Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge that traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galliger people of
Speaker 1: the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: It's April nineteen ninety five and we're in the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 2: one hundred and four kilometers away from land. The water
Speaker 2: is cold, the wind is high, the waves are strong.
Speaker 2: Captain Brian Yudell is fighting for his life. He's just
Speaker 2: survived the highest speed ejection from a US fighter aircraft
Speaker 2: at nearly one three hundred kilometers per hour. He feels
Speaker 2: like his body has just collided with a freight train.
Speaker 2: The salt water is making him painfully aware of the
Speaker 2: open wounds that cover his broken body. Brian starts to pray.
Speaker 2: He has to get home to his wife, who is
Speaker 2: four months pregnant with their first child. It'll be four
Speaker 2: grueling hours of until Brian is rescued. I'm at Middleton
Speaker 2: and this is head Game today, an unbelievable story of perseverance,
Speaker 2: strength and return to the sguise. Brian, you welcome to
Speaker 2: my podcast, head Game. How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm well, how are you? Sir?
Speaker 2: I'm always going to listen it to me, that should
Speaker 2: recording you, sir, take me back to when you first
Speaker 2: got into any type of aircraft and the fascination of flying.
Speaker 2: When did that first hit you.
Speaker 3: I'm a multi generational pilot, so it's in the DNA.
Speaker 3: My father was a fighter pilot for thirty one years,
Speaker 3: and I started flying when I was nine years old.
Speaker 3: Aviations all I know. I've been an airplane my whole life.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was just a natural progression for me
Speaker 3: to follow in those footsteps.
Speaker 2: I suppose being around that twenty seven that's just embedded
Speaker 2: in you, whether you like it or not.
Speaker 3: Right, it's good and it's bad because he got no slack.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 3: You know. I remember complaining once.
Speaker 2: And once only once.
Speaker 3: Only yes, and I said, you know, I'm tired. I was.
Speaker 3: I was in the middle of pilot training and they
Speaker 3: they do all of the things, they try to give
Speaker 3: you twenty five hours worth of stuff and twenty four
Speaker 3: hours to do it, and oh, by the way, you
Speaker 3: got to find some time to sleep. And and so
Speaker 3: I remember complaining called him up and I was like, man, Dad,
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just really tired. He goes, you don't
Speaker 3: know tired, he goes, wait till you get to combat.
Speaker 3: You work when you have to, and you sleep when
Speaker 3: you can, and you just you just go. You put
Speaker 3: it on and you go, and if there's a little break,
Speaker 3: you can take a nap. But when it's time to go,
Speaker 3: it's time to go.
Speaker 2: That's the classic military I suppose way is and that
Speaker 2: it's when you can grab that nap, grab it because
Speaker 2: you don't know when the next one's coming.
Speaker 3: It's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Tell me what happened on the eighteenth for April nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, we were.
Speaker 3: On a night training mission. Standard I was number three
Speaker 3: of a four ship. We were doing what we call
Speaker 3: a surge week, where.
Speaker 2: So when you say number three of a fourth ship,
Speaker 2: there's four four aircrafts and your number three correct.
Speaker 3: This particular night, we're going to go out and do
Speaker 3: what we call two v two aired air intercepts. That's
Speaker 3: where two aircraft are going to pose two aircraft at night.
Speaker 3: It's really a targeting and sorting exercise. It's a communications event.
Speaker 3: You're not really shooting live you're not shooting live munitions
Speaker 3: at each other, but it's the ability to effectively communicate
Speaker 3: between the two aircraft between the four people in those
Speaker 3: two aircraft and effectively figure out what the presentation is
Speaker 3: that the opposing group is giving you effectively communicate that
Speaker 3: between the aircraft, properly target and sort, sort and target
Speaker 3: those two aircraft and then put missiles in the air
Speaker 3: so that you're not both targeting one aircraft or you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's a lot of calm discipline. You know. The
Speaker 3: success I help people war hasn't changed in a thousand years.
Speaker 3: And whether you're blowing a bugle or banging on a
Speaker 3: drum or waving a guide on, it's the ability to
Speaker 3: effectively communicate is the side that's going to be. It's
Speaker 3: going to prevail because I can communicate effectively, we can
Speaker 3: put we can put force concentration in. So we're doing
Speaker 3: our thing. We were actually on our fourth intercept, this
Speaker 3: airplane that had some mechanical problems and what we call
Speaker 3: ground aboard it twice the week before. What that means
Speaker 3: is is they started the airplane up and for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: it didn't pass it's built in tests, and so they
Speaker 3: gave it back to maintenance to work on. When I
Speaker 3: showed up at the airplane, the first thing we do is,
Speaker 3: we salute the crew chief, we pick up the maintenance forms,
Speaker 3: We review the maintenance forms. I could see that this
Speaker 3: airplane had some previous discrepancies that were still kind of
Speaker 3: coming up with issues. But supposedly it was a good aircraft.
