There’s something almost addictive about high speed, low level flying. Watching the world unfold beneath you close at hand is undeniably thrilling, and the blur of the scenery as you get lower and lower is a great adrenaline rush.
Truth be told, I was never as big a fan of low level navigation as some of my buddies in naval aviation. There were guys who lived for flying low.
I’ve had my fun down below 500 feet, don’t get me wrong. But I was never as avid about it as some I knew. It was an important skill to maintain – terrain masking can get you close to certain well-defended targets without getting lit up by SAMs and AAA. But to me, a low level flight at 200 feet was like a night carrier landing: I was always acutely aware of impending mortality. The bad guys might get you if you flashed some thigh. The ground was less forgiving.
It focuses you, being three seconds away from an irrecoverable attitude. Puts you in prey mode, rather than predator. You have to be hyper-vigilant when the ground has a Pk of 1.0.
I was one of those fliers who generally preferred to stay in the middle of the air whenever I could – I tried to stay away from the edges. I wanted a way out, should something go awry. I didn’t mind a few moments of contemplation when an engine decided to play the fool, just for one example.
I might have all started back in the training command. We cut VFR sectional charts in strips, laid speed, time and distance vectors on the chart. Were taught to turn on time if we missed the visual checkpoint.
My first low level flight in the T-2C Buckeye was with Lucky Jack, who was four-fifths of his way to being a black ace. I studied the hell out of my first strip chart, and flew a good flight. We had a second flight immediately thereafter. Two strip charts was one too many for me to memorize, and the second flight didn’t go nearly as well. We didn’t have an INS in those jets, and one farm on the flat Mississippi countryside looked much the same as any other.
My next instructor at low level nav had the reputation of being basically a lunatic. He was a divorced Marine captain with a brash attitude, contempt for his students and no apparent fear of death. His psychological profile fit the classic “failing aviator”, the guy who had something to prove to everyone else, the guy whose highest aspiration was to be known as the “best pilot in the squadron.” Too many guys like that have augered in trying to keep the plates of their professional life spinning at high velocity even as their personal lives fell apart.
The senior students spoke in whispered tones about the time he’d taken the jet from a student and flown beneath a bridge spanning the Blackwater River. Before I flew with him I wrote out my first will. Not because I thought I would die that day. Because I thought I might.
This was well before the Navy adopted “human factors councils” to evoke the gossip swirling around the small town of a squadron that somehow never quite burbled up to the mayor. You sucked it up, strapped it on, hoped for the best. And wrote your will.
It all culminated years later in night low levels under night vision goggles at 200 feet in mountainous terrain. The strange truth of the matter was that, because the resolution of the NVDs increased as you got lower, you actually felt more comfortable at 200 feet than at 500. Of course, I knew of a few guys who died very comfortably when they neglected their mission cross-check times. If you had three seconds between straight and level to windscreen full of dirt, you had to sandwich navigation, radar work, RWR awareness and fuel/engine scans – not to mention formation, in a two-ship – between glimpses at your flight path. I mostly shed that other stuff in favor of not hitting the ground, and was always happy to point the nose at the moon and climb to the local obstacle clearance altitude when it was time to knock it off.
I was put in mind of all of this by reading the NTSB report on Steve Fossett‘s mishap . The millionaire adventurer took off in Decathlon and never returned. The thrust of the report was that he took of from a private Nevada strip for a “Sunday drive”, was seen 9 miles from the airfield still at 150-200 feet above ground level, climbed over the eastern Sierras and turned his IFF off a few minutes before the primary contact faded. Investigators theorized that he got caught in downdraft that exceeded the climb capability of his Decathlon at high density altitude. He had a 300 foot per minute rate of climb available to him, and it looks like that wasn’t enough.
The guy was an extremely experienced pilot, so he probably he thought he knew the risks he was taking on. People usually do. I doubt Mr. Fosset took to the sky last year thinking he was going to die. I wonder if he thought that he might.
Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.
— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. Circa early 1930′s
Some other sites are questioning the FAA report based on what the remains of the airframe/ engine (separated by 150′) showed re striking terra- proponets say the rate shows more that 1K/min rate of de, vice 300′/min rate of climb; indicating pilot incapacitation. At 14k feet alt, with no O2, was he hypoxic/disoriented/out prior to impact?
Lex is right about low-levels @200′AGL. Just takes a twitch.Shortly after I left my Squadron lost a bird down in Incirlik doing low-levels in/over the mountains–best est. was determined that the stab-aug sys.malfunctioned and put a massive spurious forward-stick input into the controls and they went right in in a heartbeat–no radio calls.
Lex,
Well said. In the 27 + years I have had a license, I have lost several friends to CFIT (controlled flight into terrain).
I was able to fly with a fellow (an AA B767 Capt now) who had a “ground level waiver” from the FAA. This means he could conduct aerobatics below the 500 foot clear of obstacles level we all understood was a loow as you could fly unless landing or taking off. My friend also had access to a Starduster II with inverted fuel and oil not to mention 220 HP, fuel injection, chutes and brand new nav/comms with David Clark headsets/boom mikes/push to talk, and five point harnesses.
We did explore the lower levels over the irrigation canals of central Florida, inverted.
