#326 Kegan Gill - F-18 Pilot Survives Two Hours in the Atlantic With a Broken Neck

The Shawn Ryan Show

Kegan Gill, a former U.S. Navy F-18E Super Hornet pilot, recounts his harrowing experience of surviving a high-speed ejection during a training exercise in

Key takeaways

• Kegan Gill survived the fastest ejection in naval aviation history at 700 mph, surviving a near-fatal crash with severe injuries.
• He experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and PTSD, which were initially overlooked by the medical system.

Main topics

• Surviving a high-speed ejection and recovery from severe injuries
• The medical system's shortcomings in treating TBI and PTSD

Notable quotes

"I was just kind of like an angry kid, didn't want to be stuck in school, moved around to a variety of different schools growing up from the public school."

Conclusion

Kegan Gill's story is a powerful testament to resilience, recovery, and the importance of

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. The new Honda City isn't just made to drive, all new vibe. Kagan Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me on, Sean. It's an honor. Likewise, likewise. Dude, holy shit. Dude, we got so much good... So much good stuff to talk about. Wow. Wow. Like, wow. But let me start you up with an introduction. All right. Kagan Gill Gill. You served as a U.S. Navy F-18E Super Hornet pilot. flying high-performance combat aircraft in one of the most demanding professions in the military. In 2014, during a dogfighting training exercise, you survived the fastest ejection in naval aviation history, ejecting from your aircraft at nearly 700 mph. The crash left you with catastrophic injuries, multiple surgeries, a traumatic brain injury, in a long battle with PTSD, addiction, and the invisible wounds of war. Against overwhelming odds, you fought your way back, returning to the cockpit, and later becoming an advocate for veteran mental health. In Phoenix Rising, you recount your journey of survival, recovery, and finding purpose after unimaginable adversity. Once again, welcome to the show, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, we found, we saw a podcast you were on and some reals, and we were like, holy shit, dude, we've got to get this. We got to get this dude in here. So thank you for coming. Dude, it's really exciting to be here and get to share this story to such a massive audience, man. Because as you know, like you're sharing some incredible information with the world right now and waking people up. And it's much needed. I'm trying. I'm trying. Yeah, sounds like psychedelics is a huge part of your recovery journey. It was. It was a transformational experience. a spiritual awakening. Yeah. And just a connection to something greater than myself and a deep love that I found within. And dude, it's changed everything in my life for the better. Right. Oh, man. Yeah, it's, uh, I did, I began a little over four years ago. And, uh, regardless of how much booze is in the studio here, I haven't had a drop to drinks since, for you since right after that. Yeah. It was pretty effort. Poison yourself. Don't need to numb yourself. and poison yourself from, you know, from that hole we all had before it. Yeah. I keep it all up here as a reminder that this shit doesn't have control over me anymore. It's pretty fucking cool. But I get a lot of shit for having it too. It looks really cool. That's what I think. That's what I think. But, all right, so a couple things to knock out real quick before we get into your life story. So I have a Patreon account. And they've been with us since the beginning. and they're the reason that we both get to sit down here today. So this is from Christian Francis. What main components of TBI treatment do you feel need to be changed? What parts of living with the TBI and recovery from injury are currently being impeded by the medical system? And how can treatment of those would TBI be changed to better understanding the patient? That's a great question. There's almost a disregard for the TBI. And through my experience, it was almost unacknowledged that I could even possibly have a TBI or what that was. So just acknowledging that it exists and how delicate the brain actually is is really critical. And then I think there's a tendency in the mainstream medical system to just hit the easy button, which is the PTSD button right now, which, you know, that gives you a diagnosis and then it opens this whole Pandora's box of all the different medications they can throw at you. you to try to deal with that. But come to find out it's a much broader issue when you do have TBI. And do you know Dr. Chris Free ever heard of him in Operator Syndrome? Dude, I've heard about this guy from like every single one of my fucking friends. And I have never met the guy. Yeah. I've heard amazing things about him. And he really nailed it. He wrote a book, right? Operational Syndrome. Yeah. Yeah, he really nails it right on the head with what he did. He basically went out. He was the PTSD. at the VA. He was fired. I don't think he left voluntarily; I think he was frustrated. I don't know exactly, but he ended up. Probably misspoke on that, so. I'm not certain. He may have quit, or he may have been fired due to frustration. I know there was some, at least some staunch disagreements. