JUST ONE WEEK FROM THE END OF MY SECOND TOUR OF DUTY IN Iraq, I would fly one of the most demanding missions of my career. I found myself preparing to take off into a massive dust storm that was blowing across Iraq and the ground battle raging below me. This would mean a long night. I would be leading Brave flight, a two-ship formation that was fragged with six different air tasking orders (ATOs). In short, I’d be supporting six different missions, sitting in the cockpit for ten hours with no reprieve.
Before walking over to Life Support to begin my preparations, I swung by the flight kitchen and grabbed a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a few bottles of water, and a packet of gummy worms.
Life Support looks a lot like an NFL locker room and contains the important equipment we use to stay alive while flying and in case we have to eject. Our names adorn our individual lockers and our gear hangs neatly, waiting for us to grab it in high pursuit. My first order of business there was focusing the diopter on my NVGs (night-vision goggles) so they perfectly aligned with my eyes’ focus. Next I grabbed my G-suit and harness. The zippers on my G-suit easily slid up as the result of the ten pounds I had lost in the desert. The last thing I needed on the way out were piddle packs. I can affirm that the question “How do you go to the bathroom in an F-16?” is a very popular one asked of fighter pilots. Now you know the answer.
We stepped to the jet thirty minutes before launch. I saluted and shook hands with my crew chief and then reviewed the forms to ensure the jet was ready to fly. It always was, but redundancy is key. We trust our lives with the crew chief, but it’s the pilot’s ultimate decision whether or not to fly the jet.
The F-16’s normally sleek body was dressed for work that night, bulked up by four 500-pound bombs and the Litening AT pod. Our loadout included two GBU-38 JDAMs,* two GBU-12 laser-guided bombs, and 510 rounds of 20mm bullets. My preflight confirmed that all bombs were secure and properly carted.
With the walkaround completed, I climbed the ladder up to the cockpit. Strapped in the jet ten minutes before engine start, I had time to say a few prayers and to organize my cockpit. The Viper is not designed to have room for all of the stuff we need when we fly combat, and there’s an art form to how every pilot sets himself up. We’ve been known to compare the setups of our jets to Burger King’s motto—Have it your way—with each pilot possessing his or her own preferred method. It’s crucial that everything is easily accessible, because anything you need will be reached for while simultaneously flying a jet in a very small altitude block at 350-plus knots.
I attached knee boards with Velcro leg straps on both thighs, which contained my lineup cards and blank 9-line forms. The 9-line is the standard format we use to work with the troops on the ground. On my left sat my bag full of various mission materials, including my “smart pack.” On my right I stashed my NVGs, food, water, and my go-pills—Dexedrine—which is legally prescribed to fighter pilots because it helps keep our minds operating at the highest levels on long, intense missions.
I reached back to double-check that my smart pack was in the correct place. The smart pack is a small three-ring binder that contains the information I’ll use to locate radio frequencies, grids, weapon data, and systems data. I think of it as my instructions for lethality.
Done. I turned on the light that was Velcroed to the side of my helmet. This little $20 gadget is a Godsend in my $30 million jet because it provides a powerful light that tracks my head movements and allows me to read the immense amount of information in my smart pack.
Brave 22 cleared for takeoff.
Moments after getting clearance, my wingman and I blasted into the pitch black, with no visual reference as to what was up or down. I was tempted to put on my NVGs, but I knew it wasn’t safe to use them until I had climbed 1,000 feet into the sky. I am religious about my flow and habit patterns, because things in the F-16 can go wrong very quickly, and putting NVGs on too early can cause a loss of spatial orientation. In 2007, the community lost a great fighter pilot, Major Kevin Sonnenberg, on takeoff due to a suspected early donning of his NVGs. His jet went into a slow roll and quickly became unrecoverable.
Once I was safely airborne, my NVGs went on and the world transformed into light green. Though my depth perception was almost zero and my field of view was narrowed to the width of a soda straw, NVGs contain amazing technology that allows one to see a cigarette burning from thirty miles away. No joke.
