Aviation Mishap Story Time 9
Return of the Mishap!
[Ed. note - for better context, these are the previous “episodes” in this series: AMST Intro, AMST 1, AMST 2, AMST 3, AMST 4, AMST 5, AMST 6, Helicopter Parenting, AMST 7, and AMST 8.]
I. Prologue - Requiescat in Pace
Life got in the way - I had an important motion due in a case - and thus there was a brief hiatus from writing my aviation mishap stories. Now we return with even more gusto! WARNING - the next few episodes, unfortunately, involve fatal mishaps; not the “fun” kind of mishaps where everyone survives and has a great story (and a little PTSD) afterwards, but the kind of smashups where people died. To the extent there is any levity in them, I offer my pre-apologies to families of the deceased, should they ever happen upon these scribblings. In all of these incidents, I knew someone involved; each of them was a terrible and unique tragedy because of the people who didn’t make it.
II. Meet the North Carolina Lawn Dart
When I was in flight school, there had been a little bit of a “jet draft” when it came time for my year group at the end of Primary flight training to select among the choices of: Helos, Jets, or Props. By then, I knew that I wanted to be a Cobra pilot, but the “needs of the service” are ALWAYS paramount. i.e. The Marine Corps will stick you in whatever aircraft it needs you to fly and you’ll shut up and be happy about it.
When it came to selecting jets in the Marine Corps, you had two options: the F/A-18D Hornet - very sexy, but not very many slots - and a whole lot more of the AV-8B Harrier jump-jet. Unaffectionately known by a number of nicknames, such as the Widowmaker, the Scarier, or (my fave) the North Carolina Lawn Dart. The first two are pretty obvious, but the last one was a joke on east coast Harrier pilots who fly out of Cherry Point Air Station, located along the Neuse River about 40 miles east and north of New River as the crow flies. A guy at the Cherry Point O’Club once asked me if I knew how I could get a Harrier for less than $10,000 and when I shook my head that I didn’t know he told me the punchline: “Just buy some property along the Neuse River and wait… eventually a Harrier will crash into your yard.”
Har-de-har-har!
But seriously, if anyone thinks this is just a helo guy poking fun at the Harrier guys, please understand, the Harrier nickname “the Widowmaker” long predates me. Here is the Wikipedia article entitled “List of Harrier Family Losses.” It is not talking about the families of the deceased pilots, but losses by the Harrier family of aircraft. I would encourage the reader to just click on the link and take a gander at the list… and its length. Note that many have UK flags next to them, as the Harrier was originally a British jet that the US decided to but and began fielding in 1971, in the original the AV-8A variant.
All of that aside, one of the “neatest” aspects about being deployed in a composite squadron was that we had fixed-wing guys with us aboard ship. Because the Harrier can take off and land vertically, we had 5 of them embarked with us aboard the USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) for our deployment in March 1995. This was something I hadn’t considered when selecting helos back in flight school and I was curious, as a helicopter pilot, about working alongside fixed-wing, “jet guys”.
III. Real American Heroes
My first intro to the iron gonads of our Harrier pilots came before I’d even met any of them. During our fly-aboard to the ship, the weather off the North Carolina coast was starting to degrade that late-March day, 1995. There are only 8 landing spots aboard a helicopter carrier, so each “wave” of aircraft has a particular window to get aboard, shut down, and quickly get pulled off of the spots (and stored) in order to make room for the next wave. The Cobra time slot was right before the Harriers and we managed to sneak in under the clouds.
But the weather was going to crap in a hurry as we helped the deck handlers button up our aircraft and get it off of the spot. I could hear the Harriers’ engines as they came in overhead, but I couldn’t see them because the cloud ceiling was already below 1000 feet - and dropping - as the ship continued steaming east toward the Caribbean, bound for Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, where we would go on-station in relief of the existing Amphibious Ready Group there.
As the Harriers came into the back of the ship, it went from bad -
To worse -
Just like that.
As unnatural as helicopters flying may be, hovering is our thing. I had zero envy for my fixed wing brothers as they tried to hover a jet with no horizon and then put it onto the boat.
When they finally all got aboard, I went down to the Ready Room to shake their hands and express my appreciation.
IV. Real American Heroes, Part Deux
After a couple of close calls in Sardinia in training (see AMST 7), my time with the British Royal Marines finally ended at the close of the exercise. We headed back to our own ship and got an appropriate send-off from the Royal Marines.
Note also the photo date stamp in orange in the lower right: ‘95 5 10 - May 10, 1995.1 A few weeks after this, we were in the Adriatic Sea - the body of water east of Italy that borders the coast of Croatia, Serbia, and Albania, among others. At the time, what used to be known as Yugoslavia was falling apart.2 Badly.
