I posted an article on 5 October detailing the F-35B (Marine Corps variant of the Joint Strike Fighter) making it’s first shipboard vertical landing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel posted a nice follow up to that story yesterday giving us a glimpse into the life of the pilot who made the landing, Marine LtCol Fred Schenk.
“It’s a one in a lifetime opportunity to be involved in an aircraft that started on a piece of paper and is now flying and doing really well,” said Schenk, 41, a 1988 Cedarburg High School graduate.
Before U.S. pilots begin to train to fly the F-35, designers and project managers must work out the kinks, and that means seeing how the F-35B vertically lands like a Harrier on a small amphibious ship.
Schenk has spent many hours in the F-35B cockpit and had test flown it on land, but the next step required taking off and landing on a ship as well as testing how the aircraft interacts with a ship’s landing systems, deck and hangar.
The first landing on Oct. 3 was done during nice weather and sea conditions – not much crosswinds and a steady deck with less than 1 degree pitch and 5 degrees of roll. Over the next few weeks Schenk flew in increasingly less favorable conditions from the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship, because ultimately pilots will be taking off and landing in all kinds of weather and seas.
The first at-sea vertical landing was over quickly, Schenk said.
“I was really just focused on how the plane was doing, how it was handling and just used to seeing that small ship out in the ocean and having to land on it,” said Schenk, whose parents live in White Lake.
“I think that it is simpler, probably easier to land on the small ship doing a vertical landing than doing a big-ship landing with a tail hook,” Schenk added. “It’s still pretty exciting and neat to stop in midair and take a look at the ship and cross from over the water to the flight deck and bring it on down to land.”
Test pilots place themselves in the cockpits of sometimes dangerous and unproven aircraft to ensure that future war fighters are equipped with technology and firepower to last for the next several decades. It’s always nice to put a face and name to those brave men and women.
