On 20 September 1956, a young USAF mechanic gave the machine entrusted to his care the ultimate preflight inspection: He took it flying.
The rest, as the say, is history.
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Cool StoryBy lex, on December 3rd, 2011
27 comments to Cool Story |
Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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As you told those dudes in Reno: “The keys are in it.”
Can you imagine the officiousness and hearings and other stuff if something like that happened now?
Joe it reminds me of the time that a fella named Jim Stanton had 20 or so horses boarded in a pasture that adjoined our place. Well, since it was late fall and all, they pushed through the 40 year old rickety fence and proceeded to chow down on the still green, succulent, late autumn, N. Nevada alfalfa that we were trying to grow. Luckily, we had a sorting corral that was easily adapted to a mini rodeo arena. One powder river gate later, we had a bucking chute, and were strapping down with my buddy, Dirk Tingey’s bareback rigging. We bucked them out till they quit. When Jim found out, he was super duper pissed. He came flaming up our driveway, but fortunately, my Mom had made her world famous “Tippy Tacos” and he calmed right down when he got invited to dinner. But….we never again bucked his stock out.
wow, really amazing story.
in the Air Guard I couldn’t get a run license because I was just a weekender, but I rode in the backseat of ‘b’ models every chance I got when one went to the trim pad. one of my crazy coworkers would always goose the engines more than needed, and once had the ACgoing fast enough that the mach needle was moving.
I was torn between the possible thrill of flying in an F-15 and the realization that if I lived I’d probably go to jail. unfortunately we slowed down and turned off on the ANG ramp. Airman Johnson’s story is way better.
As a DC6/7 co-plot I had start and taxi privileges. meaning I could get all four running taxi to the tanker base, do a run-up etc. One day I had a mechanic ride with me. He was an old Navy CPO and a guy I truly respected.He said: “Hey TG! lets take it around the patch! I look at him and said: “You have to be out of your freakin’ mind!” He said”Ahh you can do it, hell, I’ll manage the engines, I’m a flight Engineer!”
He was. I said:”HELL NO! you fly this SOB and I will watch
-on the ground!”
Then he grinned:”You passed.”
Never forgot that…
I wonder what that thingie that the second mechanic behind the canopy has is? It looks like he is installing the twin .30 out of a SBD back there. Interesting, pointless piece of trivia for you. The flexable, heavy barreled version of the M1919 used as rear seat guns were also M2HB guns, admittedly the Gun, Machine, .30, Aircraft, M2HB. Thank you, Ian Hogg!
He’s working in the plenum area. That centrigufal flow engine had two big air inlet doors on the dorsal side, just aft of the canopy. Don’t know what the longish rods are.
That’s a great story. I have recurring dreams about flying by accident and this isn’t going to make them go away anytime soon.
The beginning of the end of “E’s” having taxi authorization on their card. I’ve spoken to some old timers that were briefed on this incident for several years. The best we get these days is engine run authorization after a very regimented class, and sim time.
Just the same, what an amazing event!
Not too long ago a wife was talked down safely after her huband died at the stick.
I’m sorry for the widow but I’m glad they helped her get down in one piece.
I remember a haunting story from the late ’90s. (I can’t find it just now but I read it in the paper just after it happened.) A man in his ’40s took his elderly mom for a spin in a Cessna one bright winter day. He collapsed at the controls but she’d had some flight training years before. She really kept it together, got on the radio to the tower and they were talking her in. She and they figured he’d had a heart attack, so the thing to do was to get her down safely and quickly, then get him help.
The heartbreaking part was, someone in the tower had another thought and told her, urgently, to open a window. By then she was off the air. A crack in the heating manifold had let a lot of carbon monoxide in, and the pilot succumbed first. I went out and got those little iodate-based CO detector patches after that.
Recall hearing or reading about a corporal taking a jaunt in an A-4 from MCAS El Toro in late 70s. Unsure about this, though.
Here is story concerning A-4 flight from MCAS El Toro:
http://thebutter-cutter.com/The_Flight_Of_LCpl.html
Cool story! I worked across the road from Williams at the GM Desert Proving Ground for a number of years. Always cool things going on over there, from the races to the Blue Angels to seeing the largest plane in the world land and take off.
More “preflights”, this time from the RAF:
English Electric Lightning
quote: XM135 was the very first full-production F.1 to enter RAF service and also the last F.1 to leave. XM135 is also famous for being the aircraft in which an engineering officer had a frightening flight when he inadvertently advanced the throttles too far during a ground test. Flying with no canopy, not strapped in and with his flying experience limited to prop trainers, he successfully managed to avoid obstructions on the runway, lift off and then land safely! XM135 retired to Duxford on 20th September 1974 with 1343 flying hours recorded.
http://plane-crazy.purplecloud.net/Aircraft/Jets/Lightning/lightning.htm
The story says he was in civilian flight training.
