March Dinner Meeting: F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter (this page)

Please join us for our March 21 dinner meeting which will feature the F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter presented by A. Paul Metz.

Paul Metz was named Chief Test Pilot for the F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter in October 1992. He made the first flight on the F-22A Raptor aircraft on September 7, 1997 and continues to be actively involved in the flight test program for that aircraft. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, he served 12 years in the U.S. Air Force and was an Engineering Test Pilot and Chief Test Pilot for Northrop Aircraft for 12 years.

Metz joined Northrop Aircraft in 1980 as an Engineering Test Pilot. He conducted flight tests on the F-5E/F, the F-20 and the Antonov Colt. In October 1985, he was appointed Chief Test Pilot for Northrop Aircraft. From 1985 through 1992, he was responsible for flight tests of the F-20 Tigershark, the RF-5E Tiger Eye Reconnaissance Aircraft, the F-86F Sabre and other programs. He made the first flight of the YF-23A Advanced Tactical Fighter in August 1990.

Metz entered the USAF in 1968 and flew operational missions in the F-105G Wild Weasel in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. His combat day and night missions against surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft gun sites in support of strike missions in North Vietnam earned him two Distinguished Flying Crosses and six Air Medals. In 1976 he was a distinguished graduated from the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB and he remained at Edwards AFB conducting avionics, flying qualities, engine and flutter tests on the F-5E/F. In 1978 he became an instructor pilot at the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland.

Metz was born in Springfield, Ohio, January 1946. He received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Ohio State University, Summa Cum Laude, in 1968. His graduate studies have been in Aeronautical engineering at Ohio State and California State University, Fresno and Aviation Safety at the Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, California.

He is a Fellow and President of the Society of Experimental Test. He has written numerous articles on the flight test of modern fighter aircraft. He has over 7,000 hours and more than 37 years of experience flying 72 aircraft types including the F-86, F-105, F-4, F-5, F-15, F-20, YF-23 and F-22.