Searching for interesting Stories ... Uh-Oh's, if you like

After recently talking with another ATS member, i thought I'd try to get a thread started of Oh S$$$ stories, or Uh oh stories if you like. We were trading stories and I thought, "hey, give the gang at ATS a chance to share some hair raising stories that left a load in the pilot's pants.
Whether you were the pilot, or heard it via somebody else, please feel that this is the place to tell your story of ridiculous and bizarre situations that involve aircraft and that you were involved in or heard of. The more wild the better, consider it a campfire aircraft thread if you like!

Zaphod58 tells a great one of an F15, but I'll give him the chance to tell you himself!
It's a wild one.....Peace to you all.

Later, Mondo

[edit on 22-3-2007 by Mondogiwa]
[edit: title]

[edit on 24-3-2007 by 12m8keall2c]

The Wing Commander from Alaska used to fly down in a two ship of F-15 Eagles, with a KC-135 when he'd have to go to Hickam AFB in Hawaii. They aborted one day, got the problem fixed, and were gonna try again 24 hours later.

Next day, the wingman says "We're going today even if I lose an engine on takeoff." We looked at each other and said "Ut oh. This is gonna be ugly." Sure enough, 185 knots, going down the reef runway (8R at Honolulu International) he gets an oil warning light on his right engine.

He pulls the throttles back, #1 goes to idle, #2 goes from Zone 5, to 100%. He drops the hook and hits the barrier at the far end of the runway at 210 knots. He ran that cable as far as it would go and then some. We got him back to the hangar with cracks around the tailhook, two blown engines from tire FOD, three blown tires, three melted brakes, and various other minor damage.

Pilot said "I was thinking about ejecting but I didn't know who'd stop the engine when it stopped." My father looked at him and said "You see that water down there? It would have done a great job at shutting it down."

I went through cadets up here in Central Canada and did back to back years. First with the gliders up in Mountain View, On and the next at Lindsay, ON for my private pilots.

Stories? Well it would take a bit to write them but one that stands out from glider was one of the students and their instuctor crashing of the end of the runway.

After they had trouble with downdrafts and bad control on the side of the student putting the glider which was on tow in a very low and left to the tow. The instructor pulled the release yanked the glider in its side and lined up for a very tight squeze between some tall trees since they didn't have the alt to do an emergency turn back and land with tail to the wind.

Well they ended up wraped around a tree with the left wing and a broken (snapped off) empange and rippled right wing. They walked away from it though with only some good scrapes and bruizes and a trip to the Hospitail to make sure they were ok.


[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

This one is more of a "How stupid can the Flight Engineer be" than an "Oh S$$$", but still a pretty good one.

We used to get LC-130s through Hickam, every summer. They would fly down to New Zealand, then from there to Antartica on resupply missions. One year, one of them got caught down there, and couldn't get out. It wound up getting buried in the ice and snow for almost two years. They were finally able to recover the plane and were flying it to the depot for major repairs, because it was falling apart by this point.

They were heading out of Hickam, and were 15 minutes short of the point of no return, when they had to shut down number 2 and turn around. They were burning an insane amount of oil in that engine (I forget the exact figure, but it was in the gallons per hour range), and were concerned about it seizing up on them.

The next day, we're out there to do an engine run to try to figure out what's wrong. The flight engineer is standing on the ramp while the pilot starts the engine up. Prop starts to rotate, bleed valves pop open, and oil just starts POURING out of the engine from behind the valve doors. We start hollering for the pilot to shut the engine down before it becomes a safety issue, and start making plans for the engine shop to come out and change the engine. Oil coming out like that is an automatic engine change, because the only way to fix it is to rebuild the engine. The flight engineer looks over at us and says "We can fix that without changing the engine."

By the time they got out of Hickam, they had changed a propellor, an engine, and fixed landing gear problems when the gear wouldn't retract.

My buddy who works in communications in the RAF told me a story from a few years ago that involved a USAF E-3 AWACS that had to land at their station near Wycombe for some reason (he did tell me but this was years ago) and was due to stay there for 2 days.

