Aviation Mishap Story Time 1
Okay, I lied (a little)
In my Introductory post to this series, I promised I would “…explain the origins of the picture of Yours Truly… from 11 Aug 1994.”
That’s not quite the same picture, but a different angle of the crash from another rocky outcropping right across from ours. It seemed so precarious, like it might tumble down that hill and break into pieces. (As I learned in a close-up, however, it wasn’t going anywhere. I’ll explain why when we get to that story.)
As I started writing that tale, there was so much aviation-specific background necessary to give it proper context that the idea dawned on me that perhaps the best way to do this as a series is to simply take you through all of my encounters with aviation mishaps chronologically, from fixed-wing to rotary-wing. In that way, my hope is to acclimate you to concepts that can become useful in later pieces and lean on them in order to make those stories richer. Perhaps you’ll come to see aviation mishaps from an aviator’s eyes, if I’m at all able to do my job. I have generally relied upon this database “List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1990–1999)” as a reference as it seems to jive with my recollections, but in writing later stories I have already noticed that it is nowhere near a complete list.1
It Begins Before It Begins
March, 1992
Finally. Well… almost finally.
It feels like I’ve waited my whole life for this. I’m a shiny new 2nd Lieutenant wearing my drab green flight suit and leather jacket. Eat your heart out Tom Cruise, you poseur faggot, I smirk to myself. I’m still finishing up ground school and sims (simulator training), but just down the street are the flightlines - in both directions! Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola may get all the glory and pub - and truth is, it’s got a hoppin’ O’Club on Friday nights when they let “locals” (i.e. hot P’Cola gals looking for husbands) onto the base - but NAS Whiting Field in Milton, Florida, is where the real action is: that’s where naval flight training is actually done. The O’Club here is tiny, right across from the “Q” - the bachelor officer’s quarters (BOQ) - but it’s got good sandwiches and it crowds up during lunch with Student Naval Aviators and our instructors in between hops. It sits right up against the edge of South Whiting Field’s armada of TH-57B and -C model helicopters: the Navy’s version of the Bell 206 Jet Ranger, decked out in training colors - orange and white. All Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard helicopter pilots are made here at South Whiting Field.
Across the base, perhaps a mile straight-line drive is North Whiting Field with its flotilla of fixed-wing aircraft - the T-34C Turbo Mentor - affectionately known as the “Tormentor” by salty students. It’s a turboprop aircraft - a jet engine powers the prop - and it is fully-aerobatic. Every Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard pilot learns to fly fixed-wing first, even if you’ve got helos on your heart, because the Navy has learned the hard way that flying over the ocean requires making instrument pilots first, so this is the way it’s done and has been since the military started training helicopter pilots.2
Primary flight training is a syllabus of roughly 50-55 graded flights in the T-34, followed by aircraft selection at the end. Marines have 3 choices: Props,3 Jets,4 or Helos.5 Then Intermediate flight training based upon that selection, then Advanced. After you complete Advanced, you get your wings. After that you still have to go to the “RAG” - the Replacement Air Group - where you (finally) learn to fly your specific aircraft.
I’ve already finished The Basic School (TBS), a mandatory 26-week basic infantry course that all Marine officers go through after commissioning. I got married shortly thereafter, had to got on temporary duty for a few months while I waited for a “boat seat” - a slot in the training pipeline to open up for me, and that only got me down to P’Cola, where we endured 6 weeks of Aviation Indoctrination (AI), kinda like “Officer and a Gentleman” except without the drill instructors for those of us who are already officers.6
It took me an extra two weeks because I couldn’t pass one of the final swim events, the 15-minute tread-water in a flight suit, helmet, and boots, but now, having acquired some needed buoyancy from some carbonated beverages one weekend, here I am - the place I dreamed of when I first saw the Blue Angels barely more than a toddler at air shows over Quonset Point, Rhode Island in the early- to mid-1970s when they flew the A-4 Skyhawks.7
My good buddy, who graduated a little earlier than me from Boston University, is taking me on a tour of the squadron spaces. He’s about 5 months ahead of me in the pipeline and it’s great to have a friend who can help me as I learn the ropes. Jeff was a prior-enlisted Marine artilleryman who had gotten a scholarship to college, as well. He and I had become fast friends and he was the big brother I never had. In addition to being Navy ROTC Marine-options, we also played ice hockey together, sometimes as a defense pair. By good fortune, out of the three training squadrons on base, I’ve been assigned to the same one he was, Navy Training Squadron 2 (VT-2), the “Doer Birds”.
