The Columbus Air Show returns Aug. 22-24. In 2023, Dispatch photographer Doral Chenoweth flew with the Blue Angels in advance of that year’s show. It was a memorable experience. Here’s his column from the affair, published June 16, 2023:
When I got the call asking if I’d like to take a U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight, I was all in.
What photojournalist turns down the chance to fly in a F/A-18 Super Hornet close to the speed of sound, while turning upside down, doing rolls and feeling two huge engines rumbling feet away from you? Not me.
The Columbus Air Show begins Friday at Rickenbacker International Airport. Military performance teams such as the Blue Angels routinely offer rides to local media.
I’m glad I said yes, but the experience didn’t turn out quite like I thought it would.
The skies were beautiful, brilliant tufts of clouds when Lt. Commander Thomas Zimmerman fired up the engines Wednesday afternoon. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and pilot who has seen combat around the world, he expertly pushed the plane above the runway.
The first maneuver was a near vertical blast from 300 to 7,000 feet in just under six seconds. It was thrilling; it was magical. My body was pushed back into the seat, which I expected. I did not expect my lower lip to feel as if it was sinking into my lap. But it felt wonderful.
Over Pickaway County, I recognized downtown Circleville with its toilet paper factory and solar arrays filling the farm fields.
The next several maneuvers were a blur. The pilot was friendly; fully communicating what the plane was doing. He announced a turn that packed three times the normal gravitational pull on our bodies.
I passed out, which wasn’t the problem. I expected that. It was the “coming to” that was disorienting and wildly uncomfortable.
I thought I’d died.
I felt myself disassociating from my body. I didn’t see heaven or hell; I had entered another realm and I didn’t recognize it. I recall thinking there were things I wanted to do before dying.
As I came to, my chest felt drained of blood; I could move only my eyes. And I couldn’t figure out where I was. There was Earth below me, fantastically beautiful clouds around me. But it was all through a gauze of blocky pastel colors.
I thought of my parents; they both died protracted, painful deaths. I had sat in their bedrooms for days wondering what it was like to have your body shut down as you approached death.
In the plane, I was thinking I had just experienced my body shutting down, maybe something like theirs had done. Were they here with me now?
Slowly, chunks of memory came back: Yes, I was on an airplane ride, but I couldn’t figure out how I had gotten there. Then, pilot Zimmerman announced another maneuver.
Again, I passed out. Same experience: thinking I’d died, thinking of my parents, then being back in the cockpit.
The cockpit Go-Pro video, outfitted with a disk for me to take home, shows me passing out a total of three times. Zimmerman called it gravity-induced loss of consciousness. Each one lasted only a few seconds. I was perfectly fine, but when your mind can’t access your memory, time takes on a different dimension.
Somewhere in between those blackouts was the best part of the flight: We flew upside down — straight and level — for nearly a minute. Earth hovered over our heads; the clouds beneath us. Bliss.
When Zimmerman announced another maneuver, a long circle that would pull 4 Gs, resulting in immense gravitational pressure, I piped up: “Hey, I’m a 59-year-old guy, maybe it’s time to head back to Rickenbacker.”
He obliged.
It was the dream flight of a lifetime, but I had just cut it short.
I asked Zimmerman if he ever passed out. He said, no, “I’ve done this a couple of times…”
My esteem for the pilots who do these maneuvers all day long remains, needless to say, high above the clouds.
Doral Chenoweth III joined the Columbus Dispatch in 1990 as a staff photographer. Aside from the Dispatch, his work has appeared in several books and a list of publications that includes the New York Times, The (London) Daily Mail, TIME magazine, USA Today, and the National Geographic.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: ‘I thought I’d died’: Dispatch photographer remembers his Blue Angels flight
Reporting by Doral Chenoweth, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