Speaker 3: So we do our walk around, We climb in the jet,
Speaker 3: We start to jet up, and it runs through its
Speaker 3: test and it failed three different tests. The central computer
Speaker 3: was not operating properly, the display processor was not operating properly,
Speaker 3: and the heads up display failed. And so we called
Speaker 3: out maintenance. Maintenance plugs into the aircraft and we start
Speaker 3: talking about it, and they said, well, you know what's
Speaker 3: been fixing it before is just turn it off and
Speaker 3: turn it back on. Just recycle it. Boy, I tell
Speaker 3: you what, people say that to me. Yeah, right exactly.
Speaker 3: But people say that to me, I just want to
Speaker 3: choke them. And so so we turned it off and
Speaker 3: we turn it back on, and we repeat this multiple times,
Speaker 3: and finally we've got a good airplane. There were no
Speaker 3: spares to step two. All the other jets were broken
Speaker 3: or being utilized, so it was love the one you're with.
Speaker 3: So we worked it and worked at work it. Finally
Speaker 3: we got a good airplane. We taxied probably five minutes
Speaker 3: after the other three aircraft did. We have contingencies. Every
Speaker 3: military operation has contingencies because you know your initial plan
Speaker 3: very rarely is going to go as planned where you
Speaker 3: don't roll x into some contingency operations. So they had
Speaker 3: a contingency if I wasn't able to get down there,
Speaker 3: but we were able to get down there with them,
Speaker 3: get armed up, and we launched. We met up with
Speaker 3: an air to air refueling tanker, a casey ten that
Speaker 3: was parked in an air refueling track. We cycled through.
Speaker 3: We got about four thousand pounds of gas each, and
Speaker 3: then we went out into what we call the Whiskeys.
Speaker 3: That's the warning areas off the coast of the United States,
Speaker 3: the East coast the United States, and that allows us
Speaker 3: to be able to train like we fight, meaning we
Speaker 3: can go supersonic without blowing windows and knocking china off
Speaker 3: the walls and you know, really getting people upset with us.
Speaker 3: It also gives us the actual time compression. When you've
Speaker 3: got two airplanes coming at each other over the mock,
Speaker 3: things happen very quick. You might be one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty miles away, but that one hundred and fifty miles away.
Speaker 3: When you got a closure rated over one thousand miles
Speaker 3: an hour, we'll go.
Speaker 2: By a thousand miles an hour.
Speaker 3: So it's you have to be thinking fast. You have
Speaker 3: to stay ahead of what's going on.
Speaker 2: You're specializing it before it happens exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's why we practice this over and over and over,
Speaker 3: so it becomes where you start to see things happen
Speaker 3: before they happen. You know what's going to happen before
Speaker 3: they happen, and then you just execute. And if things
Speaker 3: aren't going the way you want them to go, you
Speaker 3: have a specific outrange, and that's a range be no range.
Speaker 3: We will be no closer than this. If we don't
Speaker 3: have our ducks in a row, we don't have eything
Speaker 3: doped out, we're out and you get out, and it's
Speaker 3: like get out before you like you mean it, and
Speaker 3: then come back and try to re engage again. But
Speaker 3: this particular event, we got our gas, we went out
Speaker 3: and the first two intercepts went off without a hitch,
Speaker 3: and about forty five minutes into the flight, we were
Speaker 3: on our third intercept, and this was the first one
Speaker 3: where myself and my wingman. We're going to play what
Speaker 3: we call red air the adversary side, and we're going
Speaker 3: to give them a presentation that was prominent from the
Speaker 3: old former Soviet Union tactics. We bring them into res
Speaker 3: cell what we call resolution cell, where basically fingertip formation.
Speaker 3: My women is on my left wing about three feet off,
Speaker 3: and we're going to be cruising in and then when
Speaker 3: we get to a range where I know that they
Speaker 3: would be firing their first salvo, we're going to split apart.
Speaker 3: My women's going to do a ninety three turn drop
Speaker 3: down to a lower altitude block. We divide the airspace
Speaker 3: into altitude blocks for safety of flight, because when they
Speaker 3: separate and you don't know where people are, especially at night,
Speaker 3: you can't see them. Ye want to see them that
Speaker 3: you exactly, so you have your safe haven at a
Speaker 3: specific altitude block. And our block was a ten to
Speaker 3: four zeros to four block, which means ten thousand to fourteen,
Speaker 3: twenty to twenty four thousand, thirty to thirty four thousand,
Speaker 3: and the other two aircraft had the fives to nine,
Speaker 3: so it'd be five to nine, fifteen to nineteen, twenty
Speaker 3: five to twenty nine, so so forth, so my women
Speaker 3: they drop down to the ten to fourteen block and
Speaker 3: I'm still at twenty four thousand. We're in a right
Speaker 3: hand turn, and we're about one hundred degrees through the turn.
Speaker 3: With believe it or not, the lessons from my father.
Speaker 3: So my father always taught me. He says, always trust
Speaker 3: your instruments, because that's I had to when I was little.
Speaker 3: I couldn't see out. But he goes, always listen to
Speaker 3: the airplane, because if you're in tune with the airplane
Speaker 3: and you're listening to it, airplanes will talk to you,
Speaker 3: and if you are listening, they'll tell you what they're doing.
Speaker 3: And what I was seeing in my instruments. Now it's
Speaker 3: a pitch black night. There's no moon, no stars, no
Speaker 3: discernible horizon. Everything in my world is in that hood's
Speaker 3: up display, and what I'm seeing is twenty four thousand
Speaker 3: feet forward or notts in a sixty year right hand turn.
