Air Combat Lessons From Navy Ace Bill Driscoll

This episode is sponsored by Culligan Water

Listening to Bill Driscoll talk takes you right into the heart of intense aerial combat. He’s a decorated Naval Flight Officer, and a Vietnam War ace with five confirmed MiG kills alongside pilot Randy Cunningham. But his story goes much deeper than just the numbers. It’s about duty, facing down immense challenges, and the relentless preparation needed when stakes are literally life and death. As you will hear in the latest episode of The Adrenaline Zone, it really makes you think about what performing under pressure truly means.

Bill joined the Navy feeling a strong sense of duty, following his father and grandfather’s military service. This was during the Vietnam War, not exactly a popular time to volunteer, and his path wasn't easy. He openly shares his struggles with the technical side of flight training, coming from an economics background, and remarkably, learning to swim only after joining the Navy. That grit showed up early, and his determination to overcome these hurdles set a foundation for handling far greater challenges later.

Flying the F-4 Phantom forms a core part of Bill’s experience. He describes it as a rock solid airplane, maybe not exceptional at any one thing, but dependable and tough. And tough it needed to be. He recounts a gripping story about meeting John McDonnell years later, thanking him because the Phantom's robust design, specifically its self-sealing fuel tanks and hydraulic lines, literally saved his life after getting hit during his final combat mission. That plane brought them home through unbelievable damage.

The reality of air combat Bill describes is a world away from movies. His first MiG kill wasn't a prolonged dogfight but a sudden, intense encounter low over the rice paddies. Later, the mission that made him and Cunningham aces involved a massive furball, four F-4s against nearly thirty MiGs. He shares the split second decisions, the desperate radio calls to save another F-4, and the sheer chaos of missiles and enemy aircraft filling the sky. It was pure survival and teamwork.

Perhaps the most intense story involves their fifth kill, a prolonged, two minute turning fight against a highly skilled North Vietnamese ace in a MiG-17. Bill paints a vivid picture of being "on the ropes," the enemy pilot predicting their every move, cannon fire flashing past. They only survived through a desperate, unconventional maneuver and sheer nerve. Even then, the fight wasn’t truly over until they were safely away from the threat.

Moments after achieving their fifth kill, elation turned to terror as a surface to air missile slammed into their Phantom. Bill recounts the horrifying sequence, fire in the cockpit, losing control systems, the plane flying sideways. The ejection itself was harrowing, upside down, squished against the canopy, barely able to reach the handle while spinning towards the earth. Surviving the ejection and subsequent rescue from enemy waters required every bit of training and composure.

Underpinning all the dogfights and split second decisions was an almost unbelievable amount of preparation. Bill estimates they spent 700 hours training and studying for every minute of actual air combat engagement. He stresses the absolute trust and clear roles between pilot (offense) and RIO (defense), constantly cross checking and communicating. Repetition built confidence, but he admits even intense training felt like a "lightning bug" compared to the "lightning bolt" of real combat.

This need for better preparation directly led to TOPGUN. Bill explains how the Navy’s poor air combat results early in Vietnam spurred its creation. He became an instructor there, part of a small, combat experienced staff dedicated to teaching advanced fighter tactics. A key element was the brutally honest debrief culture summarized by "Goods and Others," forcing crews to confront mistakes and constantly improve. This relentless pursuit of excellence dramatically turned the tide in the air war and built trust through merciless accountability.

Bill Driscoll's story is far more than a collection of war tales, it’s a masterclass in human resilience and peak performance forged in fire. His experiences underscore timeless truths: duty calls for sacrifice, extreme preparation is the antidote to fear, and absolute trust is built through brutal honesty and accountability. Whether facing MiGs at 20,000 feet or navigating challenges in our own lives, the core principles remain: Know your job, trust your team, hold yourself to the highest standard, and never, ever stop learning. Bill's journey reminds us that true excellence isn't about avoiding pressure, it's about preparing so relentlessly that you can meet it head on, and maybe even find grace within the chaos.

If you enjoyed this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thrilling conversation, and be sure to leave a review to help get the word out to fellow adrenaline junkies.

Transcript

TAZ S07E05 Bill Driscoll Transcript

Bill Driscoll:

We ended up on fire, out of control, upside down, with toony jets coming to finish us off. All of a sudden the plane challenged and we heard a loud explosion and then it sounded like somebody took a handful of BBs and threw them against the side of your car. So I did a one arm handstand. Although they teach us a firm grasp, all I could do was put top parts above two knuckles onto the top part of the handle…

Sandy Winnefeld:

Bill “Willie” Driscoll is one of America's most decorated naval flight officers and the only naval flight officer ace for from the Vietnam War. On this episode of the Adrenaline Zone, he takes us inside the cockpit during harrowing dogfights where split second decisions meant life or death. And he reveals the relentless preparation and mindset required to achieve peak performance under extreme pressure.

Bill Driscoll:

…and BAM it fired! I ejected both of us. If I were to compare the most intense training mission to the most intense combat mission, I would say it's a difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt. The enemy pilot was an excellent tactician. He knew exactly how to fly his airplane. He had us, he had us on the ropes. We had about 18 minutes of either hot vectors or engage time with real enemy airplanes. Of the 18 minutes we probably spent between us 700 hours per minute getting ready. And if you say to me, sir, did you feel you were prepared based on what we went through? I said, oh no, I would have spent more time getting ready because I had no idea it was going to be that intense.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:

This is the Adrenaline Zone, brought to you by Culligan.

Sandy Winnefeld:

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Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Welcome, Mr. Driscoll, to our podcast. We are looking forward to having a chat with you today about all of the amazing things that you've done.

