“The moment I realized I was about to die—and knew I only had seconds left to live before the airplane slammed into one of the emergency response vehicles prepositioned on the side of the runway—I experienced a deeply visceral and raw terror in my heart and my entire body.”
So said retired Navy flight engineer Tony Woody, 65, telling The Epoch Times of his miraculous out-of-body experience and close brush with his Creator.
That landing accident occurred in 1982, when Woody was 24 and stationed at Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii. A mishap aboard a 70-ton, four-engine plane triggered a spiritually transformative experience (STE), and he felt himself leave his body—a trip that forever changed his perception on life.
An “Unorthodox” Start for a US Navy Flight Engineer
“I was 17 years old when I enlisted in the Navy via the delayed entry program while still in high school. Two months after graduating from school, I went to Navy boot camp in Orlando, Florida. After boot camp, I went to Millington, Tennessee, for three months for training to learn about jet engine mechanics. After that, I went to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, for my first tour of duty in Patrol Squadron 49.
“At only 19 years old, I was offered an opportunity and the challenge of learning how to become a flight engineer (FE) on the P3 Orion aircraft via on-the-job training. I earned my Navy Air Crew wings and the privilege of being a qualified P3 Orion flight engineer in charge of the FE duties on a 70-ton, four-engine heavyweight airplane at only 21 years old. I went to FE Instructor training and became an instructor flight engineer at 24 years old in Hawaii at Naval Air Station Barbers Point. Due to the maritime nature of most of our missions, I was also required to complete deep-water survival training as well as the much-hated Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course. That is a two-week-long school on how to survive in the wilderness while behind enemy lines in a mocked-up prisoner-of-war camp. … While working there, I was qualified to inspect work done on the P3 Orion, the S3 Viking, the H2 Sea Sprite, the H3 Sea King, and the H-60 Sea Hawk, which is all five of the anti-submarine warfare aircraft platforms.
“Ironically, given my last name and unbeknownst to me ... I didn’t know until I went to my squadron duty office to check in off of furlough that the detailer in Washington D.C. who determines a sailor’s orders for their next duty station was having a little fun when he decided to send me, aviation machinist mate airman apprentice ‘Woody,’ to the VP-49 ‘Woodpeckers’ for my first tour of duty as a joke on me.
“Initially, I was not happy about that at all, since I had been picked on and teased during my childhood solely because of my last name. But this time, it was actually the best thing that ever happened to me in the Navy, and here’s why I say that. When all junior enlisted personnel first check onboard a P3 squadron, you’re immediately sent to the First Lieutenant Division where you do a lot of menial jobs, like swabbing and buffing hallway decks in the work spaces and other menial jobs like that for a few months, before going to a real work center to do real work on real airplanes.
“During my stint in the First Lieutenant Division, I was assigned to work in the ‘geedunk,’ running the cash register and taking orders for food. Each squadron had their own ‘geedunk’ (which is Navy slang for what civilians call a snack bar). About 10 days after I had been in the squadron, I’m working in the geedunk by myself when my commanding officer walks in wearing his flight suit to get some food to take with him on a training flight. The work uniform I was wearing had my last name stenciled on the front of my shirt and the back of my pants.
“Up to this point, my skipper had never met me and did not know who I was. My skipper was very happy when he walked in the door at first. But that instantly changed when I turned around to get his food … when he read my name on the back of my pants. He was clearly not happy anymore and I had no idea why he was angry with me. He was dead serious when he glared intently at me and said in a firm voice, “Son, just because you’re in the VP-49 Woodpeckers doesn’t mean you don’t have to stencil your proper name on your uniform!” I think he thought my name was Woods or Wood or something like that and I was making a play on my name because of the name of the squadron I was in.
“Here I was, an 18-year-old airman apprentice with my skipper very angry at me, and I was so scared I couldn’t even say anything back to him. Without saying a word, I pulled my wallet out and I handed him my military ID card. He takes it from me and looks at it, sees my real name on the card, then looks up over the top of my ID card at me in astonishment and says, ‘You mean I got a Woody in the Woodpeckers?’ I said with great relief, ‘Yes sir, I guess you do.’ Now he’s very happy to learn he actually does have a Woody in the Woodpeckers. Then as he started walking out the door, I blurted out the best question I’ve ever asked in my Navy career when I said, ‘Hey Skipper! What’s it like flying in one of those great big airplanes?’
“He gave me a huge smile and said, ‘Well son, come with me and I’ll show you!’ The next thing I know my skipper hooked me up with the flight engineer on his flight that day to shadow him during the two-hour-long preflight. After preflight, during engine starts, and taxiing to the runway, I sat behind the pilot seat and watched everything. We taxied to the approach end of the runway where we had to wait several minutes for another plane to land. I was wondering if I should go get strapped into a chair somewhere because I was the only one on the plane not strapped in at the time.
“Right before I spoke up to ask about that, my skipper sitting in the co-pilot seat turned to the flight engineer and said, ‘What do you think? Should we put him in there?’ And the engineer said, ‘Sure thing skipper.’ And then the engineer unbuckles his harness straps and gets out of the FE seat. My skipper turns to me and tells me to get in the flight engineer seat. I must have had this ‘are you freaking nuts?’ look on my face when my skipper put his right hand up with his palm out facing me and said, ‘Don’t worry son. We will tell you what to do.’