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Between them and the VA. Yeah, they want to put everything in that PTSD box because that means pharmaceuticals. They can throw all the, all the money makers at it that just keep you sick and unhealthy. And I mean, that's, that's, that's, you're not. That's the way that whole conventional system is designed is to... Dude, why do you think it's like that? Greed. Do they get paid? I never understood. You can't go to another pharmacy and get any of the prescriptions. I mean, I haven't been to the VA in over probably close to 10 years now. Yeah, the way I understand it is basically, I talked to an admiral level flight surgeon who's been at those meetings at the top of the VA. And he said, no matter how good the people are at the VA, because there's a lot of really good humans there that want to do good and want to serve the veterans. But he said no matter how good the people are in the VA, at the end of the day, the pharmaceutical industry gets to dictate the policies that are applied. And all of their policies are designed to put the veterans on medications and keep them there until they either in their own lives or just die miserably and feeding that machine the whole time. And it just comes down to greed. The entire healthcare system is designed to keep patients dependent., maybe alleviating some of the symptoms, but not actually curing the underlying issue. Only the best for our veterans, right? Man. Only the best for our veterans. It's sad. It's the veterans. It's everybody. I mean, it's the whole conventional medical system is feeding off the people that are sick. And you go to help, get help. You trust the people with the white lab coats with the doctorate degrees that are supposed to know better. And I don't think most of them are malevolent. I believe they’re conditioned by the system. that is profit-driven and controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, from their medical school curriculums to their medical journals that they're reading are all influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. And the whole system is just corrupted by that greed. Man. Well, I know we're going to dive into that all later. Oh, yeah. Which will be an enraging segment. But everybody gets a gap, too. So my buddy heard I was, coming on, he's like, dude, you got to get me some of those gummy bears. I'm like, man, I will definitely share some gummy bears with you. Dude, we'll load you up. Sweet. You'll load you up. They're made in Michigan. You're from Michigan, right? Yeah, yeah. They're made in Michigan. Oh, cool. And they're legal in all 50 states. Sweet. No funny business. My kids are going to try to get them from me, too. All right on. Like I said, we'll load you up. But, so I want to do. I actually got you a gift. Oh. If you want to. I love gifts. All right. I got you a few. All right. Well, one, I got to give you this first. This is a copy of my book. I've signed that one for you. Thank you. I hope you enjoy it. It's a wild story, and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of it today. We will. We will. And then my friend, Bryce Hanson, who helped me design that cover, actually heard I was coming on this show, and he's like, I got a gift you got to give him. Dude. Tell me, is this a painting? He digitally did that. And then the publishing company. and he helped kind of do the background on it. But he took a digital photo of me and my gear and then he's able to do some cool magic to make it look freaking rad. Dude, you need to get this framed. That's fucking cool. He sent me the, it was originally a painting that he did. Really? Yeah, Bryce was a green beret. And now he does all sorts of really kick-ass art. But he made you these. Holy shit, that's awesome. Heck, yeah. Yeah, I thought those would look really good in here. That is sick, dude. Thank you. And then one more small thing. I don't know if you remember Bill Filter and the guys at the Wisdom Dojo, or it used to be the Amp Dojo. The meditation guys. Yeah. Yeah, they wanted me to give you this. It's a Wisdom Dojo shirt and a Wisdom Dojo challenge coin. Dude, thank you. I talked to Bill Filter. Yeah. Who said that he did some training with you. He was my guy. And your dad. Yeah. He did. He said when he was working with you, you were still doing all this on your own. Yeah. No, it's pretty incredible what this has grown into. Yeah, it all kind of changed after that I began experience, man. Heck yeah. So literally, like, right after. But, well, that's cool. Tell Bill I said, what's up? I will. What's up, Bill? But let's get into your story. All right. Where did you grow up? I was born in Oklahoma, although I don't remember a whole lot. from it. My mom was doing her medical residency there through the National Health Service. She'd earned a scholarship to pay for her med school. And then when she finished her residency there, we moved to Colorado to a little town called Alamosa down in the San Luis Valley. Some of my earliest memories are skiing at Wolf Creek, being in powder that was over my head, just always had a love for the outdoors. My dad was a big outdoorsman. He would take me out on his backpack, and he And he'd be out backcountry skiing with me out just in like some of the most beautiful blue sky days that you can imagine. That's awesome. And then when I was about seven, we moved to northern Michigan. And I grew up in a town called Traverse City. Beautiful little town right on Lake Michigan up there. And I was just a kid that spent most of my time outside barefoot climbing trees, grabbing salmon out of the stream, hunting. Just doing stuff little kids are supposed to be doing. Nice. You don't hear that much anymore. Yeah, man, we're getting too far away from where we're supposed to be. I know. And I