Note: TransAsia ATR pilots turned off wrong
engine!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: dwskjerven@aol.com
Date: 02/05/15 22:08:00
Subject: Fwd: Air Asia crash
I think "Air Bags" suck and Delta
is making a big mistake ordering a bunch of them. Airbus's are designed
so that 3rd world countries can have an airline. God Bless Boeing and
Pratt & Whitney. David W. Skjerven
From: Wayne thron1@comcast.net
To: David Watson <flyingscot727@gmail.com>; Brad Engstrand <brad@motioncontrolsllc.com>; George Urbas <Gurbas1@yahoo.com>; Paul & Linda Wagner <lpwagner@earthlink.net>; DWSkjerven <DWSkjerven@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Feb 5, 2015 2:42 pm
Subject: Fw: Air Asia crash
To: David Watson <flyingscot727@gmail.com>; Brad Engstrand <brad@motioncontrolsllc.com>; George Urbas <Gurbas1@yahoo.com>; Paul & Linda Wagner <lpwagner@earthlink.net>; DWSkjerven <DWSkjerven@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Feb 5, 2015 2:42 pm
Subject: Fw: Air Asia crash
A friend recently retired from
Boeing in the B-737 Max program has comments on the Air Asia Airbus crash after
reading “From an Airbus Pilot” below.
Wayne T
From:Jack : Thursday, February 05, 2015
9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Air Asia crash
Good Morning Wayne,
Yep while we were at dinner I speculated that
the flight control computer might be a culprit. I know a bit about the
problems with the Airbus "fly by wire" system, because of my
early work on fly by wire at The Boeing Company (TBC). As you probably
know the pilot maintains ultimate control of the aircraft with the TBC system
and there is tactile (and visual when flying auto pilot) feedback. You
get none of that on an Airbus. Just a little "joy stick"
. The capatin "flys left handed and the first officer
"flys" right handed. And there is a flight envelope that
FCC (Flight Control Computers) maintains ultimate authority
within. At least now you can shut it off. Early versions you could not.
The abilty to shutoff the system only came about after an early A320 flew
itself into the Alps. If my memory is correct it was icing of the pito
tubes or aoa vanes.
We took a lot of input from airline pilots
like Denzel Washington (see his movie Flight?) when we designed TBC system.
Anyway it's the way things seem to
going. Cars too. I am not at all familiar the TBC 787. Our
latest system, but I have heard rumblings that flight crews don't really like
the fact that it will nearly fly itself and is highly automated. Still
the pilot has ultimate authority without going through a process of shutting
systems down. Pretty sure you can "Go Denzel" with it if you
have the need or get the urge.
Forgive the TBC humor given the grim
circumstances.
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne <thron1@comcast.net>
To: Jack & Lee Wahl <wahl777@aol.com>
Sent: Wed, Feb 4, 2015 3:30 pm
Subject: Fw: Fwd: Air Asia crash
From: Wayne <thron1@comcast.net>
To: Jack & Lee Wahl <wahl777@aol.com>
Sent: Wed, Feb 4, 2015 3:30 pm
Subject: Fw: Fwd: Air Asia crash
From: David Watson
Wayne:
I thought you might be interested in these informed
comments. Sounds like the engineers think they can fly airplanes better
than pilots!
I forward this as received. I have no experience with this manufacturer's products. However, I am astonished that anyone would create a computer driven flight control system that cannot be overridden more easily.
I forward this as received. I have no experience with this manufacturer's products. However, I am astonished that anyone would create a computer driven flight control system that cannot be overridden more easily.
Asia Airliner Crash
From an Airbus pilot:
I would like to try to clear the air (so to
speak) on this business of the Airbus and aerodynamic stalls as well as
un-commanded pitches up or down etc.
I have been a line and sim instructor for 2
major airlines and flown the Airbus 330-300 for over a decade; and want to tell
ANY PILOT OUT THERE who has not been through Airbus training; that a fly-by-
wire Airbus is not like any plane you ever flew; because you DO NOT FLY an
Airbus.
Believe it or not, the stick merely makes
suggestions to the primary flt. control computer (FCC). What the FCC does with
this input is translated and run thru it's preprogrammed data base and makes
it's interpretation of your command input to the 3 axis's control
surfaces. However, it has limits about what amount of pitch, roll, air
speed and G load it will allow. Also, importantly, the FCC also incorporates
inputs and information from the 3 ADCs (air data computers) which receive their
info from the pitot tubes and static ports on the outside of the fuselage, both
of which are heated to prevent ice contamination which can generate erroneous,
unreliable data input to the ADCs.
