In mid-November 2003, six months after returning from deployment during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), our squadron had a lot of hours to fly and training to do. We needed to maintain our readiness status. Our jets had been ridden hard during the war, and, with no time to rest after returning home, we continued to press on.

Nothing was out of the ordinary about our Tomcat flight. It was a strike-fighter weapons and tactics (SFWT) level III signoff for myself, a 2-versus-unknown night-offensive counter-air (OCA). I briefed the event, read the aircraft-discrepancy hook (ADB), and walked.

Aircraft 111 had experienced multiple left-engine problems during the previous two weeks. These problems included several instances of the engine switching to SEC (degrading from electronic to mechanical control) mode multiple times during flight, and of SEC-mode degrades coincident with air-inlet-control-system (AICS) failure. Three days before our flight, the left-engine rpm rolled back to 60 percent after landing. The morning of our flight, the port augmenter-fan-temperature control (AFTC), an electronic device responsible tot controlling the engine's primary mode of operation, was replaced as a fix for the SEC-mode discrepancies. The next flight, 111's second flight of the day, turned up another uncommanded SEC-mode gripe.

Start-up was uneventful, with no sign of trouble from the engines. We taxied to 05R--11,997 feet by 200 feet. We covered "Aborted Takeoff" and "Single Engine Failure Field" procedures and considerations before crossing the holdshort. We took the runway with our wingman for an eight-second, flight-lead-sep takeoff: My pilot ran up the engines and performed a control wipeout. Everything still looked good, so we started rolling.