Flying is inherently a risky business! Interesting story below.
New meaning to wind in your face. Maybe Navy should stick to ships that
float and go slow.
Wilbert D. Pearson
Brigadier General, USAF
HQ AFMC Director of Operations
The A-6 making emergency landing
Lieutenant Keith Gallagher's Account:
Murphy's Law says, "Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect
it." (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator.) Murphy was
correct beyond his wildest dreams in my case. Fortunately for me, however,
he failed to follow through. On my 26th birthday I was blindsided by a piece
of bad luck the size of Texas that should have killed me. Luckily, it was
followed immediately by a whole slew of miracles that allowed me to be
around for my 27th. Not even Murphy could have conceived of such a bizarre
accident (many people still find it hard to believe), and the fact that I am
here to write about it makes it that much more bizarre.
We were the overhead tanker, one third of the way through cruise, making
circles in the sky. Although the tanker pattern can be pretty boring, midway
through the cycle, we were alert and maintaining a good lookout doctrine
because our airwing had a midair less than a week before, and we
did not want to repeat. We felt we were ready for "any" emergency: fire
lights, hydraulic failures and fuel transfer problems. Bring 'em on! We were
ready for them. After all, how much trouble can two JO's get in overhead the
ship?
After my third fuel update call, we decided that the left outboard drop was
going to require a little help in order to transfer. NATOPS recommends
applying positive and negative G to force the valve open. As the pilot
pulled the stick back I wondered how many times we would have to porpoise
the nose of the plane before the valve opened. As he moved the stick
forward, I felt the familiar sensation of negative "G", and then something
strange happened: my head touched the canopy. For a brief moment I thought
that I had failed to tighten my lap belts, but I knew that wasn't true.
Before I could complete that thought, there was a loud bang, followed by
wind, noise, disorientation and more wind, wind, wind. Confusion reigned in
my mind as I was forced back against my seat, head against the headrest,
arms out behind me, the wind roaring in my head, pounding against my body.
"Did the canopy blow off? Did I eject? Did my windscreen implode?" All of
these questions occurred to me amidst the pandemonium in my mind and over my
body. These questions were quickly answered, and replaced by a thousand
more, as I looked down and saw a sight that I will never forget: the top of
the canopy, close enough to touch, and through the canopy I could see the
top of my pilot's helmet. It took a few moments for this image to sink into
my suddenly overloaded brain. This was worse than I ever could have imagined
- I was sitting on top of a flying A-6!
Pain, confusion, panic, fear and denial surged through my brain and body as
a new development occurred to me: I couldn't breathe. My helmet and mask had
ripped off my head, and without them, the full force of the wind was hitting
me square in the face. It was like trying to drink through a fire hose. I
couldn't seem to get a breath of air amidst the wind. My arms were dragging
along behind me until I managed to pull both of them into my chest and hold
them there. I tried to think for a second as I continued my attempts to breathe.
For some reason, it never occurred to me that my pilot would be trying to
land. I just never thought about it. I finally decided that the only thing
that I could do was eject. (What else could I do?) I grabbed the lower
handle with both hands and pulled-it wouldn't budge. With a little more
panic induced strength I tried again, but to no avail. The handle was not
going to move. I attempted to reach the upper handle but the wind prevented
me from getting a hand on it. As a matter of fact, all that I could do was
hold my arms into my chest. If either of them slid out into the wind stream,
they immediately flailed out behind me, and that was definitely not good.
The wind had become physically and emotionally overwhelming. It pounded
against my face and body like a huge wall of water that wouldn't stop. The
roaring in my ears confused me, the pressure in my mouth prevented me from
breathing, and the pounding on my eyes kept me from seeing. Time had lost
all meaning. For all I knew, I could have been sitting there for seconds or
for hours. I was suffocating, and I couldn't seem to get a breath. I wish I
could say that my last thoughts were of my wife, but as I felt myself
blacking out, all I said was, "I don't want to die."
Someone turned on the lights and I had a funny view of the front end of an
A-6, with jagged plexiglas where my half of the canopy was supposed to be.
Looking down from the top of the jet, I was surprised to find the plane
stopped on the flight deck with about 100 people looking up at me. (I guess
I was surprised because I had expected to see the pearly gates and some dead
relatives.) My first thought was that we had never taken off, that something
had happened before the catapult. Then everything came flooding back into my
brain, the wind, the noise and the confusion. As my pilot spoke
to me and the medical people swarmed all over me, I realized that I had
survived, I was alive.
