AURORA | Matthew Crabb was still a teenager when he got behind the controls of a plane for the first time. Having spent his childhood around U.S. military pilots, Crabb said learning to fly felt “normal,” like an airplane’s cockpit was where he was supposed to be.
“I was so used to seeing a flight suit around the house as an elementary-aged kid,” he said. “I begged, and begged, and begged my dad to be able to take flight instruction.”
Crabb’s grandfather served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. His father flew a C-130 in Vietnam. In grade school, Crabb reeled off “Top Gun” quotes and trick-or-treated as a fighter pilot.
He didn’t hit his stride academically until the end of college, as he closed in on his goal of receiving a bachelor’s degree, so he could enter the Air Force as an officer, so he could fly a jet.
Seated by a window in his office at Buckley Space Force Base, overlooking the base’s flightline and a handful of F-16s, Crabb tried to describe the rush he still feels when launching into the sky in one of the high-performance planes.
“The fact that I can go from 5,000 feet in elevation, roughly, to 24,000 feet in less than a minute, at 90 degrees, nose-high? There’s nothing that feels like that, nothing that I’ve experienced in my normal day-to-day where you can have that freedom,” he said.
“It’s indescribable. Or, it’s describable, but it’s hard to comprehend unless you’ve experienced it.”
Now a lieutenant colonel, Crabb commands the aircraft maintenance squadron of the Colorado Air National Guard 140th Wing. The squadron helps ensure the wing’s 18 Fighting Falcon jets are airworthy, including those assigned to the base’s Aerospace Control Alert Mission, which are kept ready to launch at all times to intercept threats to the continental United States.
Crabb said leading the squadron has made him a more well-rounded officer. After spending the first decade of his career as an active-duty combat pilot, helping the 220 people under his command succeed has been rewarding in ways he never expected.
The job has been a source of stability for Crabb, who lives with his wife and two sons in the flight path of the base. It also gives him the opportunity to continue to perfect his flying skills. As an instructor pilot, he leads many of the training missions that pass over Aurora, sharing with others the passion and obsession that has guided the course of his life.
“I still get a little ornery when I don’t fly,” he said. “That’s every pilot. They get the itch. Like, ‘I need to go fly.’”
High hopes
As the child of a U.S. military pilot, even from a young age, Crabb said he had an idea of the path he would need to take to follow in his father’s footsteps, starting with a college education.
The Air Force selects aspiring fighter pilots from among its officers. In order to become an officer, candidates must first receive their college degree. However, Crabb said he struggled to get good grades in middle and high school.
“My mom likes to say that school didn’t challenge me enough, and I was bored with it,” Crabb said, adding that she was “probably (being) generous.”
Still, determined to chase his dream of becoming a fighter pilot, Crabb enrolled at Northern Arizona University and signed up for the school’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program.
On May 15, 2005, he received his degree and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. A few weeks later, he shipped out to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.
Crabb said he didn’t have trouble adjusting to life as an Air Force officer, which he credited to the structured upbringing that his parents provided. His brother also went on to become an F-16 pilot, and the two shared a flight instructor as adolescents.
Regardless of whether a new Air Force pilot has experience flying civilian aircraft, Crabb said one of the goals of the training process is to indoctrinate officers into the branch’s own philosophy of flying.
Pilots were expected to memorize lists of steps to take in critical situations, such as if the engine of their plane failed mid-flight or if they had to abort a takeoff. If a pilot couldn’t remember those steps when quizzed by an instructor, they would be grounded for the day.
“It sounds strict, but it serves a very valuable purpose,” Crabb said. “I think that general mentality has carried on throughout every phase of flying to this day, to the point where you have 25-year-olds in charge of $30-million airplanes who are very professional pilots.”
As for what mental attributes predict career success among pilots, Crabb said ROTC instructors evaluated program participants based on their level of commitment and ability to work as part of a team. Besides that, he said there’s no one type of person cut out for flying.
Other pilots entered the Air Force officer corps through the Air Force Academy, a four-year university near Colorado Springs, and Air Force Officer Training School, a program at Maxwell Air Force Base for bachelor’s degree-holders, including current and former servicemembers as well as civilians.
“You don’t have to be Tom Cruise,” he said. “There’s no carbon copy. We take everyone’s strengths, who they are as human beings, and we use those to our advantage.”
Living in and out of an F-16
Crabb spent much of the first part of his military career supporting U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. In 2009, he deployed for the first of four times to Afghanistan.