This station is notoriously difficult to negotiate on the ground, especially for larger aircraft as it has remained unchanged in plan since WW2 so the the regular ground crews stationed there offered their services to guide the E-3 to the dispersal area once landed. The AWACS crew had brought their own guys along however and they weren't having any Brits taking control even if it was their own base( I don't know if this is 'policy' or isolated arrogance). The RAF blokes thought 'fine' and stood back ready for a laugh.They were not disappointed asthe AWACS proceeded to wipe off its outboard starboard engine and about 10ft of wing against a hangar wall. Giggling was definitely heard from across the tarmac.

At this point the USAF boys suddenly decided that the RAF should have guided them after all and lodged an official complaint! Happily the RAF station commander was there all through the incident and no blame was attached to 'our boys'. The E-3 was stranded at Wycombe for 8 weeks while a repair was effected.

Oh ouch Waynos. *laugh* I bet the flames from the pilots career were visible from there.

I think it's time to ressurect "The Tail Gunner and the IG" from my father. True classic.

When the USAF was just starting to transition to using the KC-135s, they still had a bunch of the old KC-97s (B-50s converted to tankers). There was a B-52 with a full crew, including an instructor pilot giving a check ride doing a flight involving an in flight refueling. A nice simple check ride, no longer than a couple hours.

The time came for the refueling portion of the flight, and this is where things went horribly wrong. The KC-97 extended the boom, and the B-52 someone collided with it. The two pilots wound up looking at each other over the boom. The IP reached down and yanked the handle and departed the aircraft. The other pilot pulled the handle and his seat didn't fire, so he decided to land it.

The KC-97 wound up having all their control cables severed at the tail, but the boom went up through the fuselage and they were able to fly that well enough to get the plane on the ground. (It was a matter of getting low enough and doing a semi-controlled fall to the runway), they weren't able to jump because at the time crew chiefs flew with them on local missions, and he had a bad back.

So both aircraft landed safely, and they decided to go for the IP on charges of abandoning the aircraft. The Inspector General comes to the base, and starts to interview the tail gunner on the B-52 ( a Technical Sergeant). It went something like this:

IG: Did you hear anyone say Eject before the IP ejected?
TG: No Sir.

IG would ask a few more questions then:

IG: Did you see the bail out light come on before he ejected?
TG: No Sir.

So this goes on for awhile until after about two hours or so:

IG: Did the IP say anything before he ejected?
TG: Hell no! The dumb SOB didn't even say bye before he left!

I love those stories Zaphod especially the C-130 engineer stupid award. BTW what was his supposed bright idea to fix the oil leak? I haven't worked on T-56's but given the A/C was icebound for a couple of years I assume it was a simple oil seal failure.

We never asked him what he wanted to do to fix it. But between changing a prop and fixing the landing gear, he had his hands full after that. It was an oil seal failure of pretty much every oil seal in the engine. They took it back to the depot with them and had it rebuilt.

Right about the time a good friend of ours was retiring and moving back to the Mainland from Hawaii, we had a bunch of A-4s come from Japan. All of them landed safely but one. He touched down gear up. Made a beautiful landing, totally destroying the external fuel tanks, but only doing minor damage to the nose gear door. Hours later, they got the gear down, and the plane back to Hickam.

They did a flight with the gear pinned in the down location, and sent it to Kaneohe MCAS, because they were flying A-4s at the time. They replaced the gear door, and fixed other minor damage, but didn't find anything wrong with the gear system.

A couple of days later, after a Safety Board interviewed the pilot, it came out that he didn't even TRY to put the gear down. He had landed in Korea, and the nose gear collapsed, so he was afraid it would happen again, so he put it down gear up in Honolulu.

