Playing to Win - 048 - Retired RAF Tornado Fighter Pilot

00:00:00.960 All right, all right. We are live for the 48th installment of the Playing to Win podcast series,

00:00:06.980 and I'm joined today with a retired RAF Tornado fighter pilot, Tim Davies. How you doing?

00:00:14.220 Hey, Rich. Good to be here. Living the dream every day.

00:00:16.800 Excellent. So a little background. Tim and I connected on Twitter. I don't recall why I found

00:00:24.980 your feed fascinating, but I did. That's all that you guys need to know. But yeah, listen,

00:00:31.920 I'm going to tell you some stories about my childhood in a minute and why I think that

00:00:35.680 military guys are amazing. First thing before I do that, I always ask you guys to do me a solid,

00:00:40.480 and if you can come over to YouTube and just help me out with the algorithms, I'm going to drop the

00:00:46.460 link and just click that if you're watching it on Twitch or Facebook or Twitter or whatever,

00:00:51.820 and join us over there and hit the like button for the YouTube algorithm. So, Tim, you probably

00:00:59.040 don't know this, but when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time building scale models of Spitfires,

00:01:05.640 Hurricanes, Lancasters, Measuresmiths, all the World War II planes. By the time the Falkland War

00:01:11.480 came along, I watched that unfold on my television screen in my family room. My dad was in the RAF.

00:01:17.960 He wasn't a pilot, though. My grandfather was in the RAF. He, again, wasn't a pilot. He was,

00:01:21.760 uh, ground crew. He worked on the flying boats. My dad was a radio tech. Um, but watching the

00:01:29.020 Falkland War unfold, I was, I was thinking myself at the time, I, that's what I want to do. I want

00:01:33.560 to fly Harrier jump jets. And I was about 18 or 19, I think, when I sent in my application,

00:01:37.920 uh, because I qualified because I was born in the UK. So I was technically, um, you know,

00:01:42.040 a citizen, although I had a funny accent at the time. But, uh, yeah, they, they turned me down because I

00:01:47.880 was too tall. Um, six foot two, you're too big for the, uh, um, cabin. And apparently you had

00:01:52.920 to have perfect vision, which, um, my vision started to, uh, started to deteriorate at the

00:01:57.080 time. But, um, what was, what was getting in the military like for you? Like, why did you decide to

00:02:01.520 do that? Father's father, father's father's father, father's father, father's father, father of being

00:02:06.460 a military. Um, my dad was a Royal Marine. His father was a Welsh guardsman. Uh, so I was always

00:02:11.900 going to go into something, I think, to be fair, we lived in Portsmouth, a Naval town in the end.

00:02:15.740 I joined the Navy. Um, and I remember when I was a very young, your father does have a huge influence

00:02:20.300 on you. And I remember when I was a kid, I used to talk about maybe joining the airlines or something,

00:02:26.720 and he wasn't that interested. But as soon as I mentioned the military, he marched me down to the

00:02:30.080 Royal Marines office and I was doing pull-ups on the door at 11, you know, this kind of stuff as

00:02:33.180 he was smoking cigarettes with the recruiter going, well, he'd be a good Marine. So from then on,

00:02:37.140 you realize your father's validation probably comes in doing something similar to what he'd done.

00:02:41.100 And, um, her brother followed me into the services. In fact, I joined the Royal Navy at,

00:02:45.660 uh, I, uh, post university, I joined the Royal Navy to fly on the Harrier. And, uh, as I got towards

00:02:52.300 the end of flying training on this aircraft here, the Hawk T1 at the time, uh, later went to instruct

00:02:58.700 on that. Um, the, the Harrier, the Sea Harrier was decommissioned in the Royal Navy. And so about

00:03:03.580 nine of us were either going to get sent around to start helicopter training, which no one really

00:03:07.780 wanted to do after about four years of learning to fly jets. And the Royal Air Force turned around

00:03:11.540 and said, look, guys, you're already trained. You haven't got a jet to fly. Why don't you come

00:03:15.540 across to the Air Force? And so we all, we all did. And I spent about, about four, about five years in

00:03:19.540 the Navy and about 15 years in the Air Force after that.

00:03:21.780 So, so did you ever get a chance to fly the Sea Harrier?

00:03:24.340 Yeah. No, I never, I flew in one. Yeah. I flew with one of the, one of the boys down from

00:03:27.460 Yoverson who dragged one up and we just went flying around and stuff. It's all good fun.

00:03:31.060 Funny, I teach it now. I teach it in, uh, in my, in my flight sim, but, um, no, I never flew the

00:03:35.540 Harrier. No, I, um, I went straight onto the big jets and, and the big jets for you was the tornado,

00:03:41.300 which was, um, I guess that was the frontline sort of, um, jet for the British Air Force. Um,

00:03:48.500 can you, can you talk a little bit about the, uh, tornado and why that was such a special plane?

00:03:52.500 Yeah. So tornado, there was two marks for it. There was the, well, air defense variant in effect

00:03:56.500 and the, the, the GR, the ground reconnaissance area. So I flew the GR4, which came after the

00:04:01.460 GR1, very much similar jet, but some updated stuff. So the GR4 that you can see down here,

00:04:06.420 that one there, I don't know whether you, I can move this a little bit and see a better

00:04:09.140 variant of it, I suppose. There we go. At the top there, that's the 12 squadron jet

00:04:12.820 at the top. And there's a Hawk T2 I struck from the bottom. So let's do that then whilst we're

00:04:16.180 talking about the tornado. Yeah. So, um, this airplane, we flew within war situations,

00:04:21.300 about 30 years and David Cameron, whenever something kicked off in the world, David Cameron

00:04:25.300 would always say, you know, where are my tornadoes? Cause he knew they were a huge asset. And this,

00:04:28.420 this aircraft was permanently at war. So of course we're always training for something, uh,

00:04:32.980 whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan or anything like that. And, uh, it's been decommissioned now

00:04:36.660 for about a year and a half, I think it is, but there wasn't air defense. What's that?

00:04:40.980 Oh, they're out of service now. Yeah. They're out of service now. Only just, only just.

00:04:44.260 Does they replace them with the F-35 or? Well, in effect, yeah, the F-35 and the,

00:04:48.900 the Typhoon, uh, the Typhoon's taken up more of the ground attack role, but it's an air defense

00:04:53.860 platform and the, the F-35 will, will do both. It's, it's not easy doing both roles to be fair

00:04:59.700 as, as a pilot. And I was purely ground attack, initially low level nights and maritime. And then

00:05:06.180 towards the last bit of my tour, I went, uh, pretty much medium level only to be fair,

00:05:09.860 or became a bit of a medium level war, especially out in Iraq. Low level is treetop, right? Like,

00:05:14.420 is it still a few hundred feet off the ground? Yeah, it's 250 feet off the ground as a minimum.

00:05:19.140 So really we'd look to be anywhere between about 270 to 320. Uh, you can do operational low flying,

00:05:24.500 especially in wartime. And we bring that down to whatever you get away with. And that's why we lost

00:05:28.500 some tornadoes back in the early nineties in Iraq. Uh, they just flew into the sand because they're

00:05:33.220 flying too low. Um, we had a minimum of a hundred feet in training. Uh, we did that in certain,

00:05:38.020 there's about three areas of the country where you can fly down to a hundred feet,

00:05:40.740 but if you are flying a hundred feet, the pilot really is just staring out the front head up

00:05:44.020 display and the weapons officer in the back is looking out for everything else, birds and

00:05:47.860 other aircraft and stuff. It's a, it's a very energy sapping task. So routinely you'd be at low

00:05:53.380 level about 250 feet. Yeah. Um, why the tornado? Like, was that the only aircraft that you had the

00:06:00.740 option to select from or? No, at the time I had two variants of tornado because they said,

00:06:06.100 what do you want to do? Uh, I wasn't the most gifted air defense pilot. I find it quite tedious

00:06:10.020 to be fair. Just going around in circles, trying to chase each other. I still do. Even though I

00:06:14.180 teach it, I'm teaching the ground attack element rather than the, um, the air defense stuff. Some

00:06:18.900 guys love air defense, sport Kings and all that kind of stuff. And I understand why I like the

00:06:22.980 planning. I like when you plan something, Rich, you, you start with a target. So someone says,

00:06:27.780 this is your target. Okay. This is a, um, I know an oil refinery, whatever it might be. And then you

00:06:32.660 work it out with a team of guys or girls in this airplane. How are we going to take this? What is

00:06:36.660 it? Is it destroy? Is it harass? Is it damage? They each mean different things. So you really get

00:06:41.300 into, well, how thick is a concrete? What are the fuzings we have on paveway guided munitions,

00:06:45.860 whatever it might be, which ones can we use? How can we get the penetration into the top?

00:06:49.300 Are we trying to harass this to get a three day rebuild or do we want to destroy it? Because if we

00:06:53.060 destroy it, then we could actually affect the local population that could have an adverse effect on the

00:06:56.740 campaign we're coming up against because they have no water, for example, and therefore they don't like

00:07:00.580 us anymore. So you might not want us to go and blow stuff up all the time. So for me,

00:07:05.220 that clinical aspect of, of pairing the sortie and really getting into the details of how many

00:07:10.580 aircraft, how many bombs, how are we going to do at medium, low level? Is it a permissive and

00:07:14.340 non-permissive environment? I do. We have air threats out there, ground threats, you know,

00:07:18.820 surface missile systems. Uh, all that for me was, was so much more engaging than let's go and fire

00:07:24.180 missiles against another aircraft. That was it. So that's, but I did have a choice,

00:07:27.380 rich Jaguars, tornadoes. Um, Harry at the time probably wouldn't have got onto that to be fair

00:07:32.340 because it was full and I wasn't as good as I could have been coming out of training.

00:07:36.100 So, uh, but back then we had a lot of aircraft, but I, I chose the tornado because that's where

00:07:40.740 the men went. I think you're fine. There was, um, there was a base in Oakham. I can't remember what

00:07:47.140 it was called or just outside of Oakham. I don't know if you ever stationed there, but they,

00:07:50.980 but they had, but they had tornadoes there and I visited my, um, I think my aunt and uncle lived there at

00:07:56.500 the time. I was small. I was, no, I wasn't small. I was, I was probably about 20 at the time, 20 or

00:08:01.380 19 or 20, but I remember going out there to visit and they're like, oh yeah, you know,

00:08:04.260 the tornado bases over there. And we just kind of like drive five minutes from her place. And

00:08:08.020 you could literally throw a stone at the aircraft as they were taxing down the

00:08:12.580 runway, you know, if you wanted to at that time. But, um, were you ever stationed there?