This is where I was along for the ride mostly. As a young man, my friend grew up on a farm where his dad and uncle owned a crop dusting operation. To him, flying low was natural. By the time he got to college he had more time upside down than most of us did straight and level. I took my first 10 hours of aerobatic training from this guy. Much of it in the Starduster II, some in a Aeronca Champ and some in a Citabria. Not quite an F-18 but lots of fun nonetheless.
Airmail/
LOL! My 1st civilian-contract IP in AF plt. tng. in C/T-172s at Laughlin in Del Rio was an old Texas ex-crop duster!
Lex:
Think about us NFO’s. We had to trust that guy on our left implicitly. Some guys you trusted like a brother. Another we passed around a name tag that fit on our flight suit: “I survived [put on tag with various numbers here] low levels with XXXXXX” A very experienced former A-7 guy who felt very low ingress was the key to survival, then would roll over ridges, giving huge wing flashes. Only guy who ever made me wonder if I’d remembered to pay my life insurance bill. And went west in a totally unrelated mishap when the engine of the RV he was flying quit over an undercast.
Early in my transition to the Intruder we went on one route where they very deliberately have the BN pull his head out of the hood and go by a still blackened streak along the very shallow rise perpendicular to a ridge line; a classic case of CFIT into very gently upsloping ground. Lesson learned. Night terrain clearance was the most…focusing. One trip through the Cascades we went through 1.8 bottles of LOX out of the two on board. They were supposed to last for hours and hours. Not that night. I learned to never, ever take my head out of hood at night; it would only scare the living bejabbers out of you.
These days I consider 500 AGL only good for flying float planes; any higher and I get nervous.
VR,
Comjam
I happened to be flying a Cessna from Van Nuys to Tucson via Blythe on the morning Steve Fossett disappeared, or around 150 miles south of the accident area. Years earlier, my aerobatic instructor cautioned me against using the Citabria for mountain flying (in Colorado) due to the lack of a VSI in the airplane, which he considered essential for such duty. I’ve wondered if Fossett knew of the strong winds over the mountains that day, due to the impromptu nature of the outing. A lesson for us all, I guess.
Heh. No Apparent Fear of Death = NAFOD.
We still use that term with regard to certain people we know. And teenagers. And sometimes thickheaded dogs who think cars stop on a dime.
Hmm. I could go on and on. There must be more out there than I realize. Gotta keep them in the lead so we know where to be careful.
This recalls two of my most heartstopping periods of flight while in a training situation. One was in the low level training phase of advanced jet (TA4-Js at the time) and the other while during the instrument refresher training that was required after the training command and before starting the RAG (also TA4-J). In both cases the heart stoppage commenced shortly after the instructor pilot said “OK, I have the aircraft”. Both were attack guys, oddly enough.
The low level was the standard training command 500′ AGL route but we were flying out of Yuma MCAS, pumping through flights to make up time lost due to bad weather in south Texas. That bit of training culminated with a 10 minute ride about 15′ AGL over the desert, climbing only to cross a highway bridge.
The instrument training flight ended with a low level tour of San Clemente Island that started about 10′ above the wavetops, followed by a hard turn into a small canyon, popping out at the top of the island, and what seemed to be the wingtip scraping the beard off a goat that was standing at the rim of the canyon.
To sort of quote a past presidential candidate…”seared, seared into my memory.” Not that is wasn’t thrilling and exciting, but….
George V.
P-cola, VT-10 (197…) & final low-level; check ride time. I draw two noted screamers (pilot and BN, both ex VA-95) for my T-39 flight. Crossing Dauphin Island inbound to start the LL we get a birdstrike on the pilot’s side. Quick evaluation and decision was made to press as we could still see out of my front and side and his side windows. All well and good, but the target was a hard to find ranger station and fire tower (two classmates had already failed the route on previous flights and had to do a re-fly, one never completed and attrited) that our route had appearing on the left front quarter for the final turn to run-in. Flew the course and as we turned, there was the tower, silhouted against the biggest damn smoke cloud you can imagine from the fire that burned from behind. Nailed the LL, debrief was silent except for all the “aboves” and figuring I’d burned all my luck on low levels, that was the last one I flew in the Navy.
Well, except for a couple as a rider in an S-3, EA-6B and in the E-2…but that was different.
- SJS
SJ:
Someday when we face-to-face I’ll tell you the tale of how I passed my final check ride in VT-86. Like they say, “I’d rather be lucky than good…”
VR,
Comjam
“undeniably thrilling, and the blur of the scenery as you get lower and lower is a great adrenaline rush”
Amen
Childhood friend in Miami had a S2 Pitts, in the 80′s we would “play” low level recon missions down to the Keys (We were taking pics of a bar at Marathon to make sure it was till there before the crew drove down there
). Remember being low enough to have to use rudder only in the turns to keep the wing tips out of the waves. One time at dusk, too fast to do much a blacked out DC3 went under us……. Wonder what they were doing???
Great site Lex even if you dis us USAF AC loving folk!
Jerry
Not much for you fast movers, I know, but HH-1K’s, whilst doing the Citizen/Sailor thing, slithering across fields at 4′ & 90kt and jumping 6′ (or was it 2 & jumping 4? Still the debate) fences to haul SpecWar types while attempting to stay away from the boat crews in the rivers was a study in invincibility vs mortality. Oh, and we’d do that at night every now and then just to say we could…all green and fun, and such it was.
These days we laugh about it…
Star Wars canyon, belly up!
Never flew with NVGs. Sounds scary Lex, especially on a LL.
b2