One winged F15D?

[s650588]

Apologies if this is an old story. The following came via email. Can anyone confirm its authenticity?


A simulated dogfight training took place between two F-15D's and four A-4N Skyhawks over the skies of the Negev. The F-15D (#957, nicknamed 'Markia Shchakim', 5 killmarks) was used for the conversion of a new pilot in the squadron. Here is the description of the event as described in "Pressure suit":

At some point I collided with one of the Skyhawks, at first I didn't realize it. I felt a big strike, and I thought we passed through the jet stream of one of the other aircraft. Before I could react, I saw the big fire ball created by the explosion of the Skyhawk. The radio started to deliver calls saying that the Skyhawk pilot has ejected, and I understood that the fire ball was the Skyhawk, that exploded, and the pilot was ejected automatically. There was a tremendous fuel stream going out of the wing, and I understood it was badly damaged. The aircraft flew without control in a strange spiral. I re-connected the electric control to the control surfaces, and slowly gained control of the aircraft until I was straight and level again. It was clear to me that I had to eject.
When I gained control I said : "Hey, wait, don't eject yet!". No warning light was on and the navigation computer worked as usual; (I just needed a warning light in my panel to indicate that I missed a wing...)"

The instructor ordered me to eject. The wing is a fuel tank, and the fuel indicator showed 0.000 so I assumed that the jet stream sucked all the fuel out of the other tanks. However, I remembered that the valves
operate only in one direction, so that I might have enough fuel to get to the nearest airfield and land. I worked like a machine, wasn't scared and didn't worry. All I knew was as long as the sucker flies, I'm gonna stay inside.

I started to decrease the airspeed, but at that point one wing was not enough. So I went into a spin down and to the right. A second before I decided to eject, I pushed the throttle and lit the afterburner. I gained speed and thus got control of the aircraft again. Next thing I did was lower the arresting hook. A few seconds later I touched the runway at 260 knots, about twice the recommended speed, and called the tower to erect the emergency recovery net. The hook was torn away from the fuselage because of the high speed, but I managed to stop 10 meters before the net.

I turned back to shake the hand of my instructor, who urged me to eject, and then I saw it for the first time - no wing !!!

The IAF (Israeli Air Force) contacted McDonnell Douglas and asked for information about possibility to land an F-15 with one wing. MD replied that this is aerodynamically impossible, as confirmed by computer simulations... Then they received the photo.... After two months the same F-15 got a new wing and returned to action.

Special thanks to Tsahi Ben Ami This is what "Flight international" wrote about the incident:
"The most outstanding Eagle save was by a pilot from a foreign air force. During air combat training his two seater F-15 was involved in a mid air collision with an A-4 Skyhawk. The A-4 crashed, and the Eagle lost it's right wing from about 2 ft. outboard. After some confusion between the
instructor who said eject, and the student who outranked his instructor and said no, the F-15 was landed at it's desert base. Touching down at 290 knots, the hook was dropped for an approach and engagement. This
slowed the F-15 to 100 knots, when the hook weak link sheared, and the aircraft was then braked conventionally. It is said that the student was later demoted for disobeying his instructor, then promoted for saving the
aircraft.
McDonnell Douglas attributes the saving of this aircraft to the amount of lift generated by the engine intake/body and "a hell of a good pilot".

The email I received came with picture of a rather dishevelled F15 (right wing missing ...) - sorry but I don't have anywhere to post the image.

[henry crun]

Some while ago I read much the same thing in two separate aviation magazines.

I believe it is authentic.

[MajorMadMax]

I've heard this story before, pretty impressive, didn't think an Eagle could take that much damage and still fly! (although I know an A-10 can!)

You can read this same story, with b/w pics (click on them if they are fuzzy) at: http://www.f-16.net/library/stories/midair.html

Cheers! M2

[Gainesy]

Layman,
True story, I wrote the piece in Flight. The picture and basic details were given to me by McDonnell Douglas when I visited them in St Louis, who were justifiably proud. The remarks about the pilots argument came from Ari Egozi, Flight's Israeli stringer.

[pana]

:eek:
Absolutely amazing!! I saw G-4 Supergaleb andG-2 Galeb practically flying with no empanage after direct stinger hit, but this is unbelievable.

After this, we can burn all aerodynamics books. :D

[s650588]

Many thanks Henry, MMM (is that M**3), and Gainesy

(almost) unbelievable - I'd given up the story as a very elaborate urban myth.

