What is it like to have diarrhea in the cockpit as a fighter pilot?

Posted 7 November 2018.

Before I start, I must be very clear on one point of the question: I was never a fighter pilot… Crew chief in the U.S. Army, sure, but never a fighter pilot.

However…

I have personally had a couple close calls. Close enough that one flight over a decade ago had forever changed how I view plums. I’ll take the liberty to tag Steve Shumaker mostly because he was sitting on the right side of the bird, and partly because I believe he still giggles uncontrollably at this story every time it comes up. (Some people miss combat for the mission and freedom from all that is bureaucracy… I miss it because of the friendships and their interdependence on shenanigans like this…)

I have also been witness to one of my students as he contended with the ever-important lesson of “no Taco Bell prior to flight.” This rule goes right up there with my suspicion/bias against plums, but different people react differently to mass-produced gastrointestinal challenges. On this particular flight, we were rounding Turtle Bay on lap one of the counterclockwise “Oahu 500” – a night-vision goggle (NVG) training flight around the island when the *rrrr…* started happening in his gut. By the time we made it to Haleiwa ten or so minutes later, his confidence was weakening that he would make it around the Leeward side and back to Wheeler. Five minutes later, as we approached Dillingham, he tersely announced that he miscalculated and we needed to land.

I have been in that pain in a helicopter before, so I sympathized… I understood… and despite being a challenging instructor who loved to artificially increase stress for my students as they neared the end of their training, I appreciated his dire (heh) straits. I made the recommendation that we land at Dillingham – a General Aviation airfield which was closed for the night – and worked out a plan for his exit to either the first Porta-potty we saw or, if one wasn’t available, as close to the treeline we could get on the taxiway.

If you have ever flown in a Black Hawk, you are familiar with the shudder on final… and it was at this point in our deceleration that the incapacitated crewchief’s leg began to resemble a sewing machine’s needle – updownupdownupdown in an impatient and distressed attempt to focus all mental attention on containing all that wanted to be released. A gentle landing and a one-foot ground roll preceded the crewchief egressing as safely and as quickly as he could towards the treeline nearby.

“Right side is out,” I announced for the situational awareness of the pilots, in case they weren’t watching him. “He’s at the rotor disk… almost to the treeline… He stopped.”

Stopped, he did… and went into this uncomfortable-looking semi-squat about 50 feet from the helicopter… fully clothed – and fully soiled.

There are times when descriptions fail to do the experience justice. The kid tried – he really did. He also failed in the biggest and most embarrassing way possible for an upcoming crewchief. However, as a testament to his character, he not only cleaned the mess he made as we flew back to Wheeler, he was back to work before anyone else the next morning making sure that the entire cabin was cleaner than it was before his ill-fated flight and he also endured the inevitable jokes which followed.