So, after booming the manned threat simulator, we established our prebriefed express heading out of the exercise airspace. At low altitude and supersonic speed (660 knots ish), the airflow around the canopies created a lot of noise. This made it difficult to hear anything on the radios and somewhat so over the crew intercom. As we continued our supersonic egress, something very garbled was coming over the radio. Something neither of us could make out. It repeated a couple of times. At first, I wasn’t too concerned. I was intently concentrating on not hitting anything at our low altitude and airspeed. Occasionally I would glance at my wingman. Both guys in #2 were Lieutenants on their first full up, go for it exercise. The front seater was my star pupil, eager to learn, and quick to soak up any new knowledge or techniques that experienced guys had to offer. So, with a quick glance accompanied by the unintelligible radio noise, I saw him aggressively rocking his wings back and forth (normally a radio silent signal by lead to bring wingmen into close formation). Something was wrong. I rocked my wings, he quickly closed to close formation, and was signaling for a fuel check. He signaled 1200 lbs. I signaled back that I was at 4800 lbs. We were about 100 miles from CFB Cold Lake. I immediately turned us to point straight at Cold Lake and set our speed for max endurance.
Let me back track about three months in time to when we started constantly flying practice low levels to tactical pop up attacks in preparation for this Maple Flag Exercise. During every pre and post brief, I harshly emphasized the need to check your gas constantly and not run yourself dangerously low on fuel racing around at high speed/low altitude with your hair on fire.
Back to Maple Flag. Establishing us on a heading straight to CFB Cold Lake, I dialed in transponder code 7700 (EMERGENCY). Our heading was going to fly us straight through the Canadian version of the highly restricted airspace north of Nellie AFB. Any deviation off heading was going to run #2 out of fuel. This was going to be tight. Somewhere in here a radio call came across guard channel “All Maple Flag aircraft be advised that CFB Cold Lake is now IFR, alternate is CFB Moosejaw”. We always carried alternate fuel for a diversion in the event of an incident at Cold Lake. Normally it was Calgary International airport, about 140 miles away. Moosejaw was 300+ miles from Cold Lake. From our position it was 200 miles away. In any event, #2’s only chance of landing was at Cold Lake. For reference, we typically planned 1,000 lbs of fuel consumption per 100 miles cruising at 20,000 feet. So, the guys in #2 definitely had seat cushion being sucked into their sphincters.
Then, another guard channel call advised that CFB Cold Lake weather was 1,000 ft overcast with light snow falling and to expect vectors to the TACAN holding fix for sequencing to instrument approaches. Well, that wasn’t gonna happen for us. Shortly, after that we checked in with Cold Lake approach, I advised that we’re an emergency, #2 is at a critically low fuel state, and we were coming to initial (visual overhead break). The controller replied that the overhead was closed and expect vectors to the holding pattern. At this point, I shed all professional bearing and told the controller to clear the pattern and that we would enter the overhead at 800 ft agl (normally 1500 ft agl) and get my #2 on the ground ASAP. The controller replied “copy, understand, contact tower”.
So, we checked in with tower, told him what we were going to do, set up for initial, and were cleared to land. At the approach end of the runway, l signaled #2 to pitch out and we followed five seconds later. We extended our pattern until he was sure to land and followed for landing. We both exited the runway, went through the normal end of runway checks and taxied back to the chocks. After shutdown and deplaning, the four of us joined up on the ramp for the walk to maintenance debriefing. Both of them were completely soaked with sweat. As we approached, I asked the front seater how much fuel they shut down with. He relied with “You’ll be proud of me boss. I shut an engine down after touchdown to conserve fuel”. I agreed that was a good call and again asked him how much shutdown with and he mumbled something unintelligible. We went back and forth a couple of times with no results and him only telling me I didn’t want to know. So, I explained the two ways this could play out. One, he could keep it a secret, the crew chief would refuel the jet, report to his line chief how much fuel it didn’t have when it was shutdown, the line chief would tell the maintenance officer, and he would tell the Deputy Chief of Maintenance who then tell our squadron commander, who would tell the ops officer, who would then come to me with this huge pile of guano, and be quite pissed off about the way he heard about it. Two, he could tell me, I would go to the ops officer and explain how it happened and that you had been thoroughly debriefed, butt chewed, and it would NEVER happen again. The ops officer would then feed the properly resolved issue up channel. I asked him which option he would like. He said “I shut down with 350 lbs showing on the gauges”. The F-4 fuel gauge accuracy tolerance was +-350lbs. I briefed our ops officer.
So, surely curious minds want to know. How did this happen?
Our attack heading on the bombing target was generally northwest. Our prebriefed egress heading was southeast in order to deconflict with other exercise aircraft. We were starting a right hand turn when the threat was called out and I stroked the burners. So did #2. (Important flight lead tip here, and it works in game). When I stroked the burners, the throttles were pushed to the forward stops and pulled back half way, to give #2 some power advantage to stay in position. My wingman was on the left side during our hard charging right hand turn. He elected to stay on the outside of the turn and in max afterburner throughout the turn and a good distance on our egress heading, instead of cutting across my turn circle to the egress heading and reducing burner. At some point, he checked his fuel, scared the crap out of the two of them, simultaneous came out of burner, and started rocking his wings.
