Interview with Larry Nazimek
On May 30th, I had the honor of speaking with Mr. Larry Nazimek. Mr. Nazimek served in the United States Air Force, where he was dual-rated as a pilot and a navigator. He flew the F-4 Phantom when he was a weapon systems officer, and flew the T-38 Talon and B-52 Stratofortress when he was a pilot. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mr. Larry Nazimek
Joshua Kupietzky: How did you decide to join the Air Force?
Larry Nazimek: I have always wanted to. Ever since I was a kid playing in the sandbox in the backyard and saw the planes fly by, I was always interested in aviation.
JK: What planes did you fly?
LN: When I got into the Air Force, they did not need pilots, they needed navigators ... There were even guys on the right side of the border line for the visual criteria; they got into officer training school and then they said, “We are going to give you another flight physical,” and then they rejected them and said, “Oh no, you are on the wrong side of the border line; you can’t be a pilot now, but you can be a navigator.” Anyway, I was a navigator first and I trained in the T-29 called the “Flying Classroom” and that is like a Convair 240, really ancient. I guess you can say it makes me an authority on World War II technology because that is what we were using. After that, I got to be a back-seater, weapons system officer, in the F-4 Phantom, which was a really good airplane. The Air Force does not want to cross over the navigators to become pilots, because it is not cost-effective, because then you have to train someone else to take your place as a navigator, and you are already an older person going into pilot training. Nevertheless, they know the navs want to be pilots, so they have a few slots open and it is a very competitive process. So I had to really jump through the hoops, working hard and getting letters of recommendation from generals and colonels. So many other navigators were jumping through the hoops, but only a small amount made it. I was lucky I was one of those who made it. I eventually got in, and in pilot training back then, they flew the T-37 and the T-38. I am not sure if they are still flying them in pilot training—I think they are still flying the T-38, but I think that only those who will be going into fighters or bombers go into that track. I don’t know if they are still flying the 37. I think it has been replaced. But anyway, after that, I was flying B-32s and T-38s.
JK: What is the difference between a navigator and a pilot?
LN: Actually, when you are in the back seat of a fighter, you are not so much a regular navigator. The navigator stuff that you learn for the most part is for transports or even for the bombers, where you have to go long distances, like getting the airplane from point A to point B. But when you are in the back seat, you are called a weapons system officer, and you wear the navigator wings.The Air Force fighters have the stick in the front as well as the back, where the Navy and Marine Corps only has it in the front. But anyway, the Air Force started with the F-4 where it would have two pilots and they were almost fighting over whose turn it was to fly. The guy in the back was more interested in the pilot stuff than in the weapons system. So the Air Force decided to do what the Navy and Marine Corps were doing, that is, to put someone who was a navigator in the back seat. They do have us flying low levels to go below the radar and you do navigation with the radar. You are really working with the pilot and to some extent you are a pilot's assistant. There are different things that you have to do like you are the one who operates the radar. There is a ground mapping mode as you are flying low level routes, and there is the air-to-air mode in case you are trying to find and shoot down other enemy aircraft. So you find them and then lock onto them, direct the pilot to an air intercept, and then the pilot will have to pull on the trigger to shoot the missiles at them. When it come to dropping the bombs, conventional bombs are dropped by the pilot, but in the more advanced models of the F-4 we had what they called “dive toss” when the pilot gets a target that he is going to bomb and he puts that on his sight and you lock onto it with the radar, then you could maneuver around somewhat and the bomb comes off automatically. For nuclear bombs, you don’t know what kind of weather you are going to have when it is time to drop the nuclear bomb, and the fighters drop nuclear bombs just like the big bombers do, but they are not going to fly all the way to Mother Russia; it is more for shorter flights, like going into East Germany and Warsaw Pact Nations or even like North Korea, for example. But anyway, let's say the weather's bad. You still have to go and so you can drop your bombs by reference to radar. So in addition to navigating, the back seater has to use the bombing computers to get the bomb off the airplane at the right spot, so it gets closer to the target. That is usually what the back seater would do. And even today, they have the F-15 Strike Eagle that is a plane that has two people: you have the pilot and the weapons system officer.
JK: How did you choose the Air Force over the Army or Navy?
LN: I figured the Army fights on the ground and the Navy fights in the water and the Air Force fights in the air and that is what I wanted. Sure, the Navy has their aviation, the Marine corps is part of it. Look, I am a terrible swimmer and I don’t really like landing on an aircraft carrier or living on an aircraft carrier. I like living on land. As far as the Marine Corps is concerned, one problem with them is at the time—I don’t know, maybe things have changed—the thing is, [if] you join [the Marines,] you are supposed to want to be a Marine. That is why you joined, because you want to be a Marine and they say that every Marine is a rifleman and every officer a platoon leader. The thing is with the Air Force, and I believe with the Navy, you have a contract that says you are going to get flying training. With the Marine Corps, no, you don’t, because you want to be a Marine. I have talked to some Marines who have told me that I made the right decision not going into the Marines because they know people who wanted to fly and never got the chance. So the Air Force to me was the way to go. I guess I also had some influence from my family. My father was in the Army Air Corps during the Second World War and his brother was a tailgunner on the B-24. So it was something I always wanted to do. I watched some of those war movies. I was interested in the Navy stuff too. There was a war at sea program. Submarine warfare and movies like that. I was always interested in military stuff, but really, I wanted to fly. Also, for maybe test pilots for astronaut stuff, I thought the Air Force had an advantage; as I see now, they don’t. But anyway, I was just into flying high-performance stuff.
JK: What year did you enlist in the Air Force and how long were you in the Air Force for?
LN: It was in [19]73. I got out in [19]85 if you want to count my time where I got a long vacation at the end, where I was on leave without pay, where I could still take a military flight and stay at most bases. I got out officially in [19]85.