00:08:17.140 That was Cotsmoor, wasn't it? The Tri-Tornado Training Establishment, TTTE,

00:08:20.580 with the British and the Italians, et cetera. Yeah, that was Cotsmoor and that migrated then. So

00:08:25.780 they did train, um, three services, German, Italians, and British there. And then what

00:08:29.780 happened is they took up their own individual training after the first tornadoes came in and

00:08:33.220 they split the tornado bases between, uh, Lossiemouth and Marum. And I was a Lossiemouth

00:08:38.340 based pilot. I asked to go as far away from Portsmouth as possible. Where better can you go

00:08:41.940 is Northern Scotland up there in Vinesh. You can't get much further away. So I flew there for about

00:08:46.260 four and a bit years on that big jet. And then the other base, Marum down south in, in Norfolk,

00:08:51.780 I never, I took a jet there once to deliver it and caught a civil flight home. But for me,

00:08:56.260 it's very flat. And it's, um, I mean, up where we had, we had all the locks around Scotland to fly

00:09:00.820 and we had the North Sea. It was great flying. Last of the, uh, great low level flying, to be fair,

00:09:05.860 I think that the Royal Air Force has ever had. Whereas I didn't want to be based in Marum.

00:09:09.940 But I did go to Cosmo. I just never flew out of there. Can you, can you talk about some of the

00:09:14.260 campaigns or is that classified stuff that you can't disclose? No, no. A lot of it's quite tedious

00:09:18.900 to be fair. War, war can be a little bit, no, war can be a lot boring to be honest. And then something

00:09:23.620 happened. What was the most, what was the most interesting thing that, um, you know, happened to

00:09:26.980 you when you were, um, in active duty? Inactive. So overseas theater wise. Yeah. Yeah.

00:09:33.460 So we, well, we had this, I used to write essays about this in the service and there's one I wrote,

00:09:37.620 uh, about, um, you know, about days being dull, but at least you're not a fighter pilot. I can't

00:09:43.540 remember what it's called now. It's on my website, fastjetperformance.com. And what that was about

00:09:47.300 was a mate of mine, Steve was in one jet and, uh, with his nav. I'm in another jet with my nav.

00:09:52.660 I still speak to Steve now. He's a good lad. And, um, we were over the town of, uh, Basra in southern Iraq.

00:09:58.180 And we're doing, we were, we're tooled up. We've got the bombs, we've got the, the, the,

00:10:01.700 the reconnaissance pod and we've got, um, all the laser designation pod and we've got the gun,

00:10:05.860 of course, uh, 27 millimeter miles of cannon. And we were over Basra just looking at the MSRs,

00:10:10.820 main supply routes, looking at, uh, pipelines and just seeing whether there'd been any sabotage.

00:10:14.820 And of course we're there. If anything happens, troops on the ground. And we'd been in theater,

00:10:18.740 I think for about five or six weeks and no one ever had a troops in contact. It was quite benign theater.

00:10:23.860 And then we got called up the radios. I've been flying for five hours at this point. And, uh,

00:10:27.860 we should be going home in about half an hour. Most of the flights are five to five,

00:10:31.300 five to six hours, but we got called up and there was a troops in contact, which I believe

00:10:36.100 was a Hampshire regiment. Um, yes, I think it was a Hampshire regiment and, uh, they'd been hit by

00:10:42.660 roadside IED up in a town called Amara to the north. So I went up there leaving Steve down south

00:10:48.260 and Basra to cover the task down there. And when I, when I started heading up, there's only about

00:10:53.060 nine minutes away. If you're doing about 600 knots with the wings back and the fire out the back,

00:10:57.620 the radio was, it was escalating. People were dying. It was pretty obvious soldiers were being

00:11:01.780 killed. And, um, we were burning fuel up, you know, like you read about, it was pretty horrendous. And

00:11:06.740 so we knew by the time we get there, we're going to have something three minutes on task, maybe

00:11:11.780 three minutes, 34 minutes max. And then we're gonna have to head up to Baghdad for a tanker

00:11:15.780 and Baghdad. That's, that's going to be something like, you know, 30 minutes flight time away to get

00:11:19.780 a tanker up there, a British tanker, because we've been on task down south for so long. And we,

00:11:24.020 we called up these, this army unit and said, guys, we've got a four minute vol time here.

00:11:27.780 And I got Steve to come up behind me and said, Steve, you better come up here, dude. I've got

00:11:31.220 the fuel for this. He started coming up as well. And, um, as we got there, we basically got radio

00:11:37.780 calls and look up guys. And we looked up and the tanker from Bas, Bas, Baghdad, sorry, come down.

00:11:42.660 As we looked up, this huge British tanker came over the top. So we, um, they weren't supposed to leave

00:11:47.220 their tow line, but they, they'd done it because they knew what was happening. We went over that site

00:11:50.980 at Amara, very low, very fast wings back fire at the back, you know, swing wing messenger of death

00:11:56.820 had arrived. You know, you, you don't want to mess around now because someone's going to gun you to

00:12:00.340 death. Um, and back then, of course I was a young, very angry man in cockpit. And, um, there was a lot

00:12:06.340 of crowds on the ground. There were a lot of people, and although we're getting targeting information about

00:12:10.660 this crowd, like, can we target the crowd? We have to go through a flow chart in the jet kneeboard and we

00:12:15.780 share it front to back. We have to get authority from external. We have to call up on the radio to

00:12:21.060 commanders back home to say that this is the threat. And I wasn't happy with this threat

00:12:26.180 because you can't just say that everyone within a crowd is insurgents. We don't do, we're British.

00:12:30.420 We don't do that. Right. You know what I'm saying? And I'm looking down and I can see

00:12:34.020 what looked like civilian activity down there. People going around this debris site of a land

00:12:39.620 rover that are being blown across the road. And once we're looking and we're trying to do the

00:12:43.220 targeting work, Steve came over the top. He did his pass, went straight up to the tanker.

00:12:48.340 I went up to the tanker first and Steve came in, then I came down again and, um,

00:12:52.020 went through the flow chart and the army were calling for, uh, a drop and we couldn't escalate

00:12:57.620 it into a drop. We just couldn't drop. And another soldier died. And we were told about that.

00:13:02.020 Surreal things happen in this, these scenarios, surreal things happen. So we're doing all this

00:13:06.100 and then Hercules aircraft just flies underneath us. I mean, the whole place is burning, just flies over

00:13:10.740 the top and just goes and lands in a field. I'm like, where the hell does that come from?

00:13:14.500 Like, they don't know who that Hercules. He's not on the same frequency. Is he part of this?

00:13:17.620 Is he picking up casualties? No, no, no. We don't know who that is. Well, it's one of ours. So

00:13:21.860 someone must be speaking to him. I mean, surreal stuff happens, really weird stuff. So we're like,

00:13:26.020 well, no one knows who that is. And does he realize we're going to drop bombs on him? And, um,

00:13:30.020 Steve came down. I had a chat with Steve. We can't do anything here, dude. Another soldier died.

00:13:34.020 That was three, I think, um, getting told about those. And actually I'll tell you what was weird,

00:13:38.340 Rich. We, we didn't drop. It wasn't necessary. People were dead already. It wasn't going to stop

00:13:42.820 people dying. The army evacuated themselves out there and obviously left the Land Rover. This is

00:13:48.420 the early days with the snatched Land Rovers that were made of, you know, paper mache and that kind

00:13:51.780 of shit, right? These guys, you know, anything looks like that is going to get blown apart.

00:13:56.020 We went back home. In fact, we followed the tanker back home. I think they saw it was eight hours in

00:14:00.340 total. It sucked, totally sucked. And for the tornado, the engines tend to stop after eight hours because they

00:14:05.940 run out of oil. Not, you know, not, not fuel. The oil stops and the engines stop. But that was

00:14:10.820 one of the last sorties I did in theater before being sent back for, to be replaced. And I was on

00:14:16.020 a flight, uh, leaving wherever the, uh, was it, Ali, Ali, I think the flight left, going back home and

00:14:21.700 sitting on that same flight, um, where some of the regiment that had been on the ground that day,

00:14:26.420 and it's a real stuff, really weird. And we just got chatting. What do you guys do? I'm an

00:14:30.340 infantry. What regiment are you in? I'm on the resume. The fusillage could be, I don't know.

00:14:33.860 No, no, no, it's not. It's not that. I can't remember the Hampshire regiment now. Someone

00:14:37.300 will correct me on this and tell them. And, um, and I said, all right, I was, I was involved in,

00:14:42.420 uh, a troops in contact contact up in, um, Amara a couple of days ago. They're like,

00:14:46.740 this guy's eyes were like thousand, you know, young dude, like 19 years old, thousand yards there.

00:14:51.300 He was like, yeah, that was my guys. That was, that was me. I was there on the ground.

00:14:54.260 I said, Oh, I was a tornado. And he's like, dude, fuck you, those two tornadoes. I said,

00:14:57.860 yeah, I was the first one to come up. He was like, fuck dude. Check this story, Rich. Check

00:15:01.780 this story. This dude, this young dude, and there's him and his two boys on the seats next

00:15:06.260 to me. And there's me and my nabs having a cup of tea down back. He says, right, here's the thing.

00:15:10.580 We were in the smashed up or part of the smashed up Land Rover, and we were treating the casualties.

00:15:15.460 This young boy says to me, he says, one of those casualties,

00:15:18.180 a really good friend of mine from back home, you know, grew up with this dude. I've got his hand.

00:15:22.580 He's missing bits of him. I hate telling the story. I hate it. He says, but he's alive,

00:15:26.260 right? He's alive. He's this dude's alive. And he, um, he's like, he's like, mate, mate,

00:15:31.060 we're going to be fine. We're going to be fine. There's two or three of them in a really bad way.

00:15:33.780 He's like, we're going to be fine. We're going to be fine. And this guy's looking at him. He's,

00:15:37.060 he's still alive. And then the tornado come, I come over the top of him, apparently.