Bill Driscoll:
Well, thank you. Thank you for having us, Sandra. Very, very much appreciate the chance to join you this afternoon.

Sandy Winnefeld:
And as we've talked recently, it's really, really great to be connected with you again. As you know, I admired you a great deal when I was learning from you as a student, learning how to fly F-14s. More on that later. But we like to start first by learning a bit about how our guests actually got into what exposed them to a high level of risk. You joined the Navy during the Vietnam War when being in the military wasn't exactly popular. So what caused you to volunteer in the first place? And how did you become a Naval Flight Officer?

Bill Driscoll:
My grandfather had served in the army during World War I, and my father fought with the army in Italy during World War II. The country was at war during the Vietnam War, and I felt it was my duty and my turn to step up. I have considered it a unique privilege to live in this country with the freedoms we have. And we have our problems, but we always seem to get through them. So I just felt, this is my turn, and I'm gonna… I'm glad to step up and do whatever I can to help. So that's why I joined.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
What was the training like in those days? And I think it evolved into Top Gun. Right, as you guys went through your training?

Bill Driscoll:
It did. It was very competitive. We went through… You probably remember this, Sandy… Aviation Officer Candidate School. I want to say there were like 86 of us that started, you know, in the indoctrination Battalion. I think about a year and a half later, about 18 of us got our wings, very competitive. And those that got the best grades got the platforms that they wanted.

I thought it'd really be cool to get into fighters any way that I could. I worked really hard. I found the academics challenging as an economics major in college, as far as aerodynamics and power plants and electronics, those things, I struggled with those. But naval aviation has a great buddy system. And there were those like Sandy and like yourself, that had majored in those particular fields during their college days. They were very willing to help and explain things. And I was probably slightly above average as a student. I worked really hard. I just had a hard time understanding those things.

Probably the biggest challenge, though, going through that portion of flight school was I joined the Navy not knowing how to swim. So I was on sub-swim for 20 weeks, and I ended up as a swim hold for a week. And my father had been a lifeguard at a place in Rhode Island called Block Island. So my family all could swim like fish. But I just never picked it up for some reason. But there were two twin brothers—they're a month apart—that had taught water skiing and could swim like fish. And they spent a huge amount of time with me in the pool after hours. You know, we kind of… won't say we snuck out, I was in Batt Three and we kind of slid out there later. We were supposed to be studying, but I practiced. I said to myself, "I'm not going to let my trouble in the pool stand in the way of getting through this program." So I just… The day I learned how to relax in the water, I couldn't believe how easy it was.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Yeah, that's the trick, isn't it?

Bill Driscoll:
Yeah. But I want to say… And I was…

Sandy Winnefeld:
How about learning to fly in the F-4?

Bill Driscoll:
Yeah, you know the F-4 Phantom, I think you mentioned asking about this earlier. It was one of those airplanes. It didn't do anything really, really well, but it did a lot of things pretty reasonably well. You know, it was rock solid around the boat. You know, you set the attitude, you just come in and man, you didn't have to… Unlike the F-14, it was somewhat, a little unglamorous around the boat coming in, not the F-4. And as a bomber, it was okay. As a fighter, it had a great roll rate. I want to say it was like 420 degrees per second. Wow. Once the nose got buried, boy, it was tough to get it back up.

But it had those J79s. You could… I mean, you can appreciate this, Sandy. When we had a fire warning light or an over temp light in the F-4, we'd bring the power back and then tweak it back up to see at what power setting the light came on. You wouldn't do that in the F-14. That's how rock solid those J79 engines were.

And I can tell you that for me, we got hit by a surface-to-air missile. I'm not sure, Sandra, if Sandy mentioned this. We ended up at the end of our last mission after shooting down three enemy airplanes, we ended up on fire, out of control, upside down, with two enemy jets coming to finish us off. We had fire in the cockpit, smoke, couldn't see the gauges. Somehow the plane stayed together. We were able to roll it… the pilot was able to roll the plane to the coast. Then we flipped it into an inverted spin.

So about eight or nine years ago, I was at the Air Force Academy giving a speech at their Character and Leadership Symposium. This elderly gentleman had come into the area where the speakers hang out earlier, and I got to talking to him a little bit. I said, "Sir, tell me, what's your line of work?" He said, "I'm retired now, but my grandson is a student here." I said, "Oh, really nice." I said, "When you were working, what'd you do?" He said, "Well, I was in aerospace. I was involved in an aerospace company." I said, "Really? What was the name of it?" He said, "It was McDonnell Douglas. I'm John McDonnell."

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Oh, you met John McDonnell. I worked there for five years.

Bill Driscoll:
Great guy.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
It was my first job.

Bill Driscoll:
So I asked him if he'd be willing to come to this speech that I was giving to about 2,000 cadets in this large auditorium. He said he'd be pleased to come. So he came with his wife. Just before I was ready to get started, he came down. He was an elderly gentleman, but very nicely dressed. He came down and he sat right in the front row.

So I got to the portion of the speech where I talked about us getting hit and on fire and out of control, I said, "You know, I'm a lucky guy because the gentleman whose airplane we were flying is here today. And the fuel cells after we got hit, they self-sealed, as did the hydraulic systems." Wow. How that airplane did not come apart, I don't know. But it didn't. And I'd like to have Mr. John McDonnell of McDonnell Douglas please stand up. He stood up, everybody clapped and he started crying. I said to myself, "I got to keep this thing going as best I can." But he was a great guy. And I said, "Sir, on behalf of all the naval aviators that ever flew the F-4 Phantom, thank you again for taking the time and making sure the engineers self-sealed those fuel cells and those hydraulic lines, because had they not done that and the way they did, I wouldn't be here today."

