Well, the fighter pilot podcast is once again representing at the annual tailhook reunion and convention in Reno, Nevada, where there is no shortage of legendary Navy and Marine Corps aviators, including Carlos Howard, who I persuaded to grab a microphone with me.

How's it going, Carlos?

It's going great.

It's finally good to catch you up in person. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we've, I feel like, known each other, but here we are, finally grabbing a microphone. And I'll tell you, Carlos, from what I know, you might just be the most interesting man alive to borrow from a popular beer advertisement, because let's see if I get this right. You are an East LA high school

dropout who needed your mom's permission to enlist in the United States Marine Corps at 17 years old.

And then you did some stuff there that we can talk about maybe another time. But somehow you

found your way, got a commission, became a Mustang, and as an officer of the Marines,

you became a pilot, flew the F-A-18 Hornet, and became a J-TAC, calling in strikes on close

air support.

And golly, after hanging up your uniform, you continued flying as an A-4 contract adversary

at Draken.

Did I get all that right?

Yeah, absolutely right.

And it's just, it's funny to go from a high school dropout to flying adversary error. And you look

back, it's all a blur, right? I bet. Yeah, you got to make, uh, you got to make the most of every

day and your story is amazing. But it doesn't end there because your legend includes being one

of the few to log one more takeoff than landing. As I understand it,

you had an episode in a dracon A4, and as I understand laying in the hospital bed that day,

recovering, you had a bit of an epiphany of sorts, didn't you? Yeah, absolutely did. And so

flying actually, the mission was a close air support for the Marine Corps, which we do as part of contract air. And just, you know, your standard day, you brief everything. Obviously you cover emergency procedures. You kind of, I wouldn't say you gloss over things, but you know, you always look at that. Okay, where's the handle? What am I going to do? Yep, ended up having to pull the handle. I knew I had to do it to save my life, but it was definitely

a transition point. Waking up in that field, my first flight actually after that was in a life

flight to the hospital. And I remember talking a few minutes later, talking to the flight nurse,

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