“And this is the CO’s office,” Jeff points as we walk down the hallway. He sticks his head in like it’s no big deal and then shrugs at me. “New CO isn’t in,” he says and we continue on toward the office where I can buy my patch, now that I know where I’m going.
“When did yo- we, get a new CO?” I ask politely.
“Few months ago…” Direct look at me - “…after the old one died.”
“Oh?” I kind of snicker, thinking this is the setup to a punchline.
“Old CO augured one in with a student last October. Kind of a bummer around here for a while, man. He was a good guy.”
“The CO died? With a student?”
“Yep. One of us - a Marine. Did you know Tom Gaffney?” I rack my brain but I don’t recognize the name.
“No.”
“Yeah. On his FAM-8 doing spins. CO put pro-spin rudder in and that tightened the spin into a spiral.” Now he gestures with his finger in a cork-screwing motion downward. “Ran out of altitude; right into the ground. Boom.” This is not the punchline I was anticipating.
In the Naval Aviation syllabus, the first Familiarization Flight (“FAM-1”), is largely a ride-along and demo by your instructor pilot (“IP”). FAM-2 is the student taking off, and FAM-3 is the student landing. FAM-6 includes stalls; FAM-8 is spins, and FAM-13 is the check ride for the FAM-14 solo.8
“Damn,” I mumble to myself. That puts a bit of a damper on things.
“Yep. Real deal, here, baby.” He chuckles and slaps me on the back. “Don’t worry, Snailman. You’ll be fine. You’re gonna crush it, buddy.”
“Let’s get you your big orange myna bird, brother, and I’ll drop you back over at ground school.”
April 15, 1992
I hear about it at the O-Club.
A T-2C Buckeye, the jet trainer used in Intermediates, with two instructors in it, is doing carrier landings on the Forrestal, when an F-14 asks for some help because it’s got a “stuck gear” indication, a little black-and-white alternating striped “flag” we call a “barber pole.” The T2 gets up close to have a look at the F-14’s gear, gets too close, and gets “sucked up” into the F-14’s wing by the infamous F-14 “jet wash”.9 Both instructors eject, the T2 goes into the drink, but unfortunately, only one of them is recovered.
My first flight is only a few weeks away. The story makes page 1A of the Pensacola News Journal the next day. My wife asks about it and I brush it off with a wry joke. Jet guys are obviously not even smart enough to watch Top Gun and know about F-14 jet wash, heh.
And now, the Fun Begins.
May 13, 1992
Finally, for real this time.
Two days ago I satisfied my on-wing that I could pre-flight the T-34C and pass his little tests and tricks. My “On-Wing” is the instructor who is going to teach me how to fly the T-34 over the course of the first 8 flights, before I go “off-wing” with different instructors for a couple of flights to ensure that other pilots get a look at each student. Then I go back on-wing for a couple of flights, before my check-ride, my FAM-13X, where I have to prove to a Standardization pilot that I’m “safe for solo.” It’s two-days past one year since I was commissioned as a Second Louie, an officer of Marines.
Yesterday was my first flight, which on the syllabus is mostly “show-and-tell” and I’m not technically on the hook for anything, however… I almost shit my pants on take-off because holy shit is everything happening fast and oh-fuck-here-come-the trees jesuschristwhenishegoingtopullup! AND WHO PUTS A RUNWAY FACING A TREELINE!
