Close Calls
Night landing. High in close. The big play for the deck. Pull throttle to idle and push the nose down to the deck. Pull back as the deck approaches to set the hook to catch the four wire. Push the throttle to military in case I miss the wire. The throttle was pushed into the idle detent when pulled back. Now I can’t get it to military. The boss is yelling for power. Luckily I caught the wire otherwise I would have been in the drink or in the chute at night with the carrier baring down on me.
On an mult-service exercise in north florida near Eglin Air Force Base. Came off of the carrier in the east Atlantic and flew over Florida with a descent into the Gulf. Turned feet dry and held for out forward air controller to call us in on a target. Made a section run on his Willie Pete. Pulled off target with a lot of airspeed. There was a 1,000 foot hard floor for our operations. We came over a dirt road heading north filled with troops, tanks, and other vehicles. Started for the tree line and as the horizon appeared out of the trees below 500 feet I saw the visor of the crew member in the door of the Huey. Pulled up as hard as I could and just missed the helo.
Coming into an island bombing range in Puerto Rico at 250 to 500 feet with over 650 knots. In a section as the lead. The navigation system put us around three miles from the target, the pull up point. Pulled back on the stick abd went inverted at 3,000 feet for the pop-up attack and just hung there looking for the target. The wingman called it to the right and I pulled hard placing the nose of the aircraft in a 15 degree dive starting the bombing run. At some point a safety article I had read in an Air Force bulletin flashed in my memory. “If you find yourself in a 15 degree dive in a pop-up maneuver abort the run.” I began pulling the aircraft out of the dive with my thumb on the pickle. The aircraft was in severe buffet and it felt like the nose was at least level or slightly above the horizon as the aircraft was pancaking towards the ground. I stayed with the aircraft as I watched the tree tops rise above me as the 12 practice bombs scattered across the target. As I pulled off the target the controller told me to never do that again. I don’t think he was trying to be funny.
Came in to the ship with 100 gallons above emergency fuel. When they directed my flight lead to enter the holding pattern behind the ship he stated that we needed to land immediately. The controller told us we could enter the VFR pattern but the ship was in the middle of a rain storm. I listened to the LSO calls to my lead as he entered the in close position. He was one of the best carrier landers on the ship. He eventually had the LSO screaming for him to “Wave off, wave off,” and he went around for another try. I was past the beam position on my turning descent to the deck. As I was at the 135 I only caught glimpses of the ship through the rain on the canopy. At the 90 I could not see the deck at all. I was locked on my instruments hitting all the marks on the descent. At in close I made my call, “Alpha Juliet 402, 1.0 clara ball.” I was surprised when the LSO told me to keep the approach coming. I called clara ball again. “Keep it coming” was the response back. I caught the 3 wire with an underline OK grade.
Rolling into the target outside Cecil Field, I was on a safety check ride. In a hard right-hand turn dropping the nose. Saw what looked like something on my canopy near the wing line and in a sp[lit second it turned into a turkey buzzard. I t missed the canopy and hit the aircraft just aft of the intake in the gun barrel. Aborted the run and declared an emergency heading back to the field. Set the throttle at military and started a climb to the field. When I reached the top of the ascent pulled the power back to idle and made an emergency descent into Cecil.
Coming into the ship at night. Disoriented. Don’t even remember the LSO calls. I know that over the deck they lose sense any sense of aircraft lineup. At some point I came out of the darkness and realized where I was. I was very high and well right of the centerline. Tried to pull it back to the centerline and get the nose down. At some point I just took the bolter.
Parked directly on the foul line pointing a bit aft next to the island. I was turning as the emergency tanker in case someone got in trouble and the airborne tanker went down. It was the last recovery. I was up approach and departure frequencies. Listening to the recoveries. The last plane down was an A6. I saw him clearly coming down the pike. The LSO called him left for lineup. The pilot turned right. In a slightly sterner voice the LSO called “Left for lineup!” Again the pilot dropped his right wing. Now he was bore sighting me and I was frozen. I should have been looking for the lower ejection handle. Another call for left for lineup and the pilot finally saw his mistake. He dropped the left wing and landed right of the center line on his left landing gear. The right gear never touched. On impact the left strut broke off the aircraft and ricocheted down the deck sending sparks in the air. I watched it take one last bounce before hitting the sea.
On a low-level training route south of Cecil field. At 500 feet, and probably 360 knots. That was the standard operating procedure for such a training route. As I am navigating the route a light single engine civilian aircraft traversed the flight at 90 degrees. A close miss.