00:15:41.300 And this guy says to his mate, he goes, mate, we're going to be fine. We're going to be fine.

00:15:44.100 The big jets are here now. And that's what his mate died. Right then. I mean, that's,

00:15:49.540 and that's the weird thing about it. There's these lives being lived and you can't control them at

00:15:53.540 all. You put yourself there and you try and do what you can, but you know, to be on that plane

00:15:58.420 with that dude, I just sat there for next, like, I think it was six hours with this guy, just,

00:16:02.820 you know, fucking sorry, dude. I couldn't do anything about that. You know,

00:16:06.820 that's crazy. Um, I used to work with this, uh, guy that used to work for me, um, back in the

00:16:12.500 collection world and he used to fly intruders off of aircraft carriers. And, um, and he said, um,

00:16:18.660 you know, he was, he didn't really talk much about it. And I asked him one day, I said, so

00:16:22.900 why did you stop doing that? Like, you know, flying, flying jets off an aircraft carrier.

00:16:26.660 Like that seems like, like that would be my dream. Like that's, that was plan A for me was,

00:16:30.980 was to be a military pilot. Yeah. Um, you know, didn't work out for me, but, um, you said,

00:16:36.020 yeah, I just got tired of, um, you know, flying off the carrier and like killing people.

00:16:40.900 Yeah. You know, I thought that was strange. Cause like, isn't that why you sign up to be a military

00:16:44.420 pilot? No, you sign up to be a pilot rich. Cause these things here look cool. Don't they?

00:16:48.500 They're, they're fine. You don't think about having to drop bombs on people. You don't

00:16:53.220 really consider the bad guy. No. Well, who was the bad guy though? I mean, you know,

00:16:58.500 we talked about this belief system that was being fed to people and you're very good when

00:17:01.940 you talk about this and I can extend that a little bit to, you know, who is the enemy

00:17:05.300 of the country and why am I out killing these dudes? I mean, what, what Iraqi ever did anything

00:17:09.940 to me? I mean, you know, same with Afghan really. I mean, these are, these are people,

00:17:14.660 they've got families and as you age, of course, and if you get families of your own and nieces

00:17:19.220 and nephews, you think, hang on a second, that's someone's father or brother, any,

00:17:22.580 we talked about the, um, the value, the value of a military age male, didn't we? Anyone between the

00:17:27.220 age of 16 and 45 isn't valued in society. I mean, you could argue men over the age of 16

00:17:31.460 aren't valued in society and entirely disposable. And that goes to both sides, of course.

00:17:35.780 So you do get to the point and I've had loads of, loads of my students have, uh, and obviously people

00:17:42.100 I've, I've flown with have killed a significant amount of people in strikes and they will have

00:17:45.460 to deal with that later. There's a calm, calm debt that's going to come around for them and

00:17:49.060 they'll have to rationalize that and rationalize the behavior. Um, but don't get me wrong. It's not

00:17:54.260 that they ever wanted to do is there's an order and you don't think about it because that's how

00:17:58.500 you're trained. And so you do it. But then when you do leave as your, as your A6 and Trudy guy would,

00:18:04.180 would tell you, you do have to kind of rationalize that behavior. It's, um, and I must admit with Iraq,

00:18:09.940 a lot of my squadron was the first squadron to go in at the time, 12 squadron. And we had lawyers

00:18:15.620 sat with us and they were saying, look, we, you know, guys don't have an authorization to even be

00:18:20.420 in country at the moment. If you drop any munitions, there's every chance you could end up at a court of

00:18:24.980 law and we can't protect you by the way. That's why we had a flow chart. That was very much about

00:18:30.340 whether we could hang on, hang on, hang on. So, so they put you in the aircraft over hostile territory

00:18:36.900 and said that you haven't got the right to defend yourself. It's difficult to defense because it was

00:18:41.540 a permissive air environment. So it wasn't as if there was a significant air threat and the surface

00:18:45.300 to missile systems had been, had been destroyed. So for us, we were able to pretty much have the

00:18:51.060 airspace to ourselves. I mean, there's times when you don't, when you get too close to the Iranian

00:18:55.700 border and the Iranians get a bit upset with you. And that's a difficult, that's a different story.

00:19:00.100 And probably one I shouldn't tell on, on here, but, um, you, you're, if you end up on the ground,

00:19:04.980 yeah, someone's going to hopefully come and find you. That's the, that's the deal. But if you were

00:19:08.420 to drop munitions on, on any people or targets at that time, we were working with a UN mandate

00:19:13.940 that was from the previous conflict. And really we should have had another one and we didn't,

00:19:17.540 Was this from round one?

00:19:18.740 That's round one. Yeah. Golf war one. Yeah. So we're still working that one, but we went back in 2003,

00:19:24.340 I think it was 2004, something like that. Okay.

00:19:26.180 And my, I was there 2006, seven, I believe it was. Round one was just to push the Iraqis out of

00:19:31.940 Kuwait, right? Pretty much. Yeah, exactly that. You know, huge ground forces swell and everything

00:19:36.340 else. And of course the country continued and then we went to remove Saddam, um, because there weren't

00:19:40.580 any good targets in Afghanistan after, you know, it's all that kind of stuff. So it was a bit of a mess

00:19:45.780 to be fair. What did that feel like when, when you went on a run and you dropped your munitions and

00:19:51.300 and you kind of look back and you see everything. And it's like, well, it's all done for training,

00:19:57.780 to be fair. So in, in training is no real difference. And, uh, it isn't a difference

00:20:03.140 though. And in fact, in my Iraq tours, I didn't drop live. Um, most of the squadron didn't drop

00:20:07.060 live. A lot of live drops went on in Syria. I wasn't part of that. Uh, I was on the ground

00:20:11.060 in Afghanistan. So for us, it shows a force. We're doing a lot of reconnaissance work. And fortunately,

00:20:15.620 we, and I say fortunately, because later on when we did leave this, there was a lot of kinetic

00:20:20.740 action and, uh, a lot of it, not all positive. Um, but when you do drop heavy munitions, we, we,

00:20:26.820 we do drop them on ranges in the UK, special places. They, they, you have these, um, charges

00:20:32.180 on the bombs cause bombs need to be thrown clear of the aircraft. So we have explosive bolts that go

00:20:36.100 bang, pushes the weapon down. And, uh, then the weapon either comes out of the port small

00:20:39.940 parachute. If it's a retard or it comes free fall. Are you allowed to say retard in the military?

00:20:44.820 Oh, yes. Good point. Well, I'll be fair with you. I did red flag in America. Right. And they

00:20:50.980 don't use the word box over there. They, they, they, they call it, um, they didn't use the word

00:20:55.300 head. They, they call it cranium. So they say craniums up as opposed to heads up. That was going

00:20:59.780 back to 2007. That's how the Americans had gone back then. So how America is now, I have no idea,

00:21:05.700 but yeah, there's certain words we're okay. We're just British, right? So we can, we can use whatever

00:21:10.420 words you want and no one really cares. Yes. It's odd because I mean, you don't hear that word so much

00:21:15.780 anymore. I mean, you know, as an aside, I was, um, I was out on a date once and I, I don't know,

00:21:20.580 I said something like, oh, that's, I'm not even going to say the word. So it's R and then, you know,

00:21:25.700 she got upset. I'm like, well, what are you getting upset for it? You know, I was just stating that,

00:21:28.980 you know, this is something right. And she's like, well, you know, my little brother is autistic and

00:21:33.620 da, da, da, da, da. And it's like, oh, you said, you said the word retard. No, I said something was,

00:21:38.340 you know, basically retarded, you know, being, being stupid. Cause that's, cause that's the way

00:21:42.420 that we used to phrase it, you know, when we were kids, right? It's just like language that you

00:21:45.700 understand. And I mean, like we were on your channel before you guys should really go watch

00:21:50.180 the conversation I had on Tim's channel. It's, um, sorry. It's fast jet performance is the channel

00:21:54.900 name again. Yeah. Fast jet performance on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Check it out. You know,

00:21:57.620 we had a conversation about my book and political correctness and a bunch of stuff,

00:22:00.420 but have a look at that. No, just, you know, just kind of sparked a little bit

00:22:03.300 of a, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. You know, is that a word that's been removed from the military?

00:22:08.020 Is it like, what's the military like today now in the Royal Air Force? Like, is it more woke? Is it

00:22:13.700 more politically correct? Has certain words been removed from the language that like, you know,

00:22:18.580 like the top gun guys would sort of use? I mean, you're a very, like, if I were to describe Tim

00:22:24.100 Davies to somebody, um, for your age, you got a lot of energy, a lot of charisma. Like to me,

00:22:30.260 you would look like the average fighter pilot sort of guy, right? Well, exceptionally good

00:22:34.500 looking, Rich, as I'm saying. Well, I'm not into that, but I'm sure your wife enjoys it.

00:22:40.660 You know, you know, um, yeah. Okay. What is it like? So also if we are using the word retarded,

00:22:45.220 that just means reduction in speed. That means to slow something down. Right. So if someone else

00:22:49.140 wants to take issue with that, I'd say that they were the person that had an agenda somewhere,

00:22:53.460 not me. I'm using it to, I'm using it. I'm saying that's retarded. That's, that's,

00:22:56.580 that's slowing this progress down, for example. And they're saying that is, I'm talking about

00:23:00.820 disabled children. I mean, come on, it's ridiculous. I mean, what's going on in their head,

00:23:03.940 right? So in the military, unfortunately it has been, um, infused with a woke, a woke agenda.

00:23:09.940 The U S air force are doing very well with this, by the way, because they're seeing,

00:23:12.660 they're seemingly managed to sort of change us around and get back to squadron life again,

00:23:16.740 the heart of squadron life, you know, the vehicles, this is what I'm hearing anyway. So, you know,

00:23:20.980 fighter pilots being fighter pilots and stuff, because, you know, I've done some videos on my channel

00:23:24.580 about this. Um, I did one, I don't know whether your channels get, your videos must get demonetized

00:23:29.380 all the time. Yeah. I got slapped around a little bit by YouTube and some people. Yeah.