JK: Where were you based?
LN: So start[ing] out in officer training school, the only place is in San Antonio. Nice place, not that you get out that much. Then, Navigator school was just east of Sacramento, California. That was a pretty good place, too. After that, my F-4 training was at Luke Air Force Base west of Phoenix. Pretty good place, although since I spent so much time out West, I wanted to see the East. I had been an aerospace engineer working out in California for a while just before the Air Force. But anyway, [I] can’t say anything bad about being in Phoenix, Arizona, but that again was just a training base so we were only there for a short time. My first operational base with the F-4—there were 20 bases that had F-4s—my last choice was Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, and that's where they sent me. Okinawa sucked, why? Well, as it turns out, they have these things called short-tour return dates, commonly known as “remote tours.” Those are places that you could not bring your wife. I don't have a wife anyway, but the thing is those are places where you spend 12 months in Korea, Thailand, or in the Philippines, you do 15 months, and when you get out of there, you get a short-tour return date. You don’t go back to one of those locations until the other people in your same specialty have gone there. With Okinawa, you spend 18 months unaccompanied and you do not get credit for the short-tour return date. That really made me mad. Then if you bring your dependents with you, it is an extra 12 months. There were some guys that brought their wifes over, so that's 30 months, but when their wives saw what Okinawa was like and hated it they divorced and went back to the States and the guy was still stuck there for his two and a half years. So I was stuck there for a year and a half. After that, I wanted to see the eastern part of the country because I had been in the West so much. So I went to Goldsboro, North Carolina, being a big city bachelor. But I was only there for a short time and then I got to go to pilot training. My last choice of pilot training bases was Del Rio, Texas; that's where I went. Very hot and very humid and nothing much out there. Judge Roy Bean is buried there and he is about as active as anyone else there. It was about 153 miles west of San Antonio. So every chance you get, [you] get away from Del Rio. It is more developed now, but it was not so developed then. After that, training for the B-52 was in Merced, California. Actually in a town called Atwater, but Merced was a bigger town and is west of Yosemite National Park. Not much to do right over there, but at least you could spend a couple of hours and drive to San Francisco or some other place. It is not what you would call a bad location, and even if it was you are only there for a short time because it is a training base. And then I got stuck in Grand Forks, North Dakota. That was the last straw.
JK: What was your favorite aircraft you flew?
LN: The F-4 without a doubt.
JK: Was the F-4 the easiest aircraft you have flown?
LN: Oh no, again, I was not the pilot, but it was something where you were always kept busy and you were in combat training for war. It seemed that in the B-52, you are always training for operational readiness inspections and you are always just running a checklist. And I realize sometimes things are on the checklist because of some accident that occurred and they said, “We better put this in the checklist.” It was like you were reciting lines for a play and you are always interested in operational readiness inspections or what they called “check rides” or other evaluations and stuff. Anyway, it was kind of dumb in that sense. You did not fly the airplane that much and you spent a lot of time on alert, when you wait for World War 3 to start and you have this alert facility; the alarm goes off and you run to the plane and start your engines, copy the messages and you find out whether you are really going to war. So the F-4 [was my favorite] because what we were doing was more combat-oriented. You look at your buddies and his life depends on you and your life depends on him.
JK: Do you have any advice you would have for any aspiring military pilots?
LN: Yeah, if you can afford it, try to get some flying in. Some civilian stuff. I know it is very expensive to get a pilot's license. What they charge now is obscene unless you're really out in the country. But if you can get some flying training under your belt, that would be better, because I think they still got it like a flight screening program, which is a wash-out program. They put you in a plane and if you are not able to fly solo, after just a couple hours of flight, you are not going to be a pilot, and so if you have a little bit of flying under your belt, you're better off. I did not go to the flight screening program because I had my civilian license. See, when I was going through Navigator school—which is pretty easy for me, the navigation stuff and map is pretty easy for me—since I got my Bachelor’s and Master’s in Aerospace Engineering. So it was really easy for me, but I would do all the homework they would tell us to do, anyway. Regardless, I had enough free time where I could go to the Sacramento Executive Airport. I got my private pilot license paying for it. And because I already had my pilot's license, I did not have to go through the flight screening program, but again it was a real wash-out program.
JK: How long were you a navigator, and how long were you a pilot?
LN: Well, let's see now. I got my navigator wings in ‘74 and you pay them back, performing for so many years. And then I entered pilot training in ‘77, so in ‘78, I got my pilot's wings. Again, I had to pay them back. So that is what it amounted to.
JK: Once you had your pilot’s wings, were you still allowed to be a navigator on some flights or were you only a pilot?
LN: Only a pilot is the way they do it. They don’t even want you to wear your navigator wings. Which I think is kind of unfair because you got guys who are lawyers maybe. In fact, I know some guys—I know one guy in particular who flew F-4’s and was shot down and was a POW and afterward he decided to become a lawyer. So they can wear their JAG pin, their lawyer thing, and they can wear pilot’s wings, or there are some guys who start out as missileers and they wear their missile badge and then they go to pilot training and they wear them both. I did not think it was right that I could not wear my navigator wings anymore. Anyway, you only wear one set of wings.
JK: What area of the world was the hardest to fly in?
LN: Grand Forks. The weather was so cold over there with the snow and all that stuff. You're actually a better pilot there. When you are flying through the clouds, sometimes the clouds don’t break until 200 feet above the ground, whereas people in other areas do more visual stuff. Or they break out the clouds at 600 feet above the ground, and then go visual. We had guys who were from another base and for whatever reason they were landing at Grand Forks and they said, “Boy, I broke out at 600 feet.” That was nothing for us. We did that all the time. So, in that sense, that was a challenge. It makes you a better pilot.
