Intercepting a Bomarc
During my tour flying the F-106 Delta Dart at Minot AFB, North Dakota, we had opportunities to escape the intensely cold winter weather by taking our squadron jets once a year to Tyndall AFB, Florida. There, we worked on our sun tans and nuclear surety qualification for each squadron jet. We were scheduled for two weeks at Tyndall, and normally had all the jets nuke qualified in the first week by successfully firing the nuclear armed AIR-2A Genie rocket (without the nuke warhead). The second week was normally scheduled for Dissimilar Air Combat Training with fighters other than the Dart and from different branches of the military, which was great fun.
During this particular trip to the beach, we are offered an unusually rare and unheard of opportunity. We are given several Bomarc missiles to live fire at with our antiquated AIM-4 air to air missiles. These Bomarcs are reaching end of shelf life and the desire is not to go through the process of disposal. Shooting them down over the Gulf of Mexico is much easier.
With only a handful of Bomarcs offered, we have a squadron “short straw” drawing to determine who the live fire shooters are going to be. I draw a long straw but, have been selected to fly wingman/chase with my bud, “RB”. RB and I get on the phone with our assigned GCI controller. The Bomarc is going to launch off the Elgin AFB range complex, climb to 65,000 feet, and accelerate to Mach 2.5. RB briefs the controller to give us notice before the Bomarc launches so we can be pointed north and accelerated to a minimum of Mach 1.5. This intercept will require a fly up to shoot the pair of AIM-4s before we reach 50,000 feet. We are restricted from going above that unless wearing pressure suits. Ya know, astronaut clothes.
We suit up and step to our jets, preflight, taxi out, and depart to the west toward our holding point. We arrive a few minutes early and establish holding at 280 knots to conserve fuel for the impending high energy event. We continue holding well past the briefed Bomarc launch time. Several minutes later, while still at 280 knots and pointed south, the GCI controller suddenly transmits “The Bomarc just launched!” and gives us a northerly intercept heading. Lighting his afterburner, RB cranks around to north, with me in tow. The now visible Bomarc is climbing at an unbelievable rate. I’ve never seen anything moving that fast! RB calls a radar contact and “Judy” (meaning he is locked on to the target and taking over the intercept) as he continues to pull the nose of his jet more and more vertical to compensate for the lack of airspeed we wanted to start the fly up with. I’m holding on in a loose route formation in max AB . Out front beyond RB, I can see the Bomarc hauling the mail in the opposite direction at an incredible rate of closure. RB calls “B time”, meaning the F-106 fire control system has calculated a launch point and has given him a “countdown to launch” signal on his radar scope. His pair of AIM-4s are already selected and armed. Then, I see the fast acting weapons bay doors on the belly of his jet slam open, the AIM-4 launchers extend down, the missiles motors ignite, and away they go. Because we are in an extreme nose up angle and much slower than desired, the missiles look more like wayward bottle rockets spinning out of control as the Bomarc zips past us like we are sitting at a bus stop. Simultaneously, RB calls on the radio that he’s lost his generator. I see a solid plume of white vapor coming out of his tailpipe, and transmit “It looks like you’ve lost something else.” The AIM-4 exhaust smoke, our extreme nose up angle, and slow speed has choked his engine airflow and caused a flame out. As all of this is transpiring, RB is rolling over on his back and pointing the nose down to gain airspeed, with me still hanging on his wing. We are more than a 120 miles off shore from Tyndall. RB has pointed his nose directly at the base and is attempting to get the J75 air started. He tries several times to no avail. Still trailing a white contrail of fuel, he states that he’s going to stop cock the throttle and try a ground start procedure. As he does, the white plume momentarily stops, reappears and fades away as the engine restarts. We are closing the distance to the base, he’s declared an emergency, and intends to go to high key for SFO (Simulated Flame Out) pattern in case the engine coughs again. The SFO is an emergency procedure all F-106 pilots learn in the school house at Tyndall and practice frequently. The textbook SFO pattern starts at 12,000 feet above ground level over the approach end of the runway, with a 360 degree descending turn to landing on the runway.
With me still in tow, RB enters high key, flys a text book pattern, and lands safely. I go around on short final, request a closed pattern for a full stop and land behind him. We taxi to parking, shut down, and go to Maintenance debrief. Our ops officer and a host of other onlookers are there for the debrief and additional details. One of the many questions asked was what our maximum altitude was during this debacle. Both of us stated no more than 50,000 feet. Got to have pressure suits to go higher ya know. Debrief complete, our Ops Officer congratulates us with a well done for getting both jets back safely. It’s now beer thirty.
The next day we go in for the mass briefing before the day’s flying starts. Our Ops Officer is waiting and pulls us aside for a chat. He asks again about our max altitude the day before. Since neither of us was really paying attention, or much cared in the midst of RB’s flameout and restart attempts, we both remembered starting to roll over on our backs approaching 50,000 feet. The Boss reveals that this Six has a, unknown to him and us before now, rudimentary flight data recorder. Our jets showed RB at 58,000ish feet and me at 57,000ish feet as we started back down. Our higher than desired nose up angle had unintentionally zoomed us up more than we realized in the midst of the more important task at hand.
The Boss closed with a “Well done, and don’t do that again”.
