A feat of superb airmanship
For many years Pprune pages have contained varying opinions on degradation of manual flying skills caused by the accent on automation. I was browsing my local charity shop looking for some cheap shoes when I found a aviation book for sale for five dollars. It was a bound copies of the USAF flight safety magazine "Aerospace Safety" covering the months January 1968 to December 1969. All in perfect condition.
Each issue had a page entitled Well Done. Many of the Well Done stories were quite scary but in each case the happy ending was due to good airmanship - a term now rarely used in aviation reports. Put yourself now in the cockpit of an F105 Thunderchief fighter over North Vietnam in November 1967. The pilot was Lt Col. Rufus Dye. This from USAF Aerospace Safety:
"On 7 November 1976, Lt Col Dye, flying an F105 was a member of a 20 ship strike force assigned to attack an important target in North Vietnam. As the force was inbound to the target deep in enemy territory, a MIG-21 interceptor succeeded in breaking through the force to fire a ALKALI air-to-air missile which impacted directly on Lt Col Dye's aircraft. Lt Col Dye immediately notified his flight leader that he had been hit and , maintaining control of his critically damaged aircraft began a turn out of enemy territory under the escort of his fellow flight members.
Quickly analyzing the engine instruments and noting the performance of his aircraft, Lt Col dye determined it was still flying reasonably well and he elected to attempt recovery at the nearest airfield 200 miles distant. The other flight members inspected his aircraft and found that the missile had detonated just inside the tail, blowing away all the speed brake petals and severely damaging the horizontal and vertical stabilizers. The body of the missile had then impacted and lodged between the aft fuselage structure and the engine tailpipe, tearing large holes in both. Forced to fly at full power to maintain airspeed, Lt Col dye realized that a refueling would be required to reach his intended recovery base.
A unique problem faced him on this refueling: The loss of the hydraulic system would require a forced refueling, one in which he would have to hold the aircraft receptacle on the refueling nozzle by engine thrust since the system could not lock on to the boom -and his damaged engine was not putting out sufficient thrust to permit this. When he was in position behind the tanker, he called the tanker pilot to toboggan, a maneuver in which the tanker and receiver make a shallow drive with the tankers power pulled far back. This difficult maneuver gave Lt Col Dye the thrust advantage he needed to take on fuel required to continue the flight.
On arrival at the recovery base, Lt Col Dye knew he would have to lower his landing gear by the emergency system, that he would be without leading edge flaps, speed brakes and wheel brakes, all due to hydraulic loss, and that he would have best marginal thrust for his approach. In addition, he anticipated correctly that the damage would most likely have destroyed his drag chute. He wisely chose to extend the gear and flaps at a safe bailout altitude and proceeded to check the controllability and power capability of the aircraft. Finding these adequate, he then made a successful landing, using the emergency braking system to steer the aircraft and the tail hook for a barrier stop without further incident.
By his cool professionalism under these extremely stressing circumstances, Lt Col Dye not only effected his own safe recovery, but also saved an extremely valuable aircraft. WELL DONE.
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Last edited by Tee Emm; 28th May 2010 at 10:34.