Elon Musk’s Rule For Learning

Whenever Billy Sparks was hungover, which was often, his fellow pilots would yell out, “Hey, Sparky, let me see that aerial map of Hanoi.”

Sparks would then oblige. He had the ability to pull down on one of his lower eyelids, flex a combination of facial muscles, and force his eyeball to bulge gruesomely from its socket. Though Billy’s bulging, bloodshot eye the morning after a long night at Takhli’s Stag Bar was unnerving, pilots viewed it as something of a good-luck talisman. And its resemblance to the air force’s bombing maps of Hanoi was so uncanny as to be satirically hilarious.

In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson crowed, “They can’t even bomb an outhouse without my approval.”

Which, sadly, was true.

And it was clearly no way to run a war.

But that was the reality the pilots of Takhli found themselves in. And as good soldiers, they flew the missions they were told to fly, even though the strategy was so clearly unsound.

The F-105 pilots were all familiar with the aerial map of Hanoi. They’d all spent hours studying every statute mile, river, tributary, road, bridge, building, and landmark. Their lives depended on it. The map featured a solid red circle, five miles in diameter, encompassing the city center. No target within this circle could be engaged without direct approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And of the approved targets, most likely were handed down from President Johnson himself. The pilots were essentially left to peck at their enemy, all at the whim of politicians and bureaucrats over eight thousand miles away.

Radiating from the solid red blotch encircling downtown Hanoi were thin, red, jagged lines representing railways, roads, and supply lines, essential for keeping the North Vietnamese war machine humming. These extended to the edge of another circle, extending ten miles from Hanoi’s city center.

Viewed from a few feet back, the map, with its blood-red pupil and surrounding web of throbbing red veins, was indeed an eerie likeness of Sparky’s eye.

Further complicating the map of Hanoi and the pilots’ missions was the fact that the North Vietnamese had so readily adapted to the US playbook and highly predictable aerial intrusions. It would be akin to a football team running the exact same play over and over again and expecting success.

By 1967, downtown Hanoi bristled with the most sophisticated, jam-packed aerial defense system on the planet, courtesy of the Soviet Union. “Going downtown,” for an F-105 pilot, meant flying directly into the blood-red circle of Sparky’s eye. More than seventeen thousand Soviet missile men had been dispatched to Hanoi to operate more than 7,600 SA-2 electronically guided surface-to-air missiles. One particularly skilled Soviet SAM operator was Lt. Vadim Petrovich Shcherbakov, who by himself downed twelve American fighter jets over Hanoi. By the end of the war, some 205 US aircraft had succumbed to Soviet-made and mostly Soviet-launched guided missiles.

The missiles were typically fired in a series of three at an incoming jet. The amount of physical and mental energy required of each targeted pilot to avoid each missile was nearly overwhelming. If the pilot were able to jink away from the first missile, he then had split seconds to locate and jink away from the second. And if the second missile could somehow be avoided, the third missile almost always proved to be the deadliest. The slightest mistake, inattention, or fatigue would result in a fireball of death. If a SAM operator had successfully locked onto your plane, it was fairly similar to three pulls of the trigger in a game of Russian roulette.

Maj. Don Harten’s first encounter with a SAM came on February 22, 1968, during his sixth mission in an F-105 and on his first “downtown” run. He was tense in flight, and the sensation of fear — a sensation that clouded judgment and slowed reaction time — began to creep over him. He rarely flew while scared, but this time was different. He was flying into the maw of Sparky’s eye, and it was inevitable that he’d encounter a SAM launch.

Don’s squadron, dubbed Bison for this mission, was tasked with bombing a MiG airfield, called Hòa La.c, on Hanoi’s western outskirts. Flying in a four-plane finger formation, the Bison pilots streaked through clear skies at eighteen thousand feet as they approached Hanoi, which was shrouded beneath a thick undercast at ten thousand feet. This added to the pilots’ unease. Should any SAM be fired at them, they would have only an eight-thousand-foot buffer in which they could visually locate the missile — which by then would be flying at nearly Mach 3 — and attempt an evasive maneuver.

As the squadron prepared to dive toward their target, predictably, Don’s radio crackled: “Valid launch at one o’clock.”

It crackled again: “Valid at ten o’clock.”

And again: “Valid at twelve o’clock.”

Don hesitated. His mind froze. He could think only of incoming missiles. He checked his E-scope, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t registering the SAMs.

Don’s mind reflexively began to count.

“Seventeen seconds to die.”

“Twelve seconds to die.”

Don was unsure of what to do. Drop in elevation? Jink right? Jink left? Dive?

He was the number four plane in the formation, so he just stayed close to his wingman, Lt. Col. Larry Pickett, and continued to count.

“Ten seconds to die.”

“Five.”

“Three.”

There is no sound other than radio chatter in the cockpit of a fighter jet. It’s not like the movies with lush flourishes of audience-gratifying special effects: supersonic whooshes, thunderous explosions, and rat-a-tat machine-gun fire. If death were to come, it would come in a silent burst. The pilot would almost never live to hear it.

