Former Boeing AH-64 Apache pilot Jon Bernstein will present about his experiences flying the U.S. Army’s primary attack helicopter as part of the EAA Aviation Museum Aviation Adventure Speaker Series on Thursday, March 21, at 7 p.m.
Jon has an interesting path that eventually took him to his status as an Apache pilot — one unlike his fellow Army aviators. He’s been interested in military aviation and history since he was a small child and followed through on that passion by working at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York beginning his senior year of high school. He continued to work at museums through the 1990s, earned his master’s degree in museum science at Texas Tech University, and during that time, published his first book about the AH-1 Cobra operating during the Vietnam War. In January of 2004, with an established career and as a published author, Jon enlisted in the Army with the intention of becoming an attack helicopter pilot — a topic he’d written about, but was now pursuing as an active participant.
“Close air support and basically the use of aircraft to support troops on the ground has been my main focus in my studies since the early 2000s,” Jon said. “I did my second book on the Apache in Afghanistan and Iraq, so that really helped get my foot in the door as far as becoming an Apache pilot.”
In the summer of 2004, Jon went to basic training at Fort Knox in Kentucky and was commissioned the following summer at Fort Lewis in Washington. Jon was in a military history Ph.D. program at Texas Tech during this time period as well and took a leave of absence from the program to attend flight school in November of 2005. He was at Fort Rucker in Alabama from November 2005 to July 2007, where he earned his wings. He then flew the Apache through December 2011 with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
As far as learning to fly the Apache, Jon said that it’s a definitely a challenge.
“It’s been described as one of the hardest aircraft to learn how to fly,” he explained. “That’s because all of your flight symbology is there in front of your right eye [of the heads-up display] and learning how to interpret the symbology and make each piece … do what you need it to do in order to get the aircraft to do what you need it to do — just learning that takes quite a bit of time. In fact, we discovered that the guys who play video games pick up on it pretty quickly. Those of us who do not, it takes a little longer.”
Jon pointed out that adjusting to the night vision system on the Apache is a particularly challenging aspect of the flight training program and actually led to a failed first checkride for him.
“Getting used to flying on the night vision system — when you’re going through flight training on the Apache, you go through several different phases in learning how to fly it. First is daytime VFR, then you go through terrain flight and everything and then you get to the ‘bag’ phase. The bag is learning how to fly the night vision system where you’re in the back seat completely blacked out. You’re sitting there and your entire world is that two-inch video screen in front of your right eye. Learning how to fly just by that imagery and nothing else really takes a lot of skill. In fact, I failed my first checkride because of it. … Being able to be consistent at that phase, you’ve got to get in the cockpit every day to learn how to fly it through visual cues in my right eye. It was absolutely the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Jon worked for the National Guard Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. during his time with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, but spent a lot of time flying the Apache in his years with the service, flying and training about five days per month. As he was responsible for maintaining the same standards as active duty Apache pilots, in case his unit was called overseas, it was a significant time commitment.
“We were flying simulated missions all the time. There were certain areas that we had, terrain flight areas and stuff like that. One of the things I started doing was I looked at missions that had been flown in Afghanistan and Iraq and started doing simulated missions based on those. …We were trying to get our guys ready if we had to go overseas.”
Jon’s service in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard ended in January of 2012, but his time flying Apaches is something he still thinks about on a daily basis.
“It’s something that I miss every day. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was gone way too quickly. The Apache is an incredible machine.”