________________________________________________________________

We had T-33s as trainers out at Hickam for a long time. They were fun to watch fly the pattern, because they dove at an insane angle to hit the runway. One day one landed on its belly. They got all the equipment together, got out there, raised it up, and when they hit the battery switch to get power to lower the gear, the first thing they heard was the warning buzzer going off. It turns out that the pilots were so busy BSing in the pattern, they failed to complete the checklist, and put the gear down.

Zaph,

You have some great stories..please continue to share more and more.

I have many stories but they all seem to relate to performance by a few particular aircraft. Yours are just a kick to read about, thanks for your donations.

Let me rack my brain about a few Navy aircraft stories.

1. PMTC A 4 wing disintigration doing ridiculous minimum radius turs over Catalina Island.

2. F 18 newbie ejecting on runway.

3. Broken refueling basket left on probe of quite a few aircraft actually.

4. Very very low high speed passes where you are looking down at the aircraft rather than up.

5. Games of, "chicken" where two or more aircraft see just how low they can get to the water without being sucked it due to ground effect..................seriously man, your tax dollars at risk here! Believe me, it happens!

anyway, just some whacked stuff off the top of my head...Peace, Mondo

One year, the Hawaii Air National Guard was having an ORI (for those that aren't familiar, and ORI is an Operational Readiness Inspection. It's an incredibly intense wargame, involving no notice scrambles, mock attacks on the installation, and just about anything else they can think of). One day, one of the IG staffers was going to go up in the back seat of an F-15B.

The ground crew got the pilots into the seats, got them all hooked up, got the engines started, and then watched in shock as the canopy went flying straight up in the air. The $100,000 canopy came crashing down onto the back of the Eagle, shattering.

The ejection specialists went racing out to the plane, scrambled up ladders, looked at both pilots and said "Sirs, don't even BREATHE funny." They said both pilots were sitting there with their arms at their sides, not even blinking until they got the safety pins installed under the seats.

Apparently, from what I was able to learn later, the staffer was a former A-10 driver. From what I was told, in the A-10 when you close the canopy, you pull the ejection handle to the first stop. This arms the system, in case you need to eject. In the F-15, the first stop blows the canopy off, so that if you have smoke in the cockpit you can jettison it and attempt to land without it.

However, when the canopy goes, it pulls two small lanyards at the back of the cockpit. When these lanyards are yanked, the charges under the seats are armed and prepared to fire.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
The ejection specialists went racing out to the plane, scrambled up ladders, looked at both pilots and said "Sirs, don't even BREATHE funny." They said both pilots were sitting there with their arms at their sides, not even blinking until they got the safety pins installed under the seats.

No personal items in the cockpit.

I had a similar thing happen. At RAF Alconbury, UK. i was working End Of Runway inspection, its to make 1 last check on the plane before it takes off. As 1 of our RF-4Cs came up the pilot signaled to me that he wanted to talk to me on the headset, so i connected to the plane and asked him what i could do for him. He stated the back seater had a problem and needed to talk to me, when i asked the rear seater what the problem was he stated that he lost his gold cigerette lighter somewhere in the cockpit and asked me if i could take a look and see if i could find it.

I jumped up on the planes wing and went up the the cockpit to discover that the lighter was jammed into the 2 linkages on top of the ejection seat and the seat was close to being fired off. I told the back seater not to move or do anything because he had a (HOT) seat.

The pilot suggested that they taxi back to the hardened shelter but i told him that any movement would set off the seat. I called in for egress systems truck to get down to the end of the runway for an emergency.

[edit on 5-4-2007 by ULTIMA1]

Zaph,

It's official man, the new revised thread title is....................

"Zaphod's Greatest Hits"

I am still rolling over that latest addition about the ejection instance (almost)....you never really hear of a partial!
Ultima1, you too man, great stories....more, please more!!!

Peace, Mondo

It seems the back seat in a Phantom is a popular place for an oops.

The following story was related to me by an RAF Squadron Leader, back in the '80's.