The FCCs program has other "safety"
protective functions which are designed to keep the plane in the limits
of the flight envelope.
I want to focus on the two protections of the
extreme ends of the speed envelope which I see as the probable causal factor
for the path this latest airbus took and probably the Air France fatal crash
off Brazil into the Atlantic.
NOTE: these two preprogrammed "protections"
take control of the plane away from the pilot! He has no means to reestablish
cockpit control inputs until the underspeed or overspeed sensing is over.
Protection#1: Stall warning-
If the FCC detects an impending stall (which is
max AOA or"Alpha Floor") the preprogrammed action is for the thrust
to go to TOGA (takeoff / Go around) max power thrust. The plane will continue
to climb at max thrust until the pilot can disconnect TOGA after the alpha
floor sensing is taken away.
Protection#2: Overspeed warning-
If FCC detects an overspeed, it will again
remove the pilot control inputs from the plane. It will level the wings, pitch
the nose up to 15 degrees and roll
the engines back to flight idle. It will not
let the pilots regain any control until it senses the overspeed condition is
over.
Conclusion:
As you can see, if the plane gets
"hijacked' by the computer due to an erroneous over/underspeed sensing;
and computer never senses the condition is over, the pilot can't regain control
of the aircraft.
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2015 14:42:03 -0500
Subject: A320 Emer A
************************
From the daily FlightSafety e-mail:
There is a recent development however that
relates to Airbus A320 series aircraft. A December 10, 2014, Airworthiness
Directive (AD 2014-25-51) describes how control of the aircraft could be lost
in flight as a consequence of icing of the angle-of-attack probes and an
interaction with the airplane's stall protection function.
Those probes act like small weather vanes on
the side of the aircraft and measure the angle at which the airplane moves
through the air -- the angle of attack. If the angle is too high the air can no
longer flow smoothly around the wings, resulting in an aerodynamic stall. The
acceptable range of angles
of attack is fairly small, and gets
considerably smaller at higher speeds, such as cruise speed.
Simply put, depending on the position of the
angle-of-attack probes when freezing occurs and the subsequent speed of the
aircraft, the system may be fooled into thinking that the aircraft is
approaching a stalled condition --even when it isn't. In response, the
airplane's stall protections pitch the aircraft's nose down to recover. This
erroneous pitch down cannot be over ridden by the pilots unless an emergency
procedure in the Airworthiness Directive is followed. All pilots flying this
model airplane should be aware of this.
The procedure instructs the pilots to shut down
two of the three air data computers to render the usual stall protection
inoperative and allow recovery of
the aircraft. Of course, there is no way, at
this stage of the investigation, to know if this played a part, but
investigators will certainly be looking for evidence of this phenomenon.
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 20148:29 PM
Subject: A320 Emergency AD
From: http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/553569-air-asia-indonesia-lost-contact-surabaya-singapore-8.html
See item #142
DATE: December 10, 2014
AD #: 2014-25-51
Emergency Airworthiness Directive (AD)
2014-25-51 is sent to owners and operators of Airbus Model A318, A319, A320,
and A321 series airplanes.
Background:
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA),
which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Community,
has issued Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2014-0266-E, dated December 9,
2014 (referred to after this as the Mandatory Continuing Airworthiness
Information, or the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on all Model A318,
A319, A320, and A321 series airplanes.
The MCAI states:
An occurrence was reported where an Airbus A321
aeroplane encountered a blockage of two Angle of Attack (AoA) probes during
climb, leading to activation of the Alpha Protection (Alpha Prot) while the
Mach number increased. The flight crew managed to regain full control and the
flight landed uneventfully.
When Alpha Prot is activated due to blocked AoA
probes, the flight control laws order a continuous nose down pitch rate that,
in a worst case scenario, cannot be stopped with backward side stick inputs,
even in the full backward position. If the Mach number increases during a nose
down order, the AoA value of the Alpha Prot will continue to decrease. As a
result, the flight control laws will continue to order a nose down pitch rate,
even if the speed is above minimum selectable speed, known as VLS.
This condition, if not corrected, could result
in loss of control of the aeroplane.
To address this unsafe condition, Airbus
***[has] developed a specific Aircraft Flight Manual (AFM) procedure, which has
been published in AFM Temporary Revision (TR)No. 502.
