FASTEST WRITER AROUND DARING COLUMNIST GOES SUPERSONIC.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

There I was pulling 6 Gs on maximum climb in an F-16 Air Force fighter plane late Thursday afternoon when it hit me. I'm getting too old for this job.

A 57-year-old reporter carrying around a couple of spare tires should be out lining up 20-foot bogey putts or covering PTA meetings.

He shouldn't be pulling six times the force of gravity in the cockpit of one of the world's most deadly fighting machines with an Air Force Thunderbird pilot who got the nickname ``Lunar'' because he shot a heat- seeking missile at the moon one night back in 1989 when he was stationed in Germany.

The Cold War was still on, and what the heck, Maj. Glen ``Lunar'' Lawson said, ``It (the missile) locked on to the moon very well, but never got there.''

No harm, no foul. Think of Tom Cruise in ``Top Gun,'' 20 years later, and you've got a pretty good fix on Lunar Lawson.

How I got to take a 45-minute, nausea-filled, roller-coaster ride in an F-16 to kick off this weekend's Point Mugu Air Show is a long story. But if you've got the time, it may give you some insight into the Thunderbirds when you're on the ground, watching them perform their incredible aerial maneuvers.

If you don't take anything else away with you, know this: Be glad these guys are on our side.

Now I know why George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld always look so confident during those press briefings on the war against terrorism. They know these guys, know they're the best fighter pilots flying the best fighting machines in the world.

No way we lose with these guys on our side.

Back to the beginning. I'm sitting at my desk about a month ago, minding my own business, when my city editor drops a letter from the Air Force Thunderbirds on my desk that says they're going to pick one member of the media to fly with them when they get to Point Mugu in mid-April.

``You want to go up?'' she asks.

Sure, I say, figuring every media hound in town is going to apply and there's no way the Thunderbirds are going to pick an old guy with a bad back to go up with them.

In 30 years of newspapering, I've never said no to an assignment, and I'm too stupid to start now. Besides, the offer was just too intriguing.

In my neighborhood growing up in the '50s, there were two things guys wanted to be - Mickey Mantle or a Thunderbird pilot.

This was pre-astronaut days, and nobody was even thinking about walking on the moon yet. The Air Force Thunderbirds, which began flying as a unit in 1953, were the nearest thing to the Space Age a kid could dream about becoming one day.

Now, maybe, for a few hours at least, my day was finally coming - about 50 years late. Figuring it was a long shot, I filled out the form and forgot about it. Until Wednesday, when the phone rang.

``You ready to go up tomorrow?'' Lunar asked. ``You've been chosen. Be at Point Mugu Naval Station at 1400 hours. And, by the way, you might want to eat a light lunch and drink a lot of water beforehand.''

Not a good sign. The last time someone told me to eat a light lunch and drink a lot of water beforehand, it was a doctor who wanted to touch parts of my body I didn't want touched.

When I got to Point Mugu, Capt. David Esteinhiser, the Thunderbirds' flight surgeon, took me behind a curtain to ask me a few medical questions.

``You in good health, no problems?'' he asked.

``Yep,'' I lied.

He took my blood pressure, looked into my ears and throat, and decided I had a 50-50 chance of surviving the flight.

``Now, about air sickness,'' he said. ``Half the people who go up get it, so don't worry about it.''

I wasn't. I already knew I was going to be sick. I knew that from when my kids were young, and I took them to Magic Mountain. I spent the afternoon lying under a shade tree trying to keep my lunch down after one of those loop-the-loop rides.

Nah, I was going to get sick, that was a gimme. It was the G-forces - forces of gravity - I was concerned about.

I did a little reading up on them, and found we're all walking around with 1 G-force already, our weight basically. Every additional G-force doubles that.

Lunar said he wanted to take us up to the max - 9 G-forces - on the flight, which basically meant I'd weigh nine times more, and the radical gravity acceleration would be flushing all the blood from my head to my feet.

