Thomas G. Goduto Interview, 20 February 2001
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| TG: | Yeah, I could see their shoulders; I could see the right shoulder and helmet of the pilot and the left shoulder and helmet of the co-pilot, although I'm restrained by my harnesses. And low-level I wouldn't have unstrapped to get out of my seat for any reason, and the IP seat would've been occupied with probably Cagle if Partin was in the pilot seat, so there wouldn't have been room for me up there anyway. But when I turned and looked I would have to stretch my imagination to say there was a glow in the cockpit, and the reason that I say that, because if I had been watching the cockpit and saw it was dark, and then turned around and saw it was lighter, yeah. So the best recollection I can give you is that, yeah, there could've been, or either was a glow in the cockpit, versus, there was no glow in the cockpit 'cause it was totally black. Now if Brad described the light coming from that as yellow, which he did I obviously would've been looking for that. | |
| INT: | I'm going to show you this drawing, which shows how they over flew the object. Here's their flight path over the object. If you want to comment on it, please do. | |
| TG: | [Laughs]. Brad is shouldering all this on his own. And the co-pilot—sorry Brad, but the co-pilot was of such a position on the crew that he didn't direct the crew, but if he had to do stuff because nobody else was doing it Brad would be a guy that would do. | |
| INT: | Well, understand something—Cagle had left the flight deck to go into his bunk. | |
| TG: | Okay, the bunk is just a matter of a couple of feet. | |
| INT: | The point is he said, 'I don't want anything to do with it' and so basically it's Runyon's department. Now Runyon's working the radio— | |
| TG: | He would be taking the ground control approach, and I would've had the command post radio, other than if General (blank), whoever that was, got on the radio—Cagle would've wanted to talk to him, or the pilot flying the aircraft would've wanted to talk to him as opposed to me. My position was more or less a relay or a monitor. | |
| INT: | Does it make sense to you that he [Cagle] would go to his bunk? | |
| TG: | Absolutely. And for the purposes stated, 'Hey, I want to stay out of this.' | |
| INT: | McCaslin stated he wasn't about to leave his ejection seat during this incident. You have a tense situation and the aircraft commander can leave the flight deck? |
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