So it was back sometime in the early 1990′s, and your host – having successfully concluded his first sea tour flying the FA-18 Hornet – was an adversary pilot at NAS Key West, Florida. I was a lieutenant on the cusp of making lieutenant commander, which in a naval sense meant that I was in the very throes of my transition from adolescence to adulthood. There were three types of jets to fly, and on a given day we might fly a sortie in each of the F-16N, F-5E or venerable A-4E Skyhawk – God’s jet, to a stick and rudder man.
And it was all basic fighter maneuvering and air combat maneuvers, the first being the 1 to 1 match of man and machine versus another, the latter being of the multi-plane variety, first in 2v2s, then 2vmany, then four-ship engagements versus practically the whole squadron. We were taught to emulate Soviet air combat doctrine, and just as the US fighters of the time were greatly more technologically advanced than the Fitters, Fishbeds and Floggers which were widely scattered and strewn over various Third World hellholes, so too were our FA-18 and F-14 opponents flying greatly superior aircraft to our A-4 “Scooters” and F-5 Tigers. The technological disadvantage narrowed when we replicated the MiG-29 Fulcrums and Su-27 Flankers making their Third Generation way on stage with our F-16 “Vipers,” but our blue forces depended upon their superior training – which it was our role to give them – initiative and boldness: “Only the spirit of attack born in a brave heart will bring success to any fighter aircraft no matter how highly developed it may be.” –Adolf Galland
Our F-16s were still outgunned in forward hemisphere engagements, so we used guile, deception and carefully choreographed maneuver to confuse the blue force’s air combat picture, enabling our superior numbers to overwhelm the blue force fighters. Once we were “in the phone booth” with the foe, our superior familiarity with the mission often carried the day for the Scooters and Vipers, while the Tigers – which were not as maneuverable in a close-in fight, but small and very hard to see nose or tail on – prowled the edges of the fight, looking to pounce on the unsuspecting.
“Know the enemy and know yourself,” said the Chinese general Sun Tzu in the 6th Century BC, “and you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.” We had flown the fleet aircraft ourselves, and knew their capabilities and limits, we were trained to a fever pitch in air combat, practicing nothing else for 30 to 40 hours per month, and it was many the F-14 and FA-18 pilot who learned to his dismay what it meant to get tied up in a slow-speed fight with Scooter, or to try and turn tail and run from an 800KT Viper.
Which was all to the point: Our adversary squadrons taught the fleet what it meant to engage a wily and experienced foe, who often had the advantage of numbers. Pick your fights carefully, engage with advantage, get slow at your peril and always, always check six. At the beginning of a two-week detachment, the blue force would often be bloodied and humbled. At the end, having carefully learned the harsh lessons of war, in lectures, in flight and in comprehensive debriefs, they would emerge lethal and victorious. Fight to victory over some of the Navy’s finest fighter pilots and you could be sure of dominance in any peripheral scrape.
Although the pilots of the 45th Fleet Adversary squadron did not deploy for months on end to sea with one another, with all of the intimacy that such enforced proximity engenders, we were still a pretty close knit group. We had flown with and against each other time and time again, we were well trained and disciplined and we knew what to expect of one another. Having exhaustively debriefed the fighters at the conclusion of each flight, we would often spend another 15-30 minutes debriefing ourselves, going over the fine points of our execution, and internalizing lessons for the next time. We trusted one another, as much as you can trust any man hurtling through the sky in close and swirling proximity, flying a 20,000 pound machine full of jet fuel at various g-loadings and at speeds from 150KTs to four or even six hundred.
So it came to pass one day that I and five of my compatriots manned up our various aircraft, each with a red star painted on the tail over Soviet-style camouflage. A flight of four FA-18s taxied out in front of us, lean and deadly, their aircrews carefully programming their weapons systems and radar set-ups for engagements near or far. After a decent interval designed to allow them 40 miles or more of separation from us once on our combat air patrol stations, we followed them into the sky.
Our game plan for the first engagement was to set up an azimuth problem for the fighters up front, with a trailing element coming in low and fast behind them waiting to pounce on any blue force fighters that too long engaged the forward decoys. The fight axis was oriented east-west, and I was in the northern arm of the decoy element forward, flying my trusty, single-seat Scooter, an airplane with a cockpit so small and cramped that you strapped the airplane on rather than strapped into it.
