How I Met My Husband
Nicole Malachowski |
Many don’t know this, but my husband Paul and I did, in fact, fly together before we started dating. I was a brand new Second Lieutenant in my very first fighter squadron and he was assigned as my crewed Weapons System Officer (WSO) for that day’s sortie. In fact, it was a formal upgrade training ride for me and he was actually my assigned Instructor. We’d planned an air-to-ground training mission over the idyllic countryside of tranquil southwestern England. It was one of my earliest sorties flying an F-15E with the ‘faster’ engines (known as -229s).
Well, I made every mistake you could while flying with those engines that day. In fact, I accidentally went supersonic…twice…over a few serene English villages. No surprise, the Squadron Commander met us after the flight. He’d received several noise complaints from my “Mach Run” over sheep farms and thatched-roofed cottages, and he was none too happy.
My ‘not yet boyfriend’ was equally perturbed at me and we kind of avoided each other for a few weeks. Then one day he walked up to me and said, “have you slowed down yet?” I had slowed down, but we sped up, and have been together ever since.
He still thinks I’m pretty fly. #punintended