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Along those same lines, I'd like to get into another story that I heard that you and your pilot, Randy Cunningham, shot down five North Vietnamese MiGs on three separate missions. And so it seems like this very solid plane kind of got you through those experiences as well. Can you kind of walk us through that and what it felt like and… Sure sounds really kind of scary, actually.

Bill Driscoll:
You don't get as scared when you're young as you do when you get older. But, you know, our first mission into North Vietnam, when we went right into the heartland where there were possible enemy airplanes, there was a huge number of surface-to-air missiles, maybe 18 to 20 fired at our strike group. There were about 25 airplanes. I was amazed when we were up in the… in the sky when the missile would be coming down at us from above and we had to pull hard up and roll over the top of it and it would correct and start coming back at us. So we had to be on our P's and Q's and make sure we did everything correctly because we had [phrase unintelligible]. But we got through it.

It seemed in the terminal stages of that and Sandy, you can appreciate this, we didn't want to get below 400 knots. We usually went into enemy territory about Mach 1.1 at about 25,000. We ended up on the first MiG kill at 250 knots at 7,500 feet, right in the heart of anti-aircraft or Triple-A country. So we did a tight graveyard spiral right down to the deck. And as we were coming out of this and accelerating, two bandits… there were, they call them blue bandits. MiG-21s had just taken off. They were in tight welded wing and I wish I could tell you it was a big dramatic turning dog fight, but it wasn't. The bandits were right in front of us and we pulled hard up, picked out the nearest tailpipe, fired a heat-seeker missile. It went up his tailpipe, huge explosion. He tumbled across the ground. And that was our first MiG kill. So happened fast. It was unexpected. It was quite an event.

Sandy Winnefeld:
And then you had to get out of there because you're down low and slow.

Bill Driscoll:
We did and we got separated from the flight, Sandy. So we were… I mean we were low, we were… we chased before we… we actually caught up to the bandit and we probably were, you can imagine this, at about approaching 600 knots somewhere about 100 feet across a ridge and it was a low altitude, high speed tail chase. I kind of left this out. The… the first missile we fired, one of the… the lead bandit made a hard brake turn and the… actually probably, I'm not sure if it was the lead of the trail, but the bandit who was in the lead position continued ahead. The bandit who made the hard brake turn reversed right back in front of us to try to get back into position. That kind of sweetened up the shot.

But it was low to the ground. I remember we were so low, Sandy, it seemed like if Randy rolled the airplane 90 degrees the wing would scrape the ground. That's how low we were. But it was a pretty interesting event. We were by ourselves now and the strike group had departed out through Laos and they were maybe 15 or 18 miles away from us. So he, Cunningham said to me, "Give me a heading heading out of here, Willie." And I said to myself, in a nanosecond, we don't want to go other than what was briefed because we're going to go through other enemy airfields that are more liable to get really shot at badly again. So I gave him a heading and I tried to take a wide arc around where we knew the suspected SAM sites were to go back in the direction that we briefed and where the main strike group was. So that's how we got out of there.

We got looked at. We had multiple strobes on the way out. We were tight on gas. We looked like we're going to have to go into Da Nang. But they didn't shoot. My understanding is they pretty much… they had fired the SAMs that they had available at that point. So we were lucky they didn't shoot at us as we left.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Wow, that's a story.

Sandy Winnefeld:
So that's a… that's kind of a gripping account of your first MiG kill, but nothing compared to your third, fourth, and fifth MiG kills, which is just an amazing story that I know you've told hundreds of times, but it is really amazing. Can you walk us through what happened that day to you and Randy on the day?

Bill Driscoll:
It was, interestingly, on my mother's birthday. We were flying as a flak suppressor. And Dr. Sandra Magnus, what that means is our job was to be overhead the target area and if any enemy guns started shooting, to roll in and silence the guns. And there were again, a flight of about 30 airplanes, Navy airplanes. There were six F-4 Phantoms. One of them had gotten hit and had ejected. Another one had also gotten hit and had a fire warning light and had a shut-down engine. So there ended up being four Navy against about 28 to 30 enemy jets. It was a huge dogfight.

As we pulled off the target area, we were jinking back and forth. And I remember looking over my shoulder to see where the bombs were. We were carrying what's called Rockeye, which are like little miniature hand grenades that sprinkled across the ground. And I saw a couple of black specks right on the horizon. I thought they were Air Force airplanes looking back across the ground, scanning again as we're jinking back and forth. And I looked out, and the two black specks were enemy airplanes rapidly closing into our… up our left side. So I called him out to Cunningham. I called him Wild Man. So whenever he heard the name Wild Man, he knew it was the RIO [Radar Intercept Officer] talking to him. Call sign was Duke. But when he heard Wild Man, he knew that was me.

I said, "Wildman, we got two bandits coming up left side. Break left." And he started rolling. He started to break and he said, "No joy. Keep talking." Which means I don't see him. Tell me what to do next. And I said, "They're approaching guns. Break left." And then he said, "Got him." Made the hard break. They flew right out in front of us. Two of them did a reverse back hard to the right, picked out the nearest tailpipe, fired a heat-seeker. Bam. MiG kill number three.

