GOING SUPERSONIC with U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds! Pulling 7 G’s in an F-16 -Smarter Every Day 235

Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:

—

**DESTIN:** Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. Today, we’re going to hang out with the Thunderbirds of the U.S. Air Force. We’re going to see if we can break the sound barrier. The temptation when making a video about flying in an F-16 is to use editing to make yourself look as impressive as possible. But that’s not this video, because I’m not awesome. These pilots, however, are incredible.

Through this experience, I learned that an F-16 is very different from a T-38. Several years ago, I went on a familiarization flight at Randolph Air Force Base in a T-38, a dual-engine trainer used to train fighter pilots. I learned a lot about the effects of g-forces on the cardiovascular system, and for the first time, I felt the forces of a fighter jet—5 G’s, in fact.

When I got the itinerary from the Thunderbirds and started reading it, it said things like “get plenty of sleep,” and I realized I hadn’t really done that. Then it said to hydrate, and when you think you’re hydrated, drink some more. This looked like a big deal, but I thought, “I’ve done the fighter jet thing before. It has to be similar, right?” I was wrong.

Let’s start with who the Thunderbirds are. They consist of 12 officers, eight of whom are highly experienced fighter pilots, and 120 enlisted personnel from nearly 30 different career fields. These are the crew chiefs, mechanics, and technicians who ensure the jets are always mission-ready. Every member had to apply and was handpicked in a highly competitive selection process. Their mission is to plan and present precision aerial maneuvers and exhibit the capabilities of modern high-performance aircraft.

They’ve operated a variety of jets over the years, and they’re currently using the F-16 Fighting Falcon, commonly known as the Viper. The FAA and the military highly restrict supersonic flight over land due to sonic booms. My flight was scheduled to happen before an airshow practice at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. Biloxi is right on the Gulf of Mexico, and there’s a stretch of open water between there and my home state of Alabama where supersonic flight is approved. I was finally going to get to break the sound barrier, which is something I’ve dreamed about since I learned about the physics of supersonic flight.

This is my pilot, Thunderbird 8, call sign Flack, Major Jason Markzon. It turns out Flack was trained by the same pilot instructor who took me up in the T-38, which made me feel a bit more confident about what we were about to do. He explained that the F-16 airframe is incredibly maneuverable, to the point that the human body is the limiting factor.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** What we’ll do when we first get into airspace is a G-awareness exercise. We’ll accelerate to about 400 knots and then pull 4 to 5 G’s.

**DESTIN:** You’re going to test my limits.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Yeah. Right now, you and I are in 1 G. If you’re in a fighter jet and you pull back on the stick and fly in an arc, it feels like you’re being pressed through the seat because of that radial acceleration. If you’re in a 2 G maneuver, your 10-pound head feels like it weighs 20 pounds. If you’re in a 7 G maneuver, your 10-pound head feels like it weighs 70 pounds. I conceptually know all this, but Flack wants to subject me to this environment.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** It’s a warm-up. It’s not so much a test; it’s to make sure our connections are good and that you can breathe appropriately.

**DESTIN:** So when we start, you’re going to know instantly if I can handle it.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Pretty close, yeah.

**DESTIN:** OK, cool. I’ll be listening to your breathing for feedback. When we do our actual G-awareness exercise, it will be a 6 to 7 G 180-degree turn.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Holy cow.

**DESTIN:** 180? That’s 6 to 7 G’s for how long?

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** About 20 seconds or so.

**DESTIN:** What? I’m going to level with you about what I was thinking at this point. We’re sitting there talking about all the stuff that’s going to happen, and I’m thinking, “You know what? I can do this.” I ran a half marathon; I can carry all the groceries in one trip. If worse comes to worst, I’m just going to lay there and take it. I might black out, but I’m good. I understand the math. But I knew I needed to fake a little humility because I didn’t want to say, “I told you so” if something bad happened.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** We’ll do four aileron rolls consecutively, and then we’ll do our max turn 9 G turn.

**DESTIN:** After the aileron rolls?

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** We can do it before the aileron rolls if you want.

**DESTIN:** So this is the shake and bake?

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** This is when the true test of your mettle happens.

After the briefing, it was time for Sergeants Jasper Roberts and Ed Portanto to suit me up. They measured me, fitted me for my helmet, made sure the mask fit correctly, trained me on the ejection seat, and laced up my g-suit. On the way out to the flight line, I was kindly offered a pair of aviator sunglasses, which I declined, and we walked out to the jet.

To be honest, this is where it started to feel real.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Everybody walks in slow motion.