The airspace over Iraq was the busiest, most concentrated in the world, and that night it felt more populated than any other night. Our F-16s were flying in one layer of the sky, but we were stacked with flying assets from every branch of the military—Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, Navy F-18s, AWACS air traffic control planes, J-STARS and U2 intelligence planes, and various unmanned platforms, like the Predator drone. Each of us brings a different LOE to the fight, but the Viper is the pointy end of the spear—the one that is most often called to support the heroes on the ground.
But we’re not without our own support. “Kingpin” is the call sign of the one hyper-smart dude whom we rely on and who runs Operation Iraqi Freedom over the radios. He, in turn, is backed up by many support assets in the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), and it is he who deals out the orders quickly and precisely. It’s not uncommon to start a mission with one tasking in mind, only to be immediately redirected by Kingpin. If a situation arises and our troops on the ground need help, we are re-rolled to support them. Flexibility is the key to airpower, and a mindset that can handle sudden change is mandatory for a fighter pilot.
Scott “Rookie” Rooks, my wingman, was in a two-mile radar trail behind me. Scott and I are the best of friends and we spend a lot of time together back in Oklahoma. Rookie is also a scratch golfer, and we had a running joke that we had the lowest combined handicap over Iraq. Our time together in Tulsa couldn’t be more different than what we faced in the hostile skies tonight. A typical day back there included eighteen holes, followed by a nice steak and a few glasses of red wine on his back deck. In Iraq it was all business: We were flying our F-16s in the hottest combat zone in the world over 88AS, the grid that encompassed most of Baghdad.
Suddenly, Kingpin interrupted with a pressing situation. We received notification that our tasking order was changing. Troops in contact (TIC)—Army and Marine forces fighting in close proximity to the enemy—needed our immediate support. Getting re-rolled to our new location was the equivalent of working a four-dimensional puzzle, one that needed to be solved urgently. I consulted my smart pack and punched in frequencies and coordinates in the up-front control to get the location of the TIC. I pushed the throttle up and the F-16 responded with raw power . . . a feeling that never gets old. I watched my fuel gauge spin over my right knee and noticed that I was going to need some gas soon. I set a new joker . . . bingo.* At the speed I was flying, executing this task was like playing a video game (except obviously no one fighting a war gets three lives).
Flying just below the speed of sound, we arrived at our location within minutes.
Brave 22 push Blue 41.
We checked in with JTAC, or joint terminal attack controller. JTAC is embedded with the ground forces and is specially trained to communicate directly with pilots. If the situation on the ground dictates airstrikes, he has the authority to call it in. JTAC owns the ordnance on our fully loaded jets. As I received an abbreviated 9-line over the radio, I could hear the chilling sounds of war in the background—the clashing of bullets ricocheting off his Humvee. The JTAC’s voice remained calm as he keyed the mike despite troops fighting for their lives. Even though I was 25,000 feet above the fight, I could feel how emotionally charged the situation was. Though I was nervous, my pulse remained steady, a skill I have refined in the jet but first learned while playing competitive golf.
The JTAC called for an immediate show of force, which is the fastest way to eliminate the threat. He cleared us to 500 feet off the deck. I elevatored the jet down through the weather deck to the low block and made a high-speed pass with my afterburner while kicking out flares that lit up the night sky. To anyone below, this sound was deafening, and the sheer power of the F-16 literally shook the ground. It proved the perfect remedy when the insurgents disengaged. Our work was done (temporarily), and I let JTAC know we’d be around all night if he needed us.
My gas was getting uncomfortably low, which meant we’d require some quick help from our tanker brothers. Thankfully, the request I’d made on the way to TIC earlier was granted, and Kingpin had moved the “Texaco in the sky” forward to where we were located. Sometimes the F-16 flies to the tankers, but there are times, like this one, when the fuel has to come to us. As you might imagine, refueling in midair at night requires coordination, precision, and concentration.
Kingpin . . . Brave, snap 185 for 15—tankers at FL210.
I turned my jet south and used my radar to lock on the KC-135 and run the intercept. Rolling out in a one-mile trail, I cleared my wingman to the left wing of the tanker. Peering through my NVGs, I saw that the boom was extended. This was my comm-out signal that I was cleared to the pre-contact position. Cool. I slowly pulled up to the back of the tanker, carefully monitoring my closure in the head-up display (HUD) to ensure I didn’t overrun them. I opened my air fueling door on the spine of the jet and tucked under the huge KC-135. Lights on the belly of the tanker guided me into position, and I heard a familiar clunk as we connected. For the next ten minutes we both flew at precisely 310 knots (356 miles per hour) as I fueled up.