was the kid who didn't really belong in a classroom, you know, sitting under a fluorescent lighting filling out scantron bubbles was pretty soul draining and I was pretty disheartened by it and became a pretty angry young kid. That's getting a lot of fights. I was always a small kid so I'd get picked on and my dad was a wrestler and was into judo and so he started teaching me how to fight and defend myself. What age? I was probably like eight, seven or eight years old. He started teaching me to fight. And the next time the bullies came at me, man, I had something different for him than cowering down and just letting them do what they wanted. What was the first lesson? The first lesson for the bullies? Yeah. From your dad. Oh. Well, the first lesson was the things I'm about to teach you are to defend yourself and defend others weaker than you. You never use this as an aggressor. As an aggressor, you use this to defend what's right. and stand up for yourself and you know he would wrestle around with me and he'd push me around and he would never let me win and that just always kind of kept me pushing and and uh was really grateful for that he would never let you win never man right on dude he didn't take it easy on me which i didn't always appreciate but yeah he was he's a good man he uh he actually auditioned for one of the earliest uh survivor shows that they were going to do back when he thought it was actually about being a survivor no shit uh for fun he's the kind of guy that he's the kind of guy that that like he'll carve his own bows and then he'll go out into the cold in the winter, make a snow cave, sleep out in the woods, and then deer hunt from his snow cave in the morning. No way. Yeah, he's like, what? He's from a different time. I've never even heard of that. He’s not like us. And I mean, That’s a compliment. What did he do? He, um, originally he was a health inspector when we were in, uh, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then when we moved to Alamos, it was so rural, he couldn't really get a job. So he kind of became, uh, dad. mom and taking care of us. Later, when we moved back to Traverse City, which was where both my parents were from, he became a respiratory therapist. He was a teacher for a while. He taught biology and then became a respiratory therapist. Right on. Are you a big hunter? Yeah. Yeah, man. Deer hunting up there is a big part of how we feed ourselves. We got a little bit of farmland up there. We got chickens. My wife's got bees, so we do our own honey. Got some fruit trees and and garden a greenhouse. Are you a prepper? You know, not so much, man. I'm not so much prepping. We're just kind of like building our own thing on the outskirts of society is what's happening right now is just kind of eating itself alive. But definitely making ourselves so we can be self-sufficient. But not so much like we're not digging a bunker. Maybe we should, but... It can hurt. Yeah, probably not, man. When you see all the billionaires doing it. I mean, yeah, pretty wild. How many of them are building fucking bonkers right now? Yeah, that's a scary. I wonder what they're so scared of. I don't know. Probably us. I bet they are. But, yeah, well, I mean, self-sufficiency is pretty, I mean, that's what prepping's all about, right? Yeah. So I guess, yeah, I'm a prepper. That's the case. Right on. In case you haven't noticed, I take preparedness seriously. And water is one of the first things I look at, not just emergency water, but the water my family is drinking every single day. A federal study found forever chemicals in nearly half the tap water in America. Because of that, I've tried a lot of filtration systems over the years. Most of them didn't make the cut. Either they were too complicated, they took up too much space, or I still didn't feel confident about what they were actually removing. That's when I found Rora. Rora's countertop system is third-party tested to reduce the contaminants people should actually be worried about, including P-FOS, lead, microplastics, and disinfection byproducts. Their Infinity Filter achieves 99.6% total PFS reduction over the filter's full lifespan. And they publish the results, so you can actually verify it before you buy. What I like is that it's simple. No plumbing, no installation, and it's built with medical grade stainless steel instead of a chunk of plastic sitting on your counter. Because when it comes to water, I'm not interested in just hoping it's clean. I want to know it's clean. And if you want worry-free drinking water for the people living under your roof, go to roar.com slash SRS for an exclusive discount. That's R-O-R-A.com slash SRS and tap into clean water today. As you guys know, once upon a time, I was a Navy SEAL, and then I contracted for CIA. We were hunting ISIS, Taliban, terrorist organizations. China was there, Russia was there, the Iranians were there, and everybody's kind of collecting on each other. One thing I learned is how important encryption in protecting your data is. That experience has just always made me extremely paranoid about what's being sucked out of my phone, what information are people getting. I wanted something that could protect everybody. And so we turned it into an application. We call it the Glacier app. We have Secure DNS. Now, what's Secure DNS? Well, very simply put, secure DNS keeps your phone from being exploited while you're browsing the Internet. Just a couple of buttons. Your phone's protected. You got yourself a burner number or more. You hit Connect, done. You're protected. This is