From that. We looked over, and the sky looked like a mini Battle of Britain. There were just enemy airplanes everywhere. You know, guys screaming on the radios, missiles in the air. It was a… it was a wild operation back then, Sandy. One of the tactics, because we had superior thrust to weight was the term we used, was drag the fight uphill. So we pulled our airplane up into the extreme vertical, and that's when we saw all these airplanes down on the left side. We saw a Navy F-4 and two enemy MiGs back about a half mile. And the third enemy looked like it was coming up to join on his wing. So we're well above this, and when we see this enemy in trouble, this friend in Trouble, we say, "F-4 in a left turn, brake left." We're obliquely coming hard down into this. This airplane sees the two back at a half mile, does not see the third one. So the second call by us is "F-4 in a left turn, brake left." Now we're coming through the bottom of this thing. And then we know in a few moments we're going to have an enemy and a friend in our gunsight. And the missile's not going to be able to tell the difference. But we're mainly concerned because this friend is going to get shot down. This enemy just come out to make a sweet shot. So the third call by us is, "God damn it, F-4. Break left. You're going to die." And the air crew in this airplane said, "Somebody must know something we don't know." They made the hard break. The bandit did not track him through it.

We're coming in from his cold side as we came down, and my arm here Sandy, has, like the extended six line. We pull hard to the extended six line. Had he made a belly check, he'd have seen us, but he didn't see us. And we fired a missile almost at his dead six. It exploded just after his tailpipe and the plane decelerated rapidly. It actually flew through, almost flew through the debris of the airplane as it was coming apart. The pilot ejected. And I can't say I made eye contact with him, but I looked over and I said to myself, "There really is a pilot in that airplane." You know, he went by him fast.

But right from there, as we started to pull out, we saw a black speck on the nose. It was another enemy airplane. So you know what they teach at Top Gun Sandy, take out all lateral separation. So we broke hard into him. He broke hard into us. We passed close aboard, 100 degrees out, close aboard. He turned on the gun and he started shooting at us with his gun. I said, "That's right, he's got a gun." We made a hard break away to avoid the bullets. He flashed by. We pulled up into the vertical, thinking to turn his run out to deep six o'clock. But he hadn't. He'd gone up in the vertical, too. And he was above us. And we realized this.

Now, generally when you start a dogfight, you try to be the higher of the two airplanes. He was maybe 5,000 to 6,000 feet above us. And when he realized his altitude advantage and the diameter here is maybe inside of a mile, we typically like to have two miles plus. I'm talking for an appropriate F-4 tactic. And when he realized this, he made a hard turn down onto us so that through this thing, he picked up 90 degrees. So at the top of this thing, he hasn't shot at us yet. But he's got guns in the nose, guns on the wings, heat-seekers under the belly. So we're in huge trouble. We break hard into him, rolling. He matches us through this perfectly. As we come to the bottom, we don't want to hit the ground. So as we pull up, he starts to shoot.

We got ourselves into what's called a slow speed rolling scissor. And generally the second airplane… think of it as a race to the wall. The second airplane to get there is going to win it. It was a three dimensional rolling turn. And generally at the top of the egg or at the bottom of the egg, we tried to skid the plane as best we could sideways because that's when he would start to shoot. The enemy pilot was an excellent tactician. He knew exactly how to fly his airplane. He had us on the ropes. And a typical jet dog fight usually lasts about, oh, 15, 20 seconds. This one lasted almost two minutes. And for the first, say, minute and 50 seconds we couldn't shake him. It was like he was tied on a string behind us.

Sandy Winnefeld:
And this was a MiG-17?

Bill Driscoll:
It was a MiG-17. His nose was so close it almost looked like a wastepaper basket barrel held up that big round nose. And I'll never forget, I'll probably take to my grave the quickly flashing guns on his wings and the slow pulsating… I think there was 20 millimeter on the wings, 37 millimeter on the nose. The slower nose firing. We did the best we could to hold him off.

The last time we went up, we knew he was going to kill us because we're going to go to zero airspeed. Cunningham said, "Willie…" He said something like "Standby." I can't remember exactly what he said. We went up. He brought the power back to idle and put out the speed brake. The enemy wasn't expecting this. He slid out in front.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Oh, my gosh.

Bill Driscoll:
But at this moment, I've often when I tell the story of Top Gun, I always ask… I have a volunteer that tells me what they think they should do. So then I always say, "So at this point, would you go after him or would you leave?" What would you do, Sandy?

Sandy Winnefeld:
A smart pilot would leave. A bold pilot would go after him.

Bill Driscoll:
Well, at that moment, the fuel low level light came on. We had it set high. So when he realized this, the enemy dropped his nose and he ran. He went right down to the deck. It enabled us to drop our nose, pick up speed. But we figured this is it and we don't want to… we wouldn't want to shoot an IR missile over a heavy jungle background with look down. You don't know if the missile's going to track correctly or not. That's all we had. So with that final look, we fired the missile. It came off, detonated just after his tailpipe. About a moment later, he hit the ground. We almost hit the ground ourselves. We had to do a hard pull up. And when we did, I mean we… we had a real close call. We found out later from intelligence that the pilot flying that airplane had shot down 13 US kills or 13 US airplanes over a period of like five or so years. So it was a pretty… wow, pretty intense fight.

Sandy Winnefeld:
So you got the equivalent of the Vietnamese Red Baron, I guess, right?

Bill Driscoll:
Whoever he was. All I know is the guy was… the guy was damn good.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So I have to ask him… this sounds like, you said it happened in two minutes. Things are happening really fast. It's really dynamic. I just… I'm picturing this whole thing in my mind. But how did you guys, you and Randy communicate during a situation like this? To keep track of what was going on and to stay coordinated… I mean we in the shuttle, it's a little bit more benign. Even though we're going faster, it's not as crazy dynamic. How do you do that?