The truth is that I’m terrified and I’m trying to decide how I’m going to explain to my family and friends that I absolutely can NOT do this. I’m afraid of heights and have been since I was a child. Somehow, the Marine Corps has managed to make me prove I’m willing to overcome even that fear, but obstacle and rope courses and rappelling down cliffs just aren’t the same thing as flying.
…But there’s no time to quit because it’s study-study-study and then crawl all over my aircraft in my “spare” time, then eat, PT, practice the landing pattern I’ve chalked out in our apartment parking lot while I walk around it (to the chagrin of our neighbors) mimicking the radio calls because tomorrow I have to be able to land this fucking thing without killing us. Then back to read the Teenie-Weenie’s NATOPS10 manual before bed to read every WARNING, Caution, and Note… There’s just not enough time for me to quit. I decide I’ll quit next week, after I get through this first week.
Right now I’m trying to focus as I stand on the wing while I get the parachute straps out of the way because LT Tim King, USN, is peppering me with questions in his syrupy Georgia draaawwwl about the aircraft’s oil system and how the prop is lubricated. I’m as stolid as a Chinaman in calculus class and I answer with flat affect. He hops in the back as I finish strapping into my parachute and the aircraft’s front seat, pull out my NATOPS pocket checklist, and we begin the challenge and response for each item in the Pre-Start checklist.
I make sure my rudder pedals are cranked back for my short legs because today’s big ticket item is that I’m going to taxi us out to the runup area where we’ll conduct our pre-takeoff checks, and then I, with the help of God Almighty, am going to take-off for the first time. I’m still not sure I’m going to be able to keep this thing on the runway once I put the power control lever (PCL) to the firewall and I’m getting all 1080 ft-lbs of torque so I CAN CLEAR THOSE F***ING TREES AT THE END OF THE RUNWAY(!).
But that problem is a distant luxury because right now I have two bigger problems: I have to prove first that I can start this sucker up, and then master the differential braking to steer our bird out of the line and down the row of aircraft, along the taxiways to the runup area without crashing into anything. I have taxied this particular aircraft - or any aircraft at all - exactly zero point zero times prior to this moment. And that’s right, kids, there is no steering wheel.
The Teenie-Weenie has one nose-gear that moves like the front wheels on a shopping cart and two main mounts under the wings. To “steer” the aircraft has brakes that can be engaged by depressing the top of the rudder pedals - the things which normally, in flight, control yaw by moving a control surface on the vertical stabilizer. On the ground, however, it is a combination of differential pressure with my feet on the very top of each rudder pedal while using the left hand to manipulate the PCL to control the prop and thus the speed of the aircraft. (Got all that? Yeah, me neither.)
I give the proper hand signal to the civilian contract ground crew that I’m firing up the engine and he acknowledges it back. I hear the igniters, the jet engine’s version of spark plugs, popping and then the “can” - the combustion chamber - lights. The blades on the prop start turning and in a few short minutes I’m through the Start checklist and Post-Start checklist, the radios are crackling, and each of us slides our canopy forward. With a thunk and clack, I latch mine down.
“I have the controls,” I say with 100% completely fake confidence.
“You have the controls,” Lt King repeats the phrase back, and I assert it again, “I have the controls” to complete the required “three-way, positive change of controls.”11
The ground handler signals me forward and I push the PCL forward, a little, while I let my foot on each brake relax and take pressure off, but now I’ve got to turn left - pressure on left, less on right - and the nose swings, and I think I’ve got it… oh, shit, he’s saluting me - I snap back my most crisp, Marine-aviator salute with my right hand, and I’m glad I’ve got the dark visor down on my helmet because I’m actually looking down at my feet and the pedals while trying to keep my head up straight.
I feel like Fred Astaire on methamphetamine, but (somehow) I manage to taxi to the run-up area completely clean: and I do mean clean. I’m downright giddy, but I keep my voice aviator cool over the intercom system (ICS) as I turn over the controls to my instructor. He can hear me grinning.
“Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut, Loo-tenuhnt Suh-ray-uhn,” my instructor observes wryly. I laugh because it’s 1992 and I’ve never heard that joke before, but I’m smiling and so damn relieved it just falls out of me. He completes the run-up while I try to follow what he’s doing on the aircraft’s gauges. We get a clearance from Ground Control to taxi to the duty runway and I take back controls to get us there. Now I WANT to taxi the damn thing to prove I wasn’t lucky the first time - Hey… I’m getting the feel for driving this damn thing!
Ground clears us to the hold short line and tells us to switch to Tower’s frequency. I switch the radio to Tower for the final approval to take the active runway for takeoff, my feet on the brakes holding us at the line… I take a deep breath and try to steady myself.
…And then all hell breaks loose on the radios.
“BEEEWWWW! BEEEWWWW! BEEEWWWW!!” breaks across the radio followed shortly thereafter by:
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Two-Echo-Two-Niner-Three, I’ve just had a midair collision…”
What is going on in my head at this exact moment: Wow. They really go for realism here. Huh. I thought our Fam Training Guide said we were supposed to do all of our simulated emergency calls in the cockpit only to our instructor…? Not out loud for the world to hear! Okay, make a mental note.
What comes out of my instructor’s mouth: “Can you see them Loo-ten-uhnt?!” I can hear his voice change while he cranes his neck from the back seat.
“Who?” I ask with complete sincerity.
“The aircraft coming back from the midair!” he all but screams, as if I am crazy.
In my total focus on the here-and-now, very-much-present problem of the takeoff I am currently holding short to accomplish, I have entirely tuned out the ongoing radio traffic between the Tower and one of the two aircraft in this ongoing, real-life, midair collision between two training aircraft.
As I turn my attention to the radio traffic it becomes clear that an aircraft from VT-3, one of our sister squadrons, with a student on his FAM-6 in front and an instructor in back, has declared an emergency, the airspace has been cleared, and they have a single barber pole - a stuck gear indication. They are asking to do a fly-by of the Tower to look with some binos to see if one of their main gear is really hung up or if they just have a faulty indication.
“Switch me to Base frequency. Let me see if I can get permission for us to go up and do a visual.” My instructor is all business now. “You okay with that? You may lose the ex, but you’re comfortable with that, yes?” All the latest in crew-coordination training requires him to ask me this question.
“-Yessir. Switching.” I do not hesitate. I flip the radio from the tower preset channel to our home base preset. Now let me be clear: I do not do so out of courage. I do so entirely because I am an idiot who has fallen for every bit of Marine Corps Oo-rah there is. I know there is no other option if I’m ever going to show my face in the organization again. And in the exact same thought, right alongside that stick, I also think of the carrot: I’ll have the best O’Club lunch “There I Was” story any FAM-2 student has ever had in his f***ing life! I’ll tell you what, buddy!
And then, the longer we sit and I listen to this play out, and my instructor is on the radio to base, the T2 mishap is sitting right in the middle of my brain.
Pessimistic Angel on shoulder: I’m gonna be along for the ride like a smoked ham… Optimistic Devil on shoulder: …but it’s a chance to be a hero!
Tim King interrupts my reverie to tell me that Base has disapproved our adventure. We listen while North Whiting Tower passes the aircraft off to South Whiting Tower for the potential gear-up landing. They don’t say why, but LT King mentions to me that likely they don’t want to gouge up our runway and close operations, whereas the helo guys at South Whiting can work around that no problem. Frank Herbert’s Dune and “the Spice must flow” comes to mind. The Training Pipeline Must Flow because out there in the Fleet is a boat spot with each of our names on it, according to projections in the Pentagon.
Tower clears us for takeoff. I manage to get the aircraft into the air and past those bleeping trees at the end of runway 23. I believe all of the hubbub inclines my instructor to be gentle with me. We have an uneventful FAM-2 and return home two hours later.
Meanwhile…
Epilogue - The Burdens They Bear
While I complete my first take-off and we go our merry way, the local news picks up the crash and it hits the television. Jeff is in intermediates, but isn’t scheduled to fly until later, so he hears about the crash from the news. We live in the same apartment complex, so he calls my house to see if I know anything and instead gets my wife.
