Searching for interesting Stories ... Uh-Oh's, if you like

And then there is this one.

Back in the late 70's a RAAF Mirage III pilot was on a hop one day when he got into trouble and had to bale out. He was duly picked up in one piece minus an expensive jet and returned to base. After a medical check and debrief he returned to the squadron mess where he was questioned by his fellow squadron mates. When the questions got to describing what it was like to eject from a Mirage in a spin ( the aircraft had suffered the notorious Atar 9C flameout routine I recall) he quickly replied, "f$%@ing windy!".

LEE.

About the same time frame as the fire warning light story:

During RIMPAC one year, COMPACAF was going to be flown out to a carrier and watch air ops, and observe the exercises overnight. The carrier flew an F-14 in to Hickam to pick him up. They had it taxi all the way to the VIP parking spot, where he was waiting. They parked, set the parking brakes, and all of a sudden everyone heard a muted *boom*. One of the main tires had blown.

They told the general that they had plenty of spares, it would just be a few hours to fly one in on an S-3 and change it. So the S-3 arrives, heads over to parking spot 4A, which was just a little ways behind the VIP parking. He parks, sets the brakes and *boom*, a main tire blows.

About this point my father looks at one of the carrier maintenance guys and asks "Do you have any helicopters with skids out there to fly a tire in?"

It turned out that the carriers run a super high air pressure in the tires, for when they slam into the deck. The taxi from 8L, where they would land, to anywhere farther than about 16 row on Hickam was so long that the brake heat would cause the plug in the valve stem on the tire to release and deflate the tire. This is a safety measure to keep hot brakes from causing the tire to explode.

When B-52s and F-117s would land in Honolulu, they'd have to land on 8R, which was the man made "Reef Runway". We'd have to go out there and recover the drag chutes and take them back to Hickam with us. On B-52s this was a big problem, because they'd stop in the first 1/3rd or so of the runway, and the recovery vehicles were at the high speed turn off at the very end of the runway. They'd have to come up on power and taxi all the way down to where we were waiting. They'd turn onto the turn off, drop the chute, the escort van would drop in behind them, and help them taxi back to Hickam while we got the chute.

One day we were sitting in his office, when my father got a call of a B-52 coming in on an unscheduled arrival with a hung missile. They had been firing Harpoons at one of the mothballed ships from Pearl Harbor over on Kauai (Pacific Missile Range at Barking Sands Naval Station) when one of the missiles misfired and wouldn't launch.

We got out to the Reef about 15 minutes before he landed. The escort van, fire trucks, and EOD were all out there with us. They were going to taxi to the high speed turn off, turn onto it and shut down the inboard engine pod, and let EOD safe the missile.

He landed safely, and got down to where we were sitting. EOD moved in, and I'm sitting there looking at the plane, with this malfunctioning Harpoon pointed right at our truck. I looked over at my father and said "Uh, do you think we can move the truck a little please? That's pointed right at my nose."

He laughed and moved us over to the other side of the plane. I never found out what caused the malfunction, but they were able to safe it, then offload it on Hot Cargo, which was right next to the EOD demo area.

Wasnt the B-52 tailgun radar guided? I dont see how it could just be on and powered on a parked plane.

There were several FCS systems used in the evolution of the B-52. By the G and H, they used dual radar antennas for search and track, but there were at least three other FCS units used prior to that. There were also three different turret designs for the tail. The initial design was for dual .50s, then they went to the quad .50s, then finally with the H, they went to the M-61.

As for it being on and powered, it was a post mission maintenance. They had the plane powered up checking everything out, including the tail gun. They were supposed to have removed all the ammunition from it, but left four rounds.

[edit on 4/7/2007 by Zaphod58]

Another "Oh dear" from Vietnam.

After a mission, the assistant crew chief went to disarm the flare system, prior to removing the flare box. To "pin" the box, you open a door on the back of the plane, and you clip a ground pin onto it. He pinned it, the box shorted, and the entire flare box ignited and dumped out of the plane. It lit up the flight line like high noon, with flares going every where on the ramp, burning holes all over the place, including the bottom of the airplane.

Zaphod you shouldn't be posting these stories on this forum...

You and your old man need to write a book on them, keep em coming


In the meantime still havent found the SR-71/ATC story but here is a personal one.

Back in 1988 I was a budding young RAAF Air Training Corps cadet. That year was Australia's Bicentenary and 1988 was also the 70th anniversary of the RAAF. As such a huge airshow was planned to be held at RAAF Richmond in western Sydney. Just about everythng you can imagine was there including the (then) Soviet Airforce with an AN-124 that did a virtual wingover above my head at the western end of the main runway.

