Hollywood has it all wrong. No one in the fighter jet business, and I mean no one, gets a cool callsign such as “Maverick,” “Iceman” or “Burner” for being the Holy Grail of aviation. Callsigns come about because a young pilot commits the cardinal sin of fighter aviation … looking ridiculous in front of peers. My callsign came about from just such a situation — and I’m lucky to be alive to tell the story.
It sounds cliché, but it really was a dark and stormy night – except that in Anchorage, Alaska, in the wintertime, night really means any time before 10 a.m. and stormy is just another day. I was a newly minted wingman in the mighty F-15C Eagle on my first operational deployment. The 19th Fighter Squadron, known as the “Gamecocks,” were deploying eight Eagles that early morning from the far reaches of snowy Alaska to sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, to take part in Red Flag, the famed highly realistic air battle on the combat ranges north of Nellis Air Force Base.
