Courtesy PBR
It’s 90 Seconds to Midnight, and US Navy Fighter Jets Named for PBR Bulls Are Helping Freeze the Doomsday Clock
Cool Whip accelerates from 0 to 160 mph in two seconds.
Legend can reach a top speed exceeding Mach 1.8.
Flapjack has an ejection seat.
Ridin’ Solo is helping prevent the outbreak of World War III.
Say what?
It’s all true – it’s just that the PBR bulls referred to are on the flightline of Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana and recently deployed aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78).
The Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier had a special group of fighter jets – named after top PBR bulls.
Other F/A-18E Super Hornets atop the carrier are Prime Time, Bodacious, Smokestack, Smackdown, Panhandle Slim, Moonlight Party.
US Navy Legend Tail
Courtesy PBR
The Ragin’ Bulls of the U.S. Navy’s VFA-37 recently returned home after flying more than 2,700 hours and spending nearly more than eight months at sea in the Baltic, Eastern Mediterranean and Red Seas, strengthening ties with America’s partners and allies.
After missing Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hannukah, the sailors returned to a country largely oblivious to a world on the trigger’s edge.
Get this: the sober-minded people who set the Doomsday Clock – a terrifying predictor of Armageddon – have it set closer to the hour of reckoning than any time in history.
At our sporting events, in our shopping malls, glued to our phones, idling in the Starbucks drive-through, we’re unaware it is 90 seconds to midnight.
Comfort and security in a very dangerous world isn’t magical or free. It comes at the cost of service, valor, and sacrifice paid for by the men and women of our nation’s Armed Forces.
Heading into its event at Hampton Coliseum, a group from PBR, including riders Andrew Alvidrez and Brandon Chambers, had the opportunity to meet some of those on the leading edge defending our country by touring NAS Oceana, where the Ragin’ Bulls are stationed.
At the naval air station, Alvidrez and Chambers experienced something outside the reach of just about everyone: taking the controls of a F/A-18E Super Hornet in a flight simulator.
Incredibly, both riders, guided by experts in their ears, landed the planes on their first try.
Andrew Alvidrez at Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana.
Andrew Giangola Photo
Alvidrez was called a natural. He’s attempted the four-legged Ridin’ Solo (and was flung on his head); maybe it’s time to try the one with 35,000 pounds of thrust.
Among the real pilots, the Ridin’ Solo with tires instead of hooves, whose tail is a steel hook described as the military’s most important piece of equipment for enabling safe landings in the middle of the night on decks bobbing at sea, is the hands-down favorite.
Like bulls, no two fighter jets are the same. Each feels different to aviators with heightened senses. Some aircraft have an extra-special aura.
The Navy’s Ridin’ Solo is flown by Naval Aviator Jack Fox. He says it’s an ultra-reliable and technically flawless plane.
“I’d heard Ridin’ Solo won a few championships and has been called a ‘once in a lifetime bull,’” he said. “Well, this is a once-in-a-lifetime jet. I’m blessed and honored to fly it.”
Perfect strike force fighter jets don’t fall from the sky. The flight line at NAS Oceana is a coterie of sailors shouldering the weighty responsibility of making sure the jets perform as designed.
“I learned there’s a whole crew behind every plane,” Chambers said. “It’s like bull riding. There’s an arena crew, a TV crew. It takes a whole village to do it. It’s the same here. It’s not just the pilots. A lot of people get these planes in the air.”
Talking about those people puts a sincere smile on the face of Commanding Officer Michael “MOB” Tremel. On the USS Ford, he’s like the proud papa of more than 200 sailors and aviators.
“Getting these jets airborne and back is 15,000 miracles all at once,” MOB said. “These 18-, 19-year-old sailors put these jets together and maintain them, and the next thing you know, our aviators are catapulting at nearly 200 mph into the sky.”
Like every trip on a rank bucking bull, ending the ride is a challenge where split-second decisions are life-or-death calculations. The strike fight squadron’s Super Hornets don’t “land.” They come in hard and fast to “crash” into the carrier’s deck. Speed is essential; if the tailhook misses the middle of one of three wires stretched across the 1,092-foot runway, a pilot “crashing the roof” will have enough power to safely take to the air again.
Crashing to land safely is counterintuitive. The flight instructors getting aviators comfortable with the unnatural concept of a catapult landing are critical spokes in the wheel.
One of them, Lt. Cmdr. Sam “POM POM” Dulaney, was channel surfing with his three-year-old son Charlie in early March 2023 when the boy was gobsmacked seeing Dalton Kasel on a spinning bull.
“Look at that bull! You can do it! You can do it!” Charlie shouted, standing on the couch.
The little boy was hooked, memorizing the bulls’ names and dressing as a bull rider for Halloween.
During deployment, POM POM sent Charlie pictures of the bulls painted on the squadron’s jets. Charlie began asking about the bulls’ names.
The three-year-old was not impressed with “Jet 101” or “Jet 103.” POM POM began calling them by names he could remember from watching on CBS. A light bulb went off.
