Sanctuary: Not just the Home of Lost Fighter Pilots

It was a blinding flash of sunlight that forced my eyes to squint into the distance and my heart-rate to soar - but it was no good… I’d lost her. The dim outline of a fighter jet, that I’d been pointing at head-on just a couple of seconds ago, was now gone. It’s the biggest fear of any pilot, losing sight of the aircraft you are about to fight - you can’t fight what you can’t see. The temptation was to frantically search the sky in the hope she’d reappear but I knew it was futile. ‘Ninja Two - confirm ‘tally’?’ I called, checking that my student could see me. ‘Negative,’ came the reply. I checked my instruments - 0.76 Mach - I knew she’d be the same and that meant a closing speed of over 1,000 miles per hour - fifteen miles per minute. One mile every four seconds. We’d only been five miles apart when we’d turned to face each other so quick maths told me that I only had two and a half, maybe three seconds before we’d collide. And, in the world of military flying training, an instructor killing their student is generally considered to be a ‘bad thing’. I started to climb. ‘Ninja One is also ‘no joy’, levelling 15,000 feet… SANCTUARY GO!’ I called. And, as I steadied my jet and dipped a wing, I saw my student flash past me in a hard right-hand turn - I’d failed to keep sight of her and had done something about it. ‘Roll out North.’ I called, ‘It’s a low sun today Beth, and visibility is poor - I think we’ll try that again.’

You can listen to Sanctuary: Not just the Home of Lost Fighter Pilots online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Sanctuary: Not just the Home of Lost Fighter Pilots is an episode from Fast Jet Performance.

This episode is 18:49 long.

This episode was published on Apr 3, 2018.

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