Being able to put his lifelong passion for aviation to practical use was a singular experience for the then-26-year-old. He compared the feeling to that of a professional athlete finally getting the chance to prove him or herself after years of practice.
“When you finally deploy, you’re in the playoffs,” Crabb said. “Every flight is that level of intensity. Maybe not from an operational standpoint — I may not be actively dropping bombs that day — but every single flight has the potential. And your level of effort is the playoffs if not the championship game every time.”
The average sortie lasted about five hours, and Crabb flew mostly at night. He described the cockpit of the F-16 — just large enough to accommodate a single person and their gear — as an environment stripped of distractions, designed to promote vigilance among pilots — armed to the teeth, flying at several hundred miles per hour, tens of thousands of feet above the ground.
Back on base, life was oriented around the mission that had brought Crabb and other airmen to the frontlines of America’s engagement in the Middle East. When he wasn’t flying, Crabb wished he was, and the lack of amusements on base only made him more eager to get back in the air, which he said was fulfilling as well as taxing.
“You can have a day where you go up, and nothing happens the whole night, and you’re just flying in circles. Or you can go up, and you can have some pretty terrifying moments where your brain is working overtime for a long period of time,” he said.
“If you go more than about two days, non-flying, you start to get a little stir crazy, because you’re in a combat zone. There’s not much to do. There’s no going to the movies or hitting up Dairy Queen. You’re kind of stuck between your work center and your bed.”
To pass the time, he and other airmen played cards, talked about their lives stateside and bonded over their shared predicament. Crabb was a one member of a squadron of pilots at a time when tens of thousands of U.S. troops were deployed in the Middle East.
While the missions he flew were part of a larger, coordinated war effort, he said the drive to tighten up his skills and continue improving came largely from within.
“You absolutely want to put every ounce of your life into this thing, because you’re trying to reach the pinnacle,” he said. “Like, I want to be the best that I can be. I want to get to that point where I’m comfortable in the airplane, and I can do almost anything. And I think, naturally, for the first 10 years, that’s what you’re trying to do.”
Over the course of his career, Crabb has clocked more than 1,000 combat hours aloft, putting him in the top 12% of Air Force pilots in terms of combat flight experience, according to a U.S. Air Force spokesperson.
Toward the end of his 11-year stint as an active-duty airman, Crabb was promoted to the rank of major, and the trajectory of his career began pointing away from the cockpit. He also wasn’t immune to the stress and upheaval of active-duty military life.
“If you were to boil all of it down into one word, it would just be ‘stability.’ I was looking for some more stability in my life,” he said. “And I wanted to keep flying. I knew if I trained under the Guard, ultimately, I would continue to fly the jet.”
Joining Aurora’s hometown fighter jet wing
In 2016, Crabb transitioned into the Colorado Air National Guard and arrived at Buckley to start a new job as a weapons officer.
The 38 pilots of Aurora’s Colorado Air National Guard wing together bring more than 10,000 hours of flight time both in and out of combat to their jobs. The wing provides air support inside of the U.S. through the Aerospace Control Alert Mission as well as overseas and in space.
It also offers a pathway for people interested in a career as a fighter pilot to acquaint themselves with military aircraft while earning their college degree and preparing to become an officer. Crabb said several of the fighter pilots at Buckley got their start in the 140th Wing.
He described his leadership of the aircraft maintenance squadron as the best of both worlds.
“I’m loving it. It’s nice taking care of people, switching hats,” he said. “My whole career — it’s going to sound weird, because we’re a team — but the majority of the time, I was focused on a lot of myself. Like, do I have the knowledge? Do I have the skills? You know, bettering those aspects of myself.”
As an instructor pilot, he continues to fly F-16s, evaluating and grading the performance of pilots during training missions. He’s also deployed twice since coming to Buckley — in 2019, to Afghanistan, and in 2022, to Saudi Arabia, supporting operations in Iraq and Syria.
Regardless, Crabb said his time at Buckley has brought stability in more ways than one. Around the time he left active duty for the Guard, he reunited with a former high school classmate. They started dating and were married in 2021.
When asked how he would feel if either of his sons wanted to take to the skies like their father, uncle and grandfather, Crabb said he’d be supportive, though he said he’s not trying to push them into a military aviation career.
“Although I have had an incredible experience in the path that I have chosen, there is zero pressure for my kids to follow in my footsteps,” he said. “I support my kids in whatever task they end up pursuing.”
At 41 years old, Crabb has started thinking about what it might look like for him to retire from the military. He said he’s eyeing a second life as a commercial airline pilot.
“The passion will always be there,” he said. “I don’t think that will ever go away.”
