...His name was Conde, and he was a major on an exchange tour from the Venezuelan Air Force. He'd been on their flight demonstration team, much like the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels or the Air Force's Thunderbirds. Only the VAF team flew the T-2 Buckeye, which, as it happens, was also the training aircraft used by the U.S. Navy to train carrier jet pilots.

So major Conde served as instructor pilot in Beeville, Texas. In return, some American officer was off doing God-knows-what in the VAF.

The man seemed to know only three words of English: "No Rrrrroff!" (Heavily rolled "r".) "Esmooth." So preflight briefings were a bit like negotiating for toilet paper in a foreign bazaar.

But he had a preternatural talent for formation flying. Effortless, crisp, and "esmooth."

You should understand that, in flying formation on your lead aircraft, you must get a lot closer than you are otherwise ever supposed to get to another aircraft. Four-foot interval between the nose of your plane and the tail of your lead. Three-feet lateral separation between your wingtip and his. (Okay, or hers.) Actually, a three-foot interval between your wingip and the wingtip vortex of your lead; you are stepped back, down, and to the side. The T-2's have tear-drop shaped fuel tanks on the tip of each wing, and when you are in proper position it seems as if you areabout to bump your helmet on your lead's tip-tank.

And you're going 300 mph. And then your lead starts turns, of increasing steepness, to either side.

And then you get to do "break-up and rendezvous" drills. The lead snaps over into a 90-degree banked 4-g turn, and you follow a couple of seconds later. After 180 degrees of turn, you'll be separated by a half mile. Then the lead begins a shallower turn, and you maneuver to re-join close formation. Which you do by steering yourself with wing-dips up a 45-degree bearing until you reach position. You get down-graded for dawdling and taking too long, but you also get dinged for closing in too fast and not being able to handle the rates of closure.

It's pretty stressful the first few times you try it. Actually, you're pretty sure you'll never live to your 24th birthday. You're contemplating the equitable distribution in your will of your 8-track tapes.

At least I was.

And so I'd flail wildly, overcorrecting, squeezing the control stick until my knuckles were white, trying to milk black juice from the hard-rubber grip. Must have been a God-awful ride, wildly fluctuating G-forces as I'd oscillate several feet up and down.

Then Conde would step in. "I got da plane."

It was like driving at speed from a rough dirt road onto a newly paved motorway. The ride instantly smoothed out; like a motorboat cruise over a glassy lake at dawn.

And then, by God, he moved in, until we were looking straight up at the lead plane's tip-tank, about 4 feet separation between my helmet and the other plane. This was where the Blue Angels flew formation. I decided I didn't like it very much.

"No rrrroff. Esmooth."

I remember looking in the cockpit...where my own stick and throttle movements had been panicked, abrupt, gross, I was now watching Conde's own control inputs on the linked, dual controls. Minute, tiny movements. The secret to formation flying is the eye, not the hand. You detect the relative motion of your plane with respect to the lead, and you do it early enough so that you can correct with a tiny corrective input.

Which Conde could not tell me. But he could show me.

More than 20 years ago, now. I often wonder what became of major Conde, gone back to that perpetually boiling teapot of a country. I wonder if he's taking part in events.

I wonder which side he's on.