like the real James Bond shit. MI6 CIA level stuff made in the U.S. Theglacier app.com or just go on the app store and look up the Glacier app. Take your privacy back. Download Glacier today. Why were you picked on so much? I was just kind of a small, nerdy kid. I think it was mainly because I was small and scrawny and easy to push around until. How long were you bullied before you stood up for yourself? Not really that long. I was picked on for about one year at school and then figured out a different way to handle bullies. How'd you handle it? Usually punching them in the dick. Nice. Pretty good. That'll work. It didn't matter how much bigger they were. You punched somebody in the dick and evens the playing field pretty quickly. But yeah, it was just kind of like an angry kid, didn't want to be stuck in school, moved around to a variety of different schools growing up from the public school. My parents put me in a charter school. That didn't really work out. Move me to like a farm school where all day, every day we were like moving chicken coops out in the field. We were feeding the animals. We did some academics, but it was all outside or in a greenhouse. We built a yurt. We would like submerse ourselves in a culture and then we would like eat their food. We would build their buildings. We would, it was way better than being stuck in a classroom. That's awesome. And I really enjoyed that. My dad got a job at a private school as the science teacher and so we got free tuition. And so I went to this snooty private school for a year and got expelled from that because I didn't fit in there at all. I was getting in fights again and doing dumb shit. I found myself back at public school kind of not liking it, getting in trouble, hanging out with the wrong people. And then when I was 16, actually, around a campfire with some buddies, we put some of these little crunchy mushrooms in our mouth. And I had this experience that night that connected me to something. And I was dealing with depression and anger that was pretty heavy. And why? Why were you so angry and so depressed? Besides the bullying, this seems like an excellent upbringing. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of it was. And actually, a lot of this I discovered through ibogaine later through going back into repressed childhood memories. But for most of my life, I didn't understand where that anger really had come from. But what I discovered through Iboga, which I don't know if you want to get into this later, but I can definitely get into it now with what I experienced in one of those journeys was I was back in my mother's womb. and saw the outline of her abdomen. I could see the veins of her skin. I could see this pink color. And I remember being in there and just feeling her anxiety because she's a mother pretty far along in her pregnancy and she's running off Diet Coke, working ridiculous hours, stressed out, meanwhile trying to be a mother. And actually before I was born, my mom had a stillborn baby, my older sister Kate. And it kind of just like broke her soul. to hold her own little baby that was dead on arrival. And she was sort of not emotionally available to connect with me. And I remember when I was born being held, but very quickly she was back to work, back to the residency, not seeing me. My dad was orphaned as a kid and he was also emotionally unavailable largely. I mean, they both cared a lot, but I think that they were really broken at their hearts from what they had been through. And so, you know, there's all these really wild childhood trauma stories. You know, I wasn't sexually abused. I wasn't beaten. Nothing like that. But I don't know if you ever heard of Gaber Matae. He's sort of like a trauma expert. He's a Canadian doctor, right? I'm not sure what his origin is. I know who he is. He's big in the psychedelic community. He may be his big thing is trauma. He's like a trauma expert. And one thing he talks about is there's childhood trauma, which is like the abuse, the physical abuse, the violence, the sexual abuse. But there's also an abuse of when you don't fulfill the needs of the child. And the need that I didn't get as that little boy and reliving it vividly during an ibogaine session was, I just wasn't fully being loved as a child. And so I remember I was in my crib crying and screaming for my parents to come get me as an infant and no one responded, leaving me with a deep sense of abandonment. And it's not that my parents didn't care. They were great parents. They really did care. But there was emotional neglect that I experienced as a really young kid that actually created an incredible amount of self-reliance, but also an anger that came from that. Like, I wasn't good enough to be loved. You remember this? Or this? Vividly. Yeah, I vividly remembered it through Iboga. I worked with a trained psychotherapist, and he brought me back into all these repressed childhood memories. And through that, I mean, I felt like the pain of my mom was experiencing of being divided and pulled away from her kid, the pain from her miscarriage. And just the, you know, there's there's this big push back then, which was women in the workforce and you can go and be a professional. And my mom absolutely did that. She broke through a lot of barriers to get to go and be a physician as a woman. But it took a toll on her and it took a toll on her children because, you know, that was the trade-off. You know, she got to become a professional and do what she wanted. But at the same time, it was really hard on her to be separated from