The RAF does some of its live firing exercises down in the Mediterranean, from a base at Decimomannu, which is in Sardinia. Upon returning from a 2 week detachment there, one of the F4's develops an engine problem. With all the other squadron aircraft recovered safely, this Phantom makes its final approach. Some way short of the runway, the engine problem gets serious and one RR Spey flames out.

At this point, standard procedure is to abandon the aircraft at the earliest opportunity.

Instead, the pilot selected full afterburner on the remaining engine, gear up and went around on one engine, which is a. difficult to do in a Phantom, and b. dangerous to anyone in the vicinity if it all goes tits up. In this case, the pilot managed to bring the F4 back to the airfield and land safely. For this, the pilot was roundly praised and awarded the DSO (I think).

What was not widely reported was that even before the fire crews got to the plane, it was met by other squadron officers in a car, who drove off at high speed before they were identified.

Turns out the pilot had no choice but to try the risky go-around, because there was no way the navigator could eject, not with a large portable stereo and two cases of expensive Italian wine sitting on his legs.

KW

A few more from my father:

My father was a B-52 crew chief during Vietnam. Oh the stories I've heard. He was at Anderson, and in Thailand during his time there.

There was another crew chief who was a short timer. The B-52s at the time had quad .50s mounted as tail guns. There was an IR detector mounted with the gun, for when it was in automatic mode.

He went out to work on his plane one night, when suddenly he heard a noise above his head. He took off at a flat out sprint, and heard *BOOM*BOOM*BOOM*BOOM*CLICK*CLICK*CLICK*CLICK* behind him. Someone had left the gun in automatic, and emptied all the ammo, except the four chambered rounds. When the gun sensed him on the IR sensor it did its job, and opened fire.

He marched into the squadron commanders office, looked him right in the eye, and said "Sir, I'm not going on that flightline again until I get on that plane to go home." And he didn't until he got on the Pan Am DC-8 heading back to the World.

_______________________________________________________________

Still in Vietnam:

Up until the G model B-52, the tail gunner sat in the tail. The pressurization system had individual controls for the different compartments. This tail gunner was flying along, minding his own business, when he heard a noise by his foot. He looked down, and this giant rat was crouched by his boot hissing up at him. He spent the rest of the mission crouched on his seat trying to avoid the rat.

When he landed, the ground crew asked him why he didn't just depressurize the compartment and kill the rat. He looked kind of sheepishly at them and said "Well, I was afraid the system wouldn't work right, and I wouldn't be able to repressurize and I'd be trapped in the compartment with the dead rat. And I'm terrified of rats."

Same friend that was retiring in the A-4 story:

Our friend was one of the best pilots I ever had the honor of knowing. He was one of those guys that would take time out to help anyone who asked, and was always cheerful and insanely lucky. He was part of the VIP squadron that flies COMPACAF and CINCPACFLT around.

One day, COMPACAF was heading to Korea for some conferences. They loaded him on the plane, everything was normal, until they took off. They were heavy, since they were going non-stop to Guam (being a C-135, they didn't have the extra tanks, so that was a long flight for them). They rolled down the runway ok, but on climb out they got a fire warning light on one engine. He shut the engine down, dumped fuel, and landed back at Hickam.

COMPACAF told him to just park on the engine run spot, check the plane out, and call him when they were ready, and he'd come to them. No need to move it back to the VIP parking.

So they checked the engine out, and couldn't reproduce the fire warning light. So they call the general, he comes out, and they try again.

They take off ok, but when they start their climb out, the fire warning light comes on again. Our friend throttles the engine back, the light goes out, pushes the throttles forward, and it stays out. The general looks at him, and says "Well Captain, what are you going to do?" Our friend looks him right in the eye and says, "About what? I didn't see anything." The general told him "Good decision."

It turned out that the only times it happened were departing Honolulu, and departing Guam returning to Honolulu. There was a tiny bit of oil that had gotten onto a wire when someone was working on the engine, and when they were heavy, and got that tiny bit of extra vibration, it would roll back onto the fire sensor, and cause a short, setting off the warning light in the cockpit.

One more tonight.

