I’ve had the opportunity over the course of my flying life to land with “an” engine shut down, which fact always made me glad that I had been issued two of them to go along with the rest of my FA-18. I did get a few hundred hours of single engine F-16 time down in Key West as an adversary pilot, and several hundred hours in single engine A-4′s there and in training.
You hear things in single engine jets that you’d be able to safely ignore in their multi-engine counterparts. Especially at night. “Night noises,” we’d call them, the bumps and whines of a mechanical contraption seem somehow magnified by the realization that you’re sitting on top of a single-point-of-failure, which is why God created ejection seats I guess.
If you lost a motor in the A-4, your only real option was to try and get it re-lit, so long as altitude permitted. My XO lost his motor alongside me one bright and sunny day near Marqueses Key in the Bay of Florida. We had plenty of altitude to work the problem, and like a good wingman, I talked him through the re-start checklist on the radio. It was something we were all required to memorize, but it can get kind of cramped and hectic in that formerly comfortable cockpit when the go-music stops, and a man might get forgetful. In any case it was useful to have a record of the proceedings on tape for the mishap board’s satisfaction if it came to that. Which it eventually did for my XO.
“Zoom climb, stores jettison, manual fuel control, throttle – idle, deploy ram air turbine, throttle off, ignition then idle,” and at this point I got off the checklist briefly to ask him, “How’s your fuel flow?”
“I’m not getting any,” he replied.
“Then I’ve got bad news,” said I because you need fuel flow, to go along with go-juice in the tank and windspeed to turn the turbine, you surely do. He punched out a bit later, having run out of airspeed, altitude and pretty much out of ideas. It was cool to watch in one of those “glad I’m not you” kinds of ways, especially when he got into his raft and onto his handheld radio and let us know he was OK. I tried to get a good visual fix on where the A-4 splashed in, if for no better reason than it was going to make a great place to find lobsters next season, but a few moments after it went in it was as though it had never existed and we never could find it again.
The F-16 came with two types of flameout approaches you were expected to attempt if the engine quit, so long as you had a suitable landing field in range and the right kind of weather. It had a hydrazine fired emergency power unit to run the flight controls once the engine-driven generator had tripped off line, and as I recall there were up to eight other redundant power sources, including a box containing a series of – no kidding – Eveready “A”-cell batteries.
One of the approaches was the straight-in, and that was all about airspeed, altitude and glide ratio. If you had the first two, the third came for free and there was very little drama to it. The overhead approach was little more exciting, it started over the field aligned to runway heading at 8100 feet above ground level, plus a 300 foot margin for every 1000 pounds of fuel or stores above 1000 pounds as I recall. From that perch you started a 15 degree nose low turn to downwind at 3000 feet or so and 210 knots, gear handle down abeam the landing zone, base turn at 1200 or 1300 feet with the wheels down and locked (“three green”) and a final approach with g on the jet that looked more like a strafe run to a naval aviator than any honest attempt to land a jet aircraft.
The round out took you from 200 knots down to 170-150, which is cooking on pretty high heat, but if you came in too slow or too low then you’d be hard pressed to make it to the landing surface, and that was considered very bad form. Faster isn’t necessarily better, because you’re supposed to be able to stop the jet in the distance remaining, and for all that the Viper had great brakes you could set them on fire by max performing with the wheels to make up for what you’d min performed with your airmanship. It was a lot of fun really, so much it almost felt like cheating.
We simulated the engine out condition by retarding the throttle to just above idle and feathering the speedbrakes out about 20 degrees or so. Jason is kind enough to send this vid showing an F-16 landing on a flameout approach without the benefit of simulation. He does a fine job from my perspective, especially considering the fact that his wingman hyperventilates a bit while trying to be of assistance – that can be a tad distracting.
Any landing you can walk away from.
And any landing where you can re-use the aircraft is perfect.
No joke about the wingy being distracting. The flameout pilot sounds like he’s doing a routine landing. Of course, isn’t that the fighter pilot creed: “You gotta look good, even when you’re going down”, or something like that?
Yep, I felt exactly the point where if I was trying to land I would be yelling at the wingie to shut the f*ck up!