her children. And it was really hard on the kids. How many siblings do you have? I have a younger sister. She's three years younger than me. Are you guys tied? She lives out in Oregon. She works for the park service out there. She's like Ranger Rick, basically. She wears a smoky bear hat and patrols the forest and does some good stuff out there. But yeah, we get together on occasion. she usually comes back in the summers and we all go camping and hang out. She's got an awesome little girl. Right on. But overall, I had a great childhood, honestly. But I definitely had this thing inside me that was just burning, this like feeling of angst that I wasn't enough. And that drove me. And it made me incredibly resilient, which came in handy later in life. I’m truly thankful for that. Like, it was like it was preparing me for something that was to come. But then it happened—big time. How did the military pop up on your radar? So when I graduated high school, I wasn't totally certain what I wanted to do, but I got to go on a little discovery flight. We have a, there was a little community college that had a flight program where I grew up in Traverse City called Northwestern Michigan College. And when I was a kid, my parents enrolled me in a flight program that they did. And you got to do like a ground school session and then you got to go up in a little Cessna. And I remembered flying this little Cessna 152, that's basically a flying lawnmower and just absolutely loving it, man. It felt like a rocket ship. And that kind of stuck with me. And so when I graduated, I decided to go to the community college and begin flight training I enrolled in the program, started flying. And by the time I was a junior in college, I was a certified flight instructor gaining flight experience No kidding. I finished my degree. I got my bachelor's. degree while I was working at the college and then I actually got hired by one of my students who a fascinating dude named Larry Poneman. He was a forensic accountant in the Navy back in the Vietnam era. He's like one of these ultra intelligent dudes with a photographic memory and after the special forces or whoever would capture an underground bunker of the Viet Cong, they would bring him in and he could go through their accounting records he can learn a new language in like a few days and then he would read through their accounting records and he could memorize it all and then he'd go back and debrief the CIA or whoever of like here's where they're getting their money here's where they're getting this and he was able to basically point them where they need to go to shut these guys down and when he got out he started a think tank and a privacy research and consulting firm but he came across me because he wanted to learn how to fly himself to all his business meetings. And so I started flying with him. And he's like, hey, man, you want to come work for my company? He ended up buying a brand new aircraft and ended up bringing me on as his company pilot. And so I got to spend the next year just flying all over the country, going to really big tech companies. We were at Microsoft and Yahoo and a bunch of others. And I kind of got to see the inner workings of the the business world I was getting paid really well. I was living a really nice lifestyle, having fancy dinners. People were dropping 500 bucks on a bottle of wine like it was nothing. What kind of plane were you flying? I was flying a Mooney Acclaim, which is sort of like a little general aviation Ferrari. Okay. Nice like Garmin G1000 avionics, integrated autopilot, Bose headsets, super nice leather seats. Nice. It was really cool job at such a young age. Damn, dude. That is pretty cool. But I found myself getting bored of how easy it was. And I recognized that I wanted more in my life than that. And so I had a buddy named Mark, who was a flight instructor at the college with me. And he had been in the military already, but he was putting together a package to go to Officer Candidate School for a pilot position. And I was like, wait, don't you have to go to the Naval Academy? Doesn't your dad have to be an admiral? Like, community college kids don't get to just go into the Navy and fly stuff. And he's like, actually you can, man. As long as you have a bachelor's degree. And so I kind of looked into the service. And originally I thought I was going to go into the Coast Guard. I had read this book called The Last Run, and it's all about the rescue missions. Those guys were doing up in Alaska. And it was just fucking wild shit that these guys were doing. And so I looked into the Coast Guard, but it was like a six-month wait to get into the Coast Guard selection process. And so while I was waiting, I put together a package and submitted it to the Navy and got picked up immediately. And so I spent that last summer, going to a CrossFit gym, getting in really good shape, had a great summer with my family, and then that fall went off to the Navy and showed up over-prepared. How old were you? I was in my early 20s. It was 2009. So I think I was like 23 or so. Right on. Yeah. 24. Did you know what you wanted to fly? Did you care? You know, originally I thought I was going to fly helicopters after reading that last run book, but I always growing up, the Blue Angels would come up to Traverse City and they'd fly every so off. And I remember seeing those jets and be like, man, that's so cool. But I also had this disconnect. I was like, there's no way I could ever do that. For whatever reason, I just never, I always had this imposter syndrome. Like, there's