In short, an elephant would be sitting on my face.

Esteinhiser told me not to worry, that Lunar would be giving me plenty of warning when the G-forces were coming. All I had to do was remember to tense up my body and take short, shallow breaths - which, of course, I forgot during the flight.

This was about the time I thought about asking the flight surgeon to take my blood pressure again because I thought it felt a little high, but he was already handing me over to the Thunderbirds' life-support tech, Staff Sgt. Kyle Puntney.

He's the guy who dressed me. Gave me about 50 pounds of flight gear to put on, including an anti-G-force suit, and an escape harness just in case something went wrong up there.

If you've been married 20 or 30 years, think about trying to put your old wedding tux on, and you pretty much have the feeling how tight all this gear fits on your body.

Puntney is one of the 50 members of the Thunderbird ground staff who travel as a team with eight pilots and four support officers to air shows all over the country, from March through November.

It's the most coveted assignment in the Air Force, he says. Every year, thousands of young airmen and -women vie for the positions, so you have to be the best of the best to make it.

``You're going to be flying with one of the top pilots in the Air Force today. He flew combat missions in Desert Storm.''

That's when Lunar walked in. Like I said, Tom Cruise at 45 with an easy Southern drawl and cocky smile. He walked me through the flight before he got to the part I didn't like: What if something happens to the plane or him in flight? What I would have to do to get us home alive?

While Lunar talked about emergency switches, ejection pulleys and life rafts, I was thinking, ``Here's the truth, Lunar. If something happens to you up there, we're both dead.''

I didn't want to tell him that I'm a major klutz when it comes to operating any kind of machinery, even a lawn mower. Flying an F-16 jet fighter was a little out of my league.

Nothing bad happened, though. And I didn't even lose my lunch, although I came close a couple of times.

We got up to 7 Gs on some hard turns and rolls. You haven't lived until you're flying a few hundred feet over the ocean, upside down, at 500 mph.

Lunar wanted to kick her up to 9 Gs, but I told him 7 was just fine, so he offered me a mind-blowing alternative.

``How'd you like to become one of the few people in the world who has ever traveled faster than the speed of sound?''

We were going to break the sound barrier over the ocean, and it didn't involve any G-forces that might have me reaching for the sickness bag in my lap.

``Let's go for it, Lunar,'' I said, starting to sound like I actually belonged in this jet.

All I can say is, it was awesome. Dead quiet, outrunning sound. Like a bullet.

Lunar took us home after that, landing with a flourish - the Thunderbird pitch, it's called.

He flew the F-16 over the Point Mugu landing strip at 300 feet with the smoke on, then stopped on a dime - 6 Gs worth - pulling up the nose and heading downwind as he lowered the gear.

I staggered off the jet looking like a guy who had just stuck his finger into an electrical socket, shook Lunar's hand, and staggered to my car clutching my honorary Thunderbird flight certificate to prove to my wife I hadn't been out fooling around all afternoon.

A half-hour later, I was still sitting there, waiting for my stomach to settle down so I could drive home.

``You look terrible,'' my wife said when I finally got home and crawled into bed at 7 p.m.

Yeah, well maybe, I thought - but how many other 57-year-old guys in the country just went supersonic with a guy who once fired a heat-seeking missile at the moon?

AIR SHOW INFO

Gates will open at 8 a.m. today and Sunday for the Point Mugu Air Show, with the Air Force Thunderbirds performing at 3 p.m. both days. The event, at Naval Base Ventura County, also will feature flights by a variety of other military aircraft. For information, call [phone], or visit www.airshownetwork.com.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) Pilot Maj. Glen ``Lunar'' Lawson shakes hands with Dennis McCarthy after their supersonic flight aboard an F-16.

(2) Dennis McCarthy straps into an F-16 fighter jet with his name temporarily emblazoned on the canopy before his flight.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Box

AIR SHOW INFO (see text)

Map:

POINT MUGU NAVAL AIR WEAPONS STATION