Our squadron got to be big heroes for rescuing an Air Force pilot (Capt. Scott O’Grady) after he was shot down over Bosnia.3 Much of the rest of the deployment was spent patting ourselves on the back, a few more exercises, some port calls, and then back home - without any mishaps or crashes. Yay, US!
One of the heroes of that rescue operation, feted (justifiably) in the press afterwards, was Ron “Wiggy” Walkerwicz. Try saying his last name five times fast and you can appreciate why he let even junior pilots like me call him by his nickname. Wiggy was one of the senior Harrier pilots on our deployment, the Harrier “tactics guy,” and he had been selected for Air Force Test Pilot School (as a Marine) - a testament to what kind of pilot Wiggy was.
I don’t think I ever heard anyone in the squadron utter a bad word about him. Ever. He was a consummate pro as a pilot and officer, and an amiable colleague and friend. He roomed with some of the other Harrier pilots just around the corner from where me and my roommates lived, so we all got to know each other pretty well.
After we returned from what had to be called successful deployment and maiden voyage for the USS Kearsarge, we de-chopped from our composite squadron and everyone went back to their former units, including our new fixed-wing Harrier pilot friends. Two of the Cobra pilots on that deployment lived up closer to Cherry Point and kept in touch with the Harrier guys, so occasionally I would hear about the goings-on. Additionally, now that I knew folks up there, whenever I did an exercise where I had to coordinate with Harriers, I could ask to talk to one of our boys, or mention a name, and have some cred. Somewhere in there I heard that Wiggy had gotten engaged to his longtime sweetheart.
A few months later, I was out testing a Cobra on a dreary Friday in February, with the clouds threatening to make my test hop a lot shorter than intended. I came back into the Ready Room and heard that a Harrier had gone down shortly after takeoff at Cherry Point. The aircraft was part of a division of three, IIRC, and as they all went up into the clouds, the last aircraft was struck by lightning, likely resulting in a complete electrical failure, as well as igniting a fire in a fuel nacelle.
The Los Angeles Times ran a story Dec. 2, 2002, entitled “More Than a Few Good Men,” profiling the 45 Marine aviators killed (to that point) in Harrier accidents since the first death of Major Michael Ripley on June 17, 1971. The story won a Pulitzer prize in journalism for highlighting the dangers of the Harrier. Near the bottom of that article is a bland explanation of how Ron “Wiggy” Walkerwicz died from a lightning strike to his AV-8B Harrier II aircraft on Feb. 16, 1996.
Walkerwicz was one of four Harrier pilots involved in the daring rescue of a downed Air Force pilot, Capt. Scott O’Grady, in Bosnia in 1995. The Harriers provided cover for the helicopter that plucked O’Grady from hostile territory.
Walkerwicz , 30, a Marine for eight years, had been obsessed with the Harrier ever since studying its use by the British in the Falkland Islands War, said his father, William Walkerwicz. He said his son “knew they were flying the most unforgiving aircraft in our arsenal.”
His AV-8B crashed after apparently being struck by lightning shortly after takeoff from Cherry Point in foggy and windy conditions. The lightning set fire to one wing, then part of the wing broke off. He never ejected from his plane.
Walkerwicz, who grew up in New York state, died two months before he was to be married.
The word from our Harrier brothers, in light of black box, tower data, and their benefit of the mishap investigation, while not conclusive, was that they believed that Wiggy likely could have safely ejected - the Harrier does “boast” the best ejection seat in the business, down to 0/0 - but he was over base housing and the elementary school and stayed with his bird to ensure it didn’t go down there.4
So, as is befitting a warrior of Captain Ron Walkerwcz’s status, I raise a toast to his memory, and ask for my God’s blessings on his family and loved ones: to Wiggy, a man who lived well and rightly.
Exactly one day short of four years of my commissioning as a Second Lieutenant of Marines aboard the USS Constitution in Boston.
The military requirement for acronyms meant that we called it all “the FRY,” as in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia.
When O’Grady was shot down in late May (I forget the exact day, but near the end of the month, ~27th), I was the Cobra schedule writer for the 8 of us on board. Which meant that I knew exactly who had already flown and who had crew day for that mission; I was among those who hadn’t flown, but the mission was scrubbed because his wingman reported he had not seen a ‘chute after O’Grady’s aircraft was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile (SAM). We were the “asset on scene” when he came up on the radio 6 days later, but I was on the schedule to test the backup bird when the mission went down for real.
A 0/0 ejection seat means that a pilot can eject from zero feet of altitude (i.e. while the aircraft is on the ground parked), with zero forward airspeed and still get a full canopy of parachute to avoid being splattered on the concrete.