no way. I'm not that cool. But as I started going through the training, like, really felt at home in that environment. People are getting yelled at and beaten and exhausted. And I was just like, fuck yeah. You like, bring it on. From college to OCS, you went straight to OCS? Or is it OCE? Yeah, Officer Canada School. So, yeah, it's basically a three-month program and you come out of it a butter bar. So, you know, the rank that shows everybody that you know absolutely fucking nothing. Which I didn't. I didn't know shit about the military. But then started flight training after that. Went down to Pensacola, Florida, and started doing all the ground school, did some ocean survival training And actually had our, we normally got into the ocean to do our ocean survival training. when we're down in Pensacola, but there was the horizon oil spill right at that time. So we couldn't go out on the ocean and do our survival training. We still did a bunch of stuff in the pool, but there was probably some stuff that we did in that ocean evolution that would have been helpful later in my career. Yeah, I was just thinking that. I mean, damn, dude, you didn't do that? No, I mean, there was a fair amount in the pool, but I don't think anything could have substituted for being out in the ocean. Yeah. But did well through API. went to what's primary flight training, which was in Corpus Christi, Texas, and flew a pretty sporty little turbine prop aircraft called the T-34 Charlie Turbo Mentor. They've since switched over to the T6 Texan, which is even more badass. Nice. But the prior flight experience definitely helped through that primary flight training. Like I already knew how to fly an airplane, I already knew how to talk on the radio. But the challenge was learning to do it the Navy way. You know, it's in some ways it was probably more challenging, because I had to forget my old ways. And there's just a ton of memorization and all that, but did well enough through that training that I got to select the tail hook pipeline coming out of that. And if you're in the top 50% of your class, you can select tail hook. And then the Navy says yes or no, depending on whatever they need you for anyways. What is a tail hook? It's any carrier-based aircraft. Okay. So at the time, it would have been the prowlers, the F-18 Hornets, the F-18 Super Hornets, and then the E2C2. So the Hawkeye with the big dish on top prop plane, and then the C2, which is the onboard delivery aircraft. So all of those were kind of on the table at that point. The other option out of primary flight training is you can go fly the P3s at that time, which are now all just P8s, which is basically a 737. They also had helicopter pipeline and a few people would go to the E9, which is like a surveillance communications aircraft. But I was kind of like, man, I'm going to take my shot and see if I can go fly fighter jets, which was the tail hook pipeline. And then I headed down to Kingsville, Texas, and started flying the T-45 Charlie Gosshawk, which is like a small single-engine jet, but super high performance, fully aerobatic, and did intermediate flight training and did really well at that. And so at the end of that intermediate training, you go to a board. and you have a bunch of the different instructors come in, you do a bunch of interviews, and one, you have to have good grades and you have to be good in the aircraft, but more importantly, they're interviewing you to see if you have the personality and you're going to fit in like a fighter squadron. And I saw guys who were better pilots and smarter, but they would go into those interviews, and they just weren't like a team player or whatever. And so... What are they looking for at a fighter pilot? Well, one, I think they want people. who know that this is going to be your life, that it's going to be all consuming. And every moment, every waking moment, you're basically going to be committed to that. They want somebody who can function in a team environment. And, yeah, just kind of have that attitude of just being a good human being, too, I think. Someone who's not an egomaniac can be humble. And they do a really good job with it, really. What are some of the questions they were asking you? Do you remember? I mean, one of the big ones is like, why do you want to be, why do you want to fly F-18s? What'd you say? I mean, I think I just said something like, you know, I think it's an incredible opportunity. I want to be at the tip of the spear. I want to be doing the most difficult thing that the Navy has to offer for a pilot. And that's where I see myself. I want the challenge. I want the hardships. And I want to be the best pilot I possibly can be. How do you, I'm just curious, how do you display that you're a team player flying a jet? I mean, it's really personality-based, and I think the instructors get a good feel for that as you go through flight training. Are you the guy who's helping other guys in your class, like, learn? Are you the guy that's really selfish in hoarding the information and trying to do it all on your own? there are definitely people who were, you know, would go into those interviews and they'd go, well, why do you want to be a fighter pilot? And they say, well, I'm better than everybody in my class. This guy does this. This guy sucks at this. And like when someone comes in like that, they're like, all right, you're not going into the fighter community. And there was a dude that did that when I was there. Oh, shit. And I think he was pretty heartbroken because he was an excellent pilot, super