Out of Control

From 30,000 to 10,000 feet....without a clue.

I was just a “Butter Bar” (2nd Lieutenant) in 1981 and going through USAF Pilot Training when I read an article in a military safety magazine, written by some Colonel, about how he almost died one night while flying an aircraft.  After all these years I  can’t remember what type of aircraft the man was flying and for that matter what actually happened other than the moral of his  story was that he got complacent and this complacency almost killed him.  Since I read a lot of aviation magazines back then and they all had their share of safety talk, I always found it odd that his one story seemed to always make its way into my brain when I went flying. I’m not sure if it’s because back then, when I was brand new and an impressionable military internee, that when a Colonel spoke I listened and obeyed, or because the title of the story was “Complacency Kills” and that really made me sit up and take notice or, maybe both of the above.

Now, fast forward to the end of the 80’s… I’m listening to Don Henley's song, End of the Innocence, – a song that Henley wrote to sum up the decade, or at least so the DJ says— and as I drive to work on this beautiful late summer morning, I’m thinking about my upcoming F-4 flight. It’s a bit of a drive from Ocean City, New Jersey to McGuire AFB, where my Guard Unit is located, but I really don’t care as most of the drive is through the country, the “pine barrens” (amazingly enough the South Central part of the state has a lot of stunted pine tree forests and cranberry bogs) and on whimsically meandering two lane roads; it’s actually a nice way to start the day, particularly if you drive a sports car!

I volunteered to take a military leave of absence from my full-time airline job so I could train the newest member of our squadron pilot ranks. Steve O’Neal was just a “butter bar” himself and was trying to get fully qualified in the F-4 before we transitioned to F-16s. Since most F-4 units had been converting to the Viper (the USAF’s official name for the F-16 is the Falcon, actually though, amongst the guys who flew it, “Viper” was the more common nickname) the school that trained F-4 pilots closed while Steve was in his last few weeks of a 6 month course. Since I had been an instructor in that F-4 RTU (Replacement Training Unit), located in Wichita, Kansas, and had been qualified to instruct in every phase of the training syllabus, I figured I was a natural candidate to finish Steve’s training at his home station and volunteered my services to do such. Evidently the Group Commander thought so too as he more than willingly said he’d cut 6 weeks of active duty orders for me to bring our young “weedhopper” up to war fighting standards. I was really looking forward to taking a break from my monthly airline’s schedule of international flying and doing some hard core, full-time fighter flying again; I was living the best of both worlds aviation wise and knew it so I’m not whining! I was also looking forward to Steve’s and mine first flight together, particularly since today’s flight, our first,  had been one of my favorites in the F-4 training syllabus…Advanced Handling.

Normally a green F-4 student would get this Advanced Handling ride relatively early in his (back then it was a males only community) F-4 transition, but since I had not flown with him before and he needed a couple of warm-up rides to “get his hands back” (he’d been out of the cockpit a couple of weeks shuffling between units and moving) I thought I’d give him a “fun” first ride as  a way of saying, “Welcome to the world of fighters!”; as you will see…Steve got a weeeeee bit more than either he, or I, expected! 

I arrived in the squadron parking lot, fully refreshed and invigorated from my splendid morning drive, and by coincidence, Steve had arrived at the same time.  Since we had met a couple of weeks earlier at a Phantom “Pharewell” party at McConnell AFB in Kansas, our greeting in the parking lot was pretty casual. After attending the morning’s mass brief, Steve and I moved to a briefing room to review the flight.

Since he had never flown out of McGuire AFB I thoroughly briefed him on the standard stuff first: Ground ops, start, taxi, take off, departure and arrival procedures, divert fields and local area orientation. After that we talked about the meat of the mission, advanced handling, F-4 style.