**DESTIN:** That’s fun.

There was a lot of tradition going on at this point, and you feel really special, but your feet are planted firmly back on the ground when you have to put on the g-suit in front of everyone at the jet. If you don’t know what you’re doing, there’s absolutely no way to look cool putting the g-suit on in front of others.

Climbing up to the cockpit of an F-16 is absolutely surreal.

**MAN:** Right foot, right here.

**DESTIN:** Yes, sir.

**MAN:** Take your left hand, put it in front of your name.

**DESTIN:** You put my name on it?

**MAN:** Oh, absolutely.

**DESTIN:** That’s impressive.

**MAN:** Sit down.

**DESTIN:** This is cool.

**MAN:** Throw that helmet on. Look cool.

**DESTIN:** Look cool? That’s going to be hard.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** [INAUDIBLE]

**DESTIN:** Yeah. Left, right, left, right.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** That’s my guy.

**DESTIN:** OK, here we go, the moment I’ve been waiting for. We’re going to point down the runway. He’s going to kick on the afterburner, which means putting fuel in the exhaust to get additional thrust. Hard bank right, shoot straight up to 16,000 feet. This is insane.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** I am ready if you are ready, my friend.

**DESTIN:** I am ready, sir.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Let’s do this. Rocket up. Smoke on. Ready now. Smoke off. Ready now. And on the roll. Here comes the afterburner. There she is. Airborne.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Eight airborne and passing 200 for 5220.

**DESTIN:** And you’re operating radios while doing this. What’s your thrust-to-weight ratio?

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** It’s about one to one.

**DESTIN:** Man.

Just like that, we’re at 16,000 feet. Now that we’re airborne in an F-16, we should probably learn how to read our instruments. This is the heads-up display, otherwise known as the HUD.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** If you look at the HUD, the left side says 351—that’s our airspeed.

**DESTIN:** Yes.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** If you go down from that, the number right below that is our current Mach number, so 0.70. Below that to the left is the current G that we’re pulling.

**DESTIN:** Understood.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Cool. All right, you ready to do that g-ex we talked about?

**DESTIN:** Yeah, let’s do it.

The first maneuver according to the flight plan is the G-awareness exercise—two 180-degree turns. When I feel the G’s, I’m supposed to clench everything up, maintain my breathing, and make sure I’m getting enough oxygen in my brain.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Here come the G’s.

**DESTIN:** 4.6?

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** 4.6.

**DESTIN:** OK.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Ready? Here we go. 180-degree turn coming up. Here come the G’s.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** You got 6.7 there.

**DESTIN:** Good.

The first maneuver we did in the F-16 was already far more difficult than the most difficult maneuver we did in the T-38, which made me realize this is more than I expected, but it’s going to be fine.

Next, we went supersonic. We took the jet to mill power, which means the fastest the engine will go without the afterburner, and we went for it.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** So you can see I’m in mill power right now.

**DESTIN:** Yeah.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** And we’re at 0.99 Mach. So as soon as I go afterburner, we’re going to break the Mach.

**DESTIN:** OK, so I’m looking down here.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** You see that 0.99 Mach?

**DESTIN:** I do see that.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** All right, ready?

**DESTIN:** Yeah.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Here we go. AB, here’s the Mach, man. We just broke it. 1.02.

**DESTIN:** Nothing happened.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** 1.04. 1.05.

Breaking the sound barrier in the cockpit of a high-performance jet is something I’ve dreamed about and studied for years, and it finally just happened. I was expecting a shake or maybe a little rumble. Nothing happened. Other than these gauges that bumped, I wouldn’t have known we went supersonic.

But the reason the gauges bumped is fascinating. This is called a Pitot tube, and this is how you measure how fast a jet is going. As a jet flies through the air, the air molecules come to the Pitot probe and ram inside that hole. If you’ve got a pressure gauge on the back of that hole, you can measure what’s called stagnation pressure.

Another thing about Pitot tubes is they have a second pressure measurement, which is on the side. If you see these holes here, that’s called the static pressure ports. If you take the difference of this and this and plug it into a fancy equation, you can calculate the airspeed of the aircraft.

When you start breaking the sound barrier, weird stuff happens. The Prandtl-Glauert transformation says that an aircraft should experience infinite air pressures as it approaches Mach 1, which would destroy the airplane. This theory is known as the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity.

When an object goes faster than the speed of sound, a shockwave is created. The pressure on the front of the shockwave is higher because the air is piling up in front of it, but the pressure behind the shockwave is at a lower pressure.

When we broke Mach 1, the altimeter reading seemed to go down by 500 feet just before punching through Mach 1. That’s because the pressure is increasing at the static port on the front of the aircraft, but once you punch through Mach 1, the altimeter reading goes up by 1300 feet instantly.