Anyway I was working general cordon security and helping out in the warbird section whenever I could. A couple of my instructors were in the Historic Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) and had flown in their Neptune bomber. Whilst tagging along I was asked to help move what was then the only Spitfire on the Australian registry which had been rebuilt, owned and flown by Col Pay. We basically had to move it from the display line to the side of one of the western end taxiway's using time honoured people power. the aircraft was pushed off the concrete to the grass over a shallow dirt spoon drain. I thought at the time that might be a bit of a hazzard but didn't say anything and thought nothing more of it.

About an hour later it was time to get ready for the Spits aerial display so it was started and warmed up. Col inched the throttle and moved towards the taxiway, as he came towards the spoon drain I turned to my instructor and said " I think that ditch may be a bit of a.....", I never finished the sentence as I realised that the port gear leg wheel was caught by the ditch. Not being able to see the problem properly Col decided to apply a little more power, now in a tricycle undercart Cessna that may suffice but a V-12 Merlin taildragger is something else. Before he could react the Spit momentarily did it's best tricycle undercarriage impersonation before bighting that big four blade'r into the bitumen. My brain was about 1 1/2 seconds ahead of this and the last thing out of my mouth was the secondary title of this thread, " Oh S**t!". I can still see the shower of timber particle's as the last 4 inches of each blade disintegrated. The aircraft never made its display flight and remained at Richmond for months untill a new prop was manufactured in ironically Germany. To this day I feel a little guilty about not speaking up when a problem was apparent, which is probably why I am so carefull working around aircraft these days.

So the leason learned that day was, "when in doubt open your cake hole".

LEE.

Oh man, that's a painful one to hear. I hate when I hear about old warbirds being trashed. I'm glad they were able to fix it.

We used to get ATI DC-8s on military charter flights into Hickam all the time. One night one came in, and the ATI employee decided to plug the comm cord in before they shut down. The only problem? The cord plugs into the bottom of #3 engine.

He went running out in front of the engine, the suction yanked the plug right out of his hand, and the very large, very heavy comm plug with about 8 feet of cable went right through the engine. Sparks and flames EVERYWHERE. With no spare engines around, they ended up having to fly it back to Travis AFB in California on three engines, with about twice the normal fuel load. It was interesting watching them make what was essentially a two engine take off, with a huge fuel load. The Reef Runway is 10,000 feet with no over run at the end, and he used about 9,500 of it.

I still have never heard of a B-52 tail gun having IR guidance, I just dont think they had it, so I think that story maybe got exaggerated somewhere along the line. I think the tail gun guidance was radar in early models, with tv later added on.

A story I heard, cant vouch for personally but others have, is that in the late 70s, an F-105 stopped into Holloman AFB. Not many 105s were left, and this new airman that was going to fuel it never had seen one before. He topped off 7 tanks with JP4, unfortunately it only has 6 fuel tanks, the other was for water injection.

The result, I was told, was the back half of the aircraft being blown apart on takeoff roll.

Firepilot,

Thanks for the story, interesting one for sure!
However, may I suggest a few courses of action!?

1. Before claiming that the IR FCS on the BUFF was not available, do some research yourself before claiming that the story is embellished.

2. Review the profile of the person that posted the story (Zaphod58) and see whether or not he seems to be consistent and knows what he is talking about (He is and he does).

3. Just to keep things friendly and not get a debate started, send him a u2u to talk about it.........he's a chill guy with a wealth of knowledge and I promise you he would talk(we do on a very regular basis), otherwise you have a chance that he may be offended by your reply above?!?!

Anyway, just some thoughts, I appreciate your post and just want to keep a fun thread going in a fun way with no challenges is all!

Also, we need to try to get these things into a book of some sort..which I will receive royalties of course.

Peace, Mondo

[edit on 9-4-2007 by Mondogiwa]

To you all, if you have not already bookmarked this website, please do so..it's got funny stories sometimes as well as up front news regarding military aviation.

www.alert5.com...

Peace, Mondo

Firepilot, whether you believe or not, it doesn't really matter. That story came from my father, who spent almost 50 years working with the USAF on everything from Air Force One, to B-52s, to KC-135s, and just about everything in between. If he says it was an IR system, that's more than good enough for me. I never had the chance to work on the B-52s before the G, so I don't know enough about their fire control systems to go into great detail about them, but he was a crew chief on them starting with the D models, and worked them up through the H.

________________________________________________________________

We were having an airshow one year, and they were going to stop the B-52 and tow it into place, because there were planes in front, behind, and on one side. They KNEW there was no safe way to taxi it into position. My father told the tug driver to stand by, and walked out in front to marshal them into position.

He started them around the first turn, and everyone else out there stopped what they were doing, and started watching, because they knew the plan had been to tow it into position.

