geoffm@EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller) (09/02/90)
From: geoffm@EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller) The following is excerpted from the 13-26 October 1989 issue of the British magazine _Aviation News_. It's from quite an interesting article called _Starfighter Down_, by Robert F. Dorr. The article describes Maj. Charles Ward's experience with a landing gear malfunction in F-104C 57-0926, and his subsequent crash landing at George AFB, California. Any typos are my own. ------ //// ------ There were two features of the F-104 that the pilots still didn't trust, namely the landing gear and the ejection seat. It was a grim joke. If the gear didn't go down and lock, the procedure was to be prepared to say goodbye to the world, because the seat wouldn't work either. They'd deleted the downward [firing] ejection seat and the current model was a more conventional, upward-firing device which could hurt you bad, even if, unlike Charlie, you didn't have chronic back problems. [...] He shifted his gaze into the cockpit and remembered that, while they'd taken out the downward-firing seat, they hadn't covered over the square panel for it in the under-fuselage. That time out at Edwards, Chalie Ward remember- ed, Smitty had done what you were never supposed to do in an F-104 and at- tempted a gear-up landing on the gritty dry lakebed. [...] But Smitty had a fine-tuned touch and put aircraft down with such delicate skill that it looked like he was going to walk away from it. Until that downslide panel ripped loose and the cockpit gouged up the desert sand, all up and around Smitty's head, suffocating him. When they dragged him out, his fists were clenched around gouts of sand and he'd tried to spit out the stuff as it filled his nostrils, mouth and eyes. ------ //// ------ In a nutshell, the article goes on to describe how Maj. Ward stayed in the pattern to burn all his fuel, then made a successful deadstick landing. Re- taining all the external stores to absorb the shock (contrary to procedures), a decision which probably saved his life, Ward made his approach, flaring at *300 knots*. The plane hit the ground about 1,000 feet short of the runway and struck seven concrete abutments that held approach lights, mowing off the five-inch lengths of galvanized pipe light-supports like blades of grass. The tip tanks, which Ward had wisely decided not to jettison, prevented the wingtips from digging in and flipping the plane as it swapped ends. (I didn't realize until I read this article that the tip tanks could be jettisoned. I've seen many pictures of F-104s with and without tip tanks, and I'd always assumed that they were just different models.) Ward survived with only a back injury. Geoff -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Geoff Miller + + + + + + + + Sun Microsystems geoffm@purplehaze.sun.com + + + + + + + + Milpitas, California -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-