'Shock' and Awe From North Idaho to the wild blue yonder
U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Caleb Worpel Coeur d’Alene High School 2010 grad and top pilot Capt. Brett “Shock” Burnside is seen here in August 2017 at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix during his F-35 B-course training.
U.S. Air Force Capt. Brett "Shock" Burnside gives the thumbs up from the cockpit of an F-35A stealth combat jet in August 2017 at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix. Burnside is from Coeur d'Alene and was back to visit just last weekend. He is stationed in Ogden, Utah. (Courtesy photo)
By DEVIN WEEKS
Staff Writer
Since a young age, Brett Burnside has felt the need — the need for speed.
"I watched 'Top Gun' when I was 5," he said. "I was visiting family in Chicago when I saw it. I was like, 'Yep, that’s what I'm going to do.'"
The young Burnside kept his eyes on the skies and pursued his dream of flight after graduating from Coeur d'Alene High School in 2010.
A top student, he was the first CHS graduate to be accepted by West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy. He graduated the Air Force Academy with distinction in 2014. Two years later he was "top stick" — or No. 1 — in his pilot training class at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. The Air Force selected him to train to fly the F-35.
Burnside, who returned to North Idaho for a visit last weekend, has about 750 flight hours under his belt. About 500 of those hours were logged in the F-35, a single-seat, single-engine stealth combat aircraft.
The aircraft’s ceiling is 50,000 feet. “The view from the office doesn’t suck,” Burnside joked.
His full rank and signature is Capt. Brett “Shock” Burnside. While deployed in Japan, the thrill-seeking pilot flew 1,000 feet above Okinawa, screaming past at nearly 700 mph.
"It was pure speed," he said. "That was the most fun."
Burnside is stationed in Ogden, Utah. While recently deployed in Europe, he performed in an air show and found himself at the center of attention.
"We’ve got just thousands of Finnish people coming up and wanting to take pictures with me," he said. "It’s very unique. It’s like, here I am some random person from North Idaho in Finland and people want my autograph and to take pictures. It's so humbling."
Burnside said he always remembers the North Idaho teachers who helped him succeed. He has visited former instructors and given them souvenirs of his experiences up in the air as tokens of his appreciation. That’s especially important to him because his father is a Coeur d’Alene High School teacher.
"I wish we did a better job of going back to thank them," he said. "It means a lot to the educator community when you say, 'Thank you, I appreciate what you did to get me to this point.'"
Watch Burnside share some of his story: https://bit.ly/2WR8619