Don’s cockpit lit up as though someone had flashed a camera bulb in his face. The SA-2 had sliced between his wingman and him, only a few feet from taking down either of the planes, traveling at three-and-a-half times the speed of sound — over 2,600 miles per hour. The flame from its solid fuel rocket motor lit the daytime sky. A trailing squadron reported that the missile had exploded about one thousand feet above the pair of jets, its timing off by only a split second.

Anticipating the second oncoming missile, Lt. Jim Butler swooped beneath the squadron, deploying a rudimentary radar-jamming device and using his plane as a decoy. The maneuver worked. The missile curved slightly before detonating to the left of squadron leader Capt. Erik Lunde, peppering the side of his plane with shrapnel and debris.

None of the pilots had an answer for the third missile other than to hope and pray.

The missile burst from the undercast, slicing brilliant yellow against the gray backdrop, streaking laser-like from the clouds below, flying directly toward Don’s jet.

He banked hard left and braced for impact. There was another camera-bulb flash above his cockpit as he flew through debris. And then it was over. Film from an automated camera mounted near the nose of Don’s plane showed that the missile had skimmed just a few feet beneath his fuselage before detonating just beyond and above his cockpit. Don was well within the missile’s “kill zone” as it exploded, leaving mission analysts wondering how he and his aircraft had escaped unscathed.

Don’s hands shook uncontrollably as he followed his wingman into an attack dive. The Bison squadron flew into bursts of antiaircraft fire above Hòa Lac; Don strained to push his fear aside and to focus only on acquiring his target and dropping his bombs. The squadron swooped above the airfield and dropped its bombs, leaving the tarmac and MiG hangars devastated beneath the fearsome rumble of ordnance. Don pulled up and shot skyward. Though his hands still trembled from his SAM encounter, he was nearly overwhelmed with relief.

As the squadron reassembled for the flight south, Don’s radio again crackled. It was Capt. Lunde: “Bison One. Seems Three hasn’t come up with us. I’ve got him still flying north. Four, can you go get him? I think those SAMs messed with his head.”

“Uh, Roger,” replied Don, who banked hard, turned on his plane’s afterburners, and raced north in search of Lt. Col. Pickett, a highly experienced combat pilot on his second F-105 tour.

Humans, like nearly all mammals, have evolved sophisticated mental and physiological responses to life-threatening danger. In simple terms, this is known as the fight, flight, or freeze response. The process, which can be entirely involuntary, begins with a huge surge of adrenaline triggered by a perceived threat. As it flushes through the body, adrenaline works almost instantly to increase heart rate and cardiac output as well as respiratory rate and blood pressure. This is designed to prepare muscles for a maximum burst of energy. Adrenaline also causes pupils to widen and the digestive system to shut down.

A person fleeing imminent danger will be primed by an adrenaline surge to run faster, jump higher, and be more cognitively attuned to the threat at hand than a person whose nervous system hasn’t been sparked by fear. In fight mode, however, an almost converse physiological reaction occurs. The body’s vascular system contracts, especially at the extremities (arms, legs, hands, feet). This is nature’s way of reducing the potential danger from cuts, bruises, or abrasions suffered from a fight. If blood vessels are constricted and an arm gets slashed, blood loss from the wound will be significantly diminished, and chances of survival will be increased. Of course, there is a tax from this process on other bodily functions. Fine motor skills will be impaired as the body places its bet on large muscle groups more useful for fighting. And subtle cognitive tasks will be difficult as the mind shoves away all sensations, sights, sounds, and thoughts that might distract from winning or surviving the battle.

Fighter pilots are trained to manage their heart and respiratory rates in an effort to maintain optimal use of their mental and physical abilities during flight. However, unlike combatants on the ground, pilots are strapped to their seats and confined to their cockpits. They can’t run, jump, box, wrestle. Their large muscle groups can’t be used to expend excess energy in order to shunt the effects of an adrenaline rush. And because of the nature of their work, pilots are required to maintain a high level of mental acuity and fine motor skill.

And for all those reasons, Don’s mind thrived in an adrenaline-soaked environment. He’d learned to carefully manage and balance the multitude of mental and physiological inputs demanded of a fighter pilot.

Some pilots, no matter how experienced or skilled, however, are susceptible to a flood of adrenaline so intense that they ultimately “freeze.” This typically occurs when the body shifts to fight mode, thus constricting vascular systems at the extremities. In the meantime, the heart begins to race, sometimes beating at over 185 beats per minute — as fast as or faster than a sprinter or distance runner at full exertion. But a fighter pilot is sitting still in the cockpit. This contrast between a racing heart and constricted blood vessels can lead to a catastrophic mental and physical breakdown. Muscles become starved for oxygen and stiffen. Cognitive abilities plunge and the ability to think rationally is lost. Respiratory rates soar, and hyperventilation occurs. Control of some bodily functions becomes impossible; bowels and bladders release. Simple tasks become exceedingly difficult. Complex tasks such as flying a plane become nearly impossible.

Listen to first three chapters of