Bill Driscoll:
Our main concern, we were very predictable then during this rolling scissor, our main concern, we realize there's just five US airplanes and there's almost 30 enemy. So our concern was as we were working predictably on this particular problem and there were several that passed through our six o'clock. So I kept a real close eye on them as best I could. And the thinking was if I… if there were other times that he wanted to go right, and I'd be screaming for a belly check. And more often than not, when we did the belly check, we rolled to see what… you know, we want to go this way, but we'd make the belly check this way just to see, make sure we're okay. I would say of the four times I screamed at him to do that, three of the times we had bandits back in the shooting position on us. We went from the belly check into the last ditch, which means aerodynamically, whatever I have to do with the airplane, I'm going to do it to prevent myself from getting shot down.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So, so you were kind of voice activating him where to go and what to do as opposed to he was handling…

Bill Driscoll:
You know, we always looked at the way he and I worked. He was the offense, I was the defense, so, so he was. But you know, we both cross checked each other. I mean I didn't spend much time looking from the 3-to-9 o'clock position. I spent most of my time looking into the lethal cone areas where the attacks might come from. Okay, so that's how we did it.

Sandy Winnefeld:
So speaking of the defense, Willie, I've heard you describe what it was like to have an enemy's bullets impacting your airplane. What did that sound like? How did it feel?

Bill Driscoll:
What Sandy's referring to here, Sandra, is coming out of this. We started talking about the fight we just had. And we had just shot down three airplanes in this mission. I wasn't thinking so much about being aces. I was just thinking, "God, what a fight that was. Holy shit, did you see that little guy?" We were paying no attention to the radar or to the radios or the electronic equipment. And as we're climbing out, he gave me… "Give me a heading out of here, Willie." I gave him the heading and we'll fly it up… Bingo profile. We were tight on gas, Sandy. I can still remember a 0.69 climb to 28,500, then an idle descent to the ship and try to hit the tanker on the way in.

And as we were climbing out straight and level, 300, maybe 330 knots. No jinking, no nothing. Just climbing out thinking that the tactical portion's over. All of a sudden the plane jolted and we heard a loud explosion. And it was like a white flash, not unlike when you flip the bathroom lights on first thing in the morning. And then it sounded like somebody took a handful of BBs and threw them against the side of your car. The plane jounced. We looked over and saw the white exhaust smoke and the orange explosion. So it's just… we call it a SAM, surface-to-air missile.

The plane continued, still continued to fly. But this brought us back to reality. That's right. I got a… you know what, look at the electronic equipment here. Check. Look at the radar. What… what am I seeing? And you know what… what are the controllers telling us? The plane continued to fly normally for about the next two minutes. And then it started to fly sideways on its own. I looked over on my left shoulder just to make sure we were clear on the left side. And there were two bandits who were rapidly climbing to our position. But I… when I looked over, I noticed we call this the turtleback area, after where the… the back seat exists is, where the fuel tanks are fuel cells. And they were on fire, the airplane was. So I said, "Hey, wild man, we got a fire on the left side and two bandits coming up." He said, "Roger, I'm losing main hydraulic and utility hydraulic." So the plane is now starting to fly on its own sideways.

We had read an article by a guy named… I'll think of his name here in just a minute. But it was an Approach magazine and this gentleman had been hit by a surface-to-air missile. So what he decided to do was not use any stick input, but just use the rudders to control the nose to try to preserve hydraulic fluid. So Duke Hernandez, that was the gentleman's name. So he wrote an article on Approach magazine, Sandy, this is a naval aviation safety magazine. He wrote this article. We had read it, we talked about it. He said, what do you think? I said, "Wow, man, if we get hit, man, we got to preserve our control as best we can." I said, well, we didn't spend a lot of time, but we talked about it. And it was not something that was new to us. So Cunningham masterfully rolled the airplane without stalling it, because when the plane came up, whichever way the nose wanted to go, he put in rudder that way. And then it was… he came to the bottom of this, he put a little back stick to get it up above the horizon, nose above the horizon and leave it alone. So we did maybe two or three of these, you know, think of them, Sandy, as sloppy barrel rolls. That's about what they were.

But right at the coast, the plane went into heavy wing rock and then flipped violently on its back. And at that point, I knew it was time for us to get out. He didn't have to tell me about this. I knew we were going to get out. I just was wondering whether we're going to make it to the coast. Now, I'm 6' 2", 185, and I've always been in halfway decent shape, but I'm squished against the top of the canopy and I can't get to the handle. So you have an ejection handle, Sandy, that sits between our legs. And they teach us one arm on the handle. Arms and legs in. I can still hear the instructor's words. Feet are flat on the deck, eyes 15 degrees above the horizon. But I couldn't get to the handle. I did a one arm handstand on my left hand. Now we're upside down. Fire in the cockpit. Smoke can't read the gauges in this inverted spin, so I did a one arm handstand. Although they teach us a firm grasp, all I could do was get the top parts of my two knuckles onto the top part of the handle. I said to myself, you know, nanosecond, if I try to sweeten this grip, I might not get back down here again. So I said, "I'm going with what I got." So with the tips of my fingers on the top of the handle, I yanked it and bam, it fired. I ejected both of us. I think I came out to the right side, 15 degrees. He came out to the left side, 15 degrees.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
But you were facing down when you ejected.

Bill Driscoll:
Correct.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So how much altitude did you have?

Bill Driscoll:
I want to say we ejected… we got hit at maybe 22,000 or 23,000 feet. And we ejected about 12,000 to 13,000 feet.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So, okay, that's still sporty.

Bill Driscoll:
It's funny, maybe you've had this experience… you've ejected, right, Sandy?

Sandy Winnefeld:
Oh, yeah, I had that fun.

