It's a long time ago, and far away, but I do recall the intricacies of 'planning for a refused TO' and the
soi-disant 'Dead Zone' between the airspeed at which the jet got off the ground, the Single Engine Safety Speed ( at which a fit, prop-forward of a driver/airframe could maintain full rudder as well as enuff climb-out power on the live engine ~170-180knots ).
Simply put, if you're just airborne and low, below Safety Speed, and you lose an enjin - you're not going to get away with it.
The Canberra B12 with Avon 109s, operating out of >4000' AFB Waterkloof on a warm Highveld summer's day, struggled to push enough Bernouillis out the back. I was of a 'Cottesmore' vintage conditioned to calculate EMBS and Stop Speeds, correcting for density, runway length, temperature and AUW, etc. I was alone, on that squadron, as the only guy who bothered. Geek!
There was one such afternoon when, fully fuelled, just as the nose was being lifted at around 130kts, the port donk surged big. Natch, my man pulled them both back sharpish. There was no way we were going to fly.
'Stop Speed' - that max. below which a full emergency application of brakes might just stop us on the remaining tarmac - was around 83kts, as I recall. We were way above EMBS (Emergency Max Brake Speed), and the brakes would burn out to nothing well before we made a fast upwind-end departure and went off-roading. The overrun was a boulder field, then a gully, and coming up fast. A 'far-end fireball' beckoned. As per SOP's, I called "No brakes. Aerodynamic braking only. Hold the nose high...." But that was not going to be nearly enough.
The airbrakes were close to useless on those Cans, but we had urgent need of more Aero-D braking. Then I remembered the config for a steep descent....
"Open the bomb doors." The old ( no, nearly new! ) B12 opened up like the Space Shuttle, grabbing huge Aero-D drag.
That did it. It was like running into a snowbank. Not that anyone from around there had ever seen a snowbank. The speed washed off hard, and we were down below 60kts before the elevators stopped holding the nose up. A normal application of brakes to 'fast walk' left us with about 1000'. Phew!
No. That 'procedure' wasn't in the SOPs. Or anywhere else we'd read or heard, before or since. That's one of MY pages from EK Gann's 'Fate Is The Hunter'.....