Speaker 3: But what I'm hearing is this airplane is getting fast.
Speaker 3: I'm hearing the wind rushing over the top of the campy.
Speaker 3: Something didn't seem right, and so I brought up a
Speaker 3: different display down on a color screen between my legs
Speaker 3: that gives me similar information in a different format. That
Speaker 3: display was showing us pointed straight at the water, and
Speaker 3: instead of twenty four thousand feet and four hundred knots,
Speaker 3: we were now at seventeen thousand feet and six hundred knots.
Speaker 3: So I'd already lost seven thousand feet and didn't even
Speaker 3: realize it until I could start hearing that wind rushing
Speaker 3: over the canopy. I didn't pick up on it. The
Speaker 3: airplane always trims for one g, so you don't have
Speaker 3: a fill sensation in the stick. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can feel the wind load as it increases. The
Speaker 3: airplane automatically adjusts for that. So my only indication was
Speaker 3: that sound, that wind rush over the canopy. When I
Speaker 3: brought that up, I looked at I was very startled
Speaker 3: because I'm now not where I thought I was, and
Speaker 3: now I've got to try to figure this out. Well,
Speaker 3: there's a thing we learned. It's called recognized, confirm, and recover. Well,
Speaker 3: I recognize we've got a problem via sound and via sight.
Speaker 3: I've got to try to confirm this. Unfortunately, I only
Speaker 3: have my head's at display, and I have my attitude
Speaker 3: indicator on this color display here, and then there's a standby. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that standby is not accurate, and you'll turn out of
Speaker 3: traffic this way and it'll precess that way. What is
Speaker 3: primary designed for is if you lost electrics. It's a
Speaker 3: gyro stabilized machine attitude indicator that I could cage and
Speaker 3: it would give me about eight minutes of stabilized attitude
Speaker 3: information to be able to get down through a weather deck.
Speaker 3: But it's not going to be used for some kind
Speaker 3: of out of control type recovery instrument. The second part
Speaker 3: of the problem was that color display. We would turn
Speaker 3: the brightness in contrast of that display down quite low
Speaker 3: so that it wouldn't cast a big colorful glow on
Speaker 3: the inside of that bubble canopy and create disorientation. And
Speaker 3: so I had to sit there and try to figure
Speaker 3: out what that actual display was telling me. And then
Speaker 3: I could see the disparity between the two. I could
Speaker 3: see the airspeed spinning up. I could see the altitude
Speaker 3: spinning down. But I've got to try to figure out
Speaker 3: in my upside down, my right side up, how many
Speaker 3: degrees knows low am I? And so now I have
Speaker 3: to stop, and I have to turn the brightness and
Speaker 3: contrast of this display up and it wasn't like a
Speaker 3: riostat where I could just go like that. It was
Speaker 3: rocker switches. So I'm sitting here pushing buttons like this
Speaker 3: to try to get the brightness. And the display turned
Speaker 3: up and we are traveling fifteen hundred feet per second
Speaker 3: straight at the water. So we started the maneuver at
Speaker 3: a second. Yes, we started the maneuver at twenty four
Speaker 3: thousand feet. I realized we had a problem at seventeen
Speaker 3: thousand feet. From seventeen thousand feet to ten thousand feet,
Speaker 3: I'm working this problem, so that's seven thousand feet, so
Speaker 3: I basically had five seconds roughly to figure this out
Speaker 3: make a decision either try to recover the airplane or
Speaker 3: command the ejection. When we got through ten thousand feet,
Speaker 3: we're now supersonic. I'm eighty degrees nos low inverted, and
Speaker 3: I realized that there is no way. One I'm not
Speaker 3: going to bet my life that this is even telling
Speaker 3: me the true and two I don't think I can
Speaker 3: pull out of this dive without ripping the wings off
Speaker 3: or blackness out or both. And at that point I
Speaker 3: just commanded the ejection and got in a body position
Speaker 3: and pulled the handles in that length of time, four
Speaker 3: thousand feet. Additionally, additional four thousand feet went by. We're
Speaker 3: now at six thousand feet. I'm pulling the ejection handles.
Speaker 3: A canopy goes off at forty five hundred feet. Dennis DW.
Speaker 3: Dennis White was my back seater. He went out at
Speaker 3: three thousand feet. I left the cockpit at fifteen hundred
Speaker 3: feet and I got my shoot roughly about five hundred
Speaker 3: feet above the water. Had had I waited even a
Speaker 3: third of a second longer to pull the handles, I
Speaker 3: would have impacted the water still in my seat and
Speaker 3: been killed. So when you talk about seeing ahead, predicting things,
Speaker 3: making those decisions, the decision to get out is made
Speaker 3: before you ever get in the airplane.
Speaker 2: So when your Powa chute deploys, are you strapped into
Speaker 2: the chair when you land.
Speaker 3: No, I had about twenty five twenty to twenty five
Speaker 3: seconds under the canopy before I hit the water. So
Speaker 3: the way it works is you separate, you leave the
Speaker 3: aircraft in your seat, and the seat is incredibly smart.