(edited for typo's)

[ 08 December 2001: Message edited by: layman ]

[MajorMadMax]

'Tis indeed a great story, made better by the pics.

Ranks up there with the A-10 pilot who engaged an Iraqi SA-6 (me thinks) during the Gulf War. He got a little 'target fixated' and it almost cost him. His Warthog (God Bless 'Em) took almost as much damage as this F-15. The humble pilot (!) remarked they were unable to find his seat cushion afterward... :eek:

Reminds me of a story by a WWII Eagle pilot (God Bless 'Em too!) who landed after one rather nasty dogfight. When he looked at the badly damaged plane on the ground, he stated he felt like taking it back up again so he could bail out! :p

Cheers! M2

[T_richard]

Gentlemen, Please forgive the intrusion of a civilian, but I saw the lead then read the story at the top of this thread. This plane with one wing landing is a myth right? I don't know much about planes but I've been sailing all my life and there are some common areas of physics. It isn't possible to sail aboat without a shaped surface (sail) how can yo fly a plane with no starboard airfoil?

[ORAC]

The F-15 has a generally flat underside and slab sided air intakes (lifting body), 2 large tail surfaces and a pair of large fins. These provides sufficient lift and tail authority to keep the aircraft in level flight as long as a sufficiently high airspeed was maintained - hence the high landing speed.

There was also, I seem to recall the case of the Coningsby F4 who lost the outer wing (failed at the wing fold)and was flying around quite happily till someone suggested he see what speed he could slow to with the flaps down....

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: ORAC ]

[T_richard]

I have been told by someone who flew them that the wingtips of a Bearcat were designed to self destruct under certain conditions but the plane could still be landed nicely. I am amazed at the people who design these planes.

[ORAC]

If you read the history of the F-8 Crusader you will also see that on several occasions it was launched with the wings still folded and the pilots managed to lock them down in flight or land with them still folded.

If you cannot imagine how a pilot might miss it, see how far back the wing sweep takes the fold from the direct line of sight:
http://members.aol.com/svanaken/f8fr.html

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: ORAC ]

[T_richard]

One of the "If I could do it over again in my life" would be to fly jets in the military. It must be amazing

[MajorMadMax]

Here's amazing aviation incident, check out the pics, video and audio from the web site below. They truly add to this story!! :eek:

http://www.gallagher.com/ejection_seat/

Cheers! M2

If you haven't read this story or seen these photos, it is the pilot's and BN's narrative of an A-6 mishap while on carrier tanker duty that could have been fatal to both men -- but luck or Divine Providence was with them.

It's a bit long, but worth it -- a testament to our people and our training. (And you thought "every day" carrier landings were tough!)

Lieutenant Mark Baden's (the pilot's) account of the Incident:

As we finished the brief, my BN (bombardier navigator - Keith Gallagher) told me that it was his birthday and that our recovery would be his 100th trap on the boat. To top it off, we were assigned the plane with my name on the side. As we taxied out of the chocks, I was still feeling a little uneasy about recent mishaps. To make myself feel better, I went through the "soft shot/engine failure on takeoff" EPs (emergency procedures), touching each switch or lever as I went through the steps.

"At least if something happens right off the bat, I'll be ready," I thought.

The first few minutes of the hop were busy. Concentrating on the package-check and consolidation, as well as trying to keep track of my initial customers, dispelled my uneasiness. As we approached mid-cycle,
that most boring time in a tanker hop, we kept ourselves occupied with fuel checks. We were keeping a close eye on one drop tank that had quit transferring with about 1,000 pounds of fuel still inside. I had tried going to override on the tank pressurization, but that didn't seem to work.

My BN and I discussed the problem. We decided it was probably a stuck float valve. Perhaps some positive and negative G would fix it. We were at 8,000 feet, seven miles abeam the ship, heading aft. I clicked the altitude hold off and added some power to give us a little more G. At 230 knots I pulled the stick back and got the plane five degrees nose up. Then I pushed the stick forward. I got about half a negative G, just enough to float me in the seat. I heard a sharp bang and felt the cockpit instantly depressurize.
The roar of the wind followed. I ducked instinctively and looked up at the canopy expecting it to be partly open.