Seem to remember that creed from Rhythms too – something like its better to die than to look bad
LOL…. “it should stop, no problem. thanks for the help”
Sounds to me like that pilot either has balls of steel, or the calmest voice-under-pressure I’ve ever heard. Outstanding landing!
In any airplane I’ve flown, it seemed as if the “night-noises” were much more audible over water, away from steel decks or long runways.
The “Lawn Dart” driver on the video sounded like a pro (all that was missing was the Govt. issued southern accent); but I couldn’t help hearing the rate of respiration that probably didn’t slow until the After Landing Checklist had been completed.
Any episode such as this that can be converted to, “TINS, there I was…” -is a good day of flying.
As I recall, the lost Scooter in question was in a large photo of three aircraft flying over the Marquesas, which sat behind the SDO desk. Not long after that incident, some creative type took a grease pencil and drew a line from the nose of the missing A-4 out, into a loop, then straight down into the water, with a nice splash at the end (I can’t remember if the drawing of the XO floating down in a parachute actually existed or is just part of my imagination). While a lot of people found it amusing, I don’t think the CO was one of them.
Jes a quick reference to the Space Shuttle post a day or so ago…..every landing in that hog is “dead stick”.And Messrs Martin and Baker absconded many,many,many years ago…….
Just sayin’
Saw that a while ago. Once I read an AF article about the history and lessons learned from F-16 power off landings. It’s happened many times I think.
The motor never quit running on me in the scooter and the rat gave me confidence just like everybody else PEL trained, but hey, I only got one engine in my car too!
What scared the bejeezes out of me was the procedure to egress if the escapac didn’t work. Something like: Disconnect from the seat (keep para), jett canopy, trim full nose down and hold stickback full, let go of stick and get launched forward over the nose into a manual D-ring para deployment. Every time I would visualize the it while studying them procedures I’d have to get a drink..
How come we couldn’t just roll inverted and drop out like the other jets?
B2
B2 —
Egads! Bailing out either way (inverted drop out or negative G pushover) sure sounds like a recipe for getting wrapped around the vertical stab as soon that ‘wall’ of fast moving air grabs hold of you. I guess you slow it down as much as practical, but …
Pass me the bourbon.
Wingman’s new callsign: MOTO
(Master of the Obvious) for clogging the airwaves with that “Now get it slowed down” call. Gee, ya think?
Surprised the pilot didn’t try to get the nose up and get a few rounds into him for that one.
I vividly recall the explaination from my flight insturctor, on my first lesson of aerobatic flying, of how to bail out of a Cessna.”After you jetison the door, undo your seat belt and just lean left and roll out of the airplane.Don’t hit your head on the wheel skirt, watch out for the horiz stab, and push away from the aircraft because you’re both falling at the same rate.”I’m thinking to my self, I’m never jumping out of this ariplane, today’s the day I’m gonna die!Of course, after the first couple of spins, it was too much fun and all that crap about hitting the wheel skirt was just a bad memory.
Wow, he NAILED the TDZ. I can’t land that precisely with a healthy engine!
Just for fun:
http://n466pg.blogspot.com/2006/11/blog-post.html
The wingman, likely younger and junior in rank to his lead, was doing what I assume he was trained to do in this situation proably for the first time. My inclination would be to cut him some major slack…lay off the “cheap shots” and give him some well deserved atta-boys…but then again I’m an un-cool boots on the ground guy not into taking cheap shots at the people I count on. Best
Can there possibly be anything more totally cool than flying upside down….excuse me, ahem…. I meant to say inverted? Watched that little video, the one thing it had going for it from my point of view was watching him flip over. That is sooooo cool.
See, now you can see just how uncool I really am.
Snake, you may not be into cheap shots at the people you count on (no doubt, a good life rule), but dare I say, I think you have snarking down to an art form. Just part of what makes you so darn lovable….
Gee Snake. The tone ain’t good.
I’m *offended* you consider aviator mind games “cheap shots”. We all got our own tribal mores I reckon. All the frogmen (don’t know any ARSOF) I know are worse on each other than aviators in a debrief!