00:23:34.260 So I, I got demonetized on one I called a red pilled fighter pilot, um, goes against the woke

00:23:40.180 something blah, you know, I'm God, that was never going to YouTube. We're going to hate that. But that

00:23:43.860 was one of my fighter pilots on Typhoon. One of my students who contacted me and said, I'm in trouble.

00:23:48.420 I said, what are you trouble about? I said, um, in my signature block, I, I had this phrase. I said,

00:23:54.740 Oh, what's that? He's got put, everyone's got the pronouns now in there, or, you know, the whole,

00:23:58.980 it's gone in, it's gone in. Um, and he'd written something like, um, I was talking about this other

00:24:03.940 day. He'd written something like, uh, the Royal Air Force is, is here to fight and win. And those

00:24:08.580 that don't fly support those that do something very fighter pilot alpha E. It's like, I'm the daddy,

00:24:14.740 I go to war. You guys just do the typing and supply me now. We know it's not true. And I did a video

00:24:18.820 about it, but he got complained about by anonymous source on something called the form was called,

00:24:23.780 um, something like a grievance form or something that could be delivered anonymously. It wasn't

00:24:28.900 around in my time. Cause I would have kicked off like, like 10 men, but he, um, he went, someone's

00:24:33.460 complained about it's gone to the boss. The boss is, uh, told me to take it down, write an apology to

00:24:38.740 whoever this person is. And I wrote out cause obviously I get sent loads of stuff from the military

00:24:42.900 still by people still in cause I put it on the channel. The air force hates that by the way,

00:24:46.660 but it shouldn't, it should just be open and then I wouldn't have to put on the channel.

00:24:50.660 And basically he, he was, um, yeah, he was reprimanded for writing. And you should have

00:24:56.180 a look at the video, Richard, cause it's, it's awful. I mean, the person complaining is saying

00:25:01.060 that he was a, or they were offended. We don't know who they were. They were offended. It almost

00:25:05.380 seemed like someone thought they were better than someone else in the military.

00:25:08.820 And I argue that someone who's been training and is flying typhoons over Syria and he's done six

00:25:13.380 or seven years worth of flying training might be better than a typist that's been in the service

00:25:17.540 for 18 months. That's all I'm saying. You know what I mean? Might be a little bit. We don't

00:25:21.460 appreciate excellence anymore. And this is why your book's so good, by the way, because you're trying

00:25:24.580 to start this again, aren't you saying, look, make yourself excellent. Make people will come to you

00:25:28.100 if you do the work. Yeah, that's, that's all that flying jets is about. It's like, it's a constant,

00:25:32.820 it's a constant strive to not die, not kill the wrong people to be as good as you can be.

00:25:37.540 What's the, what's the success rate for people that get into the Royal Air Force that, that want

00:25:43.780 to fly the fast equipment? So when I was instructing on, uh, these, uh, it's the, uh, there's the top

00:25:50.740 one there, but it's a newer jet. And I structured on that one as well. So I did that for a decade,

00:25:55.460 stopped about two and a bit years ago. Um, we would try and keep the, what we call the chop rate,

00:26:00.820 the people that we have to remove from flying training. We try and keep it as low as possible,

00:26:04.820 because when you chop someone, they've already come through elementary flying training. So

00:26:09.380 they've done for about a year, basic fast jet flying training. They've done that for about a year,

00:26:13.300 plus holds in between where they have to, you know, just sit around for a couple of months

00:26:16.340 until the course starts. And then they've been flying with us for about 18 months. And if you've

00:26:20.340 got to fail them, then they've got to go and start, not again, they won't start. They've done

00:26:24.580 elementary flying training, but they have to start on rotary or they have to be helicopters,

00:26:27.540 or they have to go onto multiple engine aircraft. My brother was a pilot on Hercules, for example.

00:26:33.140 And that's a massive, it's labor intensive, and it's a waste of resource because, you know,

00:26:37.540 we can get them through on jets and we will try. Unfortunately, some people will, um, reach their

00:26:43.460 limit. And I, I struggled at the very end of my flying training on air combat, but I did really well

00:26:49.780 on the operational conversion unit on the tornado. I did really well on that. So we know that some people

00:26:54.260 just get burnt out. And if we can just get them to that next stage, they go like this again,

00:26:58.260 you see, it's just getting, keep them inspired, motivated. They're good people. So, um, a lot

00:27:03.300 of it is coaching, of course, which I still do now with men. So we, we would have around about,

00:27:09.060 I would say 10 to 15% failure rate coming through the flight score I had. And we just really try to

00:27:14.580 keep that as low as possible, but some people are just intent on killing themselves, unfortunately.

00:27:18.340 Was it, was it low because of physical limitations or was it low because of acumen?

00:27:24.020 Like they weren't able to complete the studies, the tests, answer the questions correctly.

00:27:28.740 Yeah. Flying ability just gets eroded. I mean, from the beginning though,

00:27:32.020 the thing about flying in the air force, which I'm sure you're aware is you self-select. So you

00:27:35.860 have to say, I want to fly jets or I want to fly full stop. I want to join the military. You

00:27:40.260 self-select and you present at a careers office and you say, Hey, I want to be in the military.

00:27:44.500 And that careers office says, are you the right height, you know, weight, you know, can you see

00:27:48.660 all that? And of course we, a lot of people unfortunately don't get past that phase,

00:27:52.340 although they are changing limitations on that. Now they're going and having a look at this again,

00:27:55.940 because they realize we're losing a lot of good people, um, by things that we, you know,

00:27:59.700 we should be able to use corrective or laser surgery on the eyes. So they are looking at that.

00:28:03.380 Then if you get past that stage, you go to officer air crew selection center and you may not get

00:28:07.940 through the interview stage. And I didn't for the Royal air force. I never got through it. I joined the

00:28:11.460 Navy and then somehow got into the air force when the air force were desperate for pilots,

00:28:16.340 you know, luckily they did because, um, I was, I was awesome. I was just, I ended up doing a lot

00:28:20.660 of instruction, um, for the air force and stayed of course 20 years. And then of course, you've got

00:28:24.500 to get through your flying training. You've got to get through officer training first, and then

00:28:27.220 your flying training. And if you think about the, the chop rate from the, the initial presentation

00:28:32.580 at the careers office of, of the, the young man or woman or they, whatever gender stuff we're

00:28:37.380 into now of saying, hello, I'd like to join how many they, they go. And then how many come out as a fast

00:28:42.340 jet pilot at the end is actually, there's actually less fast jet pilots in, in the UK than there are

00:28:47.460 premiership footballers. And it's just that hard to get through the system. There's no accurate way

00:28:52.660 of forecasting what the chop rate is. You can do it for each school. You can do it for, this is

00:28:57.300 Dartmouth here. I went to Dartmouth, not Cranwell, the Naval college. You could look at how many people

00:29:02.260 didn't get through there. And then you take all, all of them up and you say, well, say we had 50 fast

00:29:07.860 jet guys start. We end up with maybe 12, something like that same way that, you know, you would with

00:29:12.660 any special forces selections, the same, isn't it? So we don't really know, but it's not, there's not

00:29:16.980 many people that get to the end to be fair. Was, was every day for you like an exciting day? Like,

00:29:23.460 you know, I could picture you, you know, with your equipment gear on your G suit, your helmet,

00:29:27.300 you're walking up to the jet. I mean, like, did you think to yourself every time that you had to go out,

00:29:32.660 you know, I can't believe I get paid to do this. Like, you know, this is my job. This is awesome.

00:29:36.500 Or did you have days you're like, come on, like, we got to get this done here. You know,

00:29:41.380 let's get this thing over with so I can go home. Yeah. I think every day is pretty much like that.

00:29:46.740 There's a lot of pressure. This is what people don't realize about flying jets. You can get it

00:29:50.100 wrong. You're only as good as your last trip. Okay. So if you're not dead, that's a bonus.

00:29:54.740 Because a lot of my friends did die. When you say a lot, like what percentage?

00:30:00.580 So, well, how many, that's a good point. Actually, we used to kill a lot more than

00:30:03.380 other militaries. We had Australian pilots with us at the time. And the Australian guys were like,

00:30:06.740 how come you guys keep ejecting? And how come you guys keep killing people? And they hadn't had a

00:30:10.580 fatality. Now, the thing about the Royal Air Force and the Navy is that we do a lot of low-level

00:30:14.340 training. We were flying the Harrier. That was quite a difficult aircraft. A lot of night work,

00:30:18.900 NBGs, night vision goggles, train following radar stuff, stuff that was hazardous. We pushed that limit

00:30:23.060 in training. And the Australians tended to fly a lot of medium level stuff, especially with the Hornet,

00:30:27.300 which I had a lot of safety systems on at the time. They didn't have the twin engine airplane,

00:30:32.420 all that kind of stuff. It didn't have the sort of the fatality rate we did. So that caused us to

00:30:36.660 look at things. When it comes down to how many percentage, I don't know. I could, I stopped

00:30:40.820 counting at 30. And they weren't all fast jet mates as well. They were some of the multi-engine

00:30:44.900 guys that we lost, rotary as well. Was it mostly training? Was it mostly combat? Or was it just a mixture?

00:30:50.500 No, not much was in combat. If any, it was in combat. It was all in training. And you've got to

00:30:55.860 ask yourself, if we're losing people in training all the time, but not in frontline work, then are

00:31:01.380 we really doing the right thing? Because surely you'd want that to be, well, you'd want to, well,

00:31:06.180 you wouldn't want anything, of course, but you'd expect there to be a balance. And of course,

00:31:09.780 there wasn't. The flying that we did with hindsight, especially on the Tornado going back in the day,

00:31:14.740 was, um, it's, uh, I keep saying this, it's, um, when you are doing that job, it's a hundred percent,

00:31:22.420 your marriage will suffer. In fact, everyone's marriage suffers because you have a choice.