Something was wrong. Instead of seeing a two or three inch gap, the canopy bow was flush with the front of the windscreen. My eyes tracked down to the canopy switch. It was up. My scan continued right. Instead of meeting my BN's questioning glance, I saw a pair of legs at my eye level. The right side of the canopy was shattered. I followed the legs up and saw the rest of my BN's body out in the windblast. I watched as his head snapped down and then back up, and his helmet and oxygen mask disappeared. They didn't fly off; they just disappeared.

I jerked the throttles to idle and started the speed brakes out. Without stopping, I reached up, de-isolated, and threw the flap lever to the down position. I reached over and grabbed for the IFF selector switch and twisted it to EMER. I was screaming "Slow down! Slow down!" to myself as I looked up at the airspeed indicator and gave another pull back on the throttles and speed brakes. The airspeed was passing 200 knots. I had been looking back over my shoulder at my bombardier the whole time I was doing everything else. I felt a strange combination of fear, helplessness and revulsion as I watched his body slam around in the windblast. After his helmet flew off, his face looked like the people who get sucked out into zero atmosphere in some of the more graphic movies. His eyes were being blasted open, his cheeks and lips were puffed out to an impossible size and the tendons in his neck looked like they were about to bust through his skin as he fought for his life.

"Mayday, Mayday, this is 515. My BN has partially ejected. I need an emergency pull-forward!"

The reply was an immediate, "Roger, switch button six."

I switched freqs and said (or maybe yelled), "Boss (Air Officer), this is 515. My BN has partially ejected. I need an emergency full-forward!" I slapped the gear handle down and turned all my dumps on (in an effort to get slower, max trap never crossed my mind).

The Boss came back in his ever-calm voice and said, "Bring it on in."

The plane was holding at around 160 knots and descending. My BN's legs were kicking, which gave me some comfort; he was not dead. But, watching his head and body jerked around in the windblast, being literally beaten to death, made me ill. I had been arcing around in my descent and was still at seven miles. The boss came up and asked if the BN was still with the aircraft. I think that I caused a few cases of nausea when I answered, "Only his legs are still inside the cockpit." It made sense to me, but more than a few people who were listening had visions of two legs and lots of blood and no body.

Fortunately, the Boss understood what I meant. As I turned in astern the boat, I called the Boss and told him I was six miles behind the boat. I asked how the deck was coming. He asked if I was setting myself up for a straight-in. I told him "yes." He told me to continue. It was then I noticed that my BN had quit kicking. A chill shot through my body and I looked back at him. He was starting to turn grey. Maybe he had broken his neck and was dead. Bringing back a body that was a friend only minutes before was not a comfortable thought. I forced myself not to look at my bombardier after that.

I saw the boat making a hard left turn. I made some disparaging remarks about the guys on the bridge as I rolled right to chase centerline. I heard CAG paddles (landing signal officer) come up on the radio. He told
the captain he would take the winds and that he needed to steady up. My tension eased slightly as I saw mother begin to leave her wake in a straight line. Coming in for landing I was driving it in at about 300 feet.

I had been in a slight descent and wasn't willing to add enough power to climb back up to a normal straight-in altitude for fear I would have to accelerate and do more damage to my already battered BN. I watched the ball move up to red and then move slowly up towards the center. Paddles called for some rudder and told me not to go high. My scan went immediately to the 1-wire. I had no intention of passing up any "perfectly good wires." I touched down short of the 1-wire and sucked the throttles to idle. The canopy shards directly in front of the BN's chest looked like a butcher's knife collection. I was very concerned that the deceleration of the trap was going to throw him into the jagged edge of the canopy. I cringed when I didn't immediately feel the tug of the wire. I pulled the stick into my lap as paddles was calling for altitude. I got the nose gear off the deck and then felt the hook catch a wire. I breathed a sigh of relief. Testing the spool-up time of a pair of J-52s as I rolled off the end of the angle was not the way I wanted to end an already bad hop. As soon as I stopped, I set the parking brake and a yellow shirt gave me the signal to kill my No. 2 engine. Immediately after that, I heard a call over the radio that I was chocked. I killed no. 1 and began unstrapping. As soon as I was free of my seat (I somehow remembered to safe it), I reached over and safed the BN's lower handle, undid his lower koch fittings and reached up to try to safe his upper handle. As I was crawling up, I saw that his upper handle was already safed. I started to release his upper koch fittings but decided they were holding him in and I didn't want him to fall against the razor-sharp plexiglas on his side. I got back on my side of the cockpit, held his left arm and hand, and waited for the medical people to arrive. I realized he still was alive when he said, "Am I on the flight deck?"