It didn't take me very long to realize that I was a very lucky man, but as
I heard more details, I found out how lucky I was. For example, my parachute
became entangled in the horizontal stabilizer tight enough to act as a
shoulder harness for the trap, but not tight, enough to bind the flight controls.
If this had not happened, I would have been thrown into the jagged plexiglas
during the trap as my shoulder harness had been disconnected from the seat
as the parachute deployed.
There are many other things that happened, or didn't happen, that allowed
me to survive this mishap, some of them only inches away from disaster.
These little things, and a s-hot, level headed pilot who reacted quickly and
correctly are the reason that I am alive and flying today. Also, a generous
helping of good old-fashioned Irish luck didn't hurt.
Lieutenant Mark Baden's (pilot) Account of the Incident
As we finished the brief, my BN (bombardier navigator - Keith Gallagher)
told me that it was his birthday and that our recovery would be his 100th
trap on the boat. To top it off, we were assigned the plane with my name on
the side.
As we taxied out of the chocks, I was still feeling a little uneasy about
all the recent mishaps. To make myself feel better, I went through the "soft
shot/engine failure on takeoff" EPs (emergency procedures), touching each
switch or lever as I went through the steps.
"At least if something happens right off the bat, I'll be ready," I thought.
The first few minutes of the hop were busy. Concentrating on the
package-check and consolidation, as well as trying to keep track of my
initial customers, dispelled my uneasiness. As we approached mid-cycle, that
most boring time in a tanker hop, we kept ourselves occupied with fuel
checks. We were keeping a close eye on one drop tank that had quit
transferring with about 1,000 pounds of fuel still inside. I had tried going
to override on the tank pressurization, but that didn't seem to work.
My BN and I discussed the problem. We decided it was probably a stuck float
valve. Perhaps some positive and negative G would fix it. We were at 8,000
feet, seven miles abeam the ship, heading aft. I clicked the altitude hold
off and added some power to give us a little more G. At 230 knots I pulled
the stick back and got the plane five degrees nose up. Then I pushed the
stick forward. I got about half a negative G, just enough to float me in the
seat.
I heard a sharp bang and felt the cockpit instantly depressurize. The roar
of the wind followed. I ducked instinctively and looked up at the canopy
expecting it to be partly open. Something was wrong. Instead of seeing a two
or three inch gap, the canopy bow was flush with the front of the
windscreen. My eyes tracked down to the canopy switch. It was up. My scan
continued right. Instead of meeting my BN's questioning glance, I saw a pair of legs
at my eye level. The right side of the canopy was shattered. I followed the
legs up and saw the rest of my BN's body out in the windblast. I watched as
his head snapped down and then back up, and his helmet and oxygen mask
disappeared. They didn't fly off; they just disappeared. My mind went into fast forward.
"What the hell happened?" I wondered. "I hope he ejects all the way. What
am I going to do now? I need to slow down."
I jerked the throttles to idle and started the speed brakes out. Without
stopping, I reached up, de-isolated, and threw the flap lever to the down
position. I reached over and grabbed for the IFF selector switch and twisted
it to EMER. I was screaming "Slow down! Slow down!" to myself as I looked up
at the airspeed indicator and gave another pull back on the throttles and
speed brakes. The airspeed was passing 200 knots.
I had been looking back over my shoulder at my bombardier the whole time I
was doing everything else. I felt a strange combination of fear,
helplessness and revulsion as I watched his body slam around in the
windblast. After his helmet flew off, his face looked like the people who
get sucked out into zero atmosphere in some of the more graphic movies. His
eyes were being blasted open, his cheeks and lips were puffed out to an
impossible size and the tendons in his neck looked like they were about to
bust through his skin as he fought for his life.
At 200 knots I saw his arms pulled up in front of his face and he was
clawing behind his head. For a moment, I thought he was going to manage to
pull the handle and get clear of the plane. I was mentally cheering for him.
His arms got yanked down by the blast and I cursed as I checked my radio
selector switch to radio 1.
"Mayday, Mayday, this is 515. My BN has partially ejected. I need an
emergency pull-forward!"