Speaker 3: It has an altimeter in it and it has pedo
Speaker 3: tubes on either side, so it knows how the seat
Speaker 3: knows how fast it's going, and it knows what's attitude
Speaker 3: it's in, and it knows what altitude it's at. So
Speaker 3: from that it makes a decision, do I need to
Speaker 3: keep him with the seat until we get down to
Speaker 3: a lower altitude, or do I got to get him
Speaker 3: out of this seat and get him a main choot immediately.
Speaker 3: And in this case, because we were going so fast,
Speaker 3: it actually threw out a miniature drag chute to try
Speaker 3: to slow us down. But then it has to be
Speaker 3: able to cut that dragshot away and then get the
Speaker 3: main canopy open and separate you from the seat. All
Speaker 3: of that happens in milliseconds. So it was able to
Speaker 3: get me slowed down enough to where the main choot
Speaker 3: wasn't destroyed upon deployment because of the excessive speed that
Speaker 3: we were traveling. So it kicks me out of the seat.
Speaker 3: I'm hanging under the canopy. I could fill the cold
Speaker 3: night air on my face. I could hear the parachute
Speaker 3: ruffling above me. I knew where I was. I also
Speaker 3: knew I was going into the ocean. And then immediately
Speaker 3: your training kicks in. You do what it's called a
Speaker 3: post ejection checklist. It's canopy visor mass seat kit. I'll
Speaker 3: be used here prepare release. I mean it's that ingrained
Speaker 3: and so I look up at my canopy. I couldn't
Speaker 3: see it was pitch black. Visor masks were supposed to
Speaker 3: take our visor put it up on top of our
Speaker 3: helmet discarder mask. I didn't have to worry about that step.
Speaker 3: The whole helmet was gone. Seat kit when we deploy,
Speaker 3: when we separate from the seat, we're actually sitting on
Speaker 3: a seat kit which contains a one man life wrapped
Speaker 3: and two survival kits. But one's called a rucksack kit.
Speaker 3: The other's called a grab and dough kit. The rucksack
Speaker 3: kit falls away on a fifteen foot lanyard that pulls
Speaker 3: the one man life raft out. It falls away on
Speaker 3: a fifteen foot landard that's hooked to my right hip,
Speaker 3: and the weight of that rucksack kit pulls a pin
Speaker 3: on a CO two cartridge that partially inflates that wrapped
Speaker 3: So hanging below me, fifteen feet below me is a
Speaker 3: one man life raft. Fifteen feet below that, it's that
Speaker 3: rucksack kit, and zipped into the inside flap right up
Speaker 3: underneath my butt is that grab and go kit, which
Speaker 3: is about the size of a fireplace log. The rucksack
Speaker 3: kit contains everything you need for long term survival. The
Speaker 3: grab and go kit contains duplicate items, but it's mostly
Speaker 3: for rescue. It's got your flares and water and radio
Speaker 3: and signal mirror whistle things like that. Yeah, So, as
Speaker 3: I'm coming down on the chute, I get to my
Speaker 3: line preserver and I look down and my life preserver
Speaker 3: looked like shredded rags hanging around my neck. And then
Speaker 3: I got a bit concern because I know I'm going
Speaker 3: into the ocean and if I don't get to something
Speaker 3: that floats, I'm going to be a dead man. And
Speaker 3: I'm hoping that my life preserver hanging fifteen feet below
Speaker 3: me that I can't see, doesn't look like this. So
Speaker 3: somewhere I had the presence of mind, and I think
Speaker 3: this is where the exceptional training comes in, because I
Speaker 3: was able to think clearly, I was able to keep
Speaker 3: my wits about me, and I just had the presence
Speaker 3: of mind to reach down and I grabbed that lanyard
Speaker 3: and with my teeth and my one arm, I reeled
Speaker 3: that life wrapped up to me and just at the
Speaker 3: point I grabbed a hold of the raft, I could
Speaker 3: tell it was inflated. I went from hanging under the
Speaker 3: canopy to about ten feet under the water. Having hold
Speaker 3: of that inflated wrap pulled me back up to the surface.
Speaker 3: Otherwise I would have drowned. I'm in mid fifties water
Speaker 3: temperature the sea states about three to five feet. The
Speaker 3: wind's blowing about ten knots, and I'm starting to be drug.
Speaker 3: My shoe catches wind and I'm starting to be drug
Speaker 3: through the water. There's a very smart man. A lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff that we have in our survival kits
Speaker 3: are as a result of somebody in the past dying
Speaker 3: from not having this. So what we have is the
Speaker 3: pyrotechnic device on our risers, and when they sense the
Speaker 3: salt water, if there's a charge and it blows your
Speaker 3: rises away, it sounds like two shotgun shells going off
Speaker 3: on either side of your head. So I came to rest,
Speaker 3: still holding onto the raft, and that's when I went
Speaker 3: to try to kick my legs to get into the raft.
