That’s My Dad!
In honor of Father’s Day, we salute military dads everywhere who work to protect our freedom. We also salute their children, who have a unique way of bringing them down to earth.

Following my combat tour in Southeast Asia in 1969, I served as an instructor in the test pilot school at Edwards AFB, Calif. As part of my duties, I checked out in the NF-104, which was a single-engine, single-seat jet fighter, modified with an additional rocket propulsion system and a three-axis reaction control system. With its full afterburning jet engine and extra rocket power, this machine was capable of speeds up to Mach 2.2 (about 1,700 mph) and zoom climbs to altitudes above 20 miles. Its purpose was to give its pilot the space-like experience of zero gravity while controlling the airplane’s altitude with spacecraft reaction controls.

Scheduled for one of these flights, I was excited to invite my wife and two older sons, ages 11 and 12, to witness the entire mission. Arriving at the flight line van where a team of life-support personnel helped me into my full pressure suit, my family was offered an assortment of doughnuts, coffee, and juice. Following a careful check of all suit connections, my boys watched in amazement while I “waddled” out to the nearby NF-104 Starfighter in my bulky pressure suit. After watching me start my engine and taxi out toward the runway, my wife and boys were escorted to the space positioning facility where my mission would be radar-tracked and video-monitored.

The boys were equipped with headsets so they could hear what was going on among their dad in his “rocket ship,” the safety chase pilot in another F-104 fighter, and the mission controller.

Lights flashed. The pen plot board showed my progress as I turned into the supersonic corridor north of Edwards AFB and began my acceleration for the zoom maneuver. There was radio chatter and more flashing lights. A high-powered telephoto camera locked on my jet. Cleared to pull, the controller called off altitude increments in dramatic fashion: “passing 50,000 feet ... through 63,000 feet, afterburner off ... 80,000 feet, jet engine off ... 90,000 feet ... 100,000 feet ... down the back side, call engine burn-out ... over the top at 106,500 feet ... down the back side, call engine relight ... good relight at 65,000 feet.” With more flashing lights and more radio calls, the camera followed me down to a full-stop landing. Mission over.

As my wife drove the two boys back home, she asked our oldest son, “What was the most exciting thing that you experienced this morning?” My son thought hard. “When the nice man in the flight line offered me a second chocolate doughnut!”

— Warren J. Kerzon is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
He and his wife, Eunice, live in Durango, Colo.