Thank you FullWings for putting it so clearly.
A classic case of "rapid unthinking response" followed by the realisation that having right royally fckud up they had better do nothing except fly the aircraft, occurred at Adelaide back in about 1992.
A Bae146 crew were taking off when they spotted a large flock of birds sitting on the runway. PF, perhaps reverting to his fighter pilot days, decided in an instant to attempt to get above them by rotating considerably before V1 had been reached. That resulted in a bad tailscrape, leaving enough shrapnel on the runway for a following B737 crew to report it to the tower.
Immediately they got airborne, and still before V2, they hit several birds, with one engine failing completely and another suffering severe damage and partial loss of thrust. Whether it was a conscious decision then to keep the damaged engine going or not, that was all that saved them. They did no drills (one can only imagine the "oh bugger" moment!); simply concentrated on nursing it around to a successful landing, barely maintaining VMCA. Had they attempted to shut down damaged engine(s) the outcome may not have been successful, as the aircraft was above its two engine inoperative weight and the FDR readout showed it remained within a few knots of becoming uncontrollable for the duration of what was a very short flight.
Last edited by Mach E Avelli; 15th Feb 2014 at 07:50.