Former Sheppard student pilot speaks to graduating class

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Mike Meares
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  More than 43 years after earning his wings here, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John Bradley, took the stage to talk responsibility, perspective and what lies ahead for the Euro NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program pilots of class 13-07 at their graduation Aug. 9, 2013.

Based on his 41-year Air Force career, the 1970 graduate of the Luftwaffe wing related what he experienced as a road map for piloting and officership success.

"This is gonna define your life. It will," he said. "Going through this program is a significant event in your life and it makes you who you are, whether it's for only several years or a whole career."

Bradley spoke about the benefits of training with an international contingent, the way he did with the Germans during his class. The Luftwaffe is also the generic term in German speaking countries for any national military aviation service, and the names of air forces in other countries.

"It was a very similar program to what they do today for the ENJJPT," he said "The flying syllabus was pretty similar. There are a couple of new things they do now that are more fighter oriented then we did then, but this program, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was considerably different than other flying training bases."

ENJJPT, established jointly by 13 North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, is a multi-national pilot training program managed by the 80th Flying Training Wing. It is the world's only multi-nationally manned and managed flying training program chartered to produce combat pilots for NATO.

"I learned the essentials of flying here, I got my wings here," he said. "I look back on my time here as about the most significant part of my career."

During his recent visit, Bradley toured the buildings he roamed as a young captain while getting his feet wet on the T-37 Tweet. He later went on to be a T-38 Talon instructor pilot at Columbus Air Force Base, Miss., eventually spending more than 7,000 hours, including 337 combat missions, in the cockpit of an A-37/B, A-10, F-4/D/E (ARN-101) and F-16C.

"It set me on a course for a lot of jobs I had in the future," he said. "The thing I learned here...is the international relations you make here, the people you that you meet from other countries, NATO countries, and the relationships you develop, you may end up working with some of the people in coalitions when we go to war in the future."

The general admittedly acknowledged the difficult nature of flying training in the Air Force, saying even he struggled at first. With a little luck and timing, mixing in some of the skills learned along the way, Bradley figured out how to navigate the course. Once the light bulb came on for him, the sky was the limit over his first assignment in Vietnam.
"What we do in teaching people to fly here is critically important," he said.

It's been more than a decade since his last trip to Sheppard and he said he found his flight rooms with no problems walking through the maze of hiding the training flights. He thinks it may have had some upgrades to the outsides of the buildings, but the inside was almost the same.

"I look at the pilot training campus here, the 80th (Flying Training Wing) area here, and it looks phenomenal, it looks gorgeous," he said. "It didn't look anything like this when I came here."

He reiterated to the graduating class about his experience here was a defining time in his career. As he suspects it will also be for the 25 graduates of class 13-07. This graduation marks 6,641 pilots who've graduated from the course since its inception.