00:31:26.820 You either look after the students and the pilots you're flying with and yourself,

00:31:30.580 or you look after the marriage. And sometimes there's not time for two, because you've got to

00:31:33.860 do the work in the evening to read the books, to make sure you're sharp, to read the check guards,

00:31:36.980 to learn the airplanes, the systems, the teach that you've got the next day. So a lot of time,

00:31:40.740 you would walk to the jet going, I hope this thing breaks, because I need to get back in and do the

00:31:45.060 do the paperwork. I could do the emails, Rich. You know what I mean? I've got to,

00:31:47.540 I've got to speak to the boss. The boss wants me in his office. Um, and sometimes the jet did break

00:31:51.700 and you'd come back in, but once the jet was started up, you know, you're fully focused on

00:31:56.180 doing the task and you'd, um, go, but yeah, I don't think it's, um, it's like speaking to rock stars,

00:32:01.220 and I'm sure you've got loads of rock star mates. They will say the same thing. You know,

00:32:04.740 touring does suck after a while. Was there ever, um, like, what's it like flying a fast jet? So,

00:32:12.020 um, I got a bit of a bucket list item. I know that there's, um, I can't remember where it is

00:32:18.020 in Russia, but there's a place in Russia where you can go and you can go up in the,

00:32:22.100 I think it's a make 29 backseat. It's like 15 grand, you know, they'll throw you up,

00:32:26.420 they'll do some maneuvers, 15, 20 minutes or something like that. What's it like being in

00:32:30.260 one of those? Like, is there anything that you can compare it to? I think the thing about it is

00:32:34.500 interesting, isn't it? If I was to jump in Lewis Hamilton's Formula One car, the whole process of

00:32:38.660 being strapped in and being in the garage and not knowing what was going on would be completely

00:32:41.940 alien to me. I would never be able to perform at the way Lewis would because Lewis has been in that

00:32:47.940 environment forever, hasn't he? So he understands it to him. He can get those tires up to temperature

00:32:51.460 and get the brakes up to temperature. He knows how to do that. I haven't a bloody clue. So if you go

00:32:54.900 and fly that MiG out in, in Russia, you'll get the briefs, you have the medical, um, it will feel

00:33:00.260 very alien to you and you'll feel very nauseous. And if I went back to flying now, if I had more than about

00:33:04.740 two months off flying, I'd feel nauseous on the first couple of trips. You're strapped in.

00:33:10.900 So a lot of people don't like this. They can't really move. You can release a lever and move

00:33:14.260 forwards, but you, you know, I used to leave myself strapped in. G is something most people

00:33:18.900 have never experienced in their life, maybe on a roller coaster, maybe hard braking or

00:33:22.500 acceleration in a car. I mean, I know you got rid of the R8 now and you've got the 720, but in the RS,

00:33:26.980 I've got the RS4 and it's been upgraded. My wife complains that a neck hurts after we drive it,

00:33:31.620 because of course, you know, we do have acceleration and we do have braking and it does

00:33:35.300 trigger the muscles down here. Cornering. Yeah. Cornering everything. Cornering is under,

00:33:39.140 is underrated, underestimating, isn't it? I don't know. It's the least exactly the same thing.

00:33:42.580 You do trigger these muscles. You wouldn't normally trigger if you're driving. Yeah. But I mean,

00:33:45.380 a car can do like one, one, one G in a bit, you know, like 1.1, 1.2, maybe if you've got Corsa tires

00:33:51.620 on it, like not even close to a jet. But a jet member, it's all through the normal axis. It's all through

00:33:55.620 the head going down. The jet will accelerate and it doesn't throw you back necessarily. A catapult launch, of course,

00:34:00.580 will do. But most jets will just come off the brakes and roll forward. You won't be pinned back in your

00:34:04.100 seat because you're getting airborne with maybe nine tons of fuel or something and your jet weighs

00:34:08.260 almost 30 tons. So it starts reheat. You'll feel that kick. You're not pinned back in a jet. You'll get

00:34:13.460 airborne. With airbrake, you may get moved forward a little bit, but you're not thrown forward. I mean,

00:34:18.580 you obviously in a, in a, in a launch, sorry, a recovery on a carrier, you will be, excuse me.

00:34:24.340 So, and even when you roll in an airplane, you're still strapped into the seat. So there's some head

00:34:28.900 movement because the helmet weighs quite a bit and you can leave it there, but

00:34:33.300 you're still manageable and you build the next muscles up, the neck muscles up. So really the

00:34:38.020 G you pull comes through this axis here. And, and the aircraft here, the Hawk is the one that can get

00:34:44.020 to, you know, six or seven G faster than any aircraft that we have much faster than tornado,

00:34:49.060 much faster than Typhoon F-35. It just gets there quickly. And that's called G onset rate. So that

00:34:54.260 aircraft in the Royal Air Force killed more people than any other aircraft.

00:34:57.700 Ironically, it was a training airplane as well. Interesting. Okay. Wow. A lot of these things

00:35:04.260 I didn't know that there was a, there's a documentary I watched once on the Raptor when

00:35:09.540 they were developing it. And I think they said something along the lines that they had to engineer

00:35:14.500 in the flight systems. I'm going to use the word retarded, retarded, you know, feedback to certain

00:35:24.020 controls because they realized that if you did something with the stick that maybe the plane

00:35:28.340 was capable of doing, it might kill the pilot. So they had to retard certain controls so that it

00:35:34.260 wouldn't affect the meatball in the cockpit. Is this, is this like the last generation of piloted planes

00:35:40.500 that we're dealing with today? Like is being a fast jet pilot going to be obsolete in the next

00:35:45.940 decade or so? Well, I did a lot of study into this guys. I was a strategy director for a startup

00:35:50.900 called Aerolist when I first left the Air Force. And we felt that we were making the last flying

00:35:54.180 training airplane, a manned flying training airplane. So with that aircraft, there was another role

00:35:59.940 where it could be a drone or a loyal wingman or a remote carrier unmanned basically. And we just think

00:36:05.140 that you're getting to the point now where you don't necessarily need a human in the cockpit

00:36:08.580 post F-35 world. We don't think we do need a human there. Swarms, drones, et cetera, et cetera.

00:36:15.300 And of course, the maneuverability of some of these platforms now is so intense that

00:36:19.060 you wouldn't be able to fully, anything about about 9G, you have to have, well, that's actually

00:36:23.700 wrong, sustained six, seven. You have to have pressure breathing. So you have G-pants, but you have

00:36:28.660 pressure suits on the chest that force oxygen, force air into the lungs to compress the chest cavity.

00:36:33.460 Typhoon has that. So the guys can sit there at 9G, looking out the top, fighting people,

00:36:38.820 the whole body is being compressed to keep the blood in the brain. That's the thing to try and

00:36:43.300 keep the blood up there. Because if you remove the blood from the brain, you take the oxygen from

00:36:46.740 the brain, and then you get G-induced loss of consciousness. You get A-lock, P-lock, anything

00:36:51.540 like that, where the brain says, oh, I haven't got enough here. I'm just going to shut down for a bit

00:36:55.060 and protect the heart because the heart's bumping, all that stuff. And the brain is the most energy

00:37:00.260 resourcive, energy intensive organ we have. And that's how we lose people. So why is that person still in the

00:37:06.660 cockpit? Why do we have that limitation now? And the thing you're talking about,

00:37:10.100 it's called Q-Feel. It allows you to feel flight control systems that are heavy and clunky. It puts

00:37:16.980 springs in there and it makes them feel...

00:37:19.060 Because the problem is, it's a mechanical thing. So no matter how fast I go, I pull this,

00:37:24.500 I pull this back here. Elevator goes like this. Elevator doesn't matter what speed it's going at,

00:37:29.140 because it's got a hydraulic system attached to it. So if I'm doing 600 knots and I do this,

00:37:33.220 one or two things happen. The tail gets ripped off and my elevator gets ripped off or the aircraft

00:37:36.820 inverts itself and I end up in the bottom right-hand corner of the cockpit half dead. So we put this

00:37:41.380 limitation. So at 600 knots, when I pull back, I physically can't pull back to create a G or a

00:37:48.500 deflection of that tailplane that will damage the airplane in any way. Flight control systems stop

00:37:53.620 you doing that now. So all modern aircraft have flight control systems. And I teach on the FAT,

00:37:58.100 the Hornet, and that's a very clever system. It won't let you stall the airplane. It will just

00:38:01.940 fly itself out.

00:38:02.660 Yeah, I heard there was a few planes where they engineered systems where if you do black out

00:38:07.700 because of a G, you know, like a G-induced blackout, the plane just kind of levels out.

00:38:12.100 Yeah. Yeah, that's right. The Americans have got a system on the F-16 that does this. I can't

00:38:18.020 remember what it's called. Someone will tell me. I should know what it's called. But you're absolutely

00:38:21.780 right. It reaches a certain height and goes, ah, we're going to recover you now. And we'll recover.

00:38:25.700 Yeah. A lot of fighter pilots I've learned tend to go into airline flying. Is there a reason

00:38:33.220 why you didn't do that? My brother does it. My brother flies triple sevens for Emirates out of

00:38:38.260 Dubai. So I vicariously live, you know, his sex life through, you know, through him basically because

00:38:44.020 he's single. Yeah, exactly. He's single, yeah. He's single at 40. He's a player. He probably

00:38:48.820 follows you, Rich. I'd have to stop him to be fair. We've probably taught him everything he knows.

00:38:53.780 He flew Hercules and then he went to Canada, in fact, flew Hercules for the Canadians out of Trenton.

00:38:59.060 You're in Ottawa, aren't you? Toronto, yeah. Trenton's a few hours east of me.

00:39:04.660 That's right. So I flew into Toronto to see him and then drove out there sort of thing.

00:39:08.260 And we went skiing up in one of your resorts, Cameron Wars now. So he was flying out of there,

00:39:11.620 Hercules, five years. And then he left that, went over to the Middle East to fly with Emirates. And

00:39:16.260 he does long haul with triple sevens. And he has a great time, loves it. You know, he's a good dude.

00:39:21.060 For me, that's the side of flying that I always hated, the transits. When I go on holiday,

00:39:25.780 I'm the worst passenger in the world. I'm like, this sucks. I don't want to be back here. You know

00:39:28.980 what I mean? I just want to be on the ground. I want to finish that stuff. So I hate the whole

00:39:32.180 airport experience. I hate the security. I hate the baggage. I hate it. So why would I do that as

00:39:38.500 a job? You know what I mean? I'm a bit of an entrepreneur like yourself. Most people when they

00:39:42.340 come out of the military, they like the stability of conformity and someone else, you know, going to

00:39:47.620 work for someone else. My brother was into that, so he did. And I didn't. And I started a couple of

00:39:52.260 businesses, whatever. And I run those now. A bit of contract work here and there, much like yourself,

00:39:56.100 I guess. And I just didn't particularly want to sit in an airliner. I've been flying for 20 years.

