This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Up next, a story by Peter Braxton about his Air Force training, his Air Force pilot

training. On the morning of September 11, 2001, that would come into play because he was the first

military pilot in the air over the burning Twin Towers. Here's Peter with his story about his pilot training at the Air Force.

In the T-37 during training, it's a fully aerobatic subsonic trainer. So you can like do loop-de-loops and

emmens and cubanates and all these other tricks and the thing, you know, the thunderbirds or the blue angels you can do that stuff we just do it way higher in the air okay we don't do it near the earth where there's zero room for error so again pre-war i'm in pilot training i wanted to be a doctor i'm like flying around. And what they do is they make you solo.

You have to like fly this thing alone, you know, fairly quickly within like 10 hours of flying.

And, you know, some of its confidence and some of its can you do it?

Well, I remember at that point, I was like, well, I guess I'm not going to fly a fighter

because there's no base near where I grew up and I'll just, I'll go fly like a C-17 or KC-10.

This might be one of the last times I ever fly alone. So I'm like, you know, I'm going to make it worth my while.

So there's a problem with me is I'm more of a Cadillac guy than a Ferrari guy, right?

So I like things a little loose where I can move and not restrict blood flow and all this

other stuff.

And, you know, yeah, you got like G suits and you're pulling Gs and your G's training. It was so funny. I never used to, this is embarrassing. I used, you know, you have the helmet on and I would wear the chin strap like it was a hockey. Like it was just dangling. Like it doesn't even need to be there, but it's got to be connected because that's part of the rules, right? Like if it's not connected, you're breaking safety law. So I would connect everything, but I wouldn't tighten it, tighten it down to myself. And so I'm flying alone. I'm like, all right, here's your chance. Do all the loop. Get it out of your system.

Do it, do it all.

So I start whipping this jet into full speed,

entering all of these maneuvers,

and then I get this bright idea that I'm going to try to fly like top,

gut, like upside down for a sustained period of time.

And I forgot on that. I didn't like strap in tight.

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