smart. But they want somebody who can play well with others, you know. Makes sense. Why is that so important? Because you operate as a team. You know, you're flying with other aircraft sections, divisions, large force exercises, and it's a team sport. You know, you're flying your jet, but you're doing all these advanced tactics with a very large group of other people. And you've got to be able to function in a sort of like a sports team atmosphere that's in the squadron, in a fighter squadron, where you're high pressure, high stress. and you've got to work together with everybody to survive in that environment in your day-to-day ground jobs and in the aircraft for what you're doing. Because it's like a very complex game of football or something once you're up there. The flying is just like, that's just like learning to run and jump and be fast if you're going to, but then the next jump is like going into the NFL and learning the sport and learning the tactics operating at that high speed and working as a team as a cohesive unit when chaos breaks out, you know. Gotcha. So it's definitely a team sport. Do you remember your first time in a jet? Yeah, I mean, I remember vividly showing up once I had made it through the intermediate and advanced training and earning my wings at Kingsville. I selected the F-18. And I remember showing up in Virginia Beach at VFA 106 at Oceana and walking into the hangar and seeing all of those frickin' hornets and super hornets. And it was just like, holy shit, man. I can't believe I get to go do this. and the first flight was just like unreal, like climbing into that thing and starting it up. And you do a lot in the simulator so you kind of know the basics, but it's nowhere near the real thing is once you get in, you can feel the rumble of this fucking tank around you. And there's so much larger than they look when you just see them flying up in the sky. They're these massive contraptions. And I remember like initially starting to taxi this thing and you're pushing up the throttles just a little bit. You got like 44,000 pounds of thrust behind you. And you can feel it just, It feels like a tank that you're taxying in, especially after flying all those smaller aircraft. But I remember... I eventually did fly the single seat, but your first few flights in the Super Hornet are in a two-seat. Okay. The instructor's got a stick in the back. But you only do like maybe three or four flights in that aircraft before you're flying it on your own. Damn. Which is wild. But the simulator, the simulator syllabus is really robust. So by the time you get in the jet, you've already done every single emergency procedure under the sun and you get pretty comfortable with it. But the coolest part was taxing onto the runway for the very first time, getting cleared for takeoff and then just putting that thing in full afterburner with both engines. And you just feel it, just shove you back in the seat. And it's like everything just happens so fast. You're immediately off the ground. You immediately get the gear up. You're immediately thousands of feet up in the air. And just everything comes so quickly. But you've been training little by little to make your mind process things faster and faster. But dude, it was just the coolest sensation, which was very quickly deterred because I realized that my mission card hadn't loaded properly and I didn't have any of my waypoints for where I was going. So as I take off, rotate, put the gear up and I'm just like, whoa! The instructor in the back's like, it's called sign Squeezer, who actually later ended up being in my squadron. He's like, hey, man, where are we going? which is not the question you want to hear the instructor say on your first flight and I look down on the display and realized none of my working area none of my waypoints were in there he's like all right just take this heading I got you and he's in the back punching in GPS coordinates and was able to salvage the rest of that flight so I didn't fail my first flight but it was like a quick kicking the nuts like dude you got some work to do you're in the big boy teams here damn that's fucking cool dude Yeah, yeah, it was, it was unreal. What do we go from here? You know, from here, I spent the next year training in the F-18 reg, which was the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life as far as professional career development, man. It's very little tolerance for mistake. The standards are set extremely high. It was really, really freaking hard, man. You're just drinking from a fire hose trying to learn. and the tactics as quickly as you can. And you're moving through these phases from just the transition stays where you're learning how to fly the aircraft itself, navigate it, take it from point A to point B, operate with emergency procedures. And then very quickly you're off on a strike detachment, learning how to do close air support, bombing missions. And then very quickly you're into the air to air phase, learning how to dogfight the aircraft, learning air to air combat, which is probably the most complex thing we do. I bet it is. With all of that. And then to kind of wrap up everything after you've gone through all of this over the course of the year, you go and you have to land this thing on the aircraft carrier day and night, which is the highest point of failure for people once they make it to that phase. No kidding. I actually disqualified at the boat my first attempt at night. Landing a fighter jet on the back of a moving aircraft carrier and shitty weather is the hardest