THE REST OF THE STORY……….
Spelling correction from earlier “Eglin” vs “Elgin”.
So there we were zooming up toward this Bomarc that was already at altitude and closing at an incredibly fast rate. The Bomarc was at Mach 2.5 and we were just over Mach 1.0, with the preplanned intention of being at 1.5 or greater so we would have plenty of fly up energy to shoot this thing in the face. Well, we didn’t. When lead let the pair of Falcons go, we were pitched up 45 degrees or more. That didn’t sit well with the two AIM-4s. Our pitch attitude was more than they could handle, resulting in them corkscrewing into the wild blue, well behind the Bomarc, that passed us like we were sitting at a bus stop waiting for the 3:05.
About that time, this thick white contrail starts flowing out of my bud’s tail pipe and he states that he’s lost his generator. My casual reply “I think you lost more than that”. While calmly stating “ahh sXXt”, he smoothly rolls his big iron triangle over on its back and pulls the nose down to get into a good air start envelope, with me dutifully hanging on his wing. We reach an appropriate altitude and airspeed for him to attempt and air start. It didn’t start. Neither did the next four attempts. Since we are about 120 miles away from Tyndall AFB, things were getting a bit tense, not so much for me but, I was there in spirit. Since this wasn’t working, he went to a normal ground start procedure. Bingo! The great white contrail sputtered and disappeared. His engine spun up and reacted normally from there on. Out of an abundance of caution, he declared an emergency and we proceeded to high key for an SFO (simulated flame out) pattern. The text book version of an SFO was to arrive over the approach end of the runway at 12,000 feet above the runway, extend the landing gear, dive at the runway in a 360 turn at 280 knots, aim for the first third of the runway, and touchdown two minutes later. We did all of the above with me hanging on the wing enjoying the ride. As we rolled out on final and it was clear he had the runway well in hand I went around for some extra flying time.
After parking the jets, we went to maintenance debrief. He had way more to debrief than I but, we were temporary heroes for getting the jets back on the ground without scraping the paint or making anyone bleed (Orville & Wilbur’s first two rules of aviation). Of course, our escapade attracted all the squadron leadership and some of the Wing strap hangers. Our Ops Officer asked what our highest altitude was as we rolled over and pulled down. “Oh, not more than 50,000 feet boss!” (Ahhh, yeah, we were studying our altimeters while in an extreme nose up attitude with one of our spare engines flamed out and rolling over to get quickly headed downhill.) You see, it was strictly forbidden to fly above 50,000 feet without a pressure suit since the TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) was nil (5 seconds) in the event of a rapid depressurization of the cockpit. With a flamed out engine, that’s a very real possibility. With all the ream of questions and debriefs complete, we headed VFR direct to the O’Club and started beer consumption, for no particular reason, other than we could.
The next day, he and I rolled into our TDY squadron to brief for the days flying fun. Our Ops O was waiting for us and spirited us into an empty briefing room and shut the door. Ru Ro! He asks again, “What was your max altitude yesterday?” “Not above 50,000 feet, boss” we both echoed. He proceeded to tell us about a rudimentary flight data recorder that the fire control computer had, that only the maintenance crews ever messed with or knew about. He proceeded to tell my bud that he was much closer to 60,000 feet than 50. He then turned my direction and advised that I was well above 55,000 feet but not as close to 60 as my fearless leader was. In closing, with a smile on his face, he chastised us with “Nice job. Don’t do that again!” Yes sir!