For the reasons described above, this AD
requires amendment of the applicable AFM [to advise the flight crew of
emergency procedures for abnormal Alpha Prot].
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Kenneth
Thomas kenandsherrill@gmail.com
To: Dave Skjerven <DWSkjerven@aol.com>
Sent: Tue, Jan 27, 2015 2:54 pm
Subject: Fwd: World War II aircraft and airmen-numbers and more numbers-manufactured, lost.
To: Dave Skjerven <DWSkjerven@aol.com>
Sent: Tue, Jan 27, 2015 2:54 pm
Subject: Fwd: World War II aircraft and airmen-numbers and more numbers-manufactured, lost.
Dave; ORD guys may find this interesting if not already seen?? Ken
Thomas
Subject: FW: World War II aircraft and airmen-numbers and more
numbers-manufactured, lost.
Date: January 27, 2015 9:59:34 AM PST
World War II aircraft and
airmen-numbers and more numbers-manufactured, lost.
WORLD WAR II AIRCRAFT
A
government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the
support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw
-- George Bernard Shaw
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: David Bina
dbina@comcast.net
To: David Bina <dbina@comcast.net>
Sent: Sun, Jan 25, 2015 2:26 pm
Subject: F-4 Phantom
To: David Bina <dbina@comcast.net>
Sent: Sun, Jan 25, 2015 2:26 pm
Subject: F-4 Phantom
Might be easier to view by clicking on this link, at least all the
images show up
In Vietnam, the U.S. Navy used the F-4 for
ground attack. (US Navy via D. Sheley)
What Couldn’t the F-4 Phantom Do?
A tribute to McDonnell’s
masterpiece fighter jet.
AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE |
MARCH 2015
MARCH 2015
First,
they tried an F-104. “Not enough wing or thrust,” recalls Jack Petry, a
retired U.S. Air Force colonel. When NASA engineers were launching rockets at
Florida’s Cape Canaveral in the 1960s, they needed pilots to fly close enough
to film the missiles as they accelerated through Mach 1 at 35,000 feet. Petry
was one of the chosen. And the preferred chase airplane was the McDonnell F-4
Phantom.
“Those
two J79 engines made all the difference,” says Petry. After a Mach 1.2 dive
synched to the launch countdown, he “walked the [rocket’s] contrail” up to the
intercept, tweaking closing speed and updating mission control while camera
pods mounted under each wing shot film at 900 frames per second. Matching
velocity with a Titan rocket for 90 extreme seconds, the Phantom powered
through the missile’s thundering wash, then broke away as the rocket surged
toward space. Of pacing a Titan II in a two-seat fighter, Petry says:
“Absolutely beautiful. To see that massive thing in flight and be right there
in the air with it—you can imagine the exhilaration.”
***
For
nearly four decades of service in the U.S. military, the Phantom performed
every combat task thrown at it—almost every mission ever defined.
“All we
had to work with at the beginning was a gleam in the customer’s eye,” said
James S. McDonnell of the Phantom’s inception. In 1954, the ambitious founder
of McDonnell Aircraft personally delivered to the Pentagon preliminary sketches
based on the U.S. Navy’s request for a twin-engine air superiority fighter. The
Navy green-lighted McDonnell’s concept, as well as a competing offer from
Chance-Vought that updated the F8U Crusader.
Revetments
at an air base in Da Nang sheltered F-4s from mortar and rockets. (National
Museum of the USAF)
In an
area of McDonnell’s St. Louis, Missouri factory known as the advanced design
cage—a cluster of three desks and a few drafting boards partitioned off with
drywall topped with chicken wire—just four engineers worked on the airplane
that would propel naval aviation into the future. As the engineers worked, the
Navy clarified its concept of air superiority: The service wanted a two-seat,
high-altitude interceptor to neutralize the threat Soviet bombers posed to
America’s new fleet of Forrestal-class super-carriers. Now designated F4H-1,
the project soon engulfed the entire resources of “McAir,” as the company
was known. By 1962, F-4 program manager David Lewis would be company president.
McDonnell’s
and the Navy’s design philosophy assumed the next war, not the last. The F-4’s
rear cockpit was there for a backseater to handle what was sure to be a heavy
information load. For the air-to-air encounters of tomorrow, gunnery was
supplanted by radar-guided missiles. Though not strictly solid state, the
airframe was stuffed with state of the art: Westinghouse radar, Raytheon
missile fire control, advanced navigation systems, and an analog air-data
computer. A network of onboard sensors extended nose to tail.
