakes are real, and the realization hits that this flight matters far beyond just flying from point A to...

This episode drops you straight into one of those situations pilots train for—but hope never happens. A routine mission turns serious fast when the fuel state stops being a number and starts becoming a problem. Not a “tight on gas” problem. A zero fuel over hostile territory problem. And now the math matters. Range, burn rate, options… none of them look good.

Fig & RePete kick back for a raw hangar-talk session unpacking aviation’s razor edge: LaGuardia runway crash layers failing Swiss-cheese style, sim freezes hiding ghost jets, and C-130 crews lining up on the wrong damn strip packed with paratrooper Chinooks. Lessons learned? Night viz traps, CRM meltdowns, bozo announcements, and “shut up, navigator” tricks that nearl...

The C-130 flight engineer is a disappearing breed. However, the stories remain.

In this episode of So There I Was, DC pulls back the curtain on high-stakes aircrew life. We explore the Air National Guard culture and the “routine” moments that turn sideways. Why is the Flight Engineer being phased out? We discuss what i...

Naval aviation stories rarely go as planned. This episode of So There I Was features Matt “Taco” Bell sharing his wildest moments… This episode of So There I Was delivers multiple “wait, what?” moments from Matt “Taco” Bell, from getting in trouble over a low transition (yeah… that didn’t go well), to realizing just how terrifying it ...

Nasty’s worst day Navy starts when a young Tomcat hopeful hears “you’re a qual” on the radio, then “you’re a disqual” at the ladder. Consequently, that gut punch on the Lex knocks his timeline off, pairs him with Bug Roach, and quietly sets the stage to help save two lives later. Actually, he walks from Key West heartbreak in a TA-4J Skyhawk to the...

He Heard Me Go By pilot story comes from Navy pilot Stretch Curran, who flew the massive A-3 / EA-3 Skywarrior “Whale,” the largest jet routinely launched from aircraft carriers.

In Episode 201 of So There I Was, Stretch joins us for a wide-ranging hangar-talk conversation about flying the Whale from carriers, the realities of multi-crew naval avia...

Royce Williams Medal of Honor recipient joins the show to recount a legendary tale. Imagine bringing a knife to a gunfight. In this case, the knife is a subsonic F9F Panther. Furthermore, the guns are seven Soviet MiG-15s. This was just a typical Tuesday for Captain Royce Williams.  

In this epis...

This aviation podcast episode explores real pilot stories, flight safety lessons, and ATC coordination. We dive into the extreme demands of flying high-performance military aircraft like the SR-71 Blackbird.  

SR-71 pilot stories don’t get much better than this. On this episode of So There I Was, we sit down with BC Thomas. As the h...

Discover gripping F-106 pilot stories, test pilot emergencies, and aviation safety lessons from a career pushing airplanes—and luck—to the brink.

Buckle up for Da Benj’s wild ride from F-106 ice-breaking sonic booms over frozen Lake Superior to praying “Please God, don’t let me F-up” in the cockpit of the Douglas Aircraft &l...

In 1967, legendary author John Steinbeck climbed into a Huey helicopter over Vietnam—and what he wrote afterward was so raw, so strange, and so brutally honest that it still messes with pilots and historians today. This episode dives into the Vietnam War helicopter experience through Steinbeck’s eyes: the sound, the fear, the weird calm, and the “ecstasy” of combat ...

Welcome to a sobering and powerful episode of So There I Was. This week, we explore incredible Hanoi Hilton survival stories with retired Navy Captain Mike “Masher” McGrath. Beyond the technical skill of flying an A-4 Skyhawk, Masher details the sheer mental grit required to survive six years of brutal captivity in North Vietnam.

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