Houston, You Have a Problem

On Jul 22, 11:47 am, Danny Deger wrote:
On Jul 22, 11:10 am, wrote:
snip

I won't say that it was wrong of your flight lead to fly an aggressive
final turn. Good pilots can get away with that. I won't say that it
was wrong of you to follow your lead through that turn. A good
wingman can get away with that too. My suggestion to you was to
rethink your view that your flight lead was wrong. That your flight
lead tried to kill you.

Where in the heck did I say he wanted to kill me? Please don't put
words in my mouth. I only said he wanted to embarrass me by flying a
turn tighter than I could. He did not know, and I did not know the
consequences of flying into his jet wash. If I had known, I certainly
would not have. If he had known, he certainly would not have flown
such a tight turn that I had to follow.

Here is the section of my book in question. I clearly say I think
lead may have been trying to embarass me. There is no mention of him
attempting to kill me.

The normal way to land is what is called the overhead break. The
number 2 plane is put on the side opposite of the break and the
formation flies down the runway at about 1,500 feet altitude. As the
formation passes over the runway lead breaks and number 2 stays level
for a few seconds. After the delay, number 2 breaks.
One of the rules was number 2 can not fly a pattern further from the
runway than lead. One day this almost killed me. Lead did a very
aggressive break. By this I mean he makes a small/tight turn. I
followed. If you are too close to the runway, you can't make the
turn and you overshoot. I knew I was closer than I ever had been in
my life, and I was going to have to make a maximum performance turn to
final. At the proper time, I started a turn at the optimum Angle Of
Attack, AOA. The F-4 had an audio feed back on AOA and had a nice
solid tone in the head set when on the optimum AOA. I was inside
lead's turn to start off with, so I am out of his wake turbulence.
But, I must go right into the center of his wake turbulence to line up
on the runway. Wake turbulence is like small horizontal tornadoes
that can cause huge roll rates if you get into one. Normally, a
fighter can fly into another fighter's wake turbulence without any big
problems. But lead was doing a more aggressive turn than usual which
made his wake stronger. Then I was at a higher than normal angle of
attack with decreased my aileron effectiveness. The end result was
when I hit his wake turbulence, I rolled instantly about 120 degrees
to the left. I knew I was in big trouble. Fortunately my training
and instincts kicked in. At a high angle of attack, the F-4 does not
roll well. I needed to get the AOA down. To do this I pushed the
stick full forward until it hit its stop. At the same time I gave the
plane full right rudder. About the time my controls become effective,
I left my lead's wake turbulence and rolled quickly back to the
right. I overshot the roll a lot and ended up in about 90 degrees of
roll to the right. The AOA was down by now, so the ailerons start to
work. With left aileron and left rudder I brought the plane back to
level flight and actually made a good landing without having to go
around. The roll excursions lasted a second or two at the most and I
was still on glide slope and on the centerline of the runway. My WSO
told me after landing he was reaching for the ejection handle as I was
fighting for control. Before he could pull the handle, I had the
plane back under control. I am glad he didn't have time. At our
altitude and roll angles, we probably would not have had time for the
chutes could open before we hit the ground.
What was strange for me at the time was the lack of interest in what
happened. We were well trained to avoid the wake of heavy airplanes,
but the general thought was the wake turbulence of another F-4 was not
dangerous. I asked that the Tactical Air Command safety organization
be brought in to get the word out that if the pattern is flown too
aggressively, lead's wake turbulence could be deadly. My request was
denied. I requested the topic be brought up at the next wing safety
briefing. Again my request was denied. I didn't at the time
understand why loosing control in the traffic pattern would not be of
interest to the F-4 safety community. Now I think I know why. Leads
are not supposed to fly such a tight pattern. He was very likely
attempting to embarrass me by flying a pattern tighter than he thought
I could. Even if his overly aggressive pattern was not meant to
embarrass me, he was at fault for the near miss. It wasn't my
favorite lead, John "Lips" Fraley, but it was a respected flight lead
of the squadron. If you are part of the in crowd, you can screw up
and not be called on the mistake. If you are not in the in crowd,
every tiny issue is blown out of proportion and used to further damage
your reputation. Being in a fighter squadron was just like being back
in junior high.

Danny Deger