At Hickam, they only have a ground control tower, because they share the runways with Honolulu International Airport, so even the tower guys stopped to watch. Right about then the Assistant Wing Commander walked into the tower.

My father was down marshaling the BUFF around the second turn, and the AWC was up in the tower starting to panic about this point. It was an amazingly tight space to get a plane the size of a BUFF into. The AWC was up in the tower trying not to watch, but knowing he'd have to so he could do the accident report, because they all KNEW the BUFF was going to hit one of the planes around it.

To make a semi-short story shorter, after about 7 or 8 minutes, and four or five turns, 2 involving crabbing on the part of the BUFF, he was parked perfectly straight and centered in his parking spot, probably better than they could have towed him into place. The AWC came down and shook my fathers hand, then yelled at him for trying to give him a heart attack.

[edit on 4/9/2007 by Zaphod58]

I saw the aftermath of an F-4 crash. The pilot was comming in with an emergency so he had to catch the cable at the end of the runway. He came in and the tailhook grabbed the cable but the pilot thought he missed the cable. The pilot kicked in the afterburners to go around again, he got several feet off the runway when the cable ran tight. The F-4 was slammed to the ground and the main landing gear punched through the wings just missing the wing tanks. It was a sight to see that F-4 sitting there with the main gear struts sticking up through the wings.

One of our RF-4s was comming back from the Netherlands and had an ECM pod attched to the outboard rail. The RF-4 took off and when the plane got to about 1,000 feet the ECM pod fell off, since the the plane was trimmed up for the weight of the pod when it fell off the plane banked over, still being on takeoff roll and not having full power the pilot could not recover. Both pilots ejected from the plane, after ejecting the plane straightened back up and flew for a few more miles before setting down on the ground. The major damage was the wing tanks were ripped up on impact.

No offense, but you also told us a B-57 variant glided from Moscow to South Korea, which was impossible.

If you can find any evidence of an IR guidance system for the B-52 tail gun, I am all ears, or eyes in this case.

But anyways, a story told to me by an AH-1 pilot from Vietnam.

He was up at night on a mission, in an area some F-4s were inbound on a strike. One of those large parachute illuminator flares was shining brightly, and unfortunately those will swing somewhat, and are very bright. The underside of that chute is highly reflective and when it swings, the light gets pointed in that direction.

Anyways, these F-4s are inbound low and fast, and got blinded by the flare, and augered in.



I asked an F-4 pilot about it, he said he had not heard of that story, but that those flares can temporarily blind you in those situations, so it was definitely possible.

Originally posted by Mondogiwa

Also, we need to try to get these things into a book of some sort..which I will receive royalties of course.

That was my thinking, but I think the royalties should go to Zaph because without his input it will be a much thinner book. Even if you were the one to start this thread.

LEE.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Oh man, that's a painful one to hear. I hate when I hear about old warbirds being trashed. I'm glad they were able to fix it.

Yeah I seem to remember it cost about $25,000AUD in 1988 dollars. The owner is a bit of a legend and also restored a Mustang and P-40 but sold the Spit last year. He's one of those old time bush pilots/engineers running a crop spraying business in Western NSW with a million hours under his belt. He has a thousand and one stories. He test flew a replica Wright model A infront of Buzz Aldrin out at Narromine NSW year before last, which I witnessed. Mans gotta be brave to do that!

He went running out in front of the engine, the suction yanked the plug right out of his hand, and the very large, very heavy comm plug with about 8 feet of cable went right through the engine. Sparks and flames EVERYWHERE.

How many ground crewies have done that over the years I wonder? Better the comm cable than your head though, which has err happened.

A story I was told several years ago by a friend who had been a serviceman in the Falklands.

A Military Policeman had been put on traffic duty, with one of those hand-held radar speed guns. As the Falklands traffic at the time consisted mainly of a couple of Land Rovers and the occasional penguin, he didn't have a whole lot to keep him busy. At some point during his shift, he hears the sound of a jet, and looks up to see an RAF fighter (Phantom?) out of Mount Pleasant. Having one of those "I wonder.." moments, he points his radar gun at the jet and pulls the trigger. This results in the aircraft's threat warning system registering that someone has got a radar lock. The pilot, thinking that maybe one of the Rapier batteries is about to open fire, panics and goes into defensive manoeuvres, ejecting about £12,000-worth of flares and chaff...

I just wonder what would happen if you did that out at say, Nellis AFB??
The signature of the passive radar sytem in those guns emits a different frequency/wavelength that is distinguishable among aircraft of today....an older Phantom, I dunno!?

Peace, Mondo

I've got an interesting one, but it's got nothing to do with aircrafts.
So far i'm not getting any support on this one either...help!