Wiggle your fingers and toes, I thought.
This is a technique I learned back at Luke to relax while I make constant small corrections for pitch and power to stay connected to the tanker. After about ten minutes I felt the pressure disconnect and saw my air refuel light blink. A quick glance down over my right knee showed the tanks were full and feeding. I gave a salute to the boomer and a quick “strength and honor” on the radio, and after Rookie gassed up we got right back into the fight.
By the time we finished our mission taskings for the night, Rookie and I were cooked. We had been in the air for over eight hours, supporting multiple taskings, which required us to refuel in midair five times. It was grueling, and yet we still had another hour of flying ahead of us before we made it back to base.
Brave flight fence out.
With that sign we could finally safe up our weapons and set our cockpit switches from combat mode to navigation mode. The last few hours had been a helmet fire. “Helmet fire” is a phrase unique to the fighter-pilot community, but one that almost anyone can understand: It describes the moment when one’s brain is overloaded with more information than it can process. We rendezvoused with our tanker buddies for one last sip of gas as we pressed south out of Iraq down the Persian Gulf and headed back to base.
The universe has more mysterious methods, though. As we passed into Kuwaiti airspace, Rookie came over the interflight UHF radio and made an unusual request.
“Hey, Noonan, turn down your lights,” he said.
“Turn down my lights?” I asked, still trying to decompress from the night’s mission.
“Your interior lights,” he said. “Turn them down.”
With the autopilot engaged, I reached over my right leg and turned the dials counterclockwise. The green glow gradually faded in the cockpit until I was engulfed in blackness.
“Okay,” I responded, still wondering why he had told me to do so.
But then came his answer. “Look up,” Rookie said.
In the fog of war, my mind hadn’t processed that a cold front had swept away the dust storm and that what was left behind was incredible to see. Instead of the usual carnage of war, I looked through the unrestricted view of the F-16 bubble canopy at the most explosive natural display of light I have ever seen in my life. The sky was awash in infinite blue space, dotted with stars that sparkled with brilliant light. It no longer looked like a war zone in the Middle East but somewhere infinitely peaceful. Perched on the forward edge of the jet at 31,000 feet, I sat in awe of the millions of stars putting on a personal show for us. As the show progressed, the stars resembling their own singular blinking worlds, I asked myself how it was possible to have gone from complete chaos to a place of pure calm so quickly. My only explanation? That this wasn’t a random or chance encounter, but rather a divine and spiritual force. It was my first encounter with the power of synchronicity, and I would never look at the world the same.
Synchronicity, or what I like to call “chance with purpose,” is how God connects moments in our lives. It’s an omnipresent current that links you to the universe and guides your intended path, the force that connects you to people and to other meaningful experiences. Moments of synchronicity are signs from God.
The concept of synchronicity was coined by the pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, who spoke of some events as “meaningful coincidences.” I believe synchronicity is much deeper than simple coincidence. Meeting your spouse at a party you almost didn’t attend, talking to someone in line at a coffee shop and learning they work at the company where you’ve just had an interview, or looking up just in time to avoid a car accident are all examples of synchronicity. It’s someone on your mind who pops onto your caller ID, or that you stumbled upon Fly Into the Wind and are now reading it.
The synchronicity I experienced in combat when I turned down my lights to reveal that heavenly display was a reminder that if I didn’t pay attention, I was going to miss out on powerful God moments both big and small. Life is synchronized beyond human comprehension, and it has potential to bring life-changing results, but here’s the secret: You can tap into it. I have broken down synchronicity into two primary types below.
This type of synchronicity provides a vector that alters your path and leads you in a new direction. These are big, life-altering moments.
