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Inside the Thunderbirds and the Cost of Getting It Wrong | Ryan Bodenheimer | Ep. 477

Oct 19, 2026 · 2h 55m

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Ryan Bodenheimer spent eleven years on active duty flying the F-15E, including 70 combat missions over Afghanistan and a stint building strike packages at the air operations center in Qatar. He was selected for the Thunderbirds, flew Thunderbird 2 for two show seasons, and instructed the next team. After the Air Force he flew airliners, then walked away to build Max Afterburner, now one of the largest military aviation channels on YouTube, and to write Take Command. The thread in this conversation is rules and when to break them. He kept a loaded jet at .99 Mach so he'd arrive with something to protect a SEAL, then went down to 100 feet because 500 would have gotten the guy killed. He went…