As I crouched, foetus-like, on a sustained 7.5-G loop in a fighter at 9,000 feet, I knew the best was yet to come. My US Navy pilot commander Lt Matthew “Bloody” Stoll tore our F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter into a screaming dive at the spectators from right above Yelahanka, and I could only watch from the cockpit behind him, with an awe I’m not sure I’ve felt before, the ground lurching up to us before we leveled out and flipped over to back away from civilisation. We needed to get away from built-up areas if Bloody was going to show me what this machine could really do.

The Indian Express was invited to test-fly the Boeing Super Hornet at the Aero India 2007 defence fair here on Tuesday. The Super Hornet is one of six fighters that competes for India’s largest single military purchase — 126 multirole fighters. And considering that fighters overwhelmed pretty much everything else here, this correspondent went up for 58 minutes to find out what all the fuss was about.

Bloody is only three years older than me, has 1,500 hours on these fighters, and as my pilot, took me through on hour of pre-flight instructions and preparations for a 58 minute sortie that would change everything. As I strode out onto the tarmac in my overalls, G-suit and safety harness, there was an immediate sense that comfort obviously mattered little to guys in the air. Forget about G-forces, I felt twice as heavy as I actually did weigh already. Twenty-minutes later, none of this would matter.

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