Speaker 3: And when I did, the top half of my leg
Speaker 3: would go one way and the bottom half would go
Speaker 3: the other. And when I kicked my left foot. My
Speaker 3: foot would flip around backwards and then it flip around forwards,
Speaker 3: and they were both useless. And then this arm is
Speaker 3: bent back like this, so I've got one functioning arm
Speaker 3: with a separated shoulder. I'm in five foot seas. I
Speaker 3: know if I don't get into this raft that I'm
Speaker 3: going to die of hypothermia. I'll go unconscious and that'll
Speaker 3: be that. And so I'm trying to get in. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to get in. I can't get in. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to push this raft underneath me, and the wave would
Speaker 3: come up and the raft would want to flip over
Speaker 3: on top of me, so I'd have to let it
Speaker 3: go like this and then I'd get it back up
Speaker 3: underneath me. And I tried probably ten times, and I
Speaker 3: just couldn't get in, couldn't get in, And now I'm
Speaker 3: literally to the point of exhaustion, and I thought, this
Speaker 3: is it. I'm going to die tonight.
Speaker 2: Is that what you thought, Brian? Did you actually think
Speaker 2: to yourself, right, I'm not going to make this, this
Speaker 2: is me.
Speaker 3: I'm gone, Yeah, And that's when I stopped everything. I'm
Speaker 3: we wonder where I get my strength from my father?
Speaker 3: My father got it from his mother. My grandmother was
Speaker 3: an incredibly strong woman, and she always taught me that
Speaker 3: we don't get to choose the day we're going to have.
Speaker 3: We get to choose how we're going to deal with it,
Speaker 3: and we should be prepared for whatever the day brings physically, mentally, emotionally,
Speaker 3: and spiritually. And she says, if you're in and a
Speaker 3: situation that you have no control over and you need help,
Speaker 3: you pray for what you need, not for what you want.
Speaker 3: And so I put my head down on the raft
Speaker 3: and I say, God, I can't die tonight. I've got
Speaker 3: too much to do. I've got My wife was four
Speaker 3: months pregnant with our first child, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 3: how selfish of it would be for me to not
Speaker 3: be there and for her to get that knock on
Speaker 3: the door. I did not want her to get that
Speaker 3: knock on the door.
Speaker 2: Your wife was four months pregnant at this time?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Did that thought process went through your head? Just as
Speaker 2: I suppose you're going to give up, It's like, I
Speaker 2: can't give up. I've got to stay alive. My wife
Speaker 2: is pregnant, I've got a child on the way. And
Speaker 2: was it that for that ultimately switched things up.
Speaker 3: It'll give you superhuman strength, Yeah, absolutely, because I took
Speaker 3: that raft. I took that raft and I shoved it
Speaker 3: down into the base between my legs like this. I
Speaker 3: threw my shoulder into it like that, and I rode
Speaker 3: the wave up. And when I crested the top of
Speaker 3: the wave and went down the backside, my body flipped
Speaker 3: right into the raft and I was sitting there perfectly,
Speaker 3: and my leg from the knee down was hanging ninety
Speaker 3: to the right over the side. My foot was turned
Speaker 3: around backwards and folded up underneath me, and this arm
Speaker 3: was a bit back like that. And I'm looking at this.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking to myself, you can't live out here looking
Speaker 3: like this. You're going to be out here a long time.
Speaker 3: You can't sit here and be looking at yourself like this.
Speaker 3: So you got to straighten yourself out. This is one
Speaker 3: of those times where it's better to look good than
Speaker 3: to feel good. And so I I grabbed my leg
Speaker 3: and I heaved it in and it went from ninety
Speaker 3: right to ninety left. It's now resting across the top
Speaker 3: of my other leg, and I'm thinking, oh, that doesn't
Speaker 3: look right either, So I shoved it down into the
Speaker 3: base of the raft. I pulled my foot out from
Speaker 3: underneath me and got it pointed or in the right direction.
Speaker 3: Brought my arm around and immobilized it into my harness.
Speaker 3: And now I know I didn't structurally fix anything, but
Speaker 3: I'm if I'm going to be out here, I want
Speaker 3: everything pointed in the right direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So now I'm starting to go into shock. I'm shaking uncontrollably.
Speaker 3: I know that if I don't stop and treat myself
Speaker 3: for the shock, that I'm going to go unconscious. And
Speaker 3: at that point, I reached down to my g suit pocket.
Speaker 3: We have these pockets on the legs, and I opened
Speaker 3: the zipper where I always kept a water bottle. I
Speaker 3: stuck my hand down into that pocket to retrieve that
Speaker 3: water bottle, and the water bottle had been blown right
Speaker 3: through the bottom of the pocket and was gone. Well,
Speaker 3: I was kept my wallet in the other pocket. I
Speaker 3: wanted to see if it was there. Opened the zipper
Speaker 3: and stuck my hand down in there, and my wallet
Speaker 3: was also blown through the bottom of the pocket and
Speaker 3: it was gone. And then I started thinking, crap. I
Speaker 3: got to cancel credit cards. I got to go get
Speaker 3: a new driver's license.
Speaker 2: I lastly, you tell me that that didn't go through
Speaker 2: your head.
Speaker 3: That is exactly what went through my head. I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: somebody is good, that's wallet's gonna wash up, and somebody
Speaker 3: is gonna get twenty bucks. And that was a lot
Speaker 3: of money back in the day.