I always knew that was a thing, but I never knew why, and it feels good to finally understand the physics behind it.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** I think we’re a little bit more efficient at supersonic. It just depends on your throttle.

**DESTIN:** What’s the G loading right now?

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** We’re at 3.3 G’s.

**DESTIN:** Wow.

If you’re not trained for 3 G’s all the time, it was incredible. Anyway, back to maneuvers. We’re going to do a split-S, which is flipping upside down and turning back the other way.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Here come the G’s.

Somehow, the beginning of that split-S caught me off guard, and I started to feel overwhelmed.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** How are you doing?

**DESTIN:** I am doing bad.

At 7.2 G’s, my head felt like it weighed over 70 pounds. My vision came down to a singular point, and I no longer had the ability to think. I was getting worried about the upcoming 9 G maneuver, which is why I was happy when flight decided to let me rest with a knife-edge maneuver.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Here comes the knife edge.

At this altitude, it’s tougher for the aerodynamics to hold on.

**DESTIN:** I’m going to level with you. I don’t even remember that conversation.

Looking back at the video, knife-edge flight is pretty interesting. If you think about how wings work, they have a lift vector that comes straight out of the wings, keeping you up in the air. But if you’re turned like this, that lift vector doesn’t really help you.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** You want to try the eight-point roll?

**DESTIN:** Yeah, let’s do it.

We did it.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** We can do a little inverted flying if you’d like.

**DESTIN:** Sure.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** Here we go. You’re just going to feel a little push.

**DESTIN:** Whoa!

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** There we go. We’re inverted.

**DESTIN:** OK, I am tapping out.

**MAJOR JASON MARKZON:** All right, buddy. We’ll cruise back to Gulfport.

And that was it. I tapped out, and I did not think I was going to tap out. My plan was to just take it, but in the moment, that split-S overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t recover.

To learn more about what my body was doing, let’s take a look at these. These are the 3D versions of the semi-circular canals in your inner ear.

**SHARON:** When I turn you in this direction, I want you to tell us that we’re going that way.

When I stop you, I’m just going to take you for a little ride.

**DESTIN:** OK, close my eyes?

**SHARON:** Close your eyes tight.

**DESTIN:** That is messed up.

So it’s my ear that makes me feel disoriented in the Air Force Thunderbirds jet.

**SHARON:** Yes.

When my head bobbled, my vestibular system had a different axis of rotation to think about. Coupled with a maneuver that gets my ear fluids spinning one way and then the other, I just couldn’t handle it.

Flack flew straight and level, and I started feeling better quickly. In fact, after exactly three minutes, I had fully recovered.

We did, however, get to do something really awesome. We flew over to Mobile Bay, which was special for me because my granddaddy used to take me there when I was little.

The return to base was a little weird for me because I knew there were maneuvers left on the table that we didn’t do. Even as we were landing, I was still second-guessing my decision to tap out of that 9 G maneuver.

**DESTIN:** He kicked my butt.

The limitation of the F-16 is the human pilot inside. The control stick barely moves, but that is a 6 G pull you’re watching, and that was enough to totally own me.

I’d like to introduce you to one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met. Her name is Major Michelle Curran, call sign Mace. She’s selected to do some of the most difficult maneuvers performed by the Thunderbirds.

**MAJOR MICHELLE CURRAN:** There are six that are actually in the demonstration. We refer to them as the diamond, which is 1 through 4, and then the solos, which is 5, and I am the opposing solo.

**DESTIN:** I just flew, and I did 7.2 G’s, and I could not think.

**MAJOR MICHELLE CURRAN:** Yeah, so it’s an acquired tolerance.

**DESTIN:** Is it, really?

**MAJOR MICHELLE CURRAN:** I think 7 is a comfortable spot to be.

**DESTIN:** You’re doing 9 G’s at 200 feet off the deck?

**MAJOR MICHELLE CURRAN:** Yes.

If you’re going hundreds of miles an hour, it takes no time at all to go 200 feet. There is no margin for error here.

This is what I learned flying with the Air Force Thunderbirds. Sometimes in life, I get overconfident, and I’m probably not the only one. If I don’t approach each new experience with an appropriate balance between confidence and humility, there’s a good chance I’ll be humbled by force.

So moving forward, whether it’s a physical challenge or a discussion with a friend, I’m going to try to maintain that balance between confidence and humility.

Teaching people how to maintain this balance is what the Air Force does. If you talk to any of these pilots, they’ll say there’s no room for error.

If you’re interested in the Air Force, I will leave links down in the video