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vincent p. norris wrote: On 11 Jul 2003 22:59:25 GMT, ost (Ditch) wrote: What about the April 4, 1963 dead-stick landing of an F-8 Crusader flown by Stu Harrison? Could you tell us more about that? VF-62 was operating the F-8E while all & sundry were discovering that the pump into the fuel feed tank would sometimes inexplicably *reverse* and start pumping fuel back out to the other eight fuel tanks in the airplane. Harrison and Gillcrist had launched from Shangri La on "a routine air intercept training mission" and were thirty miles out when things started going backwards in the fueling system. Making their way back, Gillcrist requested an emergency pull forward and soon had a ready deck. They entered the cone at 175 knots with idle power, and Gillcrist thinking they were never going to drain 45 knots before Harrison hit the deck. "He's going to rip the tail right off the airplane." Passing 500 feet, he was about to suggest that Harrison pull up and get in shape to eject, when Harrison's jet abruptly dropped below and behind. He looked back and saw Harrison's jet sitting on the deck and could not understand how the guy had possibly reeled it all in: he'd gone from the top of the cone and thirty knots fast, to the one wire. The standing order was to keep the engine running on any F-8E that had been recovered with the feed tank goof, so that technicians could take a look at the thing in action and try to sort it out. Well, the flight deck director was signalling the taxi forward, but Harrison's airplane just sat there (while Gillcrist was going around). The VF-62 CO had geared up and run out on the deck to personally supervise investigation of the feed tank goof, and was circling two fingers to Harrison to keep it running. What happened was that Harrison flipped 'em both the bird and climbed out of the jet right there where it sat. The CO promptly went nuts, of course, and told Harrison that he was in hack for the rest of the cruise. That's when Harrison told him, "Goddamn it, Skipper, the reason why I didn't keep the engine running was because the son of a bitch quit while I was in the groove!" He'd come over the ramp with one hand gingerly adding back-pressure on the stick and the other hand on the ejection handle... which was cool because there was no point in paying attention to the throttle. He must've done it all just exactly right. That's how Gillcrist describes it in his book. Billy http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php |
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