Speaker 2: But Brian, do you think do you think that way
Speaker 2: of thinking just just strats the mind from the bigger issues?
Speaker 2: You know, it keeps you alive on to me, doesn't it,
Speaker 2: because you know you're just trying to keep the mind
Speaker 2: active if you're trying not to, like you said, go
Speaker 2: into shock. So I suppose all these little things that
Speaker 2: you're thinking about a positive distraction from not actually looking
Speaker 2: at the big up problem, which is you can't move.
Speaker 2: You're now floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker 2: with one arm. Ultimately, and col you're probably not going
Speaker 2: to make it out there.
Speaker 3: I have had the privilege of meeting and speaking to
Speaker 3: numerous Vietnam POWs and people that have gone through just
Speaker 3: incredibly insane things, and there's one common denominator that I
Speaker 3: have found in all of those people. The events are different,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of similarity between the events, but the
Speaker 3: one common denominator I have found is a sense.
Speaker 2: Of humor the face of adversity.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. To find humor in the darkest places.
Speaker 3: If you can laugh at yourself and the situation that
Speaker 3: you're in, that's half the battle right there.
Speaker 2: I was hoping you're going to say that, because that's
Speaker 2: one of the War Marine core values is humor in
Speaker 2: the face of adversity. And it's so true. It works.
Speaker 3: Live it, love it, laughing man, Just just freaking deal
Speaker 3: with what you got in front of you and trudge
Speaker 3: on through. And things can always get worse. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I picture where you're at, where I'm at
Speaker 3: in the situation that I'm at, But you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm still alive. I'm still bringing in and out. And
Speaker 3: the other thing that I tell people, I said, is
Speaker 3: we all set these goals, right, Well, every goal has
Speaker 3: a set of sub goals. You'd go trying to attack
Speaker 3: this goal. It's overwhelming, but you attack each sub goal,
Speaker 3: and each sub goal that's successful gives you confidence to
Speaker 3: keep going. And that's what that night was all about.
Speaker 3: It was a little victories exactly. That leads to the
Speaker 3: ultimate of surviving the situation.
Speaker 2: So talk to me about these Neil victories. So obviously
Speaker 2: you sort your legs out the visual thing of right,
Speaker 2: I need to look droper because psychologically is going to
Speaker 2: help me. How did you get through those moments because
Speaker 2: you're were You're in the water for like five hours.
Speaker 3: I used to teach survival, and one of the things
Speaker 3: that I always taught was to survive what I called
Speaker 3: the survival rule of threes. The survival rule of three say,
Speaker 3: you can only survive about three seconds if you don't
Speaker 3: have the will to survive. And my will was to
Speaker 3: get home to see my wife. That's going to keep
Speaker 3: you moving, that's going to keep you motivated. You can
Speaker 3: survive about three minutes without air, either from drowning or suffocation.
Speaker 3: You can survive about three hours in extreme conditions extreme
Speaker 3: cold or extreme heat. I have a thermaa heat stroke, whatever.
Speaker 3: You can survive about three days without water, three weeks
Speaker 3: without food, and three months without human companionship. Before you're
Speaker 3: putting smiley faces on volleyballs and them Wilson, you know.
Speaker 3: So that's that's your roadmap for success is how what
Speaker 3: do I need to do and when do I need
Speaker 3: to do it? First of all, I want to. I
Speaker 3: want to get home to see my wife. Second of all,
Speaker 3: I got to get out of that water and into
Speaker 3: this raft that's going to keep me from drowning. And
Speaker 3: the next point is build my home so that I
Speaker 3: don't die of hypothermia because the waves are still crashing
Speaker 3: in and I've got to get my home built. And
Speaker 3: that's manual inflation. And there's three components to that raft,
Speaker 3: and only the main donut ring partially inflates. You have
Speaker 3: to complete that inflation, and then you have to inflate
Speaker 3: the floor, and then a spray shield pup tent that
Speaker 3: pops up over the top of you. My face was
Speaker 3: so distorted I couldn't create a seal around the tube
Speaker 3: to blow that up. I had to grab the valve
Speaker 3: with my teeth, clamp my hands down around my lips
Speaker 3: to create the seal. My lips stuck out past my
Speaker 3: third finger. That's how distorted my face was. So there
Speaker 3: was a point where I'm sitting there laughing at myself
Speaker 3: and how funny I must look with my lips stuck
Speaker 3: out like a duck. And I blow and I blow,
Speaker 3: and it was like blowing up party balloons for your
Speaker 3: kid's birthdays. You start getting lightheaded, and I like God,
Speaker 3: I got to take a break. I pulled the tube
Speaker 3: out of my mouth. The first time I did, the
Speaker 3: valve didn't self seal, and about half the air that
Speaker 3: I just blew in leaked out before I could get
Speaker 3: the valve turned off. So on subsequent attempts, I'd grab
Speaker 3: the valve with my teeth. I'd clamp my hands down
Speaker 3: around my lips in the tube. I'd twist to open
Speaker 3: the valve, I blow the air in, and I twist
Speaker 3: it back off when I needed to take a break.
Speaker 3: It took me two hours to get my home built
Speaker 3: and then get the water bailed out. So it's about
Speaker 3: step by step through those processes. You just don't stop.