Military jets traditionally have nicknames. POM POM, a graduate of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, a.k.a. Top Gun, suggested to MOB, his skipper, emblazoning the names of PBR bulls on the tails of the aircraft.
The idea quickly moved up the chain of command, and everyone loved it. The sailors had fun picking the final names.
In any world, maintaining and flying “Bodacious” sounds way more badass than preparing “109.”
The sailors took ownership of the idea and ran with it, even updating their maintenance computers with the bull names along with their identifying numbers.
“You’ll hear the flight deck chief come over the radios and say, ‘Cool Whip rolling’ or ‘Legend headed to the cat for launch’,” said Command Master Chief Chad Mitchell, who got on bulls in high school in North Carolina. “We’re so proud of the team that gets these aircraft rolling, and this makes it more special.”
Such morale boosters can’t be underestimated.
The U.S. Navy is now involved in the first major fight of the 21st Century, according to Vice Adm. Brad Cooper in an interview from the Red Sea on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” The last time the U.S. Navy has been engaged in constant combat was during World War II, he said.
There have been skirmishes from time to time, which brings us back to the skipper, a bona fide legend after shooting down a hostile jet in the air war over Syria.
(When the 100,000-ton USS Ford, described by the Navy as the “most adaptable and lethal combat platform in the world,” was re-tasked to the Eastern Mediterranean with MOB in command of a fighter squadron, social media was buzzing, “He’s baaaaaaack!” Some claim he’s the inspiration for a character in Top Gun: Maverick.)
Commanding Officer Michael “MOB” Tremel.
Courtesy PBR
MOB (call sign – Freedom 33) became an icon on June 18, 2017, when he launched off the carrier George H.W. Bush in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, headed for a sortie mission over the gut of war-ravaged Syria to drop bombs on the Islamic State while defending ground forces south of the city of al Tabqa, where the Syrians were getting perilously close to friendly forces.
About 20,000 feet above Turkey, MOB was cruising along at 700 mph, sipping coffee alongside the aircraft of wingman Lt. Cmdr. Carl “JoJo” Krueger, from VFA-87 Golden Warriors and two pilots from the VFA-37 Bulls.
He was tracking a Russian jet overhead when his radar picked up an unknown aircraft closing in fast on the US-supported forces below. He visually identified it as a Syrian Air Force Su-22 Fitter attack jet – the type of plane that two months earlier had delivered a gas attack, which brought a US-led retaliatory Tomahawk missile strike on a Syrian airfield.
The hostile jet could have turned away, no-harm, no-foul, and MOB would have returned to supporting the ground forces.
But repeated warnings broadcast to the Syrian pilot heading within striking distance of friendly forces were ignored. MOB gave a “head butt,” flying over the Su-22’s canopy, firing flares and breaking away.
MOB could see the undeterred plane swoop down, drop two bombs, then climb from the dive. He locked in to fire a Sidewinder missile from his wing rail, but the missile failed to track the enemy aircraft.
If at first, you don’t succeed. MOB fired an advanced medium-range missile.
Growing up in Pennsylvania, he had always enjoyed Independence Day fireworks, but this was the most beautiful flash explosion he’d ever seen, taking off the back of the Su-22, which pitched to the right and then downward. MOB saw the pilot eject.
From live fire training, the then-35-year-old aviator knew what to expect. He pulled away from the explosion as pieces of the crippled enemy jet and its ejection seat whizzed past his own canopy.
The entire dog fight took about eight minutes.
“This job is about defending people on the ground,” MOB said. “I was doing that. It just happened to include air-to-air ordinance.”
The Syrian pilot was found alive a day later in the village of Shuwaihat. MOB was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroic actions saving lives.
Of his more than 100 combat missions, it’s the one written up in military history books. But every single one is a total team effort, MOB stressed.
The unsung heroes on June 18, 2017, he says, are the hard-working sailors laboring in obscurity to maintain missiles that year after year aren’t used…until they are.
“Our nation needs us to be ready every day,” MOB said. “For every American citizen, just know that your U.S. Navy is ready to fight and win any war at a moment’s notice. That’s what we prepare for any time they need us.”
Ending its inaugural mission, the USS Ford sailed from the hotspot cauldron more than 6,000 miles away toward Virginia Beach, having flied more than 11,700 sorties safely without incident. The crew will redeploy at an undisclosed date.
Charlie, along with nearly 150 sailors and their families, attended the bull riding at Hampton Coliseum. The little boy, dressed in a black rider vest, chaps, tan cowboy hat, and boots with spurs, made his parents POM-POM and Andrea leave the house hours in advance for fear of missing a minute of the action. He screamed for every rider and bull, loudest of all when Dener Barbosa, who he knew from the CBS television broadcasts, won the round.
And after selling out the Hampton Coliseum, PBR left NAS OCEANA with newfound respect for the unsung heroes on the front lines, resilient and steady at 90 seconds to midnight.
“We couldn’t do what we love and ride bulls if it weren’t for our military,” Alvidrez said. “I’m extremely thankful I get to live this life because of their sacrifices.”
