Lt Col Mike McGee, USAF (Ret.)
"MaGoo" gets airborne in his F-15C #78-475 at Otis Air Guard Base on Cape Cod |
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A recently retired US Air Force fighter pilot now flying the A320 for JetBlue, Mike’s goal as an artist is to convey to the viewer how a fighter pilot sees things from the unique perspective of the cockpit itself.
When he was just four, Mike's father took him to see the USAF Thunderbirds at the 1968 Hanscom Air Force Base Air Show outside Boston, Massachusetts. The team’s gleaming red, white, and blue F-100 Super Sabres set in motion a dream to some day become a fighter pilot. In the ensuing years, with one eye always on the sky, he produced an endless stream of drawings of fighter planes and their pilots in the heat of battle.
A self taught artist, Mike’s high school art teacher pleaded with him to give up the pipe dream of becoming a fighter pilot to attend a top art school and become a medical illustrator as she was impressed with his eye for fine detail. But the dream to fly fighters wouldn’t die.
A 1987 graduate of UMASS Amherst, Mike was commissioned a 2nd Lt through Air Force ROTC. He earned his coveted silver pilot’s wings in 1989 from the prestigious Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program, Sheppard AFB, TX. His first assignment was to Myrtle Beach AFB, SC to fly the A-10 Warthog. Mike was soon deployed to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield. To kill time in the desert, he painted nose art on the unit’s Warthogs. Lt McGee flew 36 night attack combat sorties in Desert Storm, usually employing the infra-red version of the tank killing Maverick missile to good effect. Upon return from the Persian Gulf, he was selected for transition to the F-15 Eagle. Based out of Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, Mike flew the Eagle all over the Pacific rim from Singapore to Guam. After that, he was an F-15 instructor pilot at Tyndall AFB, FL, then served on exchange with the U.S. Navy flying the F/A-18 Hornet out of NAS Lemoore, California. In 2001, he joined the Mass Air Guard’s 102nd Fighter Wing and moved home to fly Eagles again and raise a family on Cape Cod.
Since leaving the military in 2007, Mike has been able to devote his spare time to doing commission work for various military units and pilots around the country who like his work.
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