Speaker 3: People that don't survive usually it's because of misprioritization or
Speaker 3: they just give up. The one thing you have absolute
Speaker 3: no control over is when you're going to get rescued.
Speaker 3: What you have one hundred percent control over is are
Speaker 3: you going to be alive when you get rescued. Meaning
Speaker 3: let's focus on what we have control over, not what
Speaker 3: we don't.
Speaker 2: And so you've got your house in order after two hours.
Speaker 2: Took me through the next couple of hours because coh
Speaker 2: those hours went by car like days, didn't they.
Speaker 3: It's it's all relative, I mean. And you anybody that's
Speaker 3: been through the training, I don't care. You've been through
Speaker 3: the training. You know it's going to suck. It's just
Speaker 3: that's just the way it is. It sucks, right, here's
Speaker 3: where you are deal with it is what it boils
Speaker 3: down to. So what I did during those hours that
Speaker 3: I was out there after I managed to get my
Speaker 3: raft inflated, my home built, the water bailed out. Now
Speaker 3: I've got to stay focused on a task. I can't
Speaker 3: just sit here and start thinking about, oh, miserable me.
Speaker 3: I have to start thinking ahead, what's the next step.
Speaker 2: I love that, Brian. There's no time to feel sorry
Speaker 2: for yourself in a situation like that, is there There's
Speaker 2: no mentality, there's no oh look at me, pull me.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll just lie here now. And because that's
Speaker 2: when ultimately you give up. I think that's a really
Speaker 2: really important message, is you know, you've just got to
Speaker 2: keep going. There's no time to feel sorry for yourself.
Speaker 3: There isn't and you just have to keep working, keep working,
Speaker 3: keep working. And so what I did is the harness
Speaker 3: the flashlight that was attached to my harness was blown
Speaker 3: off during the ejection. But many things in that survival
Speaker 3: kit weren't waterproof, and one of them was the flashlight
Speaker 3: that was in the survival kit wasn't waterproof, so the
Speaker 3: first wave that came by shorted it out and that
Speaker 3: was it. I was in a black raft in the
Speaker 3: middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: No moon, no stars, no flashlight, no anything in this
Speaker 3: little cocoon. I've got to figure out what I have
Speaker 3: available and where it is. So I pulled each piece
Speaker 3: of it equipment out of my rucksack kit. I felt
Speaker 3: for what it was, and I started locating it alphabetically
Speaker 3: up and down my legs so that I knew where
Speaker 3: things were. I filed myself with survival equipment up and
Speaker 3: down my legs, so that way, if I needed something,
Speaker 3: I at least knew the general direction of where to
Speaker 3: go to find it, rather than sitting around digging in
Speaker 3: a kit for it. And that kept me occupied for
Speaker 3: a good another hour. And the last hour that was
Speaker 3: tough because I had pretty much accomplished everything and now
Speaker 3: it was trying to stay conscious. I knew I was bleeding.
Speaker 3: The back of my leg was dashed open, my face
Speaker 3: was all cut. You can tell everywhere you're bleeding in saltwater.
Speaker 3: And I knew that if I went to sleep or
Speaker 3: even took a nap, that I may not wake up.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I have head injuries, internal injuries.
Speaker 3: So I've got to stay focused and keep moving, keep driving,
Speaker 3: keep going. So periodically I would pull the side of
Speaker 3: the raft down and I would yell for Dennis. I
Speaker 3: just yelled Dennis's name. And I'm sure you've been there.
Speaker 3: But if for those of you've never been in a
Speaker 3: in the middle of the ocean, all you hear is
Speaker 3: waves crashing and windblowing. That's it. And even if the
Speaker 3: sun angle is just right and the sea state is calm,
Speaker 3: there's only about a seventy percent chance if they know
Speaker 3: the area that they're going to be able to find
Speaker 3: you at night. That drops to zero. In fact, since then,
Speaker 3: I've been able to fly with a lot of we
Speaker 3: call him Coasti's coast guard guys who have gone out
Speaker 3: on all of these calls. And one guy I was
Speaker 3: speaking with, he goes, he just he was very quiet
Speaker 3: for the longest time and we're flying and he goes,
Speaker 3: you know, I've just I've just been sitting there thinking,
Speaker 3: he goes, You're not supposed to be here. He goes.
Speaker 3: I have been called out on hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: case is for people that are out in the open water,
Speaker 3: and of those hundreds cases, we either didn't find anyone,
Speaker 3: or if we did find them, they were gone, they
Speaker 3: were dead. I actually facilitated my own rescue. They didn't
Speaker 3: find me. I found them by staying awake and staying
Speaker 3: engaged and staying active. About the time, I've had really
Speaker 3: run out of things to do. I mean, I was
Speaker 3: telling myself jokes, which they're not funny when you know
Speaker 3: the punchlines, you know. But I was working on a
Speaker 3: delivery to you.
Speaker 2: I'm to your quite sane.
Speaker 3: So yes, I'm slapping myself in the face. I'm, you know,
Speaker 3: yelling for Dennis. I'm doing everything I can think of.