On the
factory floor, integrating 30,000 electronic parts and 14 miles of wiring gave
troubleshooters a fit—and job security. Cheek-by-jowl components generated
clashing sources of electromagnetic energy. Voltage wandered wire to wire,
producing crazy glitches: Gauges displayed 800 gallons when the fuel tanks were
empty. Just how convoluted the glitches could get was demonstrated when
baffling control losses were traced to a random match between the pitch of one
test pilot’s voice in the headset mic and the particular resonance of a signal
controlling autopilot activation.
After the
F-4 eliminated the F8U-3 in a competitive fly-off, George Spangenberg, an
official in the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, declared: “The single-seat fighter
era is dead.” Though its General Electric J79 engines advertised its arrival
with a smoke trail visible 25 miles away—a Phantom calling card that would take
two decades to engineer out—the first F-4 production models rolled off
McDonnell’s assembly line with Mach 2 capability as standard equipment and a 1,000-hour
warranty. Delivered to California’s Naval Air Station Miramar in December 1960
as a fleet defender purpose-built to intercept high-flying nuclear foes, the
massively powered, technology-chocked F-4 seemed to herald the same break from
1950s orthodoxy as John F. Kennedy’s torch-has-been-passed inauguration speech,
then only weeks away.
Navy
aviators of the early 1950s made do with jet aircraft hamstrung by the
requirements for carrier landings. “I wouldn’t say I really aspired to fly the
[McDonnell] F3H Demon,” says Guy Freeborn, a retired Navy commander, of the
clunky subsonic he once had to eject from. “But then, one day, here was this
beautiful new F-4 sitting right next to it.” Suddenly, carrier-based fliers
like Freeborn—who would spend two Vietnam combat tours in the front seat of a
Phantom—found themselves sole proprietors of the hottest fighter on Earth.
The new
jet took some getting used to. Getting F-4s to fly and fight required a team
effort: a pilot up front and a radar intercept officer (RIO) behind. The ethos
of the solitary hunter-killer, not to mention the ability to single-handedly
grease precarious landings on pitching carrier decks, fostered a strong DIY
culture among Navy fighter pilots. How to process the notion of a RIO (aka “guy
in back,” aka “voice in the luggage compartment”), who wasn’t even a pilot,
looking over your shoulder?
Aerial
combat in Vietnam had a clarifying effect on pilots’ attitudes toward RIOs. “I
loved it,” says John Chesire, who flew 197 combat missions in the Phantom
during two tours in Vietnam. “We split our duties, and he kept me out of
trouble. Going into combat, the workload was so high that I really relied on
the guy behind me.”
Flying
into combat without a shooting iron was another matter. “That was the biggest
mistake on the F-4,” says Chesire. “Bullets are cheap and tend to go where you
aim them. I needed a gun, and I really wished I had one.”
“Everyone
in RF-4s wished they had a gun on the aircraft,” says Jack Dailey, a retired
U.S. Marine Corps general and director of the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C.
McDonnell’s
earliest concept included interchangeable nose sections to readily convert a
standard F-4 into the RF-4B, a camera-equipped reconnaissance aircraft. The
aircraft’s most photo-friendly asset, however, was speed. RF-4Bs flew alone and
unarmed deep into unfriendly airspace. “Speed is life,” Phantom pilots liked to
say.
In the
front seat of a Marine Corps photo-recon Phantom on more than 250 missions,
Dailey was tasked to support Marines on the ground with film and infrared
imagery. “We were trying to track movement of the Viet Cong coming down the Ho
Chi Minh Trail,” he says. “They moved their trucks a lot at night. We could fly
along a road and pop flash cartridges and catch them out in the open.”
The recce
pilots in RF-4s had good reason to wish for a gun: The focal length of the
RF-4’s camera lens and the required photo coverage imposed a flight regime that
didn’t include evasive action. “For photographic purposes, they wanted you
flying straight and level at about 5,000 feet,” says Dailey. The predictable
flight path and the absence of defensive weapons drew enemy calibers from
anti-aircraft artillery down to small arms. “We got hosed down every day,” says
Dailey. Often, ground forces simply used barrage fire—large groups firing
rifles and other side arms into the sky simultaneously. Dailey’s Phantom was
nailed on nine occasions. A rifle round once penetrated the cockpit, narrowly
missing him. Another time he landed with so much engine damage “you could see
light shining through.”
