Batstrike!
A loud thud. A shower of purple-white sparks. This can't be good.
- By Randy Gordon
- AirSpaceMag.com, December 14, 2009
It was my first T-38A night solo out of Laughlin Air Force Base in the remote west Texas desert. Since night flying as a pilot training student is already an emergency procedure by default, the instructors make the flight as basic as possible. The weather has to be almost crystal clear and the winds nearly at a dead calm. Students receive a tremendous amount of preparation training for the flight and are drilled on the game plan so thoroughly that I still remember it to this day: An instructor would take off with the solo students following him at regular intervals. Another instructor would play the role of "Tail End Charlie" making sure all the students in front of him didn't inadvertently fly into Mexico. We were to follow the instructor on a course that traced a wide arc along the edges of Laughlin's training airspace, report passing pre-arranged turn points over the radio, maintain a set speed so we didn't overrun each other in the darkness, return to the pattern for several approaches, and then make a full-stop landing. The night T-38 solo flight was more about building confidence than it was about developing stick and rudder skills.
Night flying over west Texas is spectacular. Because of the area’s sparse population, there are almost no lights from cities, towns, or highways. Other than the distance-measuring equipment on the instrument panel clicking off at a rate of 8 miles a minute, you have almost no sensation of speed. Radio chatter was almost non-existent except for the occasional brief position reports from my classmates. The low hum of the engines and distant whoosh of the air flowing over the airframe was mesmerizing. The peacefulness of the night flight at altitude was the perfect contrast to the chaos that was about to erupt.
The setup for my first touch-and-go landing went like clockwork. There were no air-traffic snarls that sent me into holding, no confusing or garbled radio communications, and no aircraft malfunctions. I was on speed at the landing and made a smooth touchdown about 1,200 feet down the runway, right on the centerline. Let's see if I can make them all look like that. I added power to go around and once clear of the ground with a positive rate of climb, I retracted the gear and flaps.
Just as I was running my after-takeoff checks, I felt a sickening thud on the left side of the aircraft, like someone had just whacked the airplane with a large mallet. An enormous shower of purple-white sparks erupted from the back end of the airplane. As quickly as it appeared, the fireball outside faded to be quickly replaced by a light show inside the airplane. The Master Caution light was blaring along with warning lights and gauge indications that all pointed to a catastrophic failure of the left engine. The jet groaned ominously and issued metallic grinding noises as it chugged and lurched through the sky.
They say that in sudden emergencies, a pilot’s natural tendency is to pull back the throttles in a subconscious effort to buy time to deal with the problem. This is exactly what I did, and it was exactly the wrong thing to do. Climbing at slow speed, low altitude, and with low engine thrust is dangerous in any airplane, but especially in the T-38. Its thin stubby wings, bullet nose, and sleek coke-bottle fuselage were built for blistering speed, not slow-speed handling. T-38 aircrews have been doomed by the flight characteristics on the backside of the thrust curve, a region of slow-speed flight where it takes more thrust to fly slower due to the tremendous rise in drag. Get too slow in this region and the aircraft may not have enough thrust to recover without losing altitude. And I was just a few hundred feet off the ground.
The T-38 protested my power reduction by starting to buffet and shake—the sign of an impending stall. My brain quickly caught up: I slammed both throttles forward to maximum afterburner thrust. The right engine roared back to full power, while the left engine sputtered as it overheated and tore itself apart and the airplane vibrated wildly. I didn't care: Engine failure or not, I needed what little thrust it could produce to save the aircraft, or else there would soon be a large smoking hole in the ground about the size and shape of a pancaking T-38.
I was fully engaged with the aircraft now: I could almost hear my instructor coaxing me to use both throttles to climb to my minimum controlled-ejection altitude and airspeed first before dealing with any takeoff emergency. We were taught that you must never sacrifice aircraft control while analyzing the situation and taking the proper corrective action.
Slowly, my airspeed began to rise, as well as my altitude. When safely away, I brought the left throttle back until it stabilized within correct operational limits. The throttle position where this occurred was in idle power—but at least the vibrations had ceased and the motor could provide redundant electrical and hydraulic power.
Related topics: Air Force Jet Aircraft Trainers Military Aviators Modern Aviation
| Tweet | Digg |
Comments (1)
Does anyone besides me feel kinda sorry for the animal?
Posted by David on October 6,2010 | 03:47 PM