Originally Posted by
megan
I was a spotty callow non flying youth at the time and participated in getting her back on her wheels.That is an assessment that does no one any good. Chuck Yeager could have been tarred by that brush by the likes of you when he crashed the NF-104. A case where his instrument flying skills were not up to the task in hand. Are you going to call him an incompetent? Bob Hoover crashed an Aero Commander after refuelling with jet fuel instead of the proper avgas. Incompetent? He also scraped the belly of an Aero Commander on the runway during a fly past at an airshow. Incompetent? The worlds most experienced 747 pilot came very nearly to landing one gear up. Incompetent? (He did write a very good article on how it came about).
Thought I might follow up on some of the stuff posted here now that things have settled down. The first is your quote above.
I have little to no knowledge of the mistakes made by Hoover that you mentioned or the 747 pilot so I have no comment but I do have some further info on the rocket powered NF-104 crash you mentioned involving Chuck Yeager. It is written in a book called "Contrails Over the Mojave" by a fellow test pilot which fills in some details.
The same test pilot also wrote an article in Air & Space magazine a few years ago although much detail specific to the accident is missing.
Sky High in a Starfighter | History | Air & Space Magazine
Read the article first and then read this additional information from the book to get an idea of what happened.
- The Soviets held the altitude record at the time with a maximum of almost 114,000 feet. The NF-104 was going to be used to break the record using a zoom climb.
- Optimum climb angle was 65-70 degrees.
- Major Robert Smith set an unofficial record(no FAI monitors) of over 120,000'
- On one test flight, Smith increased the pitch angle to 85 degrees to see what would happen. He lost control, went over the top upside down and entered a spin from which he recovered.
- Yeager wanted the official record and time was short as he wanted the record set by mid-December, the 60th anniversary of powered flight.
- With time so short to the anniversary, not only were the planned sequence of build-up flights cancelled, he didn't wait for the preceding flight test data(the loss of control flight) to be evaluated. Instead, he said "If Smith can fly it, I can".
- He did two practice flights prior to the record attempt day. On the record attempt day, he did a morning practice flight to around 108,000'
- On the planned record setting flight, he was advised at 70,000 feet that his angle of climb was too shallow.
- In order to get back onto thew desired climb path, he activated the reaction controls. Something that had worked previously at lower altitudes with higher dynamic pressure.
- In the higher altitude environment, the effect was different and he discovered that he could not lower the nose. Control was lost and he crashed.
- The accident report said that Yeager contributed to the accident by"purposely exceeding the recommended angle of attack in order to attain a higher altitude".
- Major Smith later stated..."A flight test engineer told me that the stability derivatives from his flights had not been reduced until after Yeager flew. The engineer tried to get Yeager to wait until they were done and he could train in the simulator but he refused."
- The project was cancelled.
This accident was caused by rushing, an unwillingness to listen to sound planning ideas, ego refusing to accept that someone else could be as good or a better pilot, not being cautious when operating in an unknown environment, and waiting for an analysis of a previous incident. So when you ask if Yeager "could be tarred by that brush", the brush being my earlier statement that incompetence caused an accident, I would say that what Yeager did in the events leading to his accident were hardly the model of a competent pilot.
The book also mentions that Yeager taxied a B-57 into a bus at Norton AFB. "Without much ado, it was decided that there was no pilot error-it was the fault of the contractor for parking the bus in plain sight, where it had been for months. It is doubtful if any other Edwards pilot would have been excused, but Yeager managed to blame the incident on the bus driver".
One needs to brush aside the hype and do a careful analysis when it comes to these accidents instead of relying on emotion such as...that guy was a hero or very experienced so he must be good and can't be criticized.
Be careful out there, these big time guys can kill you or destroy your aircraft just as much as anyone else.