It had been awhile since I had actually briefed a green F-4 pilot, so I can’t say my brief was as smooth as I think it used to be when I was a seasoned RTU (Replacement Training Unit) Instructor. However, since I was more concerned with what he actually saw in the aircraft, then how I briefed, per se’,  I considered the brief a mere formality at this point as the real learning was to take place in the wild blue yonder. And with that said, I briefed young Weedhopper on how to do: Loops (both high and low speed), pitch backs and slice backs, hard turns,  guns breaks, slow speed flying and finally, the pie’ce de re’sistance….my patented vertical zoom climb from 10,000 feet and 500 knots to 30,000 feet and zero knots; it was a real confidence builder!

From the briefing room to the classroom we moved and in no time we were 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey, 15,000 feet up, in “Whiskey 107” (a so designated chunk of military airspace off the Jersey coast in which military aircraft did maneuvers)  on an absolutely glorious late summer day. Even though I was in the back seat of the F-4, I was happy to be flying fighters “full-time” again, albeit even if “full-time” meant a few weeks; it was still a nice respite from the globe trotting I’d been doing with my airline. And since it was such a nice day and I was doing what I so loved, I felt it just didn’t get any better than this! And while you might think, since I was in the “back” of the F-4, “the pit”, it would be lousy duty, it wasn’t all that bad.  I loved to teach, especially young, new guys, as they had such great attitudes; they were like little birds in the nest chirping, “Feed me…feed me!” (Feed me knowledge, teach me!)    

Once we entered the “working area”, we had to get right to work as the F-4 wasn’t exactly the most fuel efficient of aircraft and we would be using “gas” at a pretty high rate because most of the maneuvers required high power settings so I ran down the laundry list of aerobatic maneuvers fairly quickly in order to cover them all. I wasn’t looking for perfection in Weedhopper’s flying skill as this was more of a demo and gee whiz ride than anything else. Real learning for everyone comes when the instructor is usually out of the aircraft and you are solo, with a “real” backseater, not an instructor…particularly in the F-4 as there were many esoteric nuances when it came to maneuvering the aircraft well in battle; trial, experimentation and some failure were required in order to learn. 

As our total fuel on board registered 6,000 lbs we had done everything I wanted Steve to see, at least up to this point. If we were at cruise altitude, and “cruising”, this amount of fuel would have equated to roughly an hour of flight, but, since the throttle was usually in military power (100 percent rpm) or in afterburner (A/B), we were using up “dinosaurs” (we usually called “fossil” fuels dinosaurs) pretty quickly. Also, I waited until 6,000 lbs before the zoom climb demo on purpose. I wanted the CG  fairly forward as it helps in bringing the nose down with more authority. Finally, with 6 grand of fuel in the tanks the F-4 weighed about 40,000 lbs at that point. Since the engines put out 36,000 lbs total thrust in full A/B, we were fairly close to a 1 to 1 thrust to weight ratio which helped to get this monster up to 30,000 feet while going pure vertical.

With Steve flying we accelerated to 500 knots IAS at 10,000 feet about 30 miles off the coast. I quickly reviewed to him what we were going to do and how to do it; Accelerate to 500 knots in military power; at 500 knots pull the nose up in an airspeed/energy conserving pull (light “tickle” in airframe buffet, about 5 Gs on the G meter) and as you are pulling go into full A/B, all the while continuing the pull. Once you reach 90 degrees nose high, vertical, hold it there, the nose, while maintaining full A/B (older afterburning jets had either A/B on or “off”. The F-4 actually had 4 zones, or stages if you will, and the F-16 had 5, so you could modulate thrust while in A/B) . It was actually a pretty easy entry.

The hard part for most guys was holding the nose in the pure vertical…you actually had to push the stick forward to keep the aircraft tracking straight up, initially, and this was counter-intuitive to most guy’s instincts; I usually had to give a continuous “dialogue” as we climbed to get the guys to keep the aircraft going straight up as they kept wanting to pull over into a loop. Having said that, on today’s flight my young charge seemed to defy the conventional wisdom of most students and was pretty fearless in this part of the maneuver as he held a pure vertical climb with aplomb…As we approached 200 knots indicated airspeed I told him to get ready to apply left or right rudder and deselect A/B, as I had briefed earlier, so as to get the nose moving one way or the other as we apexed and at this point afterburner was not needed as we had all the height we needed. 