00:40:01.540 And, you know, that to me, airline flying isn't really the flying I want to do. It's the

00:40:07.620 maintenance of the system, which is exciting in its own realm, you know, lots of things.

00:40:12.900 Uh, I just, I knew, I knew it wasn't for me. Is there anything that you would do differently?

00:40:18.260 Um, you know, from like the get go, like if you could go back and talk to your 21 year old self,

00:40:22.820 would you dispense some advice that would be useful that you would have adopted at that time?

00:40:28.260 About the, about the military and the career?

00:40:29.940 Uh, both, you know, you know, within the, uh, confines of playing to win in your life.

00:40:34.100 Cause I mean, you know, it's a lot of work to be successful as an air force pilot.

00:40:37.540 But yeah, I think I probably left about eight years early, no six years earlier than I did.

00:40:42.980 So maybe done 14 years, not 20. We got to 2011 and I joined the squadron, this squadron here,

00:40:49.380 which is called, um, uh, we went from the T1 and we bought this aircraft in here called the T2.

00:40:54.500 So I was teaching from about 2011 on that aircraft.

00:40:56.340 It's an update.

00:40:56.740 Is that the Tiger?

00:40:58.020 Uh, this one here is the Hawk T2. This one here, these are squadron pilots for four squadron.

00:41:02.420 Uh, we had 28 of these aircraft. We bought them in 2011 onto a squadron called four squadron.

00:41:05.780 And I was down, I was teaching from about 2007 on the, on the Hawk T1, uh,

00:41:11.860 taught on that one up there, taught that for about four, four years, almost five in the end,

00:41:15.460 went to Afghanistan with the US army, uh, and then came back onto the new Hawk.

00:41:21.220 We brought in a new Hawk.

00:41:23.220 You should never really bring in or never be involved in a mark one airplane when it comes in.

00:41:26.660 And the Hawk T2 was a brand new airplane.

00:41:29.220 There's a lot of work to be done, a lot of work, and it's stressful as hell.

00:41:32.420 And you're working with a civilian contractor who weren't the best.

00:41:36.340 They were set up, they were new, um, and they were struggling themselves.

00:41:40.340 I would have, I would have told myself with hindsight, not ever get, never get involved in that.

00:41:44.180 You speak to the F-35 guys now.

00:41:45.540 And a lot of them are like, I wish I'd joined this jet five years later when it's been squared away.

00:41:50.260 And all the bugs have been ironed out and all the policies and procedures have been written.

00:41:54.580 And I, in 2011, my father died as well, came back from Afghanistan to bury him,

00:41:57.940 went back out, came back again.

00:41:59.700 And the whole thing, we had some fatalities in 2013.

00:42:02.980 My first students were killed, uh, and the whole, the whole workload was, was horrific.

00:42:07.460 And so I ended up really struggling from about 2013 onwards, probably until I left, I guess.

00:42:12.580 And I wouldn't, I would say there's still work being done now.

00:42:15.060 So I would, I would, I would probably say, look, get in, get into the military, burn bright,

00:42:21.860 do the work, but don't leave it too late to exit and do something else.

00:42:24.900 Because when you do leave the military after 20 years, you've been so involved in jet aviation,

00:42:28.660 it's very hard to, to turn onto something else and to start that.

00:42:32.420 And as you know, Rich, when we hit 40, our energy levels go down.

00:42:35.060 It's a constant battle to try and keep them up.

00:42:37.220 Um, we have to do things.

00:42:38.020 And this is why your TRT stuff was very interesting to me.

00:42:40.260 Uh, I think it should, I think a lot of men should, should look at that sort of thing, to be fair.

00:42:45.140 And I, I think now starting a business, you know, I, I'd like to have been young,

00:42:50.740 had the confidence to have started something when I was small.

00:42:54.100 All I say to people, if you are going to go and do something that's highly specialist and highly niche,

00:42:59.780 is just devote a little part of your life to maybe investing.

00:43:03.220 Obviously, let's look at Bitcoin.

00:43:04.500 Let's look at, um, say NFTs, for example.

00:43:08.180 There was nowhere in my life in the evenings where I could only invest any time in anything like that,

00:43:11.780 because I was reading the books and lesson planning.

00:43:14.900 And it's a hundred percent occupation.

00:43:17.220 You'd never get away from it, never get away from it.

00:43:19.860 And that's why I suggest people do it for less time and leave earlier and start a second career

00:43:25.780 that you can really invest in.

00:43:26.900 And that, that will take you through the next 20 years.

00:43:28.980 Don't do it the way I did it.

00:43:30.180 Do 15 to start the next one.

00:43:33.620 Do you think that the Air Force, um, you know, whether it's ground or Navy,

00:43:37.940 do you think that the Air Force is a good place for a young man to be today?

00:43:41.380 Or they're like, is it a hostile environment?

00:43:44.580 I mean, you know, for example, I've got, um, I got a coaching client that's, uh, younger.

00:43:49.380 He's a 20 something naval officer, um, in the U S and he says, and he's seen the writing on the

00:43:55.380 wall.

00:43:55.620 He's not going to stay in the Navy much longer.

00:43:57.620 He's just seen like the wokeness and they're promoting incompetent, uh, people to positions

00:44:02.740 that would put others at risk just because of their gender.

00:44:05.620 Um, is it like that in the UK as well?

00:44:10.020 Like, is it a place that men can still excel or is it hostile towards men or is it getting hostile?

00:44:14.500 So I, I left in 20, I left mid 2018.

00:44:17.700 And, uh, if I'd seen this coming, if I'd seen this woke agenda and the quotas and everything

00:44:21.940 coming, I would have stayed in and fought it because I'm a fight against this.

00:44:24.340 So, you know, I hate this whole, I would have stayed in and I would have risked career and

00:44:28.180 everything.

00:44:28.580 I would have said, chuck me out.

00:44:29.620 I'm not going to stand for any of this stuff.

00:44:30.660 I'm not going to stand for D and I training.

00:44:31.940 You're not going to tell me about my training.

00:44:34.580 Oh, sorry.

00:44:35.060 Diversity and inclusivity.

00:44:36.660 I think, Oh, they actually have it in the system now.

00:44:39.540 Okay.

00:44:40.100 Well, we don't have the equity part yet.

00:44:42.020 Okay.

00:44:42.500 I think the die bit is the, I think Americans have diversity, equity, and inclusivity.

00:44:47.380 And I don't, I don't think as of yet we did have, um, there was a D and I week in the

00:44:52.900 Royal Air Force on Thursday morning.

00:44:54.420 And I wrote back to them and said, you need to take this out because, uh, the morning's

00:44:58.660 lecture on a Thursday was about white privilege.

00:45:01.060 Oh, you can't even make that shit up rich.

00:45:04.260 And I was like, come on, you're like 99.8% of your military is white and you're going to

00:45:08.340 lecture people.

00:45:09.140 And I said, and also Boris Johnson had just come out.

00:45:11.140 Our prime minister had just come out and said that we're not going to teach this in formal

00:45:14.500 academic settings.

00:45:15.380 We're not going to teach people this.

00:45:16.740 And I said, your prime minister has just said like literally two weeks ago that you're not

00:45:21.220 to teach this.

00:45:21.700 And you've got it on your program.

00:45:23.860 I can, I'm quite combative with the D and I people within the military still on Twitter.

00:45:27.860 You'll see me get piled on for everyone.

00:45:30.660 I'm like, I'm about, I'm about meritocracy.

00:45:33.380 Okay.

00:45:34.020 And what a lot of people will say, Rich is, well, not everyone's got the same chances,

00:45:37.060 have they?

00:45:37.460 And I'm like, what chances do you think I had?

00:45:38.900 I failed all my A levels.

00:45:39.940 I got, my A levels were, uh, EE and, um, EE and an N.

00:45:44.100 So an N and two E's.

00:45:45.700 All right.

00:45:46.020 Had to go to university in Bristol, some polytechnic to do an H and D.

00:45:50.260 You know, my dad was a police officer.

00:45:51.700 My mother was a health visitor.

00:45:52.580 There was no money in the family.

00:45:53.460 I'm one of four kids.

00:45:54.500 There's no money there.

00:45:55.300 You know what I'm saying?

00:45:55.780 I was the guy not supposed to get in.

00:45:57.380 And yet you're telling me how privileged I was.

00:45:59.300 It's, it's an utter sham.

00:46:00.980 And now it is the, unfortunately it's gone through the military.

00:46:03.300 I do argue the Navy seem to regret this a little bit better than most of the other services.

00:46:08.180 Fair play that a senior service at the most mature, the armies.

00:46:13.220 The thing is the army, what does the army do when it's back home?

00:46:15.060 It goes, does training.

00:46:16.180 It's pretty bored.

00:46:17.140 So it probably goes, this would be a good idea.

00:46:18.660 Let's get involved in diversity and inclusivity because then we can virtue signal.

00:46:21.380 And there's something about your army, young army officers that tend to be very virtuous

00:46:24.980 because they're looking after young men and women.

00:46:27.140 I understand that.

00:46:28.180 And the air force, it just wants to put, you know, it just wants to get invested in this stuff.

00:46:32.900 And it has, and I speak to pilots still flying, as I told you the story about the young typhoon

00:46:36.740 pilot the other day, um, earlier in this, sorry.

00:46:39.140 And, uh, luckily most of the guys now have gone, we're just going to go sit there and go home,

00:46:44.980 go and do the lecture, come home.

00:46:47.060 But then where's the pushback?

00:46:50.180 Like your, like your naval student is saying, your naval client is saying,

00:46:53.860 what's going to happen in 20 years time is you just going to be led by

00:46:56.660 and competency at the top, probably more so than you are now to be fair.

00:46:59.620 Yeah.

00:47:00.340 Like with the, um, Chinese or Russian military would be pushing this agenda on their pilots,

00:47:06.500 on their captains of their warships.

00:47:09.700 You know, I would imagine.

00:47:10.500 No, right?

00:47:11.220 No, because they're not idiots, are they?

00:47:12.420 Russians and Chinese are not idiots.

00:47:13.620 They understand that war fighting is for war fighters.

00:47:16.580 Okay.