I was heading west towards the fighters at nearly 30,000 feet and cooking along at pretty close to 0.9 Mach, which was about as fast as you really wanted to go in the subsonic Skyhawk. Having only one radio, and without dedicated ground control of our own, we silently monitored the fighter’s communications, both for safety of flight purposes once engaged, to call our kill-shots once we had them and also to provide us some situational awareness of the fighters’ intentions. Thus it was that I came to learn that I had been targeted by one element of the blue four-ship, and that they had indeed launched a simulated missile salvo at me at an appropriate range.
It’s never good to die as an adversary pilot, even in simulation. Not unless the blue force had earned it, and this I fully intended to make them do. I maneuvered sharply back to the north, the airframe shuddering slightly in the thin air, before rolling the jet inverted and diving for the deck. A quick glance at the airspeed indicator passing 20,000 feet showed that I was perilously close to going through the number – in transonic flight, the A-4 tended to dive into what was known as a “Mach tuck,” and recovery could be difficult, since elevator authority was compromised. The only way to recover the jet to the horizon was to trim the entire horizontal stabilizer nose up, which could easily result in a g-overshoot.
To avert this occurrence, I thumbed out the fuselage-mounted speedbrakes using the throttle switch. Which is when things got just a little bit worse: Trusty as my 35-year old steed might have been, the utility hydraulic lines that supplied 1600PSI pressure to the speedbrakes groaned at the loads imposed on them in that high-speed dive before giving up the ghost entirely. A yellow annunciator light on my instrument panel labeled “UTIL HYD” illuminated, informing me that I had experienced a failure in that system’s integrity. There would by hydraulic fluid pooling and swirling around hot parts where it had no decent right to be, and with that the concomitant risk of fire, but my most pressing concern was that I was still going downhill like a sonofabitch, and Plan A had failed.
The fighters bearing down on me from the west were now the least of my concerns as I hauled back manfully on the controls, gently tickling the electric stabilizer trim coolie hat atop the stick. Her nose started to nod up and down a bit before finally coming back under control and popping back above the horizon: Success! And I didn’t even over-g.
I radioed a “knock-it-off” call on the shared frequency, and turned my wounded machine back towards NAS Key West, limping back home over a cerulean and indifferent sea. My flight lead, an experienced test flight pilot, joined me on our squadron common frequency to provide mutual support during my return to base.
Crew coordination in single-seat fighters consists of the pilot with the emergency executing his memorized “boldface” procedures while his supporting wingman backs him up using a pocket checklist. My wingie dutifully read the steps and I dutifully complied, first slowing to 200KTs, and then reaching for the flight control disconnect handle as he directed. Before a nagging thought stopped my hand: “What page of the checklist are you on?” I asked.
“Say again?” the wingie replied.
“The checklist, what page are you on?” Because the Skyhawk had two separate hydraulic systems, one for utility purposes such as landing gear, speed brakes and spoilers, and one for the flight controls: Elevator, ailerons and rudders. I already had one hyd system failure, and disconnecting the flight controls from their associated hydraulic system would have made for a compound emergency.
Turned out that my more experienced mentor, who routinely flew checkflights requiring flight control disconnects, had himself been running off memory and experience rather than using the pocket checklist with its detailed procedures. I felt a little smug at having caught him out on checklists, and he got a little less directive on the radio.
I chose an off-duty runway for my straight in approach, and lowered the arresting hook to engage the approach end arresting gear. The wheel brakes would still have worked just fine, but without wing spoilers the Scooter could be a little tricky to handle on deck at high speed.
I had by that time a few hundred arrested landings, most of them in the FA-18. In the Hornet you were supposed to lock the restraint harness that kept you strapped securely in the ejection seat before landing – it was a part of the landing checklist – but it was no big deal if you didn’t: There was an inertial reel incorporated within the seats of all carrier aircraft that would sense sudden decelerations and apply the brakes. The Scooter had one too.
Only that inertial reel, like my poor, wounded utility hydraulic line, was also 35-years old. I landed safely at about 125kts, took the gear at maybe 115 or so and was thrown violently forward in the cockpit, getting a face-full of the 8-day clock mounted on the canopy as the airplane came to a sudden stop, the arresting wire snaking and hissing behind it. It was a sunny day, fortunately, because my helmet visor was down and took the brunt of the collision, cracking in two places, or otherwise I would present an entirely different face to the world to this day. I was momentarily stunned and a little bruised, but none the worse for wear as the aircraft ticked down in the cable and the fire trucks raced up alongside me.
