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The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds performed their precision aerial maneuvers in F-16 Fighting Falcons on June 24, 2008, at Eielson Air Force Base. The previous day, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reporter Christopher Eshleman went along as the Thunderbirds practiced their maneuvers.

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EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE -- Airmen were scouring the runway at Eielson Air Force Base early Monday afternoon around their team’s eight red, white and blue F-16s. It was a few minutes prior to their pilots’ daily practice.

The team, the Air Force’s ambassador Thunderbirds, was in Fairbanks for last week’s open house and air show at the base, meticulously combing the sun-drenched runway. The scene offered insight into the precision with which its pilots, all of whom joined the team after earning combat experience, perform their technically challenging maneuvers.

The F-16, a dogfighter, can handle turns tight enough to leave pilots and passengers experiencing a downward physical force nine times stronger than gravity. For someone inside the cockpit, the jet provides a blend of thrills, exertion and fear that can leave a person exhilarated, ill or both.

For those curious about the physical forces at work inside an F-16 cockpit, think of a ride at the amusement park. Not the roller coaster, but that wide, short cylinder where riders line up with their backs against the wall. The cylinder spins and the floor drops out from under everyone’s feet, and an invisible force keeps them stuck against the wall until the ride slows and the floor returns to place.

A so-called “nine-g” turn in an F-16 provides some of that. Only stronger and with an exponentially better view of the clouds and the wooded earth below, which stretches far beyond Fairbanks to cover much of Interior Alaska.

The physical force in an F-16 is occurring in a machine that reaches twice the speed of sound — fast enough to take someone from Cleveland to Pittsburgh in under 10 minutes.

Rob Skelton, an operations officer with the Thunderbirds, used a few minutes prior to my media flight Monday to describe the force (which, contrary to popular belief, is distinct from the fictitious but commonly-referred-to “centrifugal” force) as similar to — well, a roller coaster. He grabbed a half-full cup of Pepsi and, holding it by the top edge, flipped it a full circle. The drink never threatened to spill; the soda stayed, as if glued, to the bottom of the cup.

The physical forces at work inside the jet also proved enough to send a passenger’s stomach on its own ride, which, for me, tempered Monday’s thrills and sights with a mounting sickness that grew with every trick.

The feeling is intense, and the 9.4-g turn that concluded Monday’s media flight left my 175-pound frame feeling like 1,645 pounds for a handful of seconds. (For comparison, Skelton said NASCAR drivers experience roughly 3-g turns on some racetracks.)

Back in the briefing room, the flight surgeon for the Las Vegas-based Thunderbirds’ team, Charla Quayle, had indicated the nine-g turn is where some F-16 passengers black out. Sure enough, as my pilot, Maj. Tony Mulhare, turned further and further into his loop, a ring of darkness appeared at the perimeter of my vision. The edges of the ring thickened as Mulhare’s turn progressed, creating a visual tunnel and leaving me fending off what felt like a hood being pulled over my head.

Quayle had also stressed the importance of contracting my muscles, particularly my midsection, during intense turns. Multiply that physical response by the number of barrel rolls, loops and four-point rolls performed during a demonstration, and one is left understanding why the pilots need to be in top physical shape. Skelton said mid-morning that he had already run six miles and would likely go running again a few hours later. Quayle said a couple of the pilots were training for triathlons. (Mulhare’s Monday morning run had brought him unexpectedly upon a mother and baby moose, sparking a brief man-on-moose chase that earned him the nickname ‘Major Moose.’)

Skelton used this phrase to sum up the collective weight military pilots place on preparation and physical training: ‘If there’s one little weak link in the dam, the dam starts to give way.”

Mulhare, himself the son of a pilot, sharply banked his Thunderbird, No. 8 in the group, into a vertical climb immediately after takeoff. After the jet broke through the clouds he leveled off and turned south toward the airspace where we’d be doing our maneuvers. (That first bank proved to be, unfortunately, enough of a jolt to the gut to ruin the post-flight ceremony an hour later, when I fouled the recently-cleaned runway under the nose of Mulhare’s jet with what had been breakfast.)

One can easily forget the raw beauty of the land outside of populated Fairbanks, and a trip more than two miles into the air on a relatively clear day provides a reminder. The scene after we broke through the clouds, seconds after takeoff, recalled Mulhare’s comment from the briefing room on Eielson: “The world is so beautiful from 15,000 feet.”