00:47:17.300 So let's look at what war fighter is.

00:47:18.980 Who's the best war fighter?

00:47:20.340 Is it a five foot four young woman?

00:47:22.500 Well, it might be if a lot of typing is involved and it is when he comes down to cyber and everything

00:47:26.340 else.

00:47:26.580 But if you want to put troops on the ground, I said this to my wife the other day,

00:47:30.260 because she talked about, we were talking about, um, it was something about dominant

00:47:35.380 relationships or the most dominant partner.

00:47:37.220 And I think at one point she said, well, I'm the dominant one in the relationship.

00:47:39.380 I leave the house and go to work.

00:47:40.580 And I said, let's go down the pub.

00:47:42.340 I'll punch the dude in the face if you want, but then you can be the dominant partner in the

00:47:45.540 relationship.

00:47:45.940 So it works out for you.

00:47:47.220 It's just one of those things.

00:47:49.140 Rome didn't have lots of weak centurions, did it?

00:47:52.020 It went, who's the most aggressive, nasty people we can have in war fighting?

00:47:56.100 Why don't you make them a war fighters?

00:47:57.300 That'll be good.

00:47:58.420 That'll be good.

00:47:59.620 The next time you hear a bang in the night, just, just give her an elbow and say, you

00:48:02.580 know what?

00:48:02.900 Why don't you get this one?

00:48:03.780 You know, since you're the dominant one.

00:48:05.220 You check that one.

00:48:06.020 Yeah.

00:48:06.180 I get it though, Rich, because in relationships, there's lots of tension and people say things

00:48:11.540 sometimes.

00:48:11.860 And she apologized for that a week later anyway, but I understand what she meant was, you know,

00:48:16.260 she felt less of a role for some reason.

00:48:20.100 That's what she came out with.

00:48:21.300 But there is this unfortunate quota element within the military now where we are saying,

00:48:26.100 well, everyone can be a jet pilot.

00:48:27.540 And I'm like, yeah, you try that.

00:48:29.220 Let me know when they die, by the way, because they will at some point in flying training,

00:48:32.580 they will die.

00:48:33.300 Most people do.

00:48:34.100 The funny thing is, Rich, these jets here, right?

00:48:35.780 These jets here, any airline guy will tell you exactly the same thing.

00:48:38.500 They don't care about your gender or your skin color.

00:48:41.860 They don't even know.

00:48:42.900 These are not woke jets.

00:48:44.260 They don't, you don't go in there and go, I'm just going to type in, by the way, I'm

00:48:46.820 a young black dude.

00:48:47.860 Okay.

00:48:48.260 I might, I might have a feminine tendencies.

00:48:50.100 No, no, it just cares about your ability.

00:48:53.140 It's a, it's a meritocracy out there.

00:48:54.900 You get that wrong.

00:48:55.620 You die.

00:48:56.100 It's a black and white thing.

00:48:57.780 It's a black.

00:48:58.340 I've told many women pilots this just because you're a woman.

00:49:00.660 It doesn't matter.

00:49:01.220 This thing is still kill you fast.

00:49:02.660 It'll just kill.

00:49:03.220 All right.

00:49:03.620 It will kill you.

00:49:04.020 Don't worry about that.

00:49:04.740 I've trained gay men.

00:49:06.020 I've changed straight men.

00:49:06.980 I've gained women, uh, nationalities over anything, you know, black people, different colors,

00:49:12.500 you know, Saudis, anything I've trained them all can all die in the same way.

00:49:16.500 Everyone dies in the same way.

00:49:17.860 Okay.

00:49:18.100 And then you find out that the blood inside people, strangely enough, is the same guy.

00:49:21.700 Does, does this woke agenda, this political correctness agenda, that's, um, you know,

00:49:27.860 getting pushed through the military, does this put countries at risk?

00:49:31.140 You know, like, does it, does it weaken the military?

00:49:34.340 I mean, like I've seen the general pacification of the Western male.

00:49:37.620 And we talked about that on your channel when we did the interview.

00:49:40.420 I mean, we mostly talked about my book and, you know, some of the concepts around that

00:49:43.540 when we were on your channel, but I'm curious about your perspective, you know, when it comes

00:49:47.460 like, are you embarrassed, you know, to the state of where the military is going?

00:49:51.620 Like, are you seeing, uh, places like Russia and China becoming a serious threat because

00:49:56.500 we're spending too much time worried about, uh, diversity, inclusivity training and white

00:50:03.060 privilege training?

00:50:03.860 I know a lot of war fighters in the military still.

00:50:07.620 I know a lot of senior commanders in the military and they're good people and they're not going

00:50:10.660 to let this stuff erode capabilities.

00:50:12.980 Although arguably the British army is struggling recently.

00:50:15.060 I'm not going to go British army, but they have been called in front of the secretary of

00:50:17.620 state for defense to explain a lot of things about bullying and other things that they've

00:50:20.900 got going on in there.

00:50:22.020 And this is the leadership issue.

00:50:23.620 Uh, I don't see our military at the moment, significantly weaker than it ever has been

00:50:29.140 a caveat by saying certain elements might well be armor, brigades, things like that,

00:50:33.220 where we haven't got the correct equipment in or procurement has been particularly poor.

00:50:36.740 When it comes down to the teaching, the, the, the teaching of pilots, for example,

00:50:39.940 and I still very close to that.

00:50:40.980 I don't see that as being eroded by any DNI policy at the moment, but remember it takes

00:50:45.940 a long time to get someone into the, become an instructor.

00:50:48.580 They join, they've got to go onto a frontline.

00:50:50.180 So they joined five years worth of flying training.

00:50:51.780 They might do a four to six year frontline tour and then they come back as an instructor.

00:50:56.340 So we've got to wait 11 or 12 years before we see any kind of element or an erosion of

00:51:00.820 capability or, or, or cognitive ability within the instructor card for the jets.

00:51:06.100 I, I reposted something and I think you saw it from, from the Russian prime minister,

00:51:10.580 president Putin, of course, president Putin, so not France, um, where he put a speech out.

00:51:15.460 And, you know, arguably he has been part of a, uh, an active subversion campaign into the

00:51:21.940 West for a significant period of time, maybe from the mid to late sixties or early seventies,

00:51:26.100 where he's looked to push these agendas.

00:51:27.860 And it probably started with, um, and I, I can't really, I mean, the will known who I interviewed

00:51:33.780 last week would talk more about the literature that can tell you this.

00:51:36.900 I don't want to be labeled as a bigot or anything on your channel by, by saying,

00:51:40.660 you know, embracing things like gay marriage or something.

00:51:42.660 However, we feel about gay marriage.

00:51:44.340 Will was a Roman Catholic who I interviewed and he didn't believe in gay marriage.

00:51:47.460 Didn't believe fine.

00:51:48.260 That's him.

00:51:48.740 Let's not go there.

00:51:49.620 But of course that came into the West, didn't it?

00:51:51.460 And then we start talking about diversity and we celebrate it and everything else.

00:51:55.620 Russia recognized where this was going in its own country and it didn't allow these things.

00:51:59.460 And it kept it very conservative and very conformist and China exactly the same now as saying with

00:52:04.340 video games, you can't have a feminine characters.

00:52:06.340 You can't have, you know, people with mixed weird genders.

00:52:10.180 And I see that we've embraced it all.

00:52:12.180 And unfortunately what happens, we're very liberal country.

00:52:14.740 And in order to be subverted, you must be able to be subverted.

00:52:18.260 You must be allowing yourself to be subverted.

00:52:20.340 And it just seems that our liberal bias that we have within your country, especially rich is

00:52:25.220 one of the ones that we should be really looking hard at.

00:52:27.700 But America especially, and us as well, and a lot of European countries, we allow these

00:52:32.900 views credibility and arguably they should be openly challenged and contested.

00:52:38.100 And of course, we're not able to because you get cancelled.

00:52:41.300 And the council culture is a real thing.

00:52:42.820 And we see it with academics in the UK.

00:52:44.900 So I don't, I see the Russian and the Chinese military is embracing the potential erosion of

00:52:50.660 a capable Western military.

00:52:53.060 The withdrawal from Afghanistan didn't help the Americans whatsoever.

00:52:55.700 The way that was done, didn't it? Unfortunately, it embraces these things.

00:52:58.980 And when it levels up, it looks for us to be leveling down.

00:53:03.300 And unfortunately, I'm happy to be out.

00:53:05.460 But again, I'd love to still be in to be able to be part of keeping the military what it should be.

00:53:11.780 Yeah, I feel like we'll see what happens over the next decade or two.

00:53:15.860 I mean, we'll see how it all unfolds, but it doesn't look promising, you know,

00:53:19.140 for Western countries, the way they're going right now.

00:53:21.060 Well, we've been on an island somewhere just chilling out, sports cars, that kind of stuff.

00:53:25.700 Yeah. Where's that island? I want to go to that one, that island.

00:53:28.260 Yeah, we'll have to find it somewhere.

00:53:29.540 I want to, I want to take another 10 minutes or so.

00:53:34.900 Do you have enough time to do a full hour?

00:53:36.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that.

00:53:39.300 What was it like for you as a guy playing a win in his life in the military as a Royal Air Force

00:53:44.340 tornado pilot managing family, marriage, you know, your relationship with your wife during that time?

00:53:49.300 Like, was it taxing? I've, I've, you know, I've talked to a lot of guys in the military that,

00:53:53.060 um, mostly in the U S and they have a term for it, you know, they call him Jody, where they go away,

00:53:58.260 they get deployed and they find out that their girlfriend, wife, whoever was, uh, getting, uh,

00:54:04.900 serviced by a guy named Jody, uh, you know, while he was away. Um,

00:54:10.820 how was it for you to manage your marriage and your personal life in the military?

00:54:14.500 Well, it's very easy, isn't it? To, um, to, to gain affection from married women,

00:54:20.580 especially in remote locations, because they're, they're pretty bored, aren't they?

00:54:23.620 The problem with our military, not all the military, there are some good places you can be based,

00:54:29.460 but I was based in the north of Scotland, Lossiemouth. And I was based in, in Anglesey,

00:54:33.300 uh, North Wales, very remote places. Of course, I was lucky that my wife started a business. We didn't

00:54:37.780 have children and we don't have children. So she did start a business and she was a chiropractor.