Both have zero-defect instant death outcomes for non-hackers in common wouldn’t you say, actuarial-wise?. Consider ejection just another exfil.
B2
B2, I reckon I am truly sorry/amused/suprised/delighted/pleased…take your pick… that my comments offended your “tribal mores” and by reference all the “frogmen” ( read SEALS/UDTs ?) that you know… noble groups indeed. I’ve taken this anti-cheap shot position in the past and received similar responses, e.g…it’s our way…gallows humor…instant death…ready room grab-ass.. zero defects, et als and while I respect your tribes willingness, no glee, at never ever letting any shortcomming or an unfortunate mis-step go un-remembered by the hapless perpetrator,I cannot agree with it.
Different military cultures… maybe…an age thing… likely. I just know that I would never bad mouth or denigrate ( debrief or not ) any young trooper doing what he’s trained to do who in the earnest excitment and stress of the event happens to hyperventilate while helping to save my sorry ass. Best
Snake,
Different strokes of course but in order to provide further clarification, I would offer that the Ready Room barbs directed at shortcomings are all amongst 0-2′s and above with 2 years of flight school behind ‘em (older w/big egos). Plus, I would offer that all of em are selected to have the similar basic mental makeup of the folks (generally) who survived the Hanoi Hilton. Must be the AVSAB test.
Your reference to “any young trooper doing what he?
Snake,
Different strokes of course but in order to provide further clarification, I would offer that the Ready Room barbs directed at shortcomings are all amongst 0-2′s and above with 2 years of flight school behind ‘em (older w/big egos). Plus, I would offer that all of em are selected to have the similar basic mental makeup of the folks (generally) who survived the Hanoi Hilton. Must be the AVSAB test.
Your reference to “any young trooper doing what he’s trained to do” is the difference I think. I can respect that. 18-25 year olds definetly require different leadership techniques methinks.
re hyperventilating trooper: Sins of commission are rarely dwelled upon for us but Sins of omission are highly frowned upon. Same I’ll bet w/yours.
BTW, in my day, the debriefs were fairly brutal (civilian level description) but purely professional and received as such. The ribbing/chopping/falcon (D.S.) log stuff often came later, especially if any “wanking” about the issue was detected by peers!
At least that was my memory. Where I am now, I’ve got all these “soft skills” of course.
b2
Snake,
Interesting hug-a-thon between you and Bob.
I’m not sure I agree with you, I think the wingie was SENIOR to our intreped F-16 glider pilot. Lots of imperative kind of radio calls that didn’t really aid the situation.
Best-
Nose
I tend to agree with nose, without really knowing the dynamics. A truly junior wingman would have been more in the “take direction and exectute for me please” mode, while a peer might be hesitant to offer more than the occasional reminder. The comm from this wingman reminds me of a couple of USAF flight leads I’ve seen or heard on the net, guys who reach in and fly their wingman’s jet for ‘em.
Once again, it’s a safe landing, so it’s hard to be too critical. But the contrast between the voice of the “helpful” lead and his the stoic emergency pilot is the kind of things aviators notice, and tend to remark upon. We only laugh because it worked out.
Nose, Lex- I just wanted Snake and whoever reading this to know that while it may appear rough treatment amongst pilots that we in Naval Aviation (P-3′s notwithstanding
-can’t speak for the AF) don’t “Eat our Own Young”.
b2
B2,Thanks for the clarifiation… it’s edifying. Best
Circa 80/81 I was working departure at Kadena AB and we had an A-4 flame out, callsign Outlaw 19. Pilot was real cool about it, no panic, said we’re going swimming departure, call the choppers in. Had a couple on freq at the time and he was out of the water in about 10 minutes and on the way to the hospital. The lack of panic must be a single engine mindset.
KC
HI,
An air force pilot friend of mine gave me your website. I am writing a novel where one of my characters is an F-16 pilot. Anyway, I need for him to have some sort of mishap where he crashes upon takeoff in his F16 but does not get injured seriously. There will have to be some sort of investigation to add conflict. And then he will be found not at fault to resolves the conflict. I have some questions, if you would be willing to offer some ideas?
Thanks.