So the question I have is: Did he log it?
“F86E 1 hr. fam., arrested landing” would be a fairly startling thing for the checkride pilot to find as the third entry in the student’s logbook.
Regards,
Ric
He’s not the only one that thought about it. Crashing and dying didn’t stop anyone. It was thought of what the official weight of the Big Green Weenie would feel like that kept it from happening. I knew an E-6 with a fair amount of civilian flight time, multi engine rating, etc. He also had a taxi license for powerplants, and would do engine runs after maintenance. He even got some F-4 simulator time.
He wanted to. Was sure he could at least take it around. Ultimately decided it was a BAD IDEA, maybe a VERY BAD IDEA.
All I ever wanted to to was go for a ride in the backseat and never managed to do that either. I’d still go if the chance ever came up.
Something like that has happened more than once in the USAF. For a while I flew with a boom operator on the KC-135 who dated back to the late stages of WWII. He was an oil wiper on C-47s — but a smart and skilled oil wiper. He told a similar story of taxi tests on C-47s that involved getting airborne for a few hundred feet. He too was caught and given a general courts martial. He too got jail time, but was allowed to stay on active duty. He was an E-7 when I knew him.
On the other hand, I recall a maintenance type who took off in a C-130 by himself. Disappeared over the North Sea without a trace.
I read an article years ago about a C-130 at Fire Support base in Vietnam that had discharged cargo and the pilots were on the ground well away from the Ac when the base got mortared. The Crew Chief launched the AC while much of the crew was on the ground watching him climb and cheering him on. I have no idea as to the final disposition of the AC and Crew Chief.
G.P.-
I saw this in the comments of the linked article, I don’t know if it is the same incident:
“A C-130 crew chief cranked up a C-130 at Mildenhall AB in England, taxied to the runway and took off. An airplane that normally requires a minimum of pilot, copilot, and flight engineer! He was distraught over his marriage. When everyone realized what had happened, and the plane was heading for mainland Europe, they scrambled F-100s out of Lakenheath and shot him down over the English Channel.”
That’s the one.
Poached from “The Aviation Forum” about the unintended flight of a BAC/English Electric Lightning (Taff Holden was a technician, not a pilot):
It happened on July 22nd 1966 while XM135 was at 33 MU at Lyneham. The aircraft had a persistant electrical problem that only showed itself under aceleration. So Wg Cdr Walter “Taff” Holden decided to undertake some ground tests to see if he could find the problem. The canopy was removed and the ground locks were in place Taff had a set of pilots notes with him in the cockpit he was strapped in but the safty pins were in. A couple of short bursts down the run way showed nothing so taff decided to give it a bit more speed. As he opened the throttels he accidentally pushed them through the gate into reheat. At first he thought the trottles had jammed but by the time he figured out what was happeneing he was out of runway and was left with only one choice to take XM135 for a quick spin round the airfield. This wouldnt be too much of a problem except that Taff had only done a few hours on a tiger moth. He couldnt call the tower as he only had on ear defenders and he couldnt eject as the seat was safe. After a couple of failed attempts after 12 minutes he landed.
a PS to myself – I was always told that Lightnings didn’t actually `land`, they `sort of crashed under the marginal control of the pilot`
Sounds like a carrier landing to me
And there’s this from my retired Marine A-4 pilot brother.
“There exists a young Marine Corporal with the same story. His flight was in a A-4M out of El Toro and his was pre-meditated. But, he didn’t need anyone to escort him to a landing. Two Sgt.s from Iwakuni stole a C-177 and flew down to Okinawa one day. They were crew members and knew how to fly it. Authorities forced them to land on Ie Shima. Kadena wouldn’t allow them to land nor would Naha, nor Futenma, so Ie Shima it was. Same post flight outcome, though”
Back when Lyndon Johnson was living in the big white ranch house on Pennsylvania Avenue a young Army mechanic at Fort Meade (as I recall) decided one night to drop in and see the boss in a Huey.
My recollection is that he drove the U.S. Park Police helicopter drivers crazy as they attempted to intercept this unknown, and clearly rogue helo headed straight for the White House.
After a fairly extended flight which included an interesting game of airborne tag while swirling around the Washington Monument he was taken into custody when he landed the aircraft. I think he was awarded a fairly long stay at Fort Leavenworth, the better for to contemplate the sheer stupidity of attacking the White House with nothing more than a Huey, and a slick at that. Lyndon and the Army brass were not impressed. I, on the other hand, thought the lad exhibited poor judgment, but also had superior airmanship.
Sucks that he got some jail time, and was not immediately admitted into pilot training. Going from a J-3 to F-86 is quite a transition. You did well, young grasshopper!