What was supposed to happen was for the student to apply this rudder input gently and not with full measure –feed it in--so as to get the nose to begin to fall as the airspeed went to zero, gravity would do the rest, both with the nose and aircraft trajectory. With the engines now in military power and the airspeed at zero, the nose would fall slowly earthward and as it did you went weightless, though it never really seemed you went fully zero G for too long. The altitude obviously stopped increasing and as long as the controls were then neutralized, and you weren’t asking the Phantom to do anything, like fly!, via the flight controls, it was a really nice transition from going straight up to straight down and a very gentle maneuver. Once the airspeed increased to 300 knots, while going straight down, I would have the guys pull the aircraft to level flight and level off. Altitude loss was usually around 10,000 feet; hence, if you topped out at 30k you’d be level at 20 on the recovery. I’m telling ya, it was a real confidence builder with the guys! Now remember, what I just said is what was supposed to happen….

On this day, as we dropped though 150 knots I asked Weedhopper to “kick” in left or right rudder…and he did as I asked…he kicked in FULL left rudder and without hesitation! Rhut row… I will tell you, my heart leapt out of my chest when I felt the rudder go full left and the aircraft responding.  Having flown about 1500 hours in the F-4 at that point, I knew this was not good and as soon as he put in the flight control input I told him to take it out—the rudder deflection—and also to push the stick forward (a lot of times a rudder input, a big one, will increase your AOA, so pushing the stick forward will counteract this increased AOA); I did not want an increase in AOA at this point, given the rudder input, and we were entering a grey area in my knowledge of F-4 flight characteristics with regard to this attitude/airspeed/flight control combination…

Now, this leads me another article I once read in a safety magazine (I told you I read a lot back then!) and it was called “Temporal Distortions”. It went into some pretty deep theory about how, under times of stress, the body/brain goes into a kind of hyper awareness state and time seems to slow down because the senses become more aware...a second seems like a minute, etc. I don’t remember the body’s biological cascade of hormonal production that caused this time warp, other than it happens, as identified by many accident victims’ testimonies.

So, after the aircraft lurched to the left, I launched into a “temporal distortion” of my own. My first thought was to take the aircraft from Steve and fly it myself, but, since the airspeed was now dropping through 150 knots, rather rapidly I might add, I thought, “What’s the use?” We were approaching 30,000 feet, the throttles were back to military power, airspeed was rapidly bleeding off, and so far the aircraft was just yawed to the left, what could happen? In fact, I even said to myself that we were too slow for anything bad to happen! I am telling you, these thoughts went through my head and as they did it seemed to me that we had been going straight up forever, like in super slow motion! So there we were, yawed to the left, still going up and I was thinking, “This is a non event, the nose is just going to drop any second.”  Though my wait seemed long, in actuality I’m sure it wasn’t, and in short order I was rewarded with the ride of my aeronautical life!

What the aircraft actually did, as best as I can figure, and to give you a visual perspective, is this… Think of a springboard diver in the Olympics as they leap off the board and into the air. As they go up they start a twist—roll—and then start to flip. Very shortly after beginning this upward vector they apex and then they start down towards the water and all the while they are still twisting and flipping. In short, that is what Steve, the aircraft, and I did on that day…had we done it at low altitude during an air show I’m sure it would have been a real crowd pleaser.

But, whereas the diver is in control of this motion, we weren’t. (One thing I didn’t tell you is that the F-4 has an “aural” AOA indicator in addition to a gauge and chevron lights. As you approach “on speed”, optimum AOA, it beeps…the closer you get to optimum, the faster the beep, until you get to “on speed and then it is a steady, medium pitched tone. But, if you go slower than on speed, higher AOA, it begins a higher pitched, faster peeping that is really irritating, no doubt to get your attention. The volume is controllable though so you can turn it way down, but most guys kept it at least at some audible level as it was a nice way to know your AOA without looking “inside” the cockpit) So the AOA tone was screaming as we began our gyrations adding to the dramatic way in which the aircraft departed controlled flight and giving a sense of urgency to get things back under control. As the aircraft rolled rapidly to the left and the nose fell through the horizon I thought it, the nose, would stay “down” once it passed 90 degrees nose low. It didn’t. I also thought the rolling would stop. Wrong again. The nose sliced through nose low and up again, as we continued rolling, and then went back to a nose high slice and still rolling. I must add, at this point that none of this rolling and slicing/pitching was violent in as far as physical discomfort. Visually it was interesting, and no doubt a weaker stomach would have launched its breakfast from whence it came, but for the most part it was a very smooth and fluid ride.