Naval
aviators were rudely initiated into an F-4 idiosyncrasy: As airplane and deck
parted company, the Phantom’s nose initially rose slowly. And with a bit
of speed, the nose could over-rotate to a near-stall attitude if not
controlled. “It got pretty wild,” says Chesire. “It was always lots of fun to
watch new guys take off.”
The
snappy response of the J79 turbojets made one aspect of landing on a carrier
safer. Earlier engines had often lagged behind urgent power requests. In a
memorable moment landing on the USS Midway, Chesire realized that
his tailhook had failed to engage an arresting cable—after he’d already fully
idled back both engines (a rookie mistake). The Midway’s deck
camera recorded his Phantom plunging off the end of the carrier. He slammed the
throttles forward. Instead of a large splash, the F-4 reappeared—“going
straight up, in full afterburner,” says Chesire—as the J79s delivered
just-in-time thrust.
***
Combat
air patrol missions were proactive: Instead of escorting or defending,
F-4s went looking for trouble. MiG pilots with North Vietnam’s air force were
happy to oblige. Part of a two-Phantom patrol to waylay Hanoi-based MiGs, Guy
Freeborn launched from the USS Constellation on August 10,
1967. “We were hungry,” says Freeborn, who had never encountered a MiG. Lurking
beneath a thin cloud layer, “we figured we might be pretty close to their path.
Then, holy crap, here come three MiG-21s out of the clouds right over us.”
The
Phantoms shifted into afterburner and sped to 575 mph to develop enough energy
to turn aggressively. F-4s hemorrhaged speed while turning—“It was a big, dirty
airplane in terms of drag,” says Freeborn—so MiGs could generally out-turn the
Phantoms. But the Russian fighter’s fancy footwork didn’t often trump the F-4’s
brute, drag-strip acceleration.
The lead
Phantom launched two Sparrow missiles, which lost radar lock on the MiGs.
Freeborn had other issues beside the finicky, radar-guided Sparrow: Behind him
sat a RIO with no combat experience. “I felt I couldn’t rely on him to stay
cool, get a radar lock-up, and do what he had to do,” he recounts. As the
Phantoms rapidly closed the gap, he chose “Heat” on his front-seat weapons
selector and launched an AIM-9 Sidewinder. The streaking heat-seeker locked on
to and hit one of the MiGs. Though smoking and trailing fuel, the fighter
remained airborne. Before Freeborn could unleash the coup de grâce, the pilot
in the lead F-4 finished off the MiG with a Sidewinder. “I told my backseater,
‘Look! That bastard just shot my MiG!’ ”
With only
one target remaining, Freeborn quickly triggered another Sidewinder, which
promptly misfired. “I said, ‘Oh man, it’s just not my day.’ ” He cycled the
weapon selector once more and lit the next AIM-9. “That one blew him to
pieces,” he says. He later discovered that neither MiG pilot had survived.
The third
MiG-21? Last seen miles away, “streaking back towards Hanoi,” says Freeborn.
***
Before
stealth, there was night. Darkness provided cover for the “Night Owls” of
the Air Force 497th Tactical Fighter Squadron, based at Ubon Ratchathani,
Thailand, during the Vietnam War. “The first time I walked into the squadron, I
noticed everything was painted black,” says Doug Joyce, today a retired Air Force
colonel.
Missions
centered on tactical interdiction and forward air control. Standard strikes
were two-craft affairs. “We seldom flew in big gaggles like the day guys did,”
Joyce explains. “Nor could we do a lot of jinking around as we came down the
chute on a bomb run, because of the risk of spatial disorientation in the
dark.” From Phantoms with painted-black bellies, Night Owls dispensed both dumb
bombs and laser-guided ones, as well as cluster bombs. Looming terrain and
ground fire posed dangers: “37mm anti-aircraft was the biggest threat,” says
Joyce. “When they couldn’t see you, they’d just shoot everywhere. If there was
any moonlight at all, of course, that F-4 would show up as a big black shape in
the moonshine.”
