This post concludes the war stories about my experiences in flying
while serving in the Air Force and Air National Guard. These stories
began almost 10 years ago when I posted a story about flying a C124
in a strong mountain wave to a thread about mountain waves. I am now
out of stories. Thanks to all the compliments I have received
about the stories. At the Nats last summer, I talked to a few who
missed part 1 of the current story. If anyone would like a Word
document of the complete unabridged story, send me an email address.
This is the third part of a story I wrote about flying target for
training F86D pilots. Part 1 posted here a few months ago covered
the initial climb out to altitude and the view of the stars on a
moonless night above an overcast while part two covered the actual
high altitude intercept. This story covers the end of the mission
and has a little more action. This story was extracted from a story
I wrote titled The Face of God and took place in February, 1956.
Chuck Anderson
The second high altitude mission hand been canceled and I was ordered
to descend to 25,000 feet to fly target for students just learning to
fly intercepts. Fun time was over and the real work was just starting.
The visibility was technically 5 miles in haze but I was having
trouble seeing the fighters more than one minute to go. Part of the
problem was the lack of a horizon. This required me to spend more
time scanning instruments leaving less time for observing the
fighters. The fighters didn't have that problem since the radar
scope displayed sufficient information to fly intercepts without
reference to instruments.
One of the students was very timid and his intercepts and were always
getting dragged into a tail chase while the other was very aggressive
and set up ahead of the beam. After each had completed his first
intercept, I mentally tagged them Casper and Tiger. On his third
pass, Tiger got too far ahead and did not start drifting aft fast
enough after the 20 seconds to go call. I called off the intercept
while rolling down and away from the fighter while Tiger pulled up
and turned into the target as briefed to maximum miss distance.
I had trouble picking up Tiger on his next pass but finally saw him
up just as he called 20 seconds to go. He was way ahead of the beam
and not drifting aft at all so I called break and started a sharp
turn down and away from Tiger. Tiger was still holding the same
angle off the nose as his red wing tip light moved down while his
green wing tip light moved up. He wasn't pulling up as
briefed. Collision course!
At the last second, I pulled the stick back into my stomach and Tiger
passed under me. There was a sharp THUMP as Tiger's wing tip hit my
T33 somewhere aft. I immediately reached down and checked that I had
removed the right seat armrest safety pin. At least I could bail out
if necessary.
I leveled the plane and it responded normally to control inputs. I
then looked out to my left and saw Tiger below me in a rolling
dive. I was surprised that he was still so close and realized that
checking the seat pin and leveling the airplane had only taken a
couple of seconds. My first impression was that Tiger was going
in! Just as this thought flashed through my mind, Tiger stopped
rolling and leveled off.
I turned my attention back to my own plane and set about evaluating
the damage. I throttled back and slowed to 175 knots. There were no
unusual vibrations or noise and the airplane response to control
inputs was normal. So far, so good but I know Tiger hit me. Is the
tail hanging on by a single bolt or what?
The controller was issuing instructions to set us up for the next
intercept when Tiger informed him that we just had a midair
collision! Control then asked about my status. I responded that the
airplane appeared to be flying normally so far. The controller then
gave me the heading for Tyndall and ask me to contact Tyndall
Approach Control. Approach asked me to confirm that I had an
emergency. I said that I had an emergency with unknown damage from a
mid-air collision. Approach then wanted to know if I had performed a
controllability check. I replied negative and said that everything
felt normal and to stand by for a controllability check.
Gear and flaps up or down for the controllability check? Tiger had
passed just under my right wing but I had no way of knowing where he
hit my plane or if there was any damage to the wing flaps or landing
gear doors. Also, I didn't want to retract the gear once it was
down. Therefore, I decided to do a clean controllability check and
execute a no flap landing. I reduced power and let the airspeed
slowly decay to 140 knots. That's slow enough! I can do a no flaps
landing at that speed if required. Then I advanced power until the
airspeed was back up to 175 knots and informed approach control of my
intention to execute a no flap landing.
Approach cleared me to descend to 1700 feet but I couldn't see
anything outside. I was over the swamps northeast of the field and
there weren't any ground lights. At last, the lights of Tyndall
appeared over my nose and Approach Control cleared me to contact the
tower. Runway lights never looked so good.
Time to put the gear down. I held my breath as I moved the gear
handle to the down position. The Yellow gear unsafe light came on
and the three gear indicators switched from UP to a striped display
to indicate the gear in transit. The airplane reacted normally as
the gear extended but the yellow light seemed to stay on much longer
than normal. Finally, the yellow light was replaced by a green light
and all three gear indicators showed down and locked. Looks like we
are going to be OK.
I flew a rectangular pattern around the field, flying over the East
Bay Bridge that I had crossed on takeoff two hours earlier. I could
see the flashing red lights of fire trucks lined up between the
runways. I maintained 150 knots until beginning the flare over the
end of the runway. I touched down at 130 knots about 2000 feet down
the runway and needed very little braking to slow down to taxi speeds
before the end of the runway. The landing and turn off the runway
had shown no indication of trouble and nothing abnormal had occurred
since the collision so I taxied back to the ramp. As I taxied back,
I could see Tiger entering downwind so he made it back too.
I released the seat belt and started to climb out but found myself
a little weak at the knees. A lot had happened in the last few
minutes but I had been too busy to react until now. After resting
for a minute, I climbed out and inspected the damage. The radar
reflector was missing and the JATO shackles to which it had been
attached were a twisted mess. There were also a number of small
holes in the bottom of the fuselage aft of the JATO shackles that had
probably been caused by the remains of the reflector pod bouncing
down the belly after being knocked off. There was no damage to
either wing. In order to do this, my T33 must have been rolled at
exactly the right angle for the F86D wing tip to hit the radar
reflector without touching the wing. Tiger's wing tip passed within
a foot of my airplane at a rate of closure of over 600 knots. The G
meter in my cockpit showed that I had pulled 2 negative G's and 6
positive G's while evading Tiger.
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