Up to this point, in all of my years flying the F-4, every time I have unloaded, reduced AOA (pushed the stick forward), the jet responded immediately and whatever out of control gyrations it was beginning to do, once unloaded, it stopped. Not this time; I was now in virgin territory and had to resort to the F-4’s Bold Face procedures for help. (The USAF taught you to commit certain time sensitive procedures to memory for instant recall if the need arose, they called them Bold Face Maneuvers. I’d say this was pretty much one of those times)

The out of control “Bold Face” maneuver for the F-4 was as follows: Stick forward, rudder and ailerons neutral, if not recovered, maintain full forward stick and deploy the drag chute; there was also a note in the manual that said unless at low altitude the throttles should be brought back to idle (as a note here, if they, throttles, were left in A/B and you deployed the drag chute you would instantly burn it off!) I can’t say I wanted to deploy the drag chute…not yet, so I didn’t tell Steve to pop the chute; that was akin to admitting failure and I wasn’t ready to do that!  I had done the out of control bold face a lot in the F-4, save for deploying the chute, as if you wanted to win dogfights in the F-4, particularly against F-16s or F-15s you had to max perform the jet and a lot of times you departed controlled flight. But!, in every case in the past where I departed, popping the stick forward and neutralizing the ailerons and rudder brought me back into controlled flight. As Steve went through these memory items to confirm that he had the flight controls where they should be, the aircraft continued to roll and the nose traced an unpredictable arc through the morning sky. 

It was pretty evident that the out of control procedure wasn’t hacking it so we quickly moved onto the next in the series and that was for the “Aircraft in a Spin” verbiage. This directed you to: Maintain full forward stick, aileron full with spin/turn needle, aircraft unloaded, ailerons neutral (that’s not a misprint with regards to “aileron” in the singular. The F-4’s ailerons only went “down”, not up, so in a spin, only one aileron was being deflected)  As we spun and flipped from the wild blue yonder  towards the deep blue sea, which was now 25000 feet below us and getting much closer with each complete gyration, Steve applied the spin recovery controls in an attempt to stop this madness. I can’t say I was worried at this point as I was sitting on a zero/zero (zero altitude/zero airspeed needed for safe ejection) Martin Baker ejection seat with a fantastic survival record and I had no qualms about giving the aircraft back to the taxpayers, albeit not exactly in same condition in which we received it, in exchange for my life. 

Since we were not under any real physical discomfort during all this, other than maybe some visual disorientation, I talked to Steve a bit as we descended. He asked if this was a normal result of “the maneuver” and I said “No”, but, “I expect the airspeed to increase at any second and for the aircraft to pop into something more “normal””. What I didn’t say was how screwed up this was and that we may be swimming home, but I didn’t want to scare him anymore than he already was. I also told him that once the airspeed did increase, it was firmly planted at zero, not to be too hasty to pull the nose up as it was really easy to enter a secondary stall/out of control situation at that point and we most likely wouldn’t have enough altitude to recover from another out of control situation.

As we passed 18,000 feet  the roll rate rapidly began to rapidly slow but the AOA was still pegged, read audibly screaming!,  way too high and the nose still wasn’t dropping like it should, thusly leading me to the third and final Bold Face in the series.  