At the beginning of my first cruise the Skipper gave all the pilots a talk. He said he wanted to bring all of us back alive. He had been flying a long time and I always thought if I had to go into combat I would want to be on his wing. He said he had some advice. You can do anything you want when you fly, but you have to brief it before hand. What kills most pilots otu at sea is doing something spontaneous and then not being able to recover. There was rule for the aircraft: below 10,000 feet in uncontrollable flight you must eject. Not you should or you may, but you will. One night at 25,000 feet hanging on the blades waiting for the recovery I thought I had plenty of altitude to convert to airspeed, and I could do a loop. I did them regularly in the simulator ashore during training. I unloaded the aircraft and picked up a lot of airspeed. I pulled back on the stick and headed into the loop. The one thing you have to remember to do in the loop is to not release pressure on the back stick. At some point during the manuever something wasn’t right. I could sense it. I started scanning my instruments and saw pure white on my attitude indicator. I saw the last part of the fall of the airspeed needle when it slammed into the peg at zero airspeed. I was heading straight up into the night sky, which is not where you want to have this aircraft. It slid back on its tail and fell like a leaf first rotating one way and then another till it settled down into what felt like a spin. I was not prepared for any of this. I sat in the ejection seat for the ride. There was one thing I needed to do and that was to execute spin procedures. I failed to do that. At some point I tried to counter the spiral with opposite stick. Luckily for me I was not in a spin and I recovered the aircraft at around 15,000 feet. Suffice it to say at the end of the cruise when back ashore I practiced spin procedures in the simulator regularly.
The mission included air combat maneuvering towards the end of the flight before recovery. It was 2 versus 1. The engangement rules were the flight of 2 had the airspace above 20,000 feet and I had the airspace below. We would meet at a specified point off the carrier at a specified time. This was often called something like “Indian Territory.” The other rule as the flights came into the engagement area There need to be ongoing radio calls. Once a flight had sight there was no more need for calls and they were responsible at maintaining separation. There is an adage that is still true3 today, “Lose sight; lose the fight,” and its corollary, “First sight; win the fight.” I was at 19,000 feet and dove for the deck hoping to gain sight when I hit 5,000 feet. Level at 5,000 feet my airspeed would bleed off quickly. The other flight would not be looking low and so that gave me the advantage. As I coasted at military power on the deck watching my airspeed bleed away I caught sight of the two aircraft. I pulled up into an Immelman and as I reached their airspeed on my back I called a fox 2 on the right and a fox 2 on the left. I was near zero airspeed when the automatic flight control system triggered a rudder movement. This is the recipe for a spin: (1) departed aircraft, and (2) a rudder input. Sure enough the aircraft entered a spin and I was ready this time.
In a controlled approach from the south into Cecil Field. Cumulous clouds all around. I am on lead’s wing when we enter a cloud. Densest cloud I was ever in, and although I was tucked in close on my lead, I lost sight. I decide to count to 3 and see if we came out of the cloud. On 3 we were still in the cloud and I saw him just in time to pull hard right and miss a mid-air collision. At that moment we came out tof the cloud.
Hot seating. Taking the aircraft out to the end of the field and taking off. Doing the landing carrier practice for a field night qualification. Landing and passing through the fuel pits, getting hot fueled. Coming back to the apron, parking, and having the tie-down chains set. Climbing out of the aircraft. Habit was to walk around the nose. Turned to cross in front of the intake and the Chief on the line grabbed me by my harness. Sved my life.
On a training flight in Basic Jet. In a flight of four in a T2 Buckeye doing break ups and rendezvous. Get to the training area at around 10,000 feet and set up in a division with a lead and all three other aircraft on the left-wing. The drill was to have the lead break right away from the other three in the flight. Each of the other aircraft would break away in turn and practice rendezvousing back on the lead. I was the lead and tried to break left into the flight. The instructor had his hand on the stick and prevented an unimaginable catastrophic accident accident.
Not quite close enough, but close enough. Getting the aircraft out to the carrier to begin workups for the upcoming cruise. At altitude on the left wing of the lead. Noticed that the power needed to stay even with the lead was around 200 pounds per hour more than what he was using. Landed at the ship and wrote up a yellow sheet with maintenance. Nothing more to do. The aircraft was inspected and nothing was found until the next morning. A squadron mate took off for a flight and when the returned to the ship they caught the wire and went to military power. In that second the engine disintegrated in glowing hot parts of turbine blades out the tailpipe.
The canopy scraper. I was engaged in a dogfight with another A7-E. I don’t remember much about the thing. I don’t remember the pilot, I don’t remember how we started, or how we got to where we ended up, both nose high, canopy to canopy. We watched each other as we translated our airspeed into altitude. The aircrafts kept climbing and I was looking at him in his cockpit as he looked at me. We were very close to one another. As the A7-E’s approached zero airspeed I had a little more energy than him and so as he bagan his tailspin I was about a half plane length above him. It was surreal as we floated backwards our canopies turning around one another, never hitting.
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