Jeff: “Hey, uh, just calling to see if the Snail’s around. He home?”
Wife: “No, Jeff. He’s flying. He’s at the squadron. Is everything okay?”
Jeff: “Yeah, yeah. No problem. I’ll call him later. Gotta go.”
Television Set an hour later: “There’s been a mid-air collision between two training aircraft at Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Milton, Florida. No details have yet emerged, however, witnesses say pieces of aircraft…”
Wife: ………….
When I get home, I am completely baffled as to why she is crying and upset.
The next day me and all of my friends are off of the schedule to go look for pieces of the T-34 that didn’t come back: one of our instructors, a VT-2 pilot, on a post-Maintenance check ride collided with the other aircraft. He managed to successfully recover the aircraft from uncontrolled flight twice, but got too low and, in trying to save the aircraft instead of bailing out, or perhaps not having any good place to put it without risking the aircraft going into a house, ran out of altitude. Into the ground. We learn all of this later on, after the investigation, and the memorial service.
I am flying within a day: FAM-3, the landing pattern. Once they start you flying, the Navy has learned that it is best to not have any breaks. They do NOT want you to have much time between flights. It’s like learning the piano - practicing every day for an hour is way more important than once a week for five hours. They talk to us about how to “manage” flying with the stresses of family and kids, but the reality is that we compartmentalize like nothing I’ve ever experienced. When I’m flying, my focus is total, complete - my family doesn’t even exist for me when I’m in the air.
This is The Way.
Some mishaps have links to archived news articles, as well, but given how long ago it was, military aviation’s insular nature, it is difficult to find very good or useful info regarding military mishaps.
It is worth noting that in 1991 at least, Whiting Field (helos and fixed-wing together) was among the busiest airports in the world by takeoffs and landings. I checked for this article and still is: https://www.pnj.com/story/news/military/2017/02/16/whiting-fields-air-space-tops-nations-busiest-airports/97892872/
…Which eventually leads to flying C-130s (and getting a job in the airlines afterwards).
…Which eventually leads to either F-18Ds or AV-8B Harriers.
…Which can lead anywhere from the massive, 3-engined CH-53E, to the workhouse, Vietnam-era transport CH-46D/E, to the UH-1N “Hueys” (the ones in every Vietnam movie with the doors pinned back), or, my dream, the AH-1W SuperCobra - the Whiskey.
We had genuine sympathy for the NavCads - Naval Aviation Cadets - who were around us, but never allowed to interact with us, during AI and all of the dunkers, swimming, O’Courses, and the rest of that shit you saw Richard Gere and his cohort go through.
The Blue Angels off-season practice airfield is NAS Pensacola. On Wednesdays or Thursdays (I can’t remember now), you could actually go sit in the bleachers at the airfield and watch the entire show, with the announcer doing his whole routine.
The syllabus moves extremely fast and is often referred to by the students as “drinking from a firehose.” It’s the post-Top Gun era and there is no shortage of young, able-bodied men who would love to be in our flight boots. Our instructors have made this clear to us: 3 “downs” - fail a test; fail a brief; or fail a flight - and you go home.
Yes yes! The infamou “jet wash” from Top Gun where Goose dies. Yes, no bullshit. The F-14 is known for that.
Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures manual. Every aircraft has one and it is required to be memorized from cover to cover. It has been drilled into us that “the NATOPS manual has been written in blood.” Our instructors can even point out which particular Warning, Caution, or Note in there came as a result of a particular fatal mishap.
Yes, people have died because pilots get distracted and no one is actually flying the flippin’ aircraft. The (in)famous 1972 eastern Airlines crash into the Everglades is one such example. As flight students, we listened to the cockpit voice recorder in our annual crew coordination training (one of many).
Reading this was more exciting than watching many action movies.
I'm going to aim more people at this series. Quite a read!
Glad you enjoyed it, Fabius. New one on Monday.