Alan C. Mack

Flying is so fun.

It's unforgiving.

Perhaps a little risky, but you can mitigate risk.

For me, it went great.

You had Desert Shield preceding Desert Storm, so about six months or so of just flying in the desert.

And because I was the new guy, they flew me every day with a senior pilot.

And then we flew at night.

And the interesting thing about me being a night stalker eventually is that, you know, you fly at night, night vision goggles.

And the goggles at the time were...

You would wear them, kind of stuff you see in some of the older 90s movies, you know, great big things, you know, surgical tubing holding them on your helmet and counterweights.

It was quite a mess.

But the older guys that had flown in Vietnam and such, they did not want to fly these.

They would much rather fly what we call a Nighthawk or unaided, right?

So just what you can see out the window.

And in Saudi Arabia, it's pitch black if there's any kind of cloud cover.

There's no cultural lighting out in the desert.

Right.

So they're like, well, send the WOJ, which is Warrant Officers Junior, to go fly.

And I got good at it.

I got a couple hundred hours flying at night in the Saudi desert.