Shane Osborn in Born To Fly, by Shane Osborn

On Drugs: 2000: Posted in Ecuador in support of local anti-drug effort

In September 2000, I left on my fourth det [detachment posting abroad] of the year, part of the first VQ-1 crew in Manta on the coast of Ecuador. Our mission was signals intelligence in support of the local anti-drug effort.

It turned out to be a fascinating det. We were practically the only Americans in Manta. For most of us it was our first taste of the Third World, with the shocking contrast between the cramped shantytowns on the outskirts and the walled villas of the local elite inside the city.

Although some of the crew was saddened or repulsed by the widespread poverty, I saw things differently. The poverty was wrenching, but the people I mingled with in Manta relied heavily on their strong family bonds. Like the people I grew up with in South Dakota and Nebraska, they showed a lot of day-to-day courage and resourcefulness. They loved their children, worked hard, hoped for a better future, and endured.

We returned from South America just in time for Christmas.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn, p. 89-90 Nov 13, 2001

On Welfare & Poverty: Impoverished people endure and work for a better future

We returned from South America just in time for Christmas.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn, p. 89-90 Nov 13, 2001

On Principles & Values: Born in South Dakota; learned to fly at early age

Becoming a pilot had been my dream and ambition for as long as I can remember. Flying in a small Piper Cub, in fact, was one of my first vivid memories. I was 3 years old in a tiny South Dakota town named Loomis.

One of our neighbors, a sheep farmer named Lyle Brewer, flew a bright yellow Piper J-3 Cub out of a pasture near our house. I tried to visit Lyle whenever I knew he was working on his plane. I took my first flight with Lyle and Dad almost as soon as the FAA inspector signed the airworthiness certificate for the Piper. "I want to fly," I told my Dad.

"Not today, Shane." By the age of 4, I already had a basic understanding of lift and was beginning to learn how the aileron controlled the plane's angle of bank or roll.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 5-8 Nov 13, 2001

On Families & Children: At age 5, raised in Nebraska after parents divorced

Unfortunately, when I was 5 my parents began to feel the strain of running so many businesses on top of raising a family. Worse, Dad, who had seen the horrors of war and earned a Purple Heart for being wounded, had too many traumatic memories from Vietnam. As the tensions at home increased, my parents agreed to a divorce.

Mom took Lynette and me back to her hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska, where Dorothy, her mother, still lived nearby. My dad was going to live in the same town, to be close to us, and for a while he did. But for his own reasons he moved on to a small town in Minnesota, and I didn't see him again for 6 years. The divorce, and our family's physically breaking apart, was painful for me, but I know I couldn't change things.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 10-1 Nov 13, 2001

On Principles & Values: Joined Civil Air Patrol at age 12

One afternoon at school when I was 12, a woman gave a presentation on the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), an auxiliary branch of the US Air Force. I listened intently to every word. In the CAP you learned how to fly--and you could earn your pilot's license by your 16th birthday.

The Civil Air Patrol absorbed me completely. The CAP made me want to study even harder than before. You advanced in rank depending on both your test score and your progress in military training. Discipline in one area, I began to see, was directly related to progress as a would-be aviator. The reward for that progress was getting to fly in our squadron's Cessna 172.

By the end of my sophomore year I had logged 16 hours in the Cessna to help me qualify for a pilot's license. I never did get my license. Still, I hoped my accomplishments in the CAP could eventually help me win an appointment to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. That had become my next long-term goal.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 19-23 Nov 13, 2001

On Principles & Values: At age 16, took 220 stitches in near-fatal car crash

That July evening I had decided to visit Grandmother Dorothy, who'd just undergone hip surgery. Tony borrowed my mom's Nissan sedan. In the passenger's seat, I unbuckled my seat belt, pushed the seat back as far as it could go, and tried to take a nap. Tony had set the car's cruise control at 65 mph, and he had accidentally fallen asleep. Our Nissan plowed straight into the back of a slow-moving John Deere tractor. The impact was so violent that our car broke the tractor's rear axle.

When I woke up, I was listening to a medic's voice. "I think this one's dead," the medic said, meaning me. As much as I tried, I couldn't answer because my lips were bruised and torn.

When I woke again, I was in the emergency room of the hospital. The doctor put in 220 stitches. I was 16 years old, and I thought my life was over. My last year in high school, while still recovering from the car crash, I interviewed for both the air force and naval academies.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 24-8 Nov 13, 2001

On Families & Children: Canceled wedding because he did not want to get divorced

A crisis loomed in my personal life. In college, I'd been dating a girl named Jen, who attended school in Colorado. We'd become engaged when I was in flight school. We were planning a big wedding in Colorado one week after I was scheduled to receive my wings, but the more I thought about getting married, the more I realized I wasn't ready. By definition, my life as a young navy pilot was going to be unstable. I would be on long detachments away from my squadron's home base. That was not a good way to start a marriage.

