What Is A Fighter Pilot Cadet?

The term fighter pilot cadet is a term that is often misunderstood by many.  In the United States Air Force Academy students are called cadets, not fighter pilot cadets. After graduating they could branch out into a number of areas, including supply, maintenance or pilot training, and calling those that received orders to pilot training a fighter pilot cadet would be a misuse of the term. They would be officers and students in pilot training.

I was a fighter pilot in the United States Navy for ten years flying F-14’s. The Navy called us Aviation Officer Candidates or simply Candidates until we received our commissions as officers, not fighter pilot cadets. After graduating we were only officers in pilot training not fighter pilot cadets. In pilot training, based on our grades, we would be further selected to fly helicopters, propeller aircraft or jets. After jet training, again based on grades, we would only then be selected to become fighter pilots, often confused with fighter pilot cadets. It was these experiences of going through training and living on an aircraft carrier that led me write West of the Rock.

It describes in stark and vivid detail precisely what it is like to undergo the rigorous training required by those commonly referred to as fighter pilot cadets. In series of powerful narratives I explain in this book what it is like to land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier at night, the daily contests with fear and the harrowing close calls that many of us had. This book is partially about what those might call fighter pilot cadet training. Fighter pilot cadet training would be a term that would not even come close to describing what was really more than training. It was life on the edge.

Want to know about life as a fighter pilot cadet? Get your copy of West of the Rock today!