thing I've ever done as far as like a skill. And I ended up DQ and I just, I was coming in. Everything looked great. And then within the last few seconds, the aircraft, I think I was just a little bit nervous to the point where I would just add just a nudge too much power. And this is just like a millimeter of movement too much in the wrong direction. And I would miss the wires and do what's called a bolter where I'd bounce off the deck. My hook would miss the wires. And then I was back up in the pattern and had him fly back around. And I did that a few times around. And before I knew it, I was at Bingo Fuel, which meant I had to divert back to Oceana. kind of the walk of shame. But luckily got another chance after that. They kind of, they do an assessment and see how you've been doing throughout the syllabus. And if you got the attitude to go back and try again and was very fortunate to get that opportunity and pass my second attempt at the boat. But the daytime carrier stuff I always enjoyed and had fun with that. But the nighttime stuff is just stupid scary. You can go from being in a really good position where everything. looks nice and suitcase to within a few seconds you're you can be eating it on the back of the ship and end your life really quickly and of course they make you watch all those videos right before you go and do it i don't know these guys eating it um but uh graduated through vfa 106 and uh selected vf a 143 the pukin dogs out of virginia beach and headed my first real flee squadron so i'll kind of feel oh man it was awesome it was like what i'd been working for for so long You know, you show up at the training reg for the F-18 at Oceania and you got your wings on your chest already and you're like, all right, I kind of know what I'm doing. Then you very quickly realize that you don't know shit, that you're still a baby. And then you go through all that training. It's super intense. Like a lot of people don't make it through that. And then you get to your fleet squadron. You're like, all right, I got to kind of have a little bit of an idea what I'm doing now. And you show up day one and you're like, nope, I'm still a baby and I don't know anything. So I took the small mouth, big ears approach, just shut the fuck up and listened and learned as much as I could. Busted my ass, studied really hard. And over the course of the next eight months or so, I was just learning to survive in that environment. But started to fit in, started to people notice that I was a hardworking dude and I was there and part of the team and was doing pretty well for my, for my experience level. I was doing really well. What do your parents think of this? You know, my parents were actually pretty anti-military. Really? They're kind of like peaceful hippie kind of folks. And when I first told my mom I was going to go into the military and fly, she was pretty heartbroken. She really came around. No one was incredibly supportive. But I could tell it it kind of hurt her because she was worried, like, what's going to happen to my son? Is he going to get hurt? But they became incredibly supportive. They were at my winging ceremony and all. always checking in. But man, it was awesome to be part of that group and to be flying these fighter jets and doing the shit we got to do. And I'd been in my squadron about eight months, kind of starting to feel like this was becoming a little bit routine and kind of knew what I was doing and showed up January 15th, 2014 for a flight that was gonna change the rest of my life. And you don't know it at the time, you know. It's just kind of like another day at the office. I showed up to the ready room. My buddy Fisty was at the squadron duty desk, which all the pilots would rotate through, answering the radios, coordinating flight schedule, kind of doing all the ground bullshit. And as a joke, Fisty put up on the whiteboard behind him all the working airspace that we're gonna use that day off the coast of Virginia Beach and the Whiskey 72, this massive warning area that's off the coast there. And he used the shark tracker app on his phone to put all these GPS positions of tagged sharks that researchers had tagged. And it just so happened on the day he was kind of laughing. He's like, hey, man, today would be a terrible day to eject. The water temperature is at 37 degrees Fahrenheit at the nearby buoy. We had a really cold winter, and the Chesapeake Bay was just washing down really frigid water to where we were training. The air temperature was below freezing with some wind. And he's like, and there's a 16 foot 3,500 pound great white shark directly underneath your airspace. Holy shit. And you know how it is in the military. We're always joking about the dark. I go to my brief, everything's going good and smooth, and as I'm kind of walking out to go get my gear on and go fly, one of the more senior pilots in the squadron pulls me aside and he's like, man, you just haven't done anything dumb enough yet to earn a call sign. And on another whiteboard that was in the ready room, they had all the newer guys in the squadron. At this point, there was like five or six newer guys under me in the squadron. And they all had like a laundry list of call signs. But I had just played the Quiet Man card so well that, like, they didn't have any ammunition against me. And when you got to my name on that board, there was just like a couple throwaway options on there, just no good call signs. So as I get my gear on and go out and take off on this flight, we went out and did some air-to-air refueling just