00:54:41.780 So she was occupied pretty much, but of course also empowered. And of course you have this

00:54:45.620 dynamic in the military where you, you want to marry and you do select, uh, an alpha woman pretty

00:54:50.180 much because you go to war and you, you want that woman to be able to hold her own in the bar.

00:54:54.100 There's never a wife of anyone. If there is, they stand out a mile off that can't hold their own in

00:54:58.820 the bar. You don't want to bring your woman to the bar. I hate the term woman rich. Sorry for saying

00:55:02.820 that you don't want to bring your wife or your girlfriend to the bar and, um, and her to be a meek

00:55:07.140 little thing. Cause it's, it's like, hang on a second, what's going on here? And I'm saying she needs to be able to hold

00:55:10.900 her own. When you're away, she's running the house. And now remember there, there are women

00:55:14.580 I've trained to fly, um, to, to fly fast jets as well. They have husbands as well. And the husbands,

00:55:19.940 again, they're, they're strong alpha characters. They need to be, need to be able to hold the home

00:55:24.580 four. The problem of course, with that is they've also got this mind, haven't they? That allows them

00:55:29.460 to think that they can, um, obviously leave a life of independence and, and often women do. I had, um,

00:55:36.340 one of my senior instructors, good dude, actually he's in, uh, he's overseas now. Shall we say,

00:55:40.180 I do tell the story. He's a, he's a good guy. I did a podcast with him a long time ago.

00:55:44.500 I, uh, he, his, uh, he found out his wife was having an affair and, uh, he smashed the place

00:55:51.380 up basically is he'd been out on, um, a detachment. His wife had also been there. He came home and

00:55:56.500 found all the text messages coming in. You know what I'm saying? When you use some of these Apple

00:55:58.980 products and she'd been seeing someone else out there, they were both out there. Of course,

00:56:02.420 he smashed his house up. Now he's a pilot. So, um, he puts all this stuff on Facebook and I'm like,

00:56:06.980 dude, what's up phone? Like, come on. Anyway, um, went to see the dude, sorted him out,

00:56:12.420 calm him down, never going to, cause he put everything up on Facebook. It's never going

00:56:15.540 to be reconciled. The thing about it was though, now he hasn't got a marriage anymore. Lucky he

00:56:19.540 didn't have any kids, wife's still out there, the boss in his infinite wisdom. And most bosses aren't

00:56:23.940 that wise to be fair. They just played the game. Yes, men had decided then that this man was

00:56:28.740 too unstable to fly. So the next day when he came into work, he said, well, he's not flying.

00:56:31.940 We've canceled all his trips. I'm like, boss, this man has nothing else. He's got nothing else.

00:56:36.740 He's got no marriage. He smashed his house up. You know what I mean? He's a good dude. He's my

00:56:39.460 top guy. He's not going to do anything. Let him fly. He's an instructor. He's my top instructor.

00:56:43.460 Let him fly. Boss was like, no, went to the dude and said, look, I can't solve this today, but you

00:56:48.740 know, go home, chill, rebuild your house tomorrow. When you come and we'll go flying together.

00:56:52.340 All right. Now that's like a massive no, no, because the boss has said he can't fly.

00:56:56.660 The dude comes in the next day. He's angry. Like this guy's turbo angry. The whole

00:57:00.980 squadron knows he's angry. Even the students know he's angry. All right. It's like, geez,

00:57:04.580 he's just telling anyone who's listening, Rich, how evil his wife was. She was in the military

00:57:10.820 as well. So this woman was very alpha. So in her mind, she can do what she wants. Right.

00:57:15.060 You know, she can have these things. She can be men and women are the same. Right. There you go.

00:57:19.300 That's it. So exactly that. And this guy was really invested in his relationship. He'd done a lot.

00:57:25.860 He found the house. He put all that stuff. They were co-located on the same base. And this had

00:57:31.380 happened. Came in the next day. He was angry. I'm trying to brief this guy going, right,

00:57:34.580 we're going to go flying. This is what we're going to do. We're going to, I used to have to assess all

00:57:38.340 these guys. And this was one of the few guys on the squadron that could also assess me in some of

00:57:42.420 my flying as well. That's why he was quite senior. And I said, right, let's get an assessment trip done

00:57:46.580 for you. Then we'll go up. You need this trip anyway. I want you to show me this teach, which would be

00:57:51.220 part low level, general handling, a bit of navigation, a bit of instrument flying. Last about

00:57:54.740 an hour, 20 minutes. Let's go and get this done. He was, he was still raging. So I went out, signed

00:58:00.820 the offsheets. And I still remember signing for the airplane being, we have an ops desk where someone

00:58:05.540 reads a piece of paper out. Have you got your G pants on, your helmet? Have you booked the jet out?

00:58:09.220 Have you booked your low level? You go, yes, yes, yes, yes. And this guy next to me is still talking

00:58:13.780 about this stuff like this. I'm hitting him going, you shut up, else the boss is going to find out.

00:58:17.300 What's the matter with you? And I was saying, he's like, but Tim, how did she do this to me? I'm like,

00:58:21.220 shut up, dude. What's up? I'm trying to smuggle you into an airplane. Anyway, the whole way out

00:58:25.540 there, we're walking across the apron to the jet. And he is, I mean, I knew the guy, fair play to the

00:58:30.740 boy. He'd been massively stitched up. And he's just raging like he's this ball of anger. And he gets,

00:58:37.940 even the ground crew there is going, Jesus, you know, this guy next to the jet is going, what the

00:58:41.540 hell? And this guy's just going, can you believe this? He gets up to the jet. See, I knew how professional

00:58:46.820 this dude was, right? Because they're all the same. Pilots are all the same. He gets up to the

00:58:50.740 jet. As soon as his foot goes on the ladder, it used to be ladders up to the jets. You climb up

00:58:54.100 these ladders into the cockpit. He touches it. And that scene, he's done. He stopped talking.

00:58:58.820 He gets in the jet. He starts with the jet up and everything. I'm in the back, helmet's on,

00:59:01.780 engines come up. He does all the calls, goes out there, does the low level, the instrument flying,

00:59:05.700 general handling, navigation, does the bit about, you know, all the stuff, transits, instrument flying back in

00:59:10.420 here. It doesn't say one thing, calm as anything. Most professional dude ever. You wouldn't have

00:59:15.220 ever thought anything else was going on in his life. Lands the jet, taxis it back in, opens the

00:59:19.620 canopy, helmet's off, all the intercom off, all the jet off, batteries off, Jen's off, everything else.

00:59:24.420 Gets out, down the ladder. As soon as his foot touches the floor, I'm not even joking, he is raging

00:59:29.300 again. You wouldn't believe that. It's like another thing she's done. Now, the thing about it is,

00:59:34.500 this is why I said the boss to let him fly. We can compartmentalize stuff. Now, we just say,

00:59:41.540 and there's an airline guy down here who just dropped a comment in there as well. He knows

00:59:44.500 what I'm talking about. You can have the worst background. When you're flying, it's like,

00:59:48.660 bang, put it on a shelf. I'm going to put that on a shelf for misery later or for attention later.

00:59:52.420 I'll deal with that later. I'll put it on a shelf for sympathy later, we used to call,

00:59:55.540 because you're never going to go back there. Put it in your sympathy box. And this guy did that.

00:59:59.620 He compartmentalized his failing marriage, went flu, he's an utmost professional. I went back to the

01:00:03.860 boss that day and I said, I've flown with this dude this morning. He's fine. And the boss was

01:00:07.940 really angry at me, but of course, he was fine then. The boss said, right, fine. Well, you can

01:00:11.700 fly then. And I think that guy, about five years later, reached back to me and said, that's what

01:00:16.580 stopped him hanging himself or whatever. He was that deep, that dark, rich. He was like,

01:00:21.380 he was going to throw himself off a beam somewhere. And that flight, just someone having confidence in him

01:00:27.140 was enough for him to not do that and rebuild his life. That's an incredible story.

01:00:31.700 Yeah, let's wrap it up on that note. Tim, where can people find you and who should come looking

01:00:38.340 for you and your content? Right. So I run a course called the spin recovery course for men

01:00:43.060 going through transitional times. People look at that as like midlife crisis. You don't have to,

01:00:46.980 you don't have to. Now it's a deep course last 12 weeks. I'm not telling you to do it. It's a

01:00:50.740 high ticket price, like two grand or some shit, right? So don't do that. I do work with clients

01:00:54.420 like yourself, Rich, but I'm more into the accountability aspects as opposed to relationship,

01:01:00.260 stuff like that. You know what I mean? You're very good at that stuff. I'm going to leave that stuff

01:01:04.100 to you. So if people are wanting to be accountable, especially if you guys get back in shape or anything

01:01:08.580 like that, those are the guys that want to come. But more so if you want to come and I run a virtual

01:01:13.380 flight school. I was the most senior instructor in the Royal Air Force for about a decade.

01:01:17.300 I've taken that now and I've built a flight school on a flight sim called digital combat sim. And I teach

01:01:23.460 the syllabi that we trained on these aircraft. It lasts about six months. It's subscription-based. It's not

01:01:27.860 very much, like $50 or something a month. And if you want to come and fly and you do fly flight sims,

01:01:32.500 then come onto fastjetperformance.com, scroll down. You'll see something called Shadowlands where

01:01:37.780 you can learn out of the spotlight. See what I did there. And then you can put your headset on.

01:01:42.260 I'll teach everything you need to know to fly these jets. We train F-5, F-18, and we just introduced

01:01:47.140 Harry and F-16 at the moment as well. It's a chill place. It's about mindfulness. You need to get

01:01:51.460 yourself involved, Rich. Then you can go and fly your MiG-29 in Russia.

01:01:53.780 Awesome. I'll take a look at it. Guys, have a look at Tim's stuff. And he just hosted me for

01:02:00.420 an interview on his channel if you want to go watch that as well. But it's been a slice, Tim.

01:02:04.580 I appreciate you carving out some time and sharing some of the war stories and experiences. It's been

01:02:09.940 a lot of fun. Thank you very much. No worries. I had a great time. I really appreciate it.

01:02:13.140 All right. We'll see you guys next time.

Playing to Win - March 02, 2022

048 - Retired RAF Tornado Fighter Pilot - Tim Davis

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