One of
the premier graveyard-shift gigs—reserved for the most experienced Owls—was
supporting B-52s on bombing raids to Hanoi. “It was pretty breathtaking,” says
Joyce, describing pyrotechnics in the night skies in the spring of 1972. “At
the very beginning, even with Wild Weasel support, they shot hundreds of SAMs
[surface-to-air missiles] at us. At the altitudes the B-52s were at, we were
close to the service ceiling of the F-4. You didn’t want to use afterburner
because you just lit yourself up. And you couldn’t maneuver laterally in these
formations because there were other airplanes next to you.”
Plumes of
metallic strips called chaff were released to distract radar-guided SAMs fired
at the B-52s. However, Joyce says it had the opposite effect on the F-4s
dispersing it: “Here we are in this very heavily defended SAM environment, and
we’re appearing on enemy radar screens at the pointy end of a bright stream of
chaff.” It amounted to an arrow pointing out the Phantom to North Vietnamese
missile operators (see “The Missile Men of North Vietnam,” Dec. 2014/Jan.
2015).
***
“I always
said if you were worried about dying, you weren’t doing a good job,” says
Chuck DeBellevue, a retired Air Force colonel. He wasn’t much of a worrier. In
Vietnam, DeBellevue flew 220 missions in the F-4 and shot down six MiGs,
becoming America’s highest scoring ace of the war.
In 1963,
a land-based variant of the Phantom emerged from the McDonnell assembly line.
Optimized for both ground support and air superiority, the Air Force F-4C was
distinguished by flight controls in both front and back seats and was primed
for manual “down the chute” dive-bombing and tactical interdiction. In time,
the Air Force bought twice as many F-4s as the Navy.
A pilot
surplus put DeBellevue into the F-4 back seat for duty as a weapons systems
officer. Unlike their Navy counterpart, the initial backseaters in Air Force
F-4s were pilots. However, the Air Force soon decided that navigators were
better suited to be F-4 WSOs—or “Wizzos.” “A lot of pilots were not really
happy going into the back seat,” says DeBellevue. “But, as a navigator, I was
just pleased as pink.” In November 1971, he was assigned to the 555th Tactical
Squadron at Udorn, Thailand.
DeBellevue
recalls that on the day he reported, he got a blunt greeting from the 555th
scheduler. “He looked at me and said, ‘You’ve got one year—if you live.
Tomorrow morning you start on the dawn patrol.’ ” As a weapons systems officer,
DeBellevue flew nearly 100 missions deep into North Vietnam.
“Crossing
the fence into North Vietnamese airspace, you’d start psyching up,” says
DeBellevue. Once the F-4 engaged an enemy, he says, “nothing that was happening
outside the cockpit was important to me.” With an impending life-or-death event
looming at near supersonic speeds, he narrowed his focus to managing weapons
systems, acquiring the enemy aircraft on radar, calculating direction of
intercept, and feeding the frontseater what he needed to know.
On
September 9, 1972, DeBellevue was paired with pilot John Madden on a patrol
mission to North Vietnam. Afterward, he was to make one of the last flights
leaving Hanoi. “We crossed the Red River and I picked up two blips on the radar
at 11 o’clock,” he recalls. Immediately he knew what they meant: “MiG-19s, a
very dangerous airplane,” he says. “We couldn’t outrun—we didn’t have gas to
run. So we had to fight. We turned on them.” Both MiGs jettisoned fuel tanks,
ready to rumble. “They turned into us, and the fight was on,” he says.
“We fired
two Sidewinders at the trailing MiG,” he says. “One hit him, and he dropped out
of the fight.” DeBellevue couldn’t see that the enemy had in fact crashed and
burned, officially making him an ace. “But the other guy was turning hard into
us anyway, so we put all our attention on him,” he says. The F-4 launched a
heat-seeker, which immediately soared out of sight. “It looked like it was
heading for the sun, which isn’t good news,” he says. “Even from the back seat,
I could see the MiG, and by this time he was really making angles on us.”
A streak
entered his field of view: The errant Sidewinder had rejoined the battle. It
ended up in the MiG’s afterburner. “He rolled out wings-level, and then rolled
inverted” says DeBellevue, of the MiG’s pilot. “He was at about twelve or
fifteen hundred feet when he started a split-S. The first 90 degrees was
perfect. After that—he turned to dust.”
Even as
he was being toasted at the officers’ club the night of his fifth and sixth
victories, “they handed me transfer papers and told me to be ready to leave at
six the next morning,” he says. The Air Force removed aces from combat.
Stateside, after graduating from pilot training, he was soon in the Phantom
again—this time the front seat. When he retired from the Air Force 26 years
later, Chuck DeBellevue was the last American ace on active duty.
