Cleared for The Break

This post is about aviation, but it starts out with golf.

Specifically, it starts out with the first practice day, Tuesday, October 6, 2009, for The Presidents’ Cup golf tournament, held at Harding Park in San Francisco, California. This is a match play event between the 12 highest ranking golfers from the United States versus the 12 highest ranking golfers from the rest of the world, except Europe. (The reason Europe is excluded is because the more famous Ryder Cup pits the US versus the best European golfers. The Presidents’ Cup is, therefore, a “Ryder Cup” for the rest of the world.)

My wife and I volunteered to be marshals for the event, marshals being the people who control the foot traffic and tell people to be quiet and stand still while the golfers are hitting and putting, and yesterday we were assigned the task of controlling a fairway pedestrian crossover, using ropes to open the crossway when there were no golfers taking shots or walking down the fairway. All in all, a great way to see a lot of great golf, and great golfers. (And celebrities too. Michael Jordan for one, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush for another.) But, and this is big, this is also Fleet Week in San Francisco, meaning the Blue Angels are in town. And, in fact, manning my gate early on with nothing much to do because the golfers were still several holes away, I heard an aircraft noise that had that sound that is hard to describe but is the sound that military fighter aircraft have and civilian air transports do not. I looked up, and there, out past the golf course running north up the shore line, were seven gold and blue F-18s, six in tight formation, one solo behind: The Blue Angels demonstration team plus the two seat, support and training aircraft. I mean, here I am, on a great golf course, a beautiful fall day with temperatures in the high 60’s, watching some of the most famous golfers in the world (yes, Tiger Woods, but also Freddie Couples, Greg Norman, Ernie Els), while The Blue Angels fly by. For me, at least, you just couldn’t make up a more perfect setting.

That evening, watching the local news, both to see what they covered of the first day of golf but also to see if they had anything on The Blue Angels, there were pieces on both, and for the Blue Angels they noted that they had arrived at San Francisco International Airport (KSFO/SFO) after having done a flyby up the coast and over The Bay. The film coverage showed the flight of six as they made their break for their visual approach and landing. It was a beautiful sight, as only a precision break can be, and it got me to thinking about breaks in general and memories of specific breaks.

The first question that always comes up is, “What is a break?”, and the second is, “Why do they do them?” (other than that they just look like an awful lot of fun to do, and they can, so they do). The Break was originally developed as a tactical maneuver to avoid enemy fire around the base when returning from a mission. The idea was to approach the field, in formation, at pattern altitude but at a high rate of speed. This obviously made it harder for ground fire to hit the aircraft, but left them still in formation and going too fast to land. The maneuver that resulted in their being separated, in trail, and slowed down, was called The Break, and it was done by having each aircraft, one at a time, roll into a 90 degree bank angle, turn 180 degrees, and roll out level on downwind. The 90 degree banked turn dissipated the speed very quickly—an airplane generates essentially zero lift at 90 degrees of bank so the only way to maintain level flight is to trade a lot of airspeed—and, it kept the aircraft within the general confines of the base. With each aircraft breaking off in a carefully timed sequence it put the formation in trail, and from that point on the approach and landing was conventional, a descending base leg, lined up and on speed/on glide path on final, flare over the numbers, landing one after the other.

Whether The Break is still a necessary return to base maneuver is a good question—most bases, both Air Force and Navy, are located well away from any potential enemy—but the tradition continues: fighters always arrive in formation and land after having been cleared for The Break. I saw this on a regular basis after I first upgraded to Boeing 727 Captain at ATA. ATA had a contract with the Air Force to fly personnel to and from Nellis Air Base, North Las Vegas, to Tonopah Air Base, which was near the little town of Tonopah, Nevada, but was, in fact, actually part of a giant restricted area in the interior of Nevada. Tonopah air base was a highly classified test center for stealth aircraft, but the area included everything from underground nuclear test sites to high speed, low level training runs. By the time ATA had the contract to ferry people back and forth the stealth program at Tonopah was publicly acknowledged, but still, parts were highly classified, a base within a base that you could see from the flight line but no one went into without proper clearance. And I mean no one. It was surrounded by fences, spot lights, guard towers, warnings about mines between the fences and machine guns armed to fire at any intruder. So I never got to go in there. But I did get to see a lot of aircraft departing and arriving, both F-117s at Tonopah, and F-16s and F-15s at Nellis. Since Nellis was also the home of the Thunderbirds, the Air Force demonstration team, we occasionally got to see The Break done to perfection, but it was always a sight to see, no matter who was doing it.

Later on I transitioned to Captain on the L-1011, which went all over the world. One of my favorite stops was Naval Station Rota. Rota is near the ocean in southwest Spain, orange, olive, Sherry and Flamenco country. Rota is a joint Spanish-US base (see previous post, “Azores,” for more on joint air bases) and the Spanish had a squadron of Harrier fighters based there. The Harrier is a vertical takeoff and landing fighter, and you have to see these things to believe them, flying fast like a fighter one second, and hovering and taxiing like a helicopter the next. The Break, for them, started normally, approaching the field in formation at high speed, just like fighters always do, breaking off one by one to line up downwind. But when they came across the threshold to land they were still about 50 feet in the air, doing about 50 knots. They decelerated to zero knots by the end of the runway, and, from a hover, rotated in place 90 degrees and taxied in to their spot on the ramp, descended the last 50 feet, and shut down. You just couldn’t believe your eyes: the fighter you just saw going by at 250 knots or so slowing to zero and landing from a hover.

On one of my last trips to the simulator for B-757 training we had some extra time at the end and the instructor asked if there was anything I wanted to try with the remaining time. I said, “Sure, I’d like to see what it’s like to fly The Break. So I lined it up with the runway several miles out at 1500 feet, shoved the throttles forward to accelerate to red line speed, chopped the power over the far end of the runway, rolled into a 90 degree turn, rolled out on downwind below maximum flap extension speed and from there on it was just another visual approach. Kind of disappointing. I think the thrill of The Break comes from, first, being in formation: this is the wolf pack coming back from the kill, with the Alpha Wolf leading the break with his pals following; second, it’s just a lot more exciting to see aircraft roll into 90 degree banked turns, one after the other, than it is to actually do one. Still, it’s got to be a thrill to come back to the field at high speed, in formation, and to hear the controller say, “Cleared for The Break.”