Then & now

Airman, May, 2004 by Chuck Roberts

When Maj. Clyde Beattie was 10, he attended an air show in Jacksonville, Fla., where the Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy Blue Angels demonstration teams performed. From where he stood in a cordoned area with fellow spectators, he gazed in admiration at the pilots standing before him and said to himself, "I want to be on the other side of the rope. I want to be one of those guys."

He became both of them--sort of--and during his Air Force career he continued to cross traditional lines. In 1997, then-Captain Beattie (above) was the first of a handful of Air Force pilots who merged with Navy aviators to fly the EA-6B Prowler when the Air Force stopped flying the EF-111 Raven for the airborne radar jamming mission. Soon after, he found himself shot off the end of the USS Constellation, ending his exhilarating sortie 30 minutes later by returning to the narrow 300-foot deck lined with aircraft. He remembers hitting the deck hard and the relief of feeling the Prowler's tail hook catch the arresting cable. The aircraft came to a halt, but not until it stretched far enough to allow him to peer over the bow of the ship at the sea below.

"That was the most exciting thing I've ever done in my Air Force time," said Major Beattie before his F-117A Nighthawk fini-flight at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., in February (left).

Such career changes have been the norm for Major Beattie. He was an engineer with Pratt & Whitney before joining the Air Force, where his first job was as a parachute qualified forward air controller with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. He's currently working in the advanced avionics and weapons section for the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., where his wife, Sandy, and two daughters, Jenniefer and Fiona, live near grandparents.