Total Eclipse Viewed From Fighter Jets: It Doesn’t Get Any Better

All of my life, I had wanted to witness a total solar eclipse. But it was always too cloudy, or I was someplace where the thing wasn’t happening, skyscrapers obfuscated the view, whatever. So when the U.S. Air Force all but guaranteed an unobstructed view of the big event, I was more than intrigued.

I wouldn’t have to worry about clouds, they assured me, because I’d be riding in the back of a T-38 fighter jet high above any potential weather, and directly along the narrow path of totality. The clear canopy glass surrounding me in the cockpit of the plane meant I could pretty much see 360 degrees in all directions.

Now I’ve done my share of out-there military aviation stories - flown supersonic in an F-15, F-16, F-18 and MiG-25 Foxbat, pulling as many as 9 Gs and traveling as high as 84,000 feet - but never was it to witness something as rare as Mother Nature’s spectacular show during a total eclipse.

So Saturday I eagerly flew to Sheppard AFB near Wichita Falls, Texas, to be with the 90th Flying Training Squadron and to meet up with renowned aviation photojournalist Mike Killian. Killian would be flying next to me in a separate T-38 with a long-lens camera to capture high-resolution photos and video. I jokingly asked if I, say, ejected from the aircraft during totality, would that make for a better photograph? We both laughed.

That said, anytime a civilian rides in a military aircraft, he or she must undergo ejection seat instruction in the event that something unexpectedly goes south during flight. Fighter jets are no joke. We did our egress training after breakfast, as well as took, and passed, the mandatory medical exams.

The T-38 is an impressive plane. Built back in the 1960s, 124 reside now at Sheppard, most of which are used to train pilots in the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program (ENJJPT). More than a dozen nations are represented, flying either the T-38 or T-6 Texan (76 at Sheppard). The T-38 is also used to train astronauts. It can pull 7 Gs and fly supersonic.

The last total solar eclipse accessible in the U.S. was 2017, but it was shorter in duration than this one, and its path passed over more remote areas of the country. The next big one in the U.S. won’t occur until 2044. That’s why this eclipse is special, and hyped as such.

Hundreds of thousands of folks flew in from all over the country to be in the path of a roughly 115-mile-wide swath of totality that stretched from Mexico to Canada. Many had initially planned to be in Texas, but because of predicted cloud cover, changed plans at the last minute to watch from the northeastern U.S.

At 1 p.m., it was wheels-up in our T-38s. Strapped in snugly with a complex safety harness system and donning a flight suit, helmet and oxygen mask, it was pretty cramped in the cockpit. My pilot, Capt. Connor “Gutter” Sipe, 28, was seated directly in front of me in a separate cockpit. We communicated via helmet radios. He confided that this mission was a milestone for him - it was his one-thousandth hour flying the T-38.

In addition to everything else, I had on a pair of cardboard eclipse sunglasses over my regular prescription glasses. The special dark lenses are needed for all eclipse viewing except the short period of totality. Looking directly at a partially eclipsed sun without the glasses could result in permanent blindness.

As the altitude gauge in our T-38 clicked off 1,000-foot chunks, we gradually rose, leveling off at 30,000 feet, above any and all clouds. We also flew 140 miles into the path of totality. The two other T-38s with us began maneuvering into position for photos. It was tough, as you can imagine. We were all at the behest of Air Traffic Control, and dozens of commercial planes were congested in the same air space.

Almost without warning, the sky suddenly darkened, then went black. I removed my dark glasses and strained my neck to look straight up, almost 90 degrees. There was this little pitch-black ball with a strange orange/white halo around it. Why, it was the moon covering the entirety of the sun! I was finally witnessing a total solar eclipse.

The image was smaller than I had expected, but no less spectacular than I had imagined. I clumsily tried to take some photos with my cellphone, but quickly realized it was a waste of time. Take in the experience for once, I thought. Leave the photos to the pros. After four minutes of totality, the eclipse was over as fast as it had begun. I did manage to see the famous “diamond ring” effect as the sun began peeking out again.

When we touched down back at Sheppard after about an hour in the air, I was a bit confused. Everything had happened so fast. I’d seen the blackness of space, and the thin electric blue atmosphere hanging over Earth’s curvature in 1999, during my MiG flight. But this was different. It was day one moment, night the next. The sun was there, and then it wasn’t. I saw the planet Venus appear in the blackened sky, and a number of stars, too. As the eclipse left totality, I could actually see its giant shadow moving on the ground. The lights of a city below were clearly visible, and it was like 1:45 p.m. in the afternoon! None of this with the MiG, though. A total eclipse is surreal.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart. At the time, he mentioned that while he had never seen an eclipse from a plane, he’d seen several from the ground. The sudden cooling of the air, eerie quietness from confusion of birds and other wildlife during the unexpected darkness and the long, strange shadows cast on the ground, were as fascinating as the spectacle of the glowing dark sun itself, he said. He was curious as to what my experience would be up high, and suggested that perhaps next time I should experience an eclipse on terra firma.

Okay, Rusty, okay. Today, I checked off one item on my life’s bucket list, but now I’ll need to replace it with another. For that next one, though, I’ll have to wait 20 more years. If I’m still here, bring it on.

(Editor’s Note: See below for photojournalist Mike Killian’s report in AVGEEKERY.com)