Bill Driscoll:
When you're coming down, I didn't have a sense that I was falling. I think they tell us we fall at 110 feet per second. But I just had a sense, a sensation that I was just suspended in the air. I was coming… we were coming down right at the mouth of the Red River harbor. The coast of North Vietnam was actually beautiful. Pristine snow white beaches, lush green jungle. Coming right up to the edge of the beach for the first mile of the water was emerald green water then dark blue water. And we're coming down right in the mouth of the enemy's harbor.

So the enemy sent out… I could see them coming down. They were on a rapid 45 degree path toward our expected water impact point. The term we used for the enemy's harbor was Point 66. And the term we used for the enemy PT boats was skunks. I was Showtime 100 Bravo. So I broadcast… I came up, I think it was 243.0. Sandy was a guard frequency. They said, "Switch to 282.8" and I said "Showtime 100 Bravo at Point 66. Two skunks vectoring my position." "Roger, come up beeper." So I switched to 282.8 and the beeper came down again. Realized for someone like me to say that water entry was routine. Please recognize, you know, my lack of swimming skill.

Sandy Winnefeld:
But your previous story about swimming, that's actually scary.

Bill Driscoll:
I've been always eternally grateful.

Sandy Winnefeld:
But at least you had people chasing you, trying to kill you, right?

Bill Driscoll:
They had us well trained. You know, we went through the Dilbert Dunker and this kind of thing. And I don't think anything that I experienced in a water survival situation we'd not already experienced in training. So you know the drill. Sandy, gotta get the gloves off, get the mask to one side, hit the water, be positioned with your hands where the Koch fittings are. So. And then flip on your back and then try to click out of the Koch fittings and you know, and then gently dog paddle yourself away from the chute, then get yourself over to your raft.

And it's interesting because, Sandra, you might have had this sensation coming down. The ocean looks like a mill pond when you hit the water. The waves are big.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Oh yeah.

Bill Driscoll:
I lost sight of the PT boats and I just said at that point. My job now is to get in the raft. And once I get in and get my wits about me. I said, well, I got to get the flare out now, the survival flare, and hit the smoke section so they'll know where downwind is to make the approach. We carried a .38 survival revolver. I've never been very good with guns, but I said, "I'm going to have my revolver ready because the fight, in my way of thinking, the fight's not over. It's just entering another dimension. I'm not going to sit here and get captured. I'm going to continue the fight here. We'll see what happens." So that's what I did.

I was in the raft for maybe 20 minutes. A couple of helicopters came over the horizon. Cunningham was about a mile away from me. We could wave to each other on the way down and give the naval aviation signal that we were okay. And you can imagine what that is. There was one of those deals like that.

Sandy Winnefeld:
So you get in the helicopter and you go back to the carrier, Right?

Bill Driscoll:
Right. Well, when you get into the helicopter…

Sandy Winnefeld:
And how did it feel to step outside that helicopter after everything you'd been through?

Bill Driscoll:
I cut my face in the ejection. It was just a flesh wound, but I was covered with blood in front of me in my torso harness and all this. And when we got rescued, I wanted to go up to the front cockpit and thank the helicopter pilots for coming to get us. There was a real muscular guy on a Gatling gun, and the door was open. They had engaged the PT boats in a firefight at the time. I probably didn't realize until later they were more than likely, they were Navy SEALs. So when I started to get up to after… I was so happy, I was so elated to get rescued. And the guy said to me, "Sir, I wouldn't stand if I were you." And I said… I saw his door open. He was on a Gatling gun, and the door on the other side was open. And I said, "You know, the last thing I want to do is have him go into a bank and me slide out the door."

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
That'd be bad.

Bill Driscoll:
Yeah. So I just kind of crawled to the back of the plane, still had the helmet on and all this.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Oh, my gosh.

Bill Driscoll:
And they took us, not back to the carrier Sandy. They took us to a hospital ship called the USS Okinawa. Now, I just had a flesh wound, but I was covered with blood in the front. So there was a corpsman on the helicopter, and he said, "Sir, I'm going to put you in the stretcher." And I said, "Oh, no, I can't get in the stretcher." He said, "Sir, look at yourself. You can't." And so I pleaded with him and said, "Look, how about you can walk next to me and if I can't get across the flight deck, then I'll get in the stretcher, but can we at least give it a try?" He said, "Okay, sir, but this is not a good idea."

Now realize in that environment, you got the shakes going real bad. You're trying not to throw up, you usually don't, but you have that tremendous… that's how your stomach feels. You're trying not to mess your pants, you usually don't, but that's how everything else feels. And Sandy, you probably have had the sensation, you know, after a tough night landing. You ever get ready to open the canopy, you take a wait for just a couple seconds to let your legs kind of get regrouped after coming in on a tough night landing. I don't know if you ever had that sensation, but in this environment, your body shakes to varying degrees of intensity. And we had the shakes going big time.

So when I got out of the helicopter and they'd announced that we just shot down the three planes and become aces. So the whole crew was out there and it wasn't very far. We had to walk to the flight deck control, and it's a steel flight deck. And I said to myself, "Man, my legs are so tired and so sore." I just said, "Willie D, just take one foot in front of the other. You can do this." But it seemed like, I'd say the 15 yard walk seemed a mile and what should have taken maybe 30 seconds, it really did, but it seemed like it took an hour.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
I have to ask you, if you don't mind. You know, one kill is lucky, but three kills on different flights is extraordinary. So what personal traits do you… Or, yeah, five total. What personal traits do you think made you so successful in this environment? You were talking about your, you know, economics and you were talking about the engine… you know, you had to kind of pick up the engineering, but clearly you had something that was perfectly matched in that environment to do all those amazing things.

