Mostly Navy here at the salt mines, retired and resigned. Kind of a half way house for naval officers.
So anyways, we’ve got a new team member that has but recently joined our group. We started swapping sea stories, and he asked me did I know of a certain “Smoke”, F-14 pilot extraordinaire of yore.
Smoke was a young junior grade nose gunner, with an experienced RO in his truck, for to guide him around and tell him what to do and such. Middle of the Med for a deployment, launching off into the burning blue for an air defense exercise. Those tricksie E-2C controllers found the refueling point for the OPFOR air, and vectored Smoke and RO to the tanker circle, for to catch the bad guys unawares, like, as they were coming off the tanker.
They arrived on station and snuggled up in trail just as a USAF Phantom was coming off the tanker. “Kill, bandit” the E-2 controller radioed.
Smoke sat patiently in trail, his Sidewinder seeker head abuzz.
“Have you shot him yet?” the RO asked, with growing impatience. There being other bandits to target, and life being short.
“What do you want me to do?” Smoke asked.
“Kill him,” the RO responded with vigor. “Shoot him.”
Meaning, off course, to make a “Fox 2, kill” call on the exercise radio frequency.
Nuggets being nuggets, Smoke pondered the unexpected complexity of life in the fleet, armed up his weapons system, centered the dot and shot an actual Sidewinder into the tailpipe of the actual Phantom.
The USAF crew were sore amazed and concerned that order had turned so rapidly to chaos, what with all the explosions back aft, the sudden illumination of fire lights and the loss of hydraulic controls. Discretion being far the better part of valor, they shelled out of their crippled machine, giving it back over to the taxpayers. It wasn’t until long after that they found out that they’d been shot out of the sky. By their own Navy.
“Amazing that such a thing could happen,” my workplace interlocutor said.
“Sure is,” your humble answered. “Amazing.”
SIX Degrees (and a sidewinder) of Separation
I am reminded of The Four Rules. Written to apply to firearms, after reading this it is clear that a loaded weapon is a loaded weapon, and the proper application of them applies to missiles, too.
An apocryphal story?
I assume an “Ooopps, I’m sorry” doesn’t cover a situation like this.
No, but it made me have to clean my monitor.
The rest of the story…
http://www.fighterpilotuniversity.com/print.cfm?id=EB2AD80B-E04C-8D4A-9341EF79E1EDB413
Gosh darn!
This smoke character and his dad sound like the real life Topper Harley and father from “Hot Shots.” Thank God the F-4 aircrew weren’t killed.
But on the bright side, see, the F-14 did work. So it had that going for it . . .
Now THAT is understatement!
Unbelievable.
While a lowly Airman First Class, I took the test for OCS and didn’t get accepted because I didn’t score high enough.
But, Holy Sh!t, even I’m smarter than that guy…
I mind the time a buddy was out and about on cruise in his trusty Tomcat, when, of a sudden, a certain AIM-54 auto-dispatched on a ballistic mission known only to itself, and bored a hole in the lovely ocean below. Upon return to Mother, He-Who-Shall-Be-Revered awaited their arrival and asked the inevitable, to which the crew responded with “HellifIknow…sir.”
Turns out the practical joker was the AWG-15, and the event replicated by the squadron tweets. Stormin was more than a little relieved, as that prolly would have been worth a ride back to the beach…in the COD.
@Advokaat: Wow. Fortune may favor the foolish the first time around, but the second time around you’re on your own. Thanks for the link!
As you were…that last was for Carbon.
blame it all on the BIB (bag in back). ’nuff said.
Hmm – much more to this story. It was the first FNAEB I had the dubious distinction for handling upon arrival at AIRLANT, inheriting that “collateral” job as a junior O-4 in an office rife with post-command O-5s (three guesses how *that* workflow diagram panned out – the other “JO” was the AIRLANT LSO :/) The paperwork alone, about half of it classified, presented as a 4-inch thick stack. Long story short, the ICS comms were a little different than above and hinged on different interpretations of “Red and Free” – operative term being *exercise*…
The review board, comprised of senior avitors and NFOs off the staff was – educational. I’ll save the details ’til the next time you are out this way and we’ve a bit more time to savor conversation
Bottomline, this was someone who had no business being around armed aircraft and the review board concurred with the first flag’s “B1″ recommendation (and contrary to CAG to whom the prospect of said aviator tooling around with nukes in a P-3 hunting rogue subs didn’t turn a hair…)
And someone told me a TYCOM staff job would be “boring”…
w/r, SJS
I’m thinking someday soon I’ll get out the DVD of LCDR Don Deihl waxing eloquently to TACTRAGRULANT of the story of the SARA in Oct 92 and upload it….he was jerked off the GW to sit through the Court of Inquiry and he and I had to later visit all LANT NSSMS ships (except SARA) to prove no one could be that stupid again…or had been before. He heard the whole story in detail. Again, who should and who shouldn’t have been on watch that night….