And I wasn’t feeling quite so smug about checklists.
I recall another one of youse that did the same, only without the visor. Twas a right shiner.
Welcome back, Cap’n. Always enjoy reading your writing!
Lex – you’re right about strapping the Scooter on. One of my USMC instructors in advanced was a weight room frequenter, with the broad triceps to show for it. He had to rotate slightly to get the canopy rail to clear, then could straighten out and let the two inch difference between the rail and the Perspex give his shoulders enough room.
What a blast to fly. If I had a kazillion bongo bucks, I’d have to spend it at the Meadows Foundation for a spin in their TA-4.
Now that’s getting clocked!
Thirty-Five years and a couple of months since my last TA-4 hops and I remember them vividly. Albeit in the back seat for this little SNFO at the time (these were the very last two flight before wings) but it put me deeply in love with the critter. I can only imagine what the Super-Fox or a lightly-loaded A-4M or N must have been like. Any aircraft who’s bold face emergency check list was, for the most part, “Pull this (or that) handle to go manual or to jettison something. If that doesn’t work, EJECT” is a masterpiece of simplicity.
I have only seen flight controls in action in a couple of small Cessnas. Never been up in any military aircraft. But Lex, you put me there in the seat. You have a rare talent with words, Sir.
He does a a Muse in his pocket, doesn’t he.
Ah, it’s a good thing seeing you back in the saddle, Lex. Excellent.
Wonderfully told Lex. Bravo!
In the E-2B there was a circuit breaker panel forward of the RO position with a plexiglass cover over it. Many of those covers were cracked when the RO trusted his inertia reel a little too much for the trap…
Great story- Thanks
On one of VP-10′s P-3b’s, there was a noticeable ding in the access panel to the MAD system in the tail. This hatch was right at the internal bulkhead to the tail “stinger” and at the very end of the “tube” or inside of the fuselage, as it were.
It was caused by the forward fire bottle which broke it’s fasteners and came flying back down the length of the fuselage. I watched it sail by from my SS-2 seat during a short-field obstacle take-off demonstration at an airshow in Pennsylvania. Greencastle, I believe. It’s wherever the Little League World Series is played. 1978.
Alan Bean, of the all-Navy Apollo 12 crew, neglected to remove one of the panel-mounted cameras before re-entry. Upon the capsule impacting the south pacific, said camera departed the panel and arrived at his forehead, giving him a mild concussion.
http://echoesofapollo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Quarantine.jpg
Sometimes the forehead-seeking gadget comes to you!
Good story, Lex.
A too small A4G pilot (not me Chief) regularly smashed into the gunsight on arrest onboard HMAS Melbourne. Usually only damage was to helmet visor (A4Gs had only the WWII era gunsight). Always puzzled only recently was it known that said ‘shortie’ put a phone book under, to be able to see over the coaming to get a view of the approach. I guess sometimes in haste to get set, the harness (briefly unlocked for maneuver) was not relocked. How phone book was hidden in cockpit I’m not sure.
A-4E/F/G/K CLOCK/GUNSIGHT NATOPS view: http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l261/SpazSinbad/A-4E-F-G-KfrontNATOPS-1.gif
Captain Lex,
From the mid 80′s to the mid 90′s I owned a Florida Keys utility boat service.
What kept me in business was a US Navy contract to service a series of towers that ranged from the middle keys to the Dry Tortugas. I did not know then, and I do not know now what those towers were for.
I kept my utility boat next to the seawall at a bar in Key West Bight. My wife and I would sit out on the open aft deck in the afternoon, enjoying a cold one.
Once in a while, on Fridays, the 45th Fleet Adversary Squadron aviators would come down to the bar. For some reason aviators seem to like boats, and I got to know a few of them.
I have never met a more upstanding group of people. I thank God they volunteered (many times) to serve and protect our country.
My thanks to each and every one of you who served.
I am not a veteran. I am a retired DC police officer.
Back to lurking.
Mike
Merritt Island, Fl.
Mike,
Those were very likely the “TACTS” towers (tactical air combat system) that tracked our aircraft through time and space, noting missile launches and simulating their engagements. We had a group of us that used to go down to Tex Schramm’s boat on Stock Island for the occasional cocktail, provided free of charge. It was a Bertram 55 if I recall correctly, and we used to call it the “Blue Cup Club.” Gentlemen all.
