Lance Cpl. Howard Foote wanted to be a fighter pilot, but an injury prevented him from qualifying.
On July 4, 1986, 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Howard Foote, a Marine mechanic stationed at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) El Toro, commandeered an $18 million A-4M Skyhawk jet for a 45-minute unauthorized flight, during which he executed several aerobatic maneuvers. Foote had dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, but an injury had disqualified him from pilot training.
At 21, the Los Alamitos native was finally living out his lifelong dream of controlling a fighter jet, even if it was a stolen one. “I had worked my entire life for this flight,” Foote said to the Los Angeles Times. “There was nothing else.”
Foote, who spent his free time flying gliders, suffered an aerial embolism—a type of decompression sickness—in February 1986 while attempting to break a glider altitude record. In late June, doctors informed him that the injury would keep him from ever qualifying as a Marine Corps pilot. Just a few days later, he took the Skyhawk without authorization.
As Military.com recounts, Foote arrived at the aircraft in a shuttle vehicle normally used to ferry pilots to their jets, wearing a flight suit to dress the part. He flew the A-4 about 50 miles—roughly 30 minutes—in the air, performing loops and barrel rolls over the Pacific Ocean. He then brought it down after making five passes over the runway. No one monitored the jet in flight, and no fighters were scrambled to intercept it. Foote returned the aircraft on his own. The stunt ultimately earned him more than four months in the brig and an other-than-honorable discharge.
A former VMA-242 A-6 plane captain who served alongside Foote recalls that, ‘I personally knew Lcpl Foote, as he and I became friends. I very much remember this event. We both served in VMA-242 as plane captains on A-6 Intruders at MCAS El Toro. I helped train him when he first came to the squadron, and we became friends. Thereafter, I learned he was a gifted and talented high-altitude glider pilot with aspirations to be a Marine pilot. The upper leadership on base got introduced to him and began grooming him to be a future pilot […]. After finding out he was no longer qualified to be a Marine pilot, he stole the Skyhawk and became a legend on a small scale. I rarely spoke about him to others because I thought people would not believe the story.’
After his discharge, Foote attempted to travel to Israel and Honduras by air. He eventually went on to qualify as a test pilot in more than 20 different military and civilian aircraft and later worked as a contractor for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also holds patents in aviation design and engineering technology.
The video below from The History Guy recounts Foote’s story.
Photo by U.S. Navy