The reply was an immediate, "Roger, switch button six." I switched freqs
and said (or maybe yelled), "Boss (Air Officer), this is 515. My BN has
partially ejected. I need an emergency full-forward!"
I slapped the gear handle down and turned all my dumps on (in an effort to
get slower, max trap never crossed my mind).
The Boss came back in his ever-calm voice and said, "Bring it on in."
Checking out the BNAs I watched, the indexers move from on-speed to a green
chevron I worked the nose to keep the plane as slow as possible and still
flying. The plane was holding at around 160 knots and descending. My BN's
legs were kicking, which gave me some comfort; he was not dead. But,
watching his head and body jerked around in the windblast, being literally
beaten to death, made me ill.
I had been arcing around in my descent and was still at seven miles. The
boss came up and asked if the BN was still with the aircraft. I think that I
caused a few cases of nausea when I answered, "Only his legs are still
inside the cockpit." It made sense to me, but more than a few people who
were listening had visions of two legs and lots of blood and no body.
Fortunately, the Boss understood what I meant.
As I turned in astern the boat, I called the Boss and told him I was six
miles behind the boat. I asked how the deck was coming. He asked if I was
setting myself up for a straight-in.
I told him "yes." He told me to continue.
It was then I noticed that my BN had quit kicking. A chill shot through my
body and I looked back at him. What I saw scared me even more. His head was
turned to the left and laying on his left shoulder. He was starting to turn
grey. Maybe he had broken his neck and was dead. Bringing back a
body that was a friend only minutes before was not a comfortable thought. I
forced myself not to look at my bombardier after that.
The front windscreen started to fog up about four miles behind the boat. I
cranked the defog all the way and was getting ready to unstrap my shoulder
harness so I could wipe off the glass when it finally started clearing.
I saw the boat making a hard left turn. I made some disparaging remarks
about the guys on the bridge as I rolled right to chase centerline. I heard
CAG paddles (landing signal officer) come up on the radio. He told the
captain he would take the winds and that he needed to steady up. My tension
eased slightly as I saw mother begin to leave her wake in a straight line.
Coming in for landing I was driving it in at about 300 feet. I had been in
a slight descent and wasn't willing to add enough power to climb back up to
a normal straight-in altitude for fear I would have to accelerate and do
more damage to my already battered BN. I watched the ball move up to red and
then move slowly up towards the center. Paddles called for some rudder and
told me not to go high. My scan went immediately to the 1-wire.
I had no intention of passing up any "perfectly good wires." I touched down
short of the 1-wire and sucked the throttles to idle. The canopy shards
directly in front of the BN's chest looked like a butcher's knife
collection. I was very concerned that the deceleration of the trap was going
to throw him into the jagged edge of the canopy. I cringed when I didn't
immediately feel the tug of the wire. I pulled the stick into my lap as
paddles was calling for altitude. I got the nose gear off the deck and then
felt the hook catch a wire.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Testing the spool-up time of a pair of J-52s
as I rolled off the end of the angle was not the way I wanted to end an
already bad hop.
As soon as I stopped, I set the parking brake and a yellow shirt gave me
the signal to kill my No. 2 engine. Immediately after that, I heard a call
over the radio that I was chocked. I killed no. 1 and began unstrapping. As
soon as I was free of my seat (I somehow remembered to safe it), I reached
over and safed the BN's lower handle, undid his lower koch fittings and
reached up to try to safe his upper handle.
As I was crawling up, I saw that his upper handle was already safed. I
started to release his upper koch fittings but decided they were holding him
in and I didn't want him to fall against the razor-sharp plexiglas on his side.
I got back on my side of the cockpit, held his left arm and hand, and
waited for the medical people to arrive. I realized he still was alive when
he said, "Am I on the flight deck?"
A wave of indescribable relief washed over me as I talked to him while the
crash crew worked to truss him up and pull him out of the seat. Once he was
clear of the plane, they towed me out of the landing area and parked me. A
plane captain bumped the canopy open by hand far enough that I could squeeze
out. I headed straight for medical without looking back at the plane.
Later, I found that ignorance can be bliss. I didn't know two things while
I was flying. First, the BN's parachute had deployed and wrapped itself
around the tail section of the plane. Second, the timing release mechanism
had fired and released the BN from the seat. The only things keeping him
in the plane were the parachute risers holding him against the back of the seat.
[This message has been edited by Ripsnort (edited 01-12-2001).]