Thanks for writing. And by the way, from my perspective, a retired DC police officer is a veteran.
I would add Combat to the veteran, in the case of DC.
And those towers are mostly gone now. A triplicate of bad hurricanes that swept across the keys (in 2005, I think) wiped them out. The result was the accelerated roll-out of a new flight tracking/debrief system called TCTS. These new pods pack a GPS receiver and line of sight comms (position) relay antennas into the same tube. Pretty awesome system. If you don’t track real time, they can pull the memory unit out post flight and insert you into the scenario before the debrief. Now you can do a full-up “TACTS” style debrief on any range without the need for TACTS towers to relay the info from the pod.
Checklists and smugness…
Just flew a trip with a rather unpleasant individual in a 747 who “knows it all” or thought he knew it all. On climb-out got a “Fuel Imbalance” alert message …called for checklist…”Know-it-all” decided to do it from memory…and very quickly.
Turns out he was pumping from light tanks into heavy tanks (making imbalance worse). Auto-pilot now connected–I proceeded to do the procedure more uh…thoughtfully. The point of the checklist being to slow you down…
Nowhere near the immediacy or seriousness of your problem Lex. Matter of fact, done with a cup of coffee in the other hand.
Two similarities: 1) Smugness…making a simple problem potentially more complex AND 2) I would like to hit my colleague in the face with something hard.
Laughing a bit at memories of trapping Scooters with the M-21 MOREST at K-Bay. We had power settings for each aircraft type, but, since F-4′s were the mainstay of our work, we’d not bother to adjust the engines down for the Scooter. As one might imagine the roll out was significantly shorter (300′ vs 750′), and forgetting to lock the harness would result in gunsight nose for the AV8TOR.
The other thing that would happen, because of a 150′ runway and occasional static brake imbalances between the arrestor engines, is the Scooter would yaw severely from side to side a couple of times upon engagement. I always wondered why none of the jets collapsed a main strut on rollout, or why none of the pilots ever got a concussion. We took a certain perverse pleasure in watching it happen.
All that, and now another memory comes to mind. I was out at the point position the day the CO of VMFA-232 chose to trap after transiting the squadron from Iwakuni. Who was to know then that in that group of jets sat a future Commandant of the Marine Corps, Hizzoner Tamer. I doubt very much he remembers anything of a tall, lanky, blond kid standing out there when he rolled to a stop, but, for me, those are days that are never very far away.
VMFA-235, VMFA-212, VMFA-232, H&MS-24. They always kept us busy, and were never a dull crew.
I got to fly TA-4Js in TPS…and came to detest the things. Made for svelte midgets. Liked the T-2s a whole lot more.
Well done, Lex.
Thank you for that.
Hopefully more sea stories lurking in Lexicon. This had all the immediacy of a current flight…well written and enjoyed the
triptrap.Checklists are always important, but the emergency procedure bits *are* more often used in older planes. At least that’s my experience.
Thanks Lex, you made the Walter Mitty in me happy.
Very nice memories that we happen to share.
Thank you, and BZ on the writing of it.
Checklists – even when they seemed superfluous – save many of one’s bacon… including mine!
I quite understand a radio of “knock it off” and wingman aborting the fight to get you home safely. One has to practice combat but dying on the job defeats the purpose, thus safety concerns are paramount.
But had that happened to you in a real combat situation, wouldn’t there possibly be lessons learned in how to disengage, scoot for home, and land a wounded bird without Wingman around or with Wingman 20 miles aft covering your six?
I’m just asking why safety in an emergency is so paramount we conveniently call off combat, when what we’re training for is combat where no such call can be made?
There’s no use losing a jet in training, but there’s also no reason to make training a matter
of convenience. You and your wingman learned something that day, learning more is better.
– Max
I would say in response that hindsight is 20/20. When in an emergency, it’s difficult to say what is next going to happen. As I understand Lex’s story, he only had 1 hydraulic system remaining. Had that (likely 35 year old) system failed, he would have ended up stepping over the side. Having a wingman on hand at that point would greatly facilitate the recovery of the person who has become a great bard.
On the other hand, I had a squadron commander who would regularly brief missions where battle damage situations would be briefed and practiced during the flight. So your point about practice is valid.
I would assume disengagement is taught in BFM — everybody runs short of fuel or munitions after a while and it’s nice to be able to pick your exit strategy. If an aircraft has to leave, low fuel or unarmed, do we practice covering the egress?