We were at Pease AFB in NH, with the 509th Bomb Wing. They were flying FB-111s at the time. Plattsburgh in NY was flying the F-111, which was very similar but had some minor differences. I can't remember if it was one of their Fs, or our FBs this happened to, but it doesn't really matter which it was.

The plane had an In Flight Emergency (IFE), and had to land in a big empty field. Both engines took major FOD, and the only way to get the plane out was going to be on a flatbed truck.

Unfortunately for the pilot, they had no way of getting in touch with anyone, because the radios wouldn't reach, due to terrain, and this was before the days of everyone having a cell phone. He went through his pockets, and found enough change for one phone call.

He takes off his G suit, and starts hiking down the road, looking for a pay phone. Roughly a half mile down the road, he finally finds one. So he drops the change into the phone, and calls the Maintenance Operations Center (MOC). The controller on duty answers the phone, and before the pilot can say anything, says "I'm dealing with an emergency, call back later!" and hangs up.

The pilot makes the long hike back to the plane, where the WSO has been securing the aircraft. He gets back there, and the WSO finds some more change, so he can try to call back to the MOC and get someone out to rescue them. Then he makes the long hike back to the phone.

He gets back to the phone, and calls the MOC again. As soon as he hears the phone pick up, he yells "Wait! Don't hang up! I'M your emergency!"

A few hours later the flatbed and a crane arrived, picked the plane up and trucked it home.

Did anyone hear about the Harrier that landed on the river barge? He was comming back from a mission in the Falklands and was running out of fuel.

I wil see if i can find it again.

I can't offer anything as detailed as those but here are a couple of shorts which I could call 'Pilots aren't as great as they think'

The first one was brought to mind by ultima's post above, as it concerns an RAF Harrier GR.5.

On a flight over the Bristol Channel the pilot got into some difficulty and ended up in a spin, after trying and failing to regain control he punched out of the plane. Suddenly freed of its human handicap, the Harrier righted itself and flew off, straight and level, heading out over the Atlantic Ocean, where it was followed by another RAF aircraft until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, leaving one very embarrassed pilot back in Bristol.

In a similar vein to Ultima's story about the lost Harrier is the account of how the allies got hold of the then brand new and very secret Fw 190 in WW2.

The British forces were in the midst of planning a daring Commando raid into France to get hold of one of these fearsome fighters so that it could be examined by our scientists and engineers, when the problem was solved unexpectedly by the Luftwaffe itself.

After becoming disorientated in an air battle over the south of England Fw 190 pilot, Oblt. Armin Faber, headed back to his base in France across the English Channel. Unfortunately he headed in completely the wrong direction and actually flew over the Bristol Channel (is this place like the Bermuda Triangle?) he then swooped low over the RAF base at Pembrey in South Wales and proceeded to 'beat up' the airfield performing aerobatics and vctory rolls to an astonished audience, before landing. He was absolutely amazed to find himself under arrest by the RAF Police, the look on his face must have been a picture!

One of the by-products of this amazing cock-up was the engine cowl design for the Centaurus, as used in the Hawker Tempest and Fury fighters, developing an efficient cowling for this hugely powerful engine had previously been a huge problem which had held back the development of these otherwise excellent fighters, Thanks Armin




[edit on 7-4-2007 by waynos]

OK, I have started trawling through my collection of old Australian Aviation magazines as they have for many years run amusing aircraft tales. There is one I love about a rookie US millitary air traffic controller and his first encounter with a Blackbird. I spent two hours tonight looking for it to tell the story right, if I dont find it in the morning I'll post it up as I remember most of the story

In the meantime I found this little gem.

An US AH-1 Cobra was conducting auto rotation drills when something went horribly wrong in the controls. The aircraft slammed tail boom first into the deck spinning along the tarmac and shedding the boom in the process. As the Cobra span past the tower still out of control on its skids ATC asked him if he needed assistance the pilot managed to reply in a southern drawl, "don't know, I don't think were done crashing yet!"

LEE.