Oh, and while we’re on the topic of FNAEB’s, ask me about the Hornet guy who blew through a night DLQ pattern, almost midair’d the SH-2 with the squadron XO in it, and lied about it the following day…
…the tape tells no lies…
(just one of what were 172 FNAEB/FNFOB’s I shepherded over the following two years. Looking for my ‘FNAEB Centurion’ patch)
w/r, SJS
Another “switchology” story: During an ORI in the UK we were sent to the range in a mixed-squadron F-4C/D gaggle (don’t ask why–always a bad portent in any event–we flew Ds–other 2 Sqdrns Cs.) We were loaded out w. practice blues and center-line gun pod w. live rounds for strafe. While in the pattern at the range as element lead I observe flt-lead (not MY Sq) roll in for dive event–see the pod come tumbling off end-over-end. I started methodically setting all the switches to safe. “What’s going on?,” my back-seater said who’d had his head in the cockpit and didn’t catch the action. “We’re going home,” I said. “But we just got here, the ORIs not an hour old, how do you know?,” he replied. “TRUST me” I said, “this exercise is OVER–we’re headed home” I said only mere seconds before the Ranger calls everybody to hold hi & dry and safe wpns. LOL!!
After the SARATOGA incident, I sat in a room full of aviators, with the goal of counting the individual actions to release each type of ordnance from each aircraft. Just before lunch, one frustrated and sane CDR said words to the effect: “look, it doesn’t matter how many buttons, switches of covers an operator has to use, if he things he’s supposed to shoot, he’ll do all of them.” Wise man….one of a very few it seems.
I can’t tell any tales of splashing a Phantom, or dropping a gun pod, but I did watch one of my platoon’s Bradley’s fire a 25mm round through a plywood target a mile away…
…while the range maintenance folks were working on it.
Cycling the ghost round should NOT be done on a “cold” range.
Speaking of “ghost” rounds, XBrad, the C-model F-4 gun-pod was pneumatically powered, so pulling off the tgt there often was enough pressure in the system to pop a couple, three, out into the great beyond even after one’s finger was off the pickle button/trigger. One had to be careful with the pattern so as not to spray any civilians near-by by restricting direction of run-in and pull-off on the range. The D-model’s gun-pod was electrically driven, so no such problem.
Ony 4 more for ace status.Prolly didn’t make it though..just a hunch.
I remember an A-6 from INDY getting shot down by a CIWS some years back. Rooster (or was it Oyster?) wasn’t too happy about that one, but luckily no one, ‘cept a venerable Intruder were injured. For some reason methinks it was a JMSDF Destroyer that took him down. I’m sure he received long and enduring Gomen Asai’s for that.
It was a JMSDF ship that shot down an A-6 during RIMPAC, I think it was ’96 or ’98.
Better than the Saratoga firing a Sea Sparrow into a Turkish destroyer in ’93 during an ex in the Med. Another one of those simulated shoots – but with live rounds loaded. Not a pretty end this time, five killed included in the DDG’s skipper. Ended the exercise too.
BN, when we were down at the old Wheelus in Tripoli for bomb and gun in 1969 we had a guy *manage* to somehow launch/lob a sparrow over into Algeria. “I launched an arrow into the air–where it fell I know not where.” First name was Bill–thereafter forever known as “Willy Rocket.”
“Oooops” is appropriate in a multitude of situations.
This was not one of them.
I’m thinking there’s a thread of Sea Stories that needs to be started over at the Flight Deck. Just think of the history not written you’ll leave behind if you do not share, and think more of all those who will have to learn their lessons for themselves if you do not proffer your sage advice.