A wave of indescribable relief washed over me as I talked to him while the crash crew worked to truss him up and pull him out of the seat. Later, I found that ignorance can be bliss. I didn't know two things while I was flying. First, the BN's parachute had deployed and wrapped itself around the tail section of the plane. Second, the timing release mechanism had fired and released the BN from the seat. The only things keeping him in the plane were the parachute risers holding him against the back of the seat.

Lieutenant Keith Gallagher's Account:
Murphy's Law says, "Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect it." (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator.) Murphy was correct beyond his wildest dreams in my case. Fortunately for me, however, he failed to follow through. On my 26th birthday I was blindsided by a piece
of bad luck the size of Texas that should have killed me. Luckily, it was followed immediately by a whole slew of miracles that allowed me to be around for my 27th. Not even Murphy could have conceived of such a bizarre accident (many people still find it hard to believe), and the fact that I am here to write about it makes it that much more bizarre.

We were the overhead tanker, one third of the way through cruise, making circles in the sky. Although the tanker pattern can be pretty boring midway through the cycle, we were alert and maintaining a good lookout doctrine because out airwing had a midair less than a week before, and we did not want to repeat. After my third fuel update call, we decided that the left outboard drop was going to require a little help in order to transfer. NATOPS recommends applying positive and negative G to force the valve open. As the pilot pulled the stick back I wondered how many times we would have to porpoise the nose of the plane before the valve opened. As he moved the stick forward, I felt the familiar sensation of negative "G", and then something strange happened: my head touched the canopy. For a brief moment I thought
that I had failed to tighten my lap belts, but I knew that wasn't true. Before I could complete that thought, there was a loud bang, followed by wind, noise, disorientation and more wind, wind, wind. Confusion reigned in my mind as I was forced back against my seat, head against the headrest, arms out behind me, the wind roaring in my head, pounding against my body.

"Did the canopy blow off? Did I eject? Did my windscreen implode?" All of these questions occurred to me amidst the pandemonium in my mind and over my body. These questions were quickly answered, and replaced by a thousand more, as I looked down and saw a sight that I will never forget: the top of the canopy, close enough to touch, and through the canopy I could see the top of my pilot's helmet. It took a few moments for this image to sink into my suddenly overloaded brain. This was worse than I ever could have imagined - I was sitting on top of a flying A-6!

Pain, confusion, panic, fear and denial surged through my brain and body as a new development occurred to me: I couldn't breathe. My helmet and mask had ripped off my head, and without them, the full force of the wind was hitting me square in the face. It was like trying to drink through a fire hose. I couldn't seem to get a breath of air amidst the wind. My arms were dragging along behind me until I managed to pull both of them into my chest and hold them there. I tried to think for a second as I continued my attempts to breathe.

I finally decided that the only thing that I could do was eject. I grabbed the lower handle with both hands and pulled-it wouldn't budge. With a little more panic induced strength I tried again, but to no avail. The handle was not going to move. I attempted to reach the upper handle but the wind prevented me from getting a hand on it. As a matter of fact, all that I could do was hold my arms into my chest. If either of them slid out into the wind stream, they immediately flailed out behind me. The roaring in my ears confused me, the pressure in my mouth prevented me from breathing, and the pounding on my eyes kept me from seeing. I was suffocating, and I couldn't seem to get a breath.

Looking down from the top of the jet, I was surprised to find the plane stopped on the flight deck with about 100 people looking up at me. (I guess I was surprised because I had expected to see the pearly gates and some dead relatives.) My first thought was that we had never taken off, that something had happened before the catapult. Then everything came flooding back into my brain, the wind, the noise and the confusion. As my pilot spoke to me and the medical people swarmed all over me, I realized that I had survived, I was alive. It didn't take me very long to realizethat I was a very lucky man, but as I heard more details, I found out how lucky I was. For example, my parachute became entangled in the horizontal stabilizer tight enough to act as a shoulder harness for the trap, but not tight, enough to bind the flight controls. If this had not happened, I would have been thrown into the jagged plexiglas during the trap as my shoulder harness had been disconnected from the seat as the parachute deployed.

There are many other things that happened, or didn't happen, that allowed me to survive this mishap, some of them only inches away from disaster. These little things, and a s-hot, level headed pilot who reacted quickly and correctly are the reason that I am alