The NAVY - It's not just a job, it's an ADVENTURE!!
So much for the thought of a boring refueling mission! This is a pretty
amazing story.
Lieutenant Keith Gallagher's (Bombardier Navigator)
Account of the incident:
Murphy's Law says, "Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least
expect it." (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator.) Murphy
was correct beyond his wildest dreams in my case. Fortunately for me,
however, he failed to follow through. On my 26th birthday I was blindsided
by a piece of bad luck the size of Texas that should have killed me.
Luckily, it was followed immediately by a whole slew of miracles that
allowed me to be around for my 27th. Not even Murphy could have conceived of
such a bizarre accident (many people still find it hard to believe), and the
fact that I am here to write about it makes it that much more bizarre.
We were the overhead tanker, one third of the way through cruise, making
circles in the sky. Although the tanker pattern can be pretty boring midway
through the cycle, we were alert and maintaining a good lookout doctrine
because our airwing had a midair less than a week before, and we did not
want to repeat. We felt we were ready for "any" emergency: fire lights,
hydraulic failures and fuel transfer problems. Bring 'em on! We were ready
for them. After all, how much trouble can two JO's get in overhead the ship?
After my third fuel update call, we decided that the left outboard drop was
going to require a little help in order to transfer. NATOPS recommends
applying positive and negative G to force the valve open. As the pilot
pulled the stick back I wondered how many times we would have to porpoise
the nose of the plane before the valve opened.
As he moved the stick forward, I felt the familiar sensation of negative
"G", and then something strange happened: my head touched the canopy. For a
brief moment I thought that I had failed to tighten my lap belts, but I knew
that wasn't true. Before I could complete that thought, there was a loud
bang, followed by wind, noise, disorientation and more wind, wind, wind.
Confusion reigned in my mind as I was forced back against my seat, head
against the headrest, arms out behind me, the wind roaring in my head,
pounding against my body. "Did the canopy blow off? Did I eject? Did my
windscreen implode?" All of these questions occurred to me amidst the
pandemonium in my mind and over my body.
These questions were quickly answered, and replaced by a thousand more,
as I looked down and saw a sight that I will never forget: the top of the
canopy, close enough to touch, and through the canopy I could see the top of
my pilot's helmet. It took a few moments for this image to sink into my
suddenly overloaded brain. This was worse than I ever could have imagined -
I was sitting on top of a flying A-6!
Pain, confusion, panic, fear and denial surged through my brain and body
as a new development occurred to me: I couldn't breathe. My helmet and mask
had ripped off my head, and without them, the full force of the wind was
hitting me square in the face. It was like trying to drink through a fire
hose. I couldn't seem to get a breath of air amidst the wind. My arms were
dragging along behind me until I managed to pull both of them into my chest
and hold them there.
I tried to think for a second as I continued my attempts to breathe. For
some reason, it never occurred to me that my pilot would be trying to land.
I just never thought about it. I finally decided that the thing that I could
do was eject. (What else could I do?) I grabbed the lower handle with both
hands and pulled-it wouldn't budge. With a little more panic induced
strength I tried again, but to no avail. The handle was not going to move. I
attempted to reach the upper handle but the wind prevented me from getting a
hand on it.
As a matter of fact, all that I could do was hold my arms into my chest.
If either of them slid out into the wind stream, they immediately flailed
out behind me, and that was definitely not good. The wind had become
physically and emotionally overwhelming. It pounded against my face and body
like a huge wall of water that wouldn't stop. The roaring in my ears
confused me, the pressure in my mouth prevented me from breathing, and the
pounding on my eyes kept me from seeing. Time had lost all meaning. For all
I knew, I could have been sitting there for seconds or for hours. I was
suffocating, and I couldn't seem to get a breath.
I wish I could say that my last thoughts were of my wife, but as I felt
myself blacking out, all I said was, "I don't want to die." (Close up of
Keith just after landing.) Someone turned on the lights and I had a funny
view of the front end of an A-6, with jagged plexiglas where my half of the
canopy was supposed to be. Looking down from the top of the jet, I was
surprised to find the plane stopped on the flight deck with about 100 people
looking up at me. (I guess I was surprised because I had expected to see the
pearly gates and some dead relatives.)
My first thought was that we had never taken off, that something had
happened before the catapult. Then everything came flooding back into my
brain, the wind, the noise and the confusion. As my pilot spoke to me and
the medical people swarmed all over me, I realized that I had survived, I
was alive. It didn't take me very long to realize that I was a very lucky
man, but as I heard more details, I found out how lucky I was. For example,
my parachute became entangled in the horizontal stabilizer tight enough to
act as a shoulder harness for the trap, but not tight, enough to bind the
flight controls. If this had not happened, I would have been thrown into the
jagged plexiglas during the trap as my shoulder harness had been
disconnected from the seat as the parachute deployed.
There are many other things that happened, or didn't happen, that allowed
me to survive this mishap, some of them only inches away from disaster.
These little things, and a s-hot, level headed pilot who reacted quickly and
correctly are the reason that I am alive and flying today. Also, a generous
helping of good old-fashioned Irish luck didn't hurt.
Lieutenant Mark Baden's (Pilot) Account of the Incident:
As we finished the brief, my BN (bombardier navigator - Keith Gallagher)
told me that it was his birthday and that our recovery would be his 100th
trap on the boat. To top it off, we were assigned the plane with my name on
the side.
As we taxied out of the chocks, I was still feeling a little uneasy about
all the recent mishaps. To make myself feel better, I went through the "soft
shot/engine failure on takeoff" EPs (emergency procedures), touching each
switch or lever as I went through the steps. "At least if something happens
right off the bat, I'll be ready," I thought. The first few minutes of the
hop were busy. Concentrating on the package-check and consolidation, as well
as trying to keep track of my initial customers, dispelled my uneasiness.
As we approached mid-cycle, that most boring time in a tanker hop, we
kept ourselves occupied with fuel checks. We were keeping a close eye on one
drop tank that had quit transferring with about 1,000 pounds of fuel still
inside. I had tried going to override on the tank pressurization, but that
didn't seem to work. My BN and I discussed the problem. We decided it was
probably a stuck float valve. Perhaps some positive and negative G would fix
it. We were at 8,000 feet, seven miles abeam the ship, heading aft. I
clicked the altitude hold off and added some power to give us a little more
G.
At 230 knots I pulled the stick back and got the plane five degrees nose
up. Then I pushed the stick forward. I got about half a negative G, just
enough to float me in the seat. I heard a sharp bang and felt the cockpit
instantly depressurize. The roar of the wind followed. I ducked
instinctively and looked up at the canopy expecting it to be partly open.
Something was wrong. Instead of seeing a two or three inch gap, the canopy
bow was flush with the front of the windscreen. My eyes tracked down to the
canopy switch. It was up. Moment of impact my scan continued right. Instead
of meeting my BN's questioning glance, I saw a pair of legs at my eye level.
The right side of the canopy was shattered. I followed the legs up and saw
the rest of my BN's body out in the windblast. I watched as his head snapped
down and then back up, and his helmet and oxygen mask disappeared. They
didn't fly off; they just disappeared.
My mind went into fast forward. "What the hell happened?" I wondered. "I
hope he ejects all the way. What am I going to do now? I need to slow down."
I jerked the throttles to idle and started the speed brakes out. Without
stopping, I reached up, de-isolated, and threw the flap lever to the down
position. I reached over and grabbed for the IFF selector switch and twisted
it to EMER. I was screaming "Slow down! Slow down!" to myself as I looked up
at the airspeed indicator and gave another pull back on the throttles and
speed brakes. The airspeed was passing 200 knots. I had been looking back
over my shoulder at my bombardier the whole time I was doing everything
else.
I felt a strange combination of fear, helplessness and revulsion as I
watched his body slam around in the windblast. After his helmet flew off,
his face looked like the people who get sucked out into zero atmosphere in
some of the more graphic movies. His eyes were being blasted open, his
cheeks and lips were puffed out to an impossible size and the tendons in his
neck looked like they were about to bust through his skin as he fought for
his life. At 200 knots I saw his arms pulled up in front of his face and he
was clawing behind his head. For a moment, I thought he was going to manage
to pull the handle and get clear of the plane. I was mentally cheering for
him.
His arms got yanked down by the blast and I cursed as I checked my radio
selector switch to radio 1. "Mayday, Mayday, this is 515. My BN has
partially ejected. I need an emergency pull-forward!" The reply was an
immediate, "Roger, switch button six." I switched freqs and said (or maybe
yelled), "Boss (Air Officer), this is 515. My BN has partially ejected. I
need an emergency full-forward!" I slapped the gear handle down and turned
all my dumps on (in an effort to get slower, max trap never crossed my
mind). The Boss came back in his ever-calm voice and said, "Bring it on in."
Checking out the BNAs I watched, the indexers move from on-speed to a
green chevron I worked the nose to keep the plane as slow as possible and
still flying. The plane was holding at around 160 knots and descending. My
BN's legs were kicking, which gave me some comfort; he was not dead. But,
watching his head and body jerked around in the windblast, being literally
beaten to death, made me ill. I had been arcing around in my descent and was
still at seven miles. The boss came up and asked if the BN was still with
the aircraft. I think that I caused a few cases of nausea when I answered,
"Only his legs are still inside the cockpit." It made sense to me, but more
than a few people who were listening had visions of two legs and lots of
blood and no body. Fortunately, the Boss understood what I meant.
As I turned in astern the boat, I called the Boss and told him I was six
miles behind the boat. I asked how the deck was coming. He asked if I was
setting myself up for a straight-in. I told him "yes." He told me to
continue. It was then I noticed that my BN had quit kicking. A chill shot
through my body and I looked back at him. What I saw scared me even more.
His head was turned to the left and laying on his left shoulder. He was
starting to turn grey. Maybe he had broken his neck and was dead. Bringing
back a body that was a friend only minutes before was not a comfortable
thought. I forced myself not to look at my bombardier after that. The front
windscreen started to fog up about four miles behind the boat. I cranked the
defog all the way and was getting ready to unstrap my shoulder harness so I
could wipe off the glass when it finally started clearing. I saw the
boat making a hard left turn. I made some disparaging remarks about the guys
on the bridge as I rolled right to chase centerline.
I heard CAG paddles (landing signal officer) come up on the radio. He
told the captain he would take the winds and that he needed to steady up. My
tension eased slightly as I saw mother begin to leave her wake in a straight
line. Coming in for landing I was driving it in at about 300 feet. I had
been in a slight descent and wasn't willing to add enough power to climb
back up to a normal straight-in altitude for fear I would have to accelerate
and do more damage to my already battered BN. I watched the ball move up to
red and then move slowly up towards the center. Paddles called for some
rudder and told me not to go high. My scan went immediately to the 1-wire. I
had no intention of passing up any "perfectly good wires." I touched down
short of the 1-wire and sucked the throttles to idle.
The canopy shards directly in front of the BN's chest looked like a
butcher's knife collection. I was very concerned that the deceleration of
the trap was going to throw him into the jagged edge of the canopy. I
cringed when I didn't immediately feel the tug of the wire. I pulled the
stick into my lap as paddles was calling for altitude. I got the nose gear
off the deck and then felt the hook catch a wire. I breathed a sigh of
relief. Testing
the
spool-up time of a pair of J-52s as I rolled off the end of the angle was
not the way I wanted to end an already bad hop. As soon as I stopped, I set
the parking brake and a yellow shirt gave me the signal to kill my No. 2
engine. Immediately after that, I heard a call over the radio that I was
chocked. I killed #1 and began unstrapping.
As soon as I was free of my seat (I somehow remembered to safe it), I
reached over and safed the BN's lower handle, undid his lower koch fittings
and reached up to try to safe his upper handle. As I was crawling up, I saw
that his upper handle was already safed. I started to release his upper koch
fittings but decided they were holding him in and I didn't want him to fall
against the razor-sharp plexiglas on his side. I got back on my side of the
cockpit, held his left arm and hand, and waited for the medical people to
arrive. I realized he still was alive when he said, "Am I on the flight
deck?" A wave of indescribable relief washed over me as I talked to him
while the crash crew worked to truss him up and pull him
out of the seat.
Once he was clear of the plane, they towed me out of the landing area and
parked me. A plane captain bumped the canopy open by hand far enough that I
could squeeze out. I headed straight for medical without looking back at the
plane. Later, I found that ignorance can be bliss. I didn't know two things
while I was flying. First, the BN's parachute had deployed and wrapped
itself around the tail section of the plane. Second, the timing release
mechanism had fired and released the BN from the seat. The only things
keeping him in the plane were the parachute risers holding him against the
back of the seat.
Webmaster Note: Naval Aviators are gutsy guys and have
to be just a bit wacky to do the work they do - sort of like submariners in
that respect. While the majority of my Navy career was with the U. S.
Submarine Service, I did serve almost three years on an aircraft carrier,
the USS FORRESTAL (CV-59) from February 1974 through October 1976. During
the two Mediterranean deployments the ship made while I was aboard, I
observed or at least knew about a number of accidents and incidents we
sustained and it was not unusual to lose several aviators every cruise. The
particular incident described above is certainly not the norm - but any Navy
guy who has deployed in ships, submarines and aircraft know that the catchy
slogan "It's not just a job - it's an adventure" has more truth behind it
than the average civilian realizes. I applaud the two gentlemen who made it
through this incident - as I do all who have served our wonderful country in
the world's finest military - the United States Armed Forces.
