Marine Tells of Swan-Song Flight in Jet

When he was 12 years old, Howard A. Foote Jr. says, he decided to be a fighter pilot when he grew up. It’s a dream familiar to a lot of youngsters that age, but for Foote it was more. It became an obsession. It became his whole life.

Everything he would do for the next nine years focused on that goal, Foote said, and so the sense of loss was tremendous when he found out earlier this year that what he thought was a minor injury would leave him physically unqualified for military flight school.

But he couldn’t put it behind him that easily, he said. He had to experience flying a fighter at least once. So, during the early morning hours of last July 4, Lance Cpl. Foote climbed aboard an A-4M Skyhawk at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, started it up and taxied out to the runway.

“As soon as I pushed the throttles to go down the runway, my head snapped back against the ejection seat, and I was happy,� Foote said Friday, just hours after being discharged from the Marine Corps. “It was natural. That was my home.�

After four months in the Camp Pendleton brig where he was sent after that flight, Foote gathered with his family and a few pilots who are close friends on the terrace of an oceanfront restaurant Friday. There, the 21-year-old Los Alamitos native recalled the flight and what had driven him to it.

Occasionally he’d glance skyward as fighters from El Toro passed overhead en route to the gunnery and bombing range at San Clemente Island.

“I knew I was as good as I was going to get with the training I’d had,� said Foote, a record-setting glider pilot who has flown since he was 15. “I just had to fly a jet one time. And I knew if I didn’t do it now, I’d never get to.

“I just didn’t want to go through the rest of my life being frustrated because I hadn’t done it. A lot of people do that. They say, ‘If only I’d done this or that 10 or 15 years ago when I could.’ Well, now I’ve flown the plane, and I know what it’s like.�

Foote had suffered an aerial embolism--the pilot’s physical equivalent of the bends that plague deep-sea divers--in February while attempting to set a world altitude record for gliders. That disqualified him from flight school, flight surgeons told him.

The decision to take a jet on an unauthorized flight in July was spur-of-the-moment, Foote said, and not something he’d been planning for a long time.

“I’d just finished midterms at the college I was going to in San Bernardino, and as I was driving back to the base that night I realized it was all going to amount to nothing,� Foote said. “It had been completely wasted for what I wanted.�

He went to bed but slept only until about midnight. “As I was lying there, I decided, that’s it--I’m going to do it,� he said.

Stationed at El Toro as an aviation mechanic, Foote knew where to get the keys to a maintenance truck, which he then drove to the flight line where the fighters of Squadron 214--the Black Sheep--were parked. He said he made thorough preflight inspections of three planes before picking the one he wanted to use.

The control tower was closed for the night and the airfield’s lights were off, Foote said, but once he was airborne he just followed the base’s standard departure route and headed out over the ocean toward San Clemente Island, an area the Marines use for pilot training.

“I was in a restricted area where civilian planes aren’t supposed to be, but I still kept a sharp eye out for any other traffic,� Foote said.

Even though it was a clear night and there was a bright moon, Foote said, there was no time to enjoy the view because “when you’re flying, you have to do that 110%. You don’t have time to think about anything else.�

He said he began putting the single-seat Skyhawk through standard maneuvers that had been drilled into him during 60 hours of flight-simulator instruction.

‘Fat With Fuel’

Foote said he had been airborne about 35 minutes when a generator that powers the lighting and navigational systems shut down. After failing to get it restarted and switching to a backup, he realized that it was time to head back.

“I was still fat with fuel,� Foote said, explaining that the plane can weigh only a certain amount when it touches down to avoid damage to landing gear. “So I decided to burn off some fuel rather than dump it. When I got back over the field, I flew the standard approach pattern they use for carrier landing practice.

“They claimed I buzzed the field five times because I was having trouble landing. That just wasn’t true. I was just burning off the fuel.�

Disputed Corps’ Contention

Foote also disputed the Marine Corps’ contention that he had used a plane that was in no condition to be flown.

“If that was true, why was that plane scheduled for a flight that same day?� he said. “And the aileron problem they said the plane had wasn’t discovered until after I’d flown it.�

Maj. Frank B. Kennedy III, an aviation maintenance officer at the El Toro base, testified at a hearing in August that because of mechanical problems with the jet, “from a maintenance standpoint, it was not a flyable airplane.�

Describing the flight as “a piece of cake,� Foote said it had reminded him of a time when he’d gone up in a two-seat glider with another pilot who is a friend. “There were no records to go after that day,� he said. “We weren’t stressed out. We were just enjoying what was going on in the cockpit. And that’s how the jet flight was.�

Arrested After Landing

Foote was arrested as soon as he landed, and his court-martial was to have begun Wednesday. If he had been convicted of misappropriating both the A-4M and the maintenance truck, he could have spent nine years in a military prison. But before the court-martial got under way, an agreement was reached under which the charges would be dropped and Foote would be discharged from the Marine Corps in return for a letter of apology from Foote to the base commander.

On Friday, wearing a T-shirt given to him by members of the squadron whose plane he’d taken, Foote said he had nothing against the Marine Corps. He said, though, that he felt that the base flight surgeons had been wrong when they said he’d never be able to go to flight school.

‘Didn’t Really Believe It’

“At first, I didn’t really believe it was true or that there wasn’t some way it wouldn’t work out,� Foote said. “After all, when you’ve got a general behind you, you can always get something done like a waiver.�

Gen. William A. Bloomer, who was the El Toro commander before retiring last June 30, had taken steps to help Foote with glider record attempts, as well as helping prepare him for flight school.

“But I realized when Gen. Bloomer left, it was probably all over,� Foote said. “When I’d have to take my flight school physical, they’d just take one look at my medical records and say no way.�

When he was a young boy, Foote said, he “used to look up at planes flying by and wonder what’s the magic? What magic ingredient makes those pilots so different from me? When I really got into training, I realized there is no magic. It’s just a job that you have to do very well.�

Combat ‘Name of the Game’

As for his future, Foote said he already had received some offers of flying jobs, including one as a corporate jet pilot. But he said he had no interest in flying for a commercial airline.

He said he might try to go to another country, perhaps Israel, that is looking for combat pilots.

“After all,� he said, “I can fly the plane. I know that now. But combat is still the name of the game. Until I get those wings on my chest, I know I’ll never fulfill my potential.