Bill Driscoll:
I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So I live in a very simple world. And Randy lives… we lived in the same world. We tried to keep things simple. A simple plan, simple goals. I've often said that goals without a plan are nothing more than a wish. And you might have asked me earlier, Sandy, we had about 18 minutes of either hot vectors or engaged time with real enemy airplanes. Of the 18 minutes, we probably spent between us 700 hours per minute getting ready. So. Oh, wow.

And if you say to me, so did you feel you were prepared based on what we went through, I'd say, "Oh, no. I would have spent more time getting ready because I had no idea it was going to be that intense." I would say the… if I were to compare the most intense training mission to the most intense combat mission, I would say it's a difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt. That's the difference.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Yeah. So you were basically pulling on all that sort of muscle memory in your brain and in your habit patterns.

Bill Driscoll:
And we spent a huge amount of time. I've always lived in a world of repetition, produces confidence. So we practiced. And Cunningham was one of these guys, Sandy, that worked. If something came up on the flight, he gladly skipped lunch. He was in the books, looking things up. He was absolutely 24/7, one dimensional, focused on what he needed to do to get ready to meet the bandits. And he was the right guy for the moment because fate tested us in a supreme way.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Wow, that's impressive. Actually, that's an amazing story. The whole thing.

Bill Driscoll:
I've never considered myself anything special or any particularly talented aviator. I've always figured that any number of our contemporaries would have done just as well, maybe even better, if given the same opportunities. We were very lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and the Navy had us well trained.

Sandy Winnefeld:
I'm going to call you on the luck piece, but let's talk about that preparation thing. And that means talking a little bit about Top Gun. When you were a student learning the F-4, there was this nascent thing called Top Gun that was part of the F-4 training squadron that eventually evolved into its own squadron. And you were an instructor there for a while. Can you tell us about what that was like, what the culture was like, what the philosophy was like, and how you went about… and how Top Gun started, for that matter, dramatically changing how Navy fighter pilots performed in the Vietnam War?

Bill Driscoll:
Probably the best way to answer that question is to look at what Top Gun was like before it came into existence. Now we call this the exchange ratio of how many airplanes the US shoots down compared to how many we lost. And the Navy had an exchange ratio in all previous wars of 18 to 1, meaning we would knock down 18 enemy airplanes for every one we lost. For the first portion of the Vietnam war, the first five years, the exchange ratio was 2 to 1. Oh yeah, and we had fired 68 air-to-air missiles in a row and didn't hit anybody.

So senior Navy said to a gentleman by the name of Captain Frank Ault, "Captain Ault, what's going on?" So he conducted a huge investigation. Took him about a year to do this. And he got all the statistics of the times we fired missiles and why we didn't hit anybody and all this. And he concluded, he said, "The air crew do not know how to fly today's airplanes in the in-close dogfight." The thinking is that technology at the time we had the beyond visual range missiles. Now the early versions of the Sparrows, we call them AIM-7 Echoes and AIM-7 Echo 2s. And the thinking was because of the technology we're not going to be in close anymore. So therefore we're training for these beyond visual range fights. So therefore the skill set of what's involved to win the in-close dog fight was became passe thing of the past. So Captain Ault said they don't know how to fly tactically the correct way.

So he wrote a scathing report. Senior Navy leadership came to him and said, "Captain Ault, you can't go out on the street with this. So you're putting us all on report." Captain Ault said, "Well sir, this is what's happened." He didn't change the report. He was on the admiral's list. Six months later he was out of the Navy. He got passed over and he retired. But his report got published. And one of the key findings of the report was the Navy needs to establish a postgraduate school in air-to-air fighter tactics. And they need to bring in the best dogfighters they can find. And these folks that come in, this air crew that gets selected to become to this place called Top Gun, they are going to teach the fleet's training officers how to be the best of the best.

So that's how it got started. The exchange ratio right after Top Gun got started went from 2 to 1 up to 13 to 1. So it was a dramatic improvement. We were able to point immediately to the success. When I was there, Sandy, there were 13 of us on staff. All were combat veterans about a third of them were MiG killers. And we were… it was fast and furious. It was putting the syllabus together. I myself gave seven different lectures, gave, what was it? ACM intercepts, Briefing and debriefing, Teaching and learning. A lecture on how to give lectures, debriefing and debriefing.

At the time, everyone thought in the summary we should say goods and bads. I said to the staff, I said, "You know, most fighter pilots I know the word 'bads' is not going to resonate." We couldn't agree on it. We had some pretty colorful staff discussions. But the guy who was giving the lecture, his wife was having a baby one day. I was assistant training officer. He was the training officer. So he asked me if I could cover him for the lecture and I said, "Sure, I can do that." So when I did it, I can't say I introduced it initially, but I said it in the end. When we summarize what happened, we're going to put two words on the board, goods and others. And that's what I put out in the lecture. Nobody said it was a great idea or a bad idea. And the critiques, it just… And so then the guy's name was Winston Copeland. He was a MiG killer. So he said, "Willie, why don't you continue to take this lecture?" So I continued it for the next year and it just… we just kind of fell into it for no other reason than it just one of those things that happened.

Sandy Winnefeld:
But I think your point though is valid in that one of the reasons why our Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force fighter pilots are so good is because we do have these very rigorous debriefs in which you set your ego aside and it's a learning experience where there are other air forces in the world who don't do that.

Bill Driscoll:
There's many ingredients that go into… Well, there's a way Top Gun operates, I thought. I think you Sandy, you described it perfectly in your book. But it's an ultra motivated group of individuals that have a burning desire to be the best they can be and they're willing to pay about any price within reason to get to that standard and maintain the standard. Now one of the things that's always driven me, whether it's in my flying, my commercial real estate career, my professional speaking career, is the little word, satisfied. The world I live in is the day you stop wanting to get better. Today you stop being good.