“I couldn’t believe he just said that, but didn’t have to be asked twice. I immediately jumped in the seat and the next thing I know I’m pushing all four power levers forward setting 4,600 horsepower per engine across the board while the real flight engineer is supervising my actions. Two-and-a-half hours earlier, I was selling hotdogs in a U.S. Navy geedunk; the next thing I know I have 18,400 shaft horsepower at my control, in my hand via four power levers, and it felt great! For the next few hours on that flight, I was living a dream. And that dream continued on and eventually turned into 22 amazing years of shear pure fun.
A Moment of “Sheer Terror” Triggers Woody’s Spiritually Transformative Experience
“In 1981, I transferred to the VP-6 Blue Sharks at Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii … where I had the aircraft runway incident and the spiritual experiences in 1982, about 10 months after checking onboard VP-6.“Technically, the real reason we ran off the runway in the first place should have never happened, and I take equal blame for that because there was a moment when I could have stopped it from happening in the first place but I didn’t. We all knew we were about to make an emergency engine-out landing with the outboard number-one engine on the left wing shut down. We knew anytime you have an asymmetrical power situation with two engines operating on one wing and only one on the other during a landing scenario, the pilot in control of the plane always gives a landing brief, discussing the emergency and the asymmetrical power situation in anticipation of potentially swerving off centerline on the runway.
“The pilot in control verbally states how he will use the rudder to counteract the expected swerve in order to stay on the runway centerline. That day, my pilot, albeit jokingly, gave the emergency landing brief backwards when he verbalized the exact opposite of what he should do with the rudder to counter the expected swerve. The co-pilot and I picked up on the fact he was joking, and we let it happen and joked along with him, probably because we were all on the same crew and had flown together for a long time by then; so we had a lot of familiarity with one another in the flight station.
“I believe, even though he was joking and we all knew it, that his brief was subconsciously stuck in his mind and he did exactly what he briefed, which was exactly the wrong thing to do at the wrong time, causing the plane to rapidly depart the runway at 135 knots [just over 155 mph]. I learned a very valuable lesson that day. I learned the flight station is not Comedy Central and is no place to joke around, especially during an engine-out emergency landing situation. …
“The pilot made a mistake and put in incorrect rudder during the three-engine emergency landing, and because we have fire trucks on the side of the runway, waiting there to take care of anything that goes wrong in case we crashed, we departed the runway and we were going directly at one of the fire trucks—I mean straight at it. I suddenly had death coming at me at over 135 knots … It was coming at that speed, and I knew it, and all I could think about was, ‘I’m never going to hold my son again.' He was a little over 3 years old. I was never going to see my wife, my family. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff that goes through your head in an instant, in that moment, when you know it’s over. I didn’t think I was dead. I knew it was coming. And there was nothing I could do.
“In that moment, all of a sudden, I find myself outside the airplane, looking down on everything from like 20, 30 feet up, over all of it. And I’m still having the perspective of the me in the seat. So somehow, I’m in two places in the middle of all this, and I have no idea what’s going on. I’m totally confused. The me in the seat was terrified—emotionally I could feel that energy—and the me outside the plane was totally calm, as if just an observer watching everything. Everything too; it got really strange after that. That ended up triggering for full-blown spiritual experience where I was in the light, and it was powerful, [a] life-changing event. I knew I was in the presence of my Creator. You can’t not know. Because the energy is blasting through you, of love, peace, harmony. So many things happen there.
“I also describe another similar out-of-body experience that happened two days later, when [a] spirit came to me in my sleep. … After I prayed a prayer of simple gratitude right before going to sleep, that little 10-second-long prayer somehow triggered a full-blown spiritually transformative experience, placing me directly in the presence of my Creator. I instantly knew I was in the presence of God because I was one with all of the infinite power, infinite wisdom, and intelligence, which are one and the same, because you can’t have one without the other—and infinite, unconditional love. Only God can do that.”
Woody Shared His Story After Over 2 Decades of Shame and Silence
“Within the first two weeks after my experiences on the runway and in the light two days after, triggered by a simple prayer of gratitude, is when I needed professional help the most and got none. I went to a pastor of a small church in Waianae, Hawaii, and told him what happened. He looked at me like I was crazy, turned around and walked off and said nothing to me at all.“My wife physically tried to prevent me from asking another pastor in a different church while in a public setting, and then, right after that, a Navy lieutenant commander, who was in a different P3 squadron and also stationed at Barbers Point Naval Air Station, came up to me in the church parking lot after services and said, ‘I recommend you stop talking about your experience. If you don’t, you are at risk of being labeled mentally unstable and could lose your security clearance.’
“I immediately knew that meant I would be forced to stop flying and most likely be removed from military service completely. I loved the Navy and I loved being a P3 flight engineer, and vowed nobody was going to take that away from me no matter what. So my only apparent choice at the time was to just stop talking about it. And I did, for over 20 years. But that doesn’t work either. You cannot stuff God away once He has acted in an overt manner in your life that affects you deeply forever after. You just can’t. I tried though, really hard; and for a very long time too. In doing so, it cost me a marriage and it caused a lot of other troubles in my life, all because I received no help in the beginning when I needed help the most.