I was watching some old World War 2 documentaries at 2am last week, courtesy of my 15 month-old son who refuses to sleep the night through, and thought it odd that wounded B-17 and B-24 bombers who couldn’t keep up with the formation were left on their own. Logically it makes sense, in a herd the stragglers and weak are what the hunters prey upon, and if everybody slowed there would be more casualties as the hunters attacked the herd again and again rather than the wounded left behind.
But it didn’t make sense from a logistics standpoint. Aircraft take a long time to build, they’re not disposable. Aircrew take a year or more to train, they’re quite valuable. An aircraft and flight crew able to fight tomorrow is much more valuable than a replacement next week. World War 2 we had both planes and men in abundance compared to the Germans, but today against China or Russia it’s simple numbers and they have more. A lot more.
So during a mechanical or other failure that requires an aircraft to leave the fight, do we drop the current mission and practice protecting the wounded on one side and let the other practice on pressing their advantage?
A single plane isn’t much. If he takes a wingman with now it’s two planes gone. He’s wounded, both are defensive and one all about coasting as much as he can. That’s a pretty major change in a 4-ship engagement. It might be worth reviewing on both sides of the fight.
– Max
Nice to see another Navy story; you have so many great ones, and nobody tells them like you do. Thanks for bringing us along for the ride!
So, Lex, I’m wondering, as you thumbed the switch, and lost the speedboards, if the Good Lord had offered you a deal, “You’ll get out of this fine, but you’ll smack your face on the gunsight on landing?,” wouldn’t that have seemed like a bargain at just that second?
Is it typical for adversary pilots to have started that duty after their first cruise?
Depended upon the flavor of adversary squadron. For the “real” adversary squadrons it was typically a first shore tour, post-sea tour opportunity (apart from the department heads and CO/XO of course). But there were VC “composite” squadrons at Guantanamo and in the Philippines which had a quasi-adversary mission and first tour aviators. Before women-at-sea, a lot of those billets were filled by female jet jockeys with no place else to go. I honestly don’t know how the other billets at a VC squadron were filled, but my impression was that they were mostly cast asides.
(Looking at photo, then layout diagram of cockpit)
Wow, first time I’ve ever seen a fighter cockpit with an 8-track player in it! (Item 29)
Sarge, You win a banana!
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l261/SpazSinbad/A-4E-F-G-KfrontNATOPSkey.gif
I remember some of the A-4 guys making sure they wore steel tip boots in case they had to eject out of the squirrel nest (aka. cockpit) to preserve their toes!
F4Jock
Heh. Even tho I was primarily F-4 like you I wore my pair of black steel-toe paratrooper boots I bought in AFROTC all the way thru plt tng to SEA and beyond until the end. I hated those cloth cammo ones with the drain holes they issued us in SEA (although if I ever went down I would probably have wished I’d had ‘em once on the gnd., lol)
From F.A.W. Mk.53 Sea Venom days the A4G pilots inherited these black suede zipped/laced steel toed booties: http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l261/SpazSinbad/RANaircrewBlackSuedeZipLacesSteelToeBoots.jpg
I got to fly TA-4Js in TPS…and came to detest the things. Made for svelte midgets. Liked the T-2s a whole lot more.
Lex, will you please banish Mike M. for HERESY?
I spent many years in A-4s of various vintages, including over 400 combat missions. To say that Skyhawks hold a place near to my heart would be understatement. Flying them as an FMFPAC adversary pilot was more fun than a barrel of marsupials. And doing a couple of spin test series at Pax River rounded out my intuitive knowledge of the Scooter. Each switch you mentioned twitched the neurons that remember how things feel. Great aircraft, even greater memories.
TC
The 8-dayclock reminds me of my first flight in a TA-4. I was transitioning to the A4 by any means and this was my first A4 flight. This was a test flight out of NAS Miramar. Back seat. On takeoff the front seater told me to hit the clock when he released the brakes so he could detrmine time and distance for TO. After airborne the front seater asked me for the time. All I could embarrasingly say – where is the clock? Good thing he did not have the capability to eject the back seat.
Reminds me of an instance when I was transitioning to the A4. First flight was on a test flight in the back seat of a TA4 at Miramar. Front seater told me to hit the clock when he started his take-off roll. He wanted to check acceleration. After airborne he asked for the time. Much to my embarrasment I told him I couldn’t find the clock. Good thing he didn’t have the ability to eject me.