I tell them the way we build trust at Top Gun is we hold ourselves mercilessly accountable. That's how we build trust. The next thing I tell the audience is I have a picture of an Aircraft carrier. And I say, there's 5,000 sailors on board this ship. They're working for well below minimum wage, 12 to 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. When we're operating, not all of them, but many of them will run through walls. For the captains of these ships, how do they do it? So I asked the audience, tell me, what does a good leader look like to you? And again we have a lively discussion. Usually what I do is I hand my yellow legal pad to the senior person there and ask them to take notes. So they take notes.

And then what I'm going to tell them is this is what the sailors are asking these captains. Number one, "Sir, do you know me? Because if you know me, I'm going to know you." Number two, "Sir, do you care about me? Because if you care about me, I might care about you." And number three, "Sir, are you willing to help me get better? Because if you are, I'm going to get better and that's going to help you." I asked the audience, I say those three points. What do you think is most important? The answer I'm looking for is care. Because if you care for your people, you're going to get to know them and you're going to get to help them. Things like that.

So we do a lot of audience participation. I briefly explain how Top Gun does the goods and the others. But if I was speaking to, for example, Raytheon, then I would say, but rather than talking about how Top Gun approaches goods and others in their debriefs. And I have a picture of the Raytheon logo. And I say, "For Raytheon today, tell me, what are you good at?" And again we have a lively discussion. And after about a couple minutes of that, I smile at the audience. I say, "Now it wouldn't be fair just to talk about what you're good at without rotating the question 180 degrees." I said, "The next one is others." I'd say, "What do you need to get better at?" [Phrase unclear]. Kind of a lively discussion. Many times the senior executives in the front are looking around going, "Geez, I wasn't aware of that. I didn't hear that." So interesting.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Sometimes it takes a third party to bring that stuff up.

Bill Driscoll:
Many times it does. I'm not going to make anybody uncomfortable, anybody feel embarrassed. But it's a lively discussion to try to peel back the onion in some respects on the corporate culture of a particular audience that we're talking with.

Sandy Winnefeld:
You know, what you just described, Willie, is very reminiscent of what something that General Colin Powell told me one time, and that is the essence of leading people, is to hold them to the highest possible standards while you take the best possible care of them. And you just very articulately expressed exactly that in talking about how sailors want to know you care about them. And also the standards that we hold people up to, it's absolutely terrific.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So I know we've been holding you hostage here for a little while, so I want to respect your time. But I have a kind of a get off the stage question, and it's about the future because the Air Force just announced the winner of its new fighter competition, and the Navy is also supposed to do so any day now. And we haven't had an ace in a long time. So how do you feel about the future of aviation? And it really kind of goes back to where we started with the Top Gun conversation with respect to, you know, the technology and the aircraft now are… it's just amazing what's available to the pilot. There's drones and collaborative combat aircraft. There's artificial intelligence coming online. What are your thoughts about all this and the future of fighter aviation? It's complicated.

Bill Driscoll:
It is complicated. I tell you, I've been going up to Top Gun, Sandy. You probably know this. I've been the graduation speaker for the last 34 years up there. I do a talk up there called Air Combat. I've been invited back to the Air Force Academy. They have a Character and Leadership conference I talked about a little bit earlier. Invited back there four or five times. I'm actually… Do you know a guy named General Mike Sederholm, call sign Homie? Have you met him, Sandy? No. Doug Nesteruk? Anyway, he's the general up at Camp Pendleton. He's bringing me in the 2nd of April to give a big speech to the Marines.

I don't give canned speeches. So I interview five or six audience members about a month prior to find out what's important to them, what they're good at, what they're not good at. Their biggest challenges. What do they worry about? At night, we take all this information. I think about it. I read all the interviews very carefully, and then I tailor things accordingly.

My sense is, I was back in Boston, I guess, about a month or so ago. I gave a big speech to students at Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College and Tufts. Interviewed a number of those students. Getting ready for that speech. What I see in today's world with this younger generation is they are really smart. They get it, they want to do a good job. They love the country just as much as we do. They're coming at it from a different angle. They're really with the technology. So I am extremely optimistic that the current group, with all the challenges and they're severe, believe me, there's so much information today. But I think this current generation is going to rise to the occasion, meet the challenges and perform brilliantly when they have to.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:
That's a good high note to end on.

Bill Driscoll:
Yeah.

Sandy Winnefeld:
Willie, thank you so much for… This has been a terrific conversation. And I really meant what I said earlier. When I was a little wet behind the ears guy trying to learn how to fly the F-14 and I had Bill Driscoll on this flight schedule in my backseat. I knew that I better have my act together because I was gonna get peppered with questions before we flew and I better have my act together. Cause he was gonna be checking how well I prepared. And that's something that stayed with me throughout my career. And so I owe you a debt of gratitude from back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we were flying together. Terrific having you on and thank you so much for being with us today and we wish you the very best in the future. Thanks for being one of our country's aces.

Bill Driscoll:
And Sandy, I'll close with just this thought. I've met a lot of folks in my career in the Navy and a lot of business people. I will say this very sincerely. I'm very glad that you're serving in the capacity you are today because you were a blue chip guy as a lieutenant, you stood out. You were really smart, you were very determined, you were extremely polite and you were just leaning into it right when I first met you. And I'm not the least bit surprised that you ended up as a four-star admiral in the most senior leadership positions in naval aviation. I'm so grateful that the country has someone like you. And you've performed brilliantly throughout your life. And from folks like myself, thank you again, my friend. Much appreciated.

Sandy Winnefeld:
You're too kind and you had something to do with it though. So thank you and thank very much.