Extraordinary events are often the result of game-changing synchronicity, of being at the right place at the right time and being observant of the amazing possibilities therein. Game-changing synchronicity occurred, for example, in Scotland in the 1920s when Dr. Alexander Fleming, a bacteriologist at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, returned from vacation and noticed that mold had contaminated his Petri dishes. The mold that infiltrated the Petri dish, Penicillium notatum, seemed to have stopped Staphylococcus from growing as it normally would. Could mold be inhibiting the growth of bacteria? Fleming wondered. He knew this could lead to a massive improvement in mortality rates, so he performed more tests to confirm his theory. While there was much work to be done to develop penicillin as we know it today, fourteen years later the first patient was saved from a deadly infection in the United States. Since that discovery, millions of lives have been saved thanks to Dr. Fleming’s game-changing moment of synchronicity and his observant instincts.
We can point to another example years later, this time on the other side of the pond. George Herbert Walker Bush secured a rich legacy as one of the youngest aviators to fly during World War II, as a congressman and the tenth U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as director of the CIA, then vice president under Ronald Reagan, and eventually the forty-first president of the United States. However, his legacy would not be celebrated if it wasn’t for an incredible moment of game-changing synchronicity. Shortly after Bush was promoted to lieutenant junior grade, he piloted a Grumman TBM Avenger aircraft that attacked the Japanese on an island called Chichijima during World War II. Bush and three other Avengers faced intense fire. Bush’s plane was hit, and his engine was immediately set ablaze. Still, he was able to release his bombs over his target and make several hits before flying miles away from the island, where he and his crew member jumped out of the burning aircraft. His crew member’s parachute did not open, and Bush was left alone in hostile open waters, floating in his raft. In a game-changing moment of synchronicity, a nearby U.S. submarine rescued him. Had that vessel not been nearby, he likely would have been captured by enemy forces. Bush’s list of accomplishments as president is long, but a few notable contributions include playing a key role in the ending of the Cold War, liberating Kuwait, passing the Americans with Disabilities Act, and creating the Points of Light initiative, the largest organization dedicated to volunteer service. Without that key moment of synchronicity, our nation’s history would look very different than it does today.
Fluid synchronicity is the affirmation that you are on the right path and the encouragement to stay the course. Fluid synchronicity consists of those signs that are meaningful to you and that consistently appear in your life. Moments of fluid synchronicity may include seeing a number or name repeated with frequency, encountering the same symbol regularly, thinking about something and then having it happen, or an interaction with someone who will play a role in your journey.
Ever since that day on the golf course when I realized that the origins of 13 were rooted in new beginnings, the number 13 has brought fluid synchronicity into my life. I felt a renewed conviction for my destined path. I began to understand that HE (13) is everywhere. Suddenly I found my Avis spot flashing space B13, or my flying out of gate 1367 (double 13s—6 + 7 = 13). I can’t tell you how many times my bill at a restaurant has added up to 13, the gas pump has stopped on 13 gallons, or my wife has called my cell at 1313 hours. I know that when the 13th day of every month pops up on the calendar, it will be a day full of blessings. When I am faced with difficult decisions or a professional or personal roadblock, the appearance of 13 serves as a reminder from God that I’m on the correct course. While the number 13 remains my most consistent form of fluid synchronicity, I also get a boost every time I encounter a random coin on the street; they are like breadcrumbs from God. I smile whenever I read the phrase “In God We Trust” on every coin.
Fluid synchronicity is by no means limited to numbers (or coins). Fluid synchronicity arrives in the form of any small but significant reminder to you. This could include symbols, patterns, phrases, songs—anything that captures your attention and serves as a confirmation from your higher power that you’re on the right path.
While that beautiful display of starlight opened my eyes to the concept of synchronicity, it was the number 13 that inspired me to become a “watcher.” Most of us move through the day not noticing much of what’s going on around us. At work or in school, we focus on what needs to get done or on events that directly impact us at that moment. I get it, this is a big part of life. But being a watcher—in a position to actually notice and experience moments of synchronicity—requires us to be less self-centric and function as active participants throughout our days. As you begin work on this line of effort, it can be difficult to know what to watch for, and it is easy to overthink and to look so intently for signs that you’ll potentially miss the small moments of synchronicity that are meant for you. To help narrow your focus about what to watch for, try the following:
Accumulating moments of game-changing and fluid synchronicity will draw you one crucial step closer to achieving CAVU, but to benefit from everything it has to offer, you must regard these moments as invitations from God to make a change, take a risk, or make a concrete decision to pursue essential goals. Have the courage to use reckless faith when God calls to you through a moment of synchronicity and see where it can take you.