Speaker 3: Just try to stay conscious and lo and behold. I
Speaker 3: heard a unique sound off in the distance. And once
Speaker 3: you've heard it once, you never forget that sound. And
Speaker 3: it was the turboprops of the sea one thirty hercules aircraft.
Speaker 3: It's a unique sound. And I heard those turboprops way
Speaker 3: off in the distance, and I peek out and I
Speaker 3: could see the position lights of the aircraft flying a pattern,
Speaker 3: and then often the distance beyond that, I could hear
Speaker 3: the faint rotor walk of at age sixty, and I thought,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, they're out here, and they're serious about
Speaker 3: getting me out of here tonight. And I thought to myself,
Speaker 3: if I don't make contact with them, they're never going
Speaker 3: to find me. So now, all of this whole time
Speaker 3: that I've been in the water, it's been nothing but survival,
Speaker 3: and now it's time to shift gears and start thinking
Speaker 3: about rescue. But even while you're thinking about the rescue,
Speaker 3: you're still surviving. You don't stop surviving. That's the mindset
Speaker 3: you have to have. So I'm frantically trying to get
Speaker 3: to my survival radio. Back then it was a PRC
Speaker 3: ninety radio. It had two frequencies, uniform guard and then
Speaker 3: a uniform backup guard. And so I turned the radio on,
Speaker 3: turned the volume up, pulled the antenna up, and I
Speaker 3: was kind of shocked that I didn't hear eelts. I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: why am I not hearing ELTs? And I started transmitting.
Speaker 3: I thought i'd be hearing Dennis working the rescue. I
Speaker 3: didn't hear that. I started transmitting my call sign swored
Speaker 3: nine to three May Day, and no response. I must
Speaker 3: have tried a dozen times, and I tried the backup
Speaker 3: frequency and still nothing. And then I went back to
Speaker 3: the primary frequency. I'm like, now I'm thinking, crap, my
Speaker 3: radio doesn't work. But this is all I have. And
Speaker 3: so I kept trying, kept trying, and finally the pilot
Speaker 3: of the C one thirty answered back. That was amazing. Well,
Speaker 3: I was just like, oh my gosh, they know I'm alive.
Speaker 2: So how did that conversation go? You just put out
Speaker 2: your call sign? And then someone got back to me
Speaker 2: saying that I'll read you loud and clear.
Speaker 3: Loud and clear, And then they went into authentication process.
Speaker 3: They want to do authentic. I go, I can understand
Speaker 3: if we're in a combat zone, but I'm sixty five
Speaker 3: miles ouf the coast of North Carolina. How many people
Speaker 3: do you think are down here? And why don't you
Speaker 3: just rescue all of us? Yeah? Why don't you rescue
Speaker 3: all of us? We'll work out the pleasantries when I
Speaker 3: get on board. They're asking me the middle to my
Speaker 3: social security to the last four they're asked me whether
Speaker 3: the street that irew grew up on all those those
Speaker 3: security questions, and there was a reason. At the time,
Speaker 3: I thought, this is the nuttiest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: But the reason that they were doing that is because
Speaker 3: my wife had gotten the dock on the door. She
Speaker 3: is four months pregnant. Knock comes. It's a chaplain, a
Speaker 3: doctor's quadron, commander's quatern commander's wife. They were going to
Speaker 3: notify her that we were down and missing. And so
Speaker 3: when they were trying to figure out who it was,
Speaker 3: they didn't want to call my house and it be Dennis,
Speaker 3: or call Dennis's wife and be me. So they're trying
Speaker 3: to sort that all out. So for me though, it
Speaker 3: was like, why are we wasting time? I'm me, I
Speaker 3: don't care, Just luck come get me. And then obviously
Speaker 3: they don't want you to use in your name over
Speaker 3: the radio because all the media listening in and everything.
Speaker 3: So I said, you've got me, and then I knew
Speaker 3: I was going home. I'll never forget the picture of
Speaker 3: that rescue swimmer, Jim Peterson. I still keep in touch
Speaker 3: with him. It's been twenty nine years and we still
Speaker 3: talk every year. The last thing I had to do
Speaker 3: was let the air out of the spray shield and
Speaker 3: get it down, and I knew when I did, the
Speaker 3: waves are going to start coming in, and the wind's
Speaker 3: going to start blowing in, and things are already getting
Speaker 3: miserable because I've started to move around again. I get
Speaker 3: the spray shield deflated. He comes swimming up to me
Speaker 3: and he introduces himself. He says, I'm Coastguard rescue swimmer
Speaker 3: Jim Peterson. I'm here to rescue. I said, well, I'm
Speaker 3: Air Force Captain Brian new Dell, and I'm here to
Speaker 3: be rescued. Let's get the hell out of here.
Speaker 2: I love that, I SI, Brian, thank you ever so
Speaker 2: much for coming on the podcast. Phenomenal story, phenomenal lessons
Speaker 2: and huge inspiration and I listened to all the best
Speaker 2: of the future.
Speaker 3: Buddy, Hey, pleasure beating you, being able to speak with you.
Speaker 3: It's an honor. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining me on head Game.
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed so
Speaker 2: you don't miss any of our incredible stories, and leave
Speaker 2: me a review wherever you're listening. I'm Matt Middleton. Catch
Speaker 2: you again next time.