The last Bold Face was for Out of Control Flight. If the first two Bold Faces didn’t work, this one stipulated, pretty bluntly,: Passing 10,000 feet AGL, if still out of control- eject!  Because of this edict in the F-4 Flight Manual I told Steve that we were going to have to eject if the aircraft was still uncontrollable passing ten grand. Almost on cue though, as if the aircraft was listening and didn’t want to be abandoned, the nose stopped its slicing, the wings fully stopped their rolling and the tail pointed itself directly skyward with the opposite end going seaward. The airspeed went from zero to 250 knots about as fast as you are reading this sentence and at 300 I told Steve to begin a smooth pull on the stick and recover, which he did, leveling at 10,000 feet AGL. Wheeeeww……! 

It was now very quiet in the cockpit. We were now headed south, 180 degrees out from our initial heading, and cruised for a few long and silent seconds. Steve broke the silence first with his announcement that he wanted to  “go home”…without hesitation I concurred and told him to RTB (Return To Base). The rest of the flight was uneventful. 

In the mission’s de-brief I learned that Steve never realized he was supposed to slowly feed in the rudder. He said he thought, as he listened to my very inadequate brief, that he was supposed to go full left or right rudder passing 150 knots and this thought process was actually reinforced as we passed 200 knots when I said to him, “Standby to “kick in” left or right rudder!”… 

So what happened? Why did a maneuver that I had done so many times before get so screwed up on this flight, almost causing us to almost lose an aircraft and possibly die…? I’m sure you’ve figured it out already… complacency of course! The “voice of Cybil” that I’d been heard so many times before as I was about to fly a mission, or was actually flying one, about how complacency kills, had abandoned me while I briefed and flew that day. 

I can only think that all the elements that led up to this wicked departure from controlled flight, the proverbial links in the chain, had started with my lovely morning drive to work and my carefree, life is great, I can do anything attitude. This fed into every part of the day’s events. When I briefed Steve, I was so full of myself! I had been an F-4 Fighter Weapons School Instructor Pilot and Steve was just a new guy; I had been at the pinnacle of F-4 flying and Steve had barely scratched the surface, I was going to show him how to really fly the F-4! At this point in my career I considered the brief a mere formality. Most guys I had been briefing for flights, since I had left the Fighter Weapons School environment for the airlines and my part-time guard unit, were so used to the “standard” stuff, the same ‘ole missions, that they barely listened to the brief and were experienced enough to catch whatever might be different and ask questions if they weren’t sure about something. Because of this, Steve was collateral damage in as far as my brief was concerned.  I had glossed over the most important part of the flight believing that he would know what I was talking about and figuring that I was good enough anyway to catch whatever errors he might make in flight and then instantly correct them (the errors).

Which leads me to the second area of my complacency…the actual flying. I had 1500 hours in the F-4 as we alighted from the runway that day and other than drop “nukes” (nuclear weapons) I had done so much in the Phantom that I considered myself bullet proof and figured that I had seen it all. I mean I had instructed green F-4 students for 3 years and had dealt with all of their self destructive tendencies; the reward being theirs and mine survival and after that foray into an alternate flying universe, I went into the F-4 Fighter Weapons School as an Instructor Pilot after having just gone through the  School (same type of school as the movie Top Gun portrays, only USAF style) as a student…I really felt like I was somebody!

To be sure I almost was…somebody, but not in a good way!; had we put the aircraft and ourselves into the drink no doubt I would have had my 15 minutes of fame and a lifetime of regret. As it was we should have deployed the drag chute when we were fully out of control when the initial attempts to stop the gyrations were unsuccessful, but, pride go’eth before the fall…a 20, 000 foot fall to be exact.  I had too much ego when we were out of control to admit defeat and deploying the drag chute was akin to defeat in my head, and this narcissistic trait could have cost us dearly…another lesson learned.

As I drove through the forests and cranberry bogs of South Central New Jersey that evening, heading home and enjoying the breeze upon my face, the dimming of a late day’s sun and the rock and roll tunes emanating from the car’s stereo. Don Henley’s raspy rancor, once again, pulls me out of my trance and reminds me, very bluntly, that today’s mission was truly, at least for me, the end of my innocence.    

COPYRIGHT NOVEMBER, 2021 Roger Blair Johnson