***
Jim
Schreiner had flown Air Force A-10s and was facing a desk job in 1990 when
he was offered one more flying tour. He suggested a General Dynamics F-16 or a
McDonnell Douglas F-15, the elite fighters at the time. In his book Magnum!
The Wild Weasels in Desert Storm, coauthored with Brick Eisel, he described
his assignment flying 1969-vintage F-4Gs instead. “It was still a fighter,” he
says today, “but not exactly what I was thinking of.”
Twenty
years after SAMs downed more than 200 American warplanes in Vietnam, “Wild
Weasel” pilots like Schreiner flew upgraded Phantoms into SAM-filled skies
during Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. This time, the outcome was very
different: Not a single U.S. aircraft was downed by an Iraqi radar-guided SAM.
The Wild
Weasel F-4s were fitted with an AN/APR-47 radar-homing-and-warning system,
which enabled them to sniff out missile sites. Also, the back-seat
configuration was altered to accommodate additional radarscopes and inertial
navigation equipment. The Weasel’s most pertinent weapons were two or four
AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation missiles, designed to follow the SAM radar
beam right back to its origin.
At 2 a.m.
on the first night of the war, Schreiner and his backseater, Dan Sharp, one
half of a two-aircraft mission, quickly found the Iraqi SAM sites. Early on,
North Vietnamese SAM operators had connected the dots (energized radar equals
missile exploding through the roof) and learned to keep their radar powered
down until the last moment before launch. “The Iraqis hadn’t yet figured out
that it wasn’t a good idea to have the sites up,” says Schreiner. “So they had
them all turned on.” The result was a “target-rich environment,” says
Schreiner. “Lots of things to look at and shoot at.”
In the
cockpit, he watched as each anti-radiation missile found its mark, and the icon
representing a SAM site on the Phantom’s radar screen was replaced by a symbol
indicating where it used to be. Air-to-air threats were a
non-issue—AIM-7 Sparrows carried for self-defense were never used. “There was
never any reason to,” says Schreiner. “Had there been any threat, we had plenty
of F-15s in the air to take those out.” None of the Wild Weasels were hit by
anything larger than small-caliber ground fire. “We continued to fly until they
called a halt to the air war,” says Schreiner.
***
“yes,
68,000 is well above the F-4’s operating range,” says Jack Petry. “We
weren’t supposed to go above 50-, so we didn’t tell anybody.” That day in
January 1965, while he and his back seater, Captain Ray Seal, were chasing the
Titan II rocket, their Phantom’s “smash”—flight energy—pushed the space
program’s comfort zone.
In his
helmet headset, Petry could hear that the range controller at Cape Canaveral
was getting nervous: “Break it off,” the controller repeated.
“Negative,”
Petry replied, assuring the controller that his finite momentum wouldn’t mess
with the missile. “The whole idea was to keep the airplane pointed at the
missile,” he says. “So we stayed with it just as long as we had the airspeed—to
keep the cameras rolling.”
For a
fleeting moment, his altimeter eclipsed 68,000 feet. “We had virtually no
energy left,” says Petry. “We weren’t flying anymore at that point—just riding.
But the F-4 stayed quite stable.”
The Titan
leaned into its trajectory and barreled downrange. Petry broke away inverted
and maneuvered to restore airflow over the wings. He and his backseater kept
Gemini II in the F-4’s camera sights, he says, “until we fell out of the sky.”
Read more: http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/what-couldnt-f-4-phantom-do-180953944/#ixzz3PryYveP1
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: robert moser
Date: 1/31/2015 9:15:29 AM
Subject: Fwd: This is Why We Fly!
This is exactly "Why We Fly!" We have the best seat in the
house!
This is a 5 min video of approach to Queenstown, NZ in the early
morning.
Pilots can see more spectacular scenery in a week, that most people
NEVER experience or see in a lifetime!
Queenstown, New Zealand (NZQN & ZQN Airport Codes) on the Southwest
end of the South Island of New Zealand.
Truly spectacular scenery. The Approach comes in over Lake Wakatipu
and Milford Sound to land at the airport.
It was sped up for effect but truly representative. He knew where he
was the whole time in the clouds, don’t try this at home!
I’ve flown into Christchurch, NZ back in the USAF (1971). It is about
295 miles (475km) NE of Queenstown.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Marty
A Pilot’s View: Queenstown, New Zealand …
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