"I do not plan to get divorced," I said as honestly as I could. MY parents' divorce was still unsettling to me, and I wanted my marriage to be as rock solid as possible.

At first Jen was stunned, but she understood my reasoning. We spent the next day printing out and addressing don't-come-to-the-wedding requests to everyone on the invitation list.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 67 Nov 13, 2001

On Foreign Policy: Learned geopolitics as Navy flyer posted in world hotspots

Our Navy flight instructor's relentless quest for excellence went beyond technical airmanship. He bombarded me with tactical questions from the mission commander's notebook. We were expected to learn the military structure and current geopolitical policies of all the nations in the regions that the squadron patrolled. This wasn't just some theoretical college seminar, but a practical requirement for becoming an EWAC and advancing to mission commander. At that level, an officer had to understand the exact nature of the potential enemy's military threat. If they painted your aircraft with fire-control radar, he asked, how likely were they to actually launch a missile? Naturally, we also were expected to stay as current as possible on our government's attitude toward these countries and understand the kind of intelligence we were collecting and the reasons it was needed. Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 86 Nov 13, 2001

On Homeland Security: Routinely tracked by Chinese fighter jets while on patrol

We were headed down the coast of Asia to the South China Sea. Once on track, we would fly our surveillance track in international air space south of China's Hainan Island. Our squadron had been flying such missions in this area in one kind of aircraft or another for decades without serious incident. But we did expect that Chinese fighters would intercept us in international airspace at some point along our track. Once Chinese radar picked us up, their navy would usually dispatch a pair of twin-jet F-8 Finback interceptors from the People's Liberation Army/Navy (PLAN) to look us over.

This harassment had been going on for years. On some intercepts during this det [detachment assignment abroad], the Finbacks had given us a quick once-over. That morning, though, they'd seemed inclined to remain with us.

For the next 45 minutes, the 2 fighters had dogged us, one on our left wing, the other hovering right behind us, as if to make sure we stayed out of Chinese airspace.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p. 97-100 Nov 13, 2001

On War & Peace: Mid-air collision with Chinese fighter over South China Sea

The Chinese pilot was gesturing at us with his open gloved hand as if trying to wave us away. I was gripped by dread. How could he try to fly his plane with one hand in these conditions? The only way the pilot could control the Finback effectively was with one hand on the throttles, the other on the stick--and he wasn't doing much of a job of it, because his nose was chopping up and down. There was nothing I could do. It would be too dangerous to try to maneuver with him flying so unstably just beneath our wingtip.

The Chinese pilot dropped away again. But the Finback approached again from our left rear; he pitched up and tried to turn away to stop his rate of closure. But it was too late. The fighter's long fuselage rose toward the chopping propeller blades. The unimaginable had happened. The pilot had just smashed his plane into ours.

I realized that the propeller of my number one engine had cut the Finback in two. The front half of the Finback smashed directly into our nose.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p.124-6 Nov 13, 2001

On Homeland Security: Destroyed all computers & paperwork before Chinese capture

[After a mid-air collision over the South China Sea], we were going to land on a runway in a hostile country. "Activate the emergency destruction plan," I called over the PA, "and prepare to ditch."

I couldn't see what was going on at the back end, but I imagined there was some frantic activity. Operators and technicians would snatch up their binders of classified information, erasing any classified digital information on the built-in computers, then smashing the laptop computers with a fire axe. The final item was dumping the boxes of classified material and smashed computers out the starboard hatch. We were well out to sea. The boxes would sink, and the paper on which the classified information was written would quickly dissolve.

It was a crazy kind of chaos on board. In back, [the crew] were deliberately and frantically destroying everything in sight while in front we were, with equal desperation, trying to save what had already been badly damaged.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p.139-41 Nov 13, 2001

On War & Peace: Kept as POW by Chinese after crash-landing at Hainan

[After a mid-air collision over the South China Sea, and crash-landing in China], suddenly, the plane rolled to a stop. Our ordeal had lasted about 33 minutes. It was the longest half hour I had ever spent in my life. I just can't believe we're alive, I thought again.

Then another, colder thought struck me. We're alive, but we're also in Communist China. I didn't consider ourselves to be POWs yet. The collision with the Finback had been an accident caused by poor airmanship and aggressive flying, not an act of war. At this stage, I could not imagine that the Chinese would find a reason to keep us there very long. I would soon find out how wrong I was.

Later that evening, I tried in vain to sleep. Nightmare images of the collision kept popping into my head. Reliving the traumatic 33 minutes, I knew there was nothing I could or would have done differently.

Source: Born To Fly by Shane Osborn,p.155-61 Nov 13, 2001

The above quotations are from Born To Fly The Heroic Story of Downed U.S. Navy Pilot Lt. Shane Osbornby Michael French and Shane Osborn. Click here for other excerpts from Born To Fly The Heroic Story of Downed U.S. Navy Pilot Lt. Shane Osbornby Michael French and Shane Osborn. Click here for other excerpts by Shane Osborn. Click here for a profile of Shane Osborn.
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