Besides, it’d be kind of interesting to see the tales and how many of them we recognize. One thing I’ve found of sea stories, they’re kind of like that old game Post Office — the same story mutates as it is told, and eventually becomes an entirely different story to the listener. Given the number of veterans here, most about the same age, what those stories share in common and what they have different could be some poor English major’s seminal treatise!
Before he started work on the fry line, I mean. But hey, you choose English as a major fully aware of the prospects.
– Max
I remember the UPS truck getting shredded at Cecil Field in the 80′s because someone didn’t safe his cannon before making a hard landing. When did this incident with the Phantom happen? I remember getting asked to leave Mildenhall AFB because the Navy shot down an RF-4C. I was on the Forrestal in Portsmouth and took a few days leave. This would have been Sept.-Oct. 1987
That was it…I arrived at CNAL about 3-4 weeks afterwards.
w/r, SJS
I had a pilot in my F-4 squadron who while over the Gulf of Mexico had an engine explode, shelling compressor blades into the other engine and severing hydraulic lines. After a lifetime of pondering and a few seconds of time, he gave the immortal words “Bailout, Bailout, Bailout”. To which the WSO responded “No”. Being a thoughtful guy, he responded “Bailout (*&(^*&%”, to which the WSO responded “No”. So, being the Pilot in Command, he responded by initiating the ejection. Bang, Bang, both are in their chutes. They’re pretty far out in the gulf, so the rescue chopper from Eglin takes a while to get there and only has gas enough to pick up the first one they find, the pilot. However, an Army Huey also happened to hear the beeper and so vectors into the area. Evidently they did not have a hoist on board, so when they find the WSO, they throw a rope with a hook on it down to him. Unfortunately, said WSO had taken off his helmet. Hook hits him on the head and stuns him. Feeling kinda woozy (WSO-ey?) he hooks the rope to the front of his harness and gives the chopper a hearty thumbs up. They start pulling him up. Unfortunately, he had undone the leg straps on his harness, so the harness rapidly starts to hang him by the neck. Luckily the crew chief sees this and lets the rope back down. The WSO hooks up the leg straps and gives another not so hearty thumbs up. The crew hauls him up using the skid as a kind of pully. Which works ok, until the WSO’s head reaches that level and bangs against it. Finally, his travails are over, he’s wet, sun burned and banged up, but alive. Upon RTB, he meets up with the Pilot who is curious why the two refusals to bailout. The WSO said, “I was shot down once by the GD Navy and didn’t want to go through anything like that again.”
God’s honest truth.
Bet he never wanted to see an Army Helo again either. An adventurous career fer sure
LOL, juvat, my IP in T-37s said to me the very first time we strapped in: “Son, if you hear me say ‘bailout’ don’t turn your head and ask ‘what?’ cause I’ll already be gone–you won’t hear it a second time.”
I as an EF-111A EWO stationed in England when this shoot down occurred.
Our leadership went kind of nuts about the whole thing.
We were barred from flying with, or even close to, the U.S. Navy.
This was bad for us Raven EWOs, ships being a juicy treasure trove of interesting radars.
Great waves of schadenfreude swept through the USAF flying community as this incident confirmed our total superiority to our lesser brethren in the Navy.
I was just a bit less caught up in this enthusiasm because I remembered when the first F-15s came to Okinawa one of the pilots inadvertently fired two AIM-9s during what should have been a routine cross country.
I really didn’t credit the initial reports that the shoot down had been intentional until much latter when the official reports filtered down to my level.
In a couple of months the whole thing was forgotten and we were friends with the Navy again.
Anybody remember this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_incident
For SJS: I was at CNAL at the same period you were (and yes, the “Ready Room” had come colorful characters…)- but I only had to serve on one FNAEB – The Safety Officer at that time would have done well at the Spanish Inquisition…..
And forever after the WSO in said shoot down was C/S “Splash” (flew with him in F15Es)…
I seem to remember many years ago a scooter pilot on an air-to-ground range letting off a long burst and then flying right in front of it.
Tends to ruin a good day flyin’
Cain’t be what you call career enhancing.
Wasn’t that an F-1F1 Tiger back circa ’56 in a test flight?
F11F–geeze