which the B-1B bomber pilot knew wasn’t normal. When a flight atten- dant asked whether any pilots were on board, Gongol reported to the flight deck, where he saw the captain, who looked pale and clammy. The pilot had suffered a heart at- tack, and the relatively inexperienced first officer was showing signs of strain. “I had about five seconds to assess her: ‘Was she panicking, or was she OK to fly the aircraft?’” Gongol recalls. Concluding the copilot was up to the task, he decided to act in a support role and set to work programming the autopilot, communicat- ing with air traffic con- trol, and monitoring the aircraft’s critical systems. After a successful
emergency landing in Omaha, Neb., the first offi- cer managed to make it to the gate despite never having taxied a 737 before — a feat that greatly impressed Gongol, who downplays his own role in the incident. “I saw nothing but the finest professionalism under pressure [from] the flight atten- dants, the nurses, and the first officer,” he says. “Everyone aboard the aircraft remained calm, and there is no doubt in my mind this contributed above all else to our successful outcome. In my opinion, any military pilot would have done the exact same thing I did.”
Situational awareness
When the threat is not elemental but human, military training can be helpful in aiding a servicemember to spot a potential problem — especially if that person has been deployed. Oregon Army National Guard mem- ber Spc. Jon Sweeney was returning from a computer programming class in downtown Portland, Ore., when a passerby set off his internal alarm. Deployments in Iraq and Afghani- stan had taught Sweeney to pay at-
tention to his instincts, so he turned and followed as the suspicious man approached a woman and a little girl outside a hotel. Sweeney saw the man trying to snatch the girl from her stroller, and as the nanny screamed, he raced to the
sound of screaming and breaking glass. A moment later, a man with an assault rifle and pistol entered their carriage. Stone, civilian pal Anthony Sadler, and Spc. Alek Skarlatos of the Oregon Army National Guard quickly ducked behind their seats. Skarlatos looked at Stone and said, “Let’s go.” With Stone in the lead, the three
as the men struggled,
the attacker began lashing out with a box cutter ... but the airman kept
the assailant firmly pinned to the side of the cabin in a chokehold.
raced down the narrow passageway as the man raised his rifle to fire. But the gun jammed, and as Stone lunged toward the gunman, the man hit him in the face with the weapon. As the men struggled, the attacker began lashing out with a box cutter, slicing Stone’s thumb to the bone, but the airman
kept the assailant firmly pinned to the side of the cabin in a chokehold. When the man managed to reach his handgun, Skarlatos took it away, seized the assailant’s rifle,
scene, wrested the girl from the ab- ductor, and put himself between them. The guardmember then grabbed the attacker, who immediately tried to punch him. “Using combatives train- ing, I avoided the swing and used his momentum to put him on the ground,” says Sweeney. “Once I got him on the ground, I had his hand locked with one [of my] hands and ahold of his air- way with my other arm. From there, I was able to maintain control until the police arrived.”
Tackling terrorism
Perhaps the most well-known recent case of off-duty intervention hap- pened on a train from Amsterdam to Paris in August 2015, as three longtime friends were enjoying a tour of Eu- rope. Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone, USAF, had fallen asleep when he and his buddies were jolted awake by the
and repeatedly smashed it into the man’s head until he was unconscious. As other passengers arrived to hold the man down, Stone saw that a pas- senger had been shot in the neck and was losing blood rapidly. Trained as a paramedic, he applied hand pressure to stop the bleeding, despite his own serious wounds. Subsequently Stone, Skarlatos,
and Sadler received the French Legion of Honor — the highest French decoration for military and civil merits — for preventing what surely would have been a massacre, and Stone received a Purple Heart. While grateful for the awards, Stone, a MOAA member, maintains it was a team effort, saying, “If it wasn’t for Alek [Skarlatos] and Anthony [Sadler], I would be dead. I wouldn’t have been able to do it by myself.”
— Mark Cantrell is a freelance writer based in North Carolina. His last feature
article for Military Officer was “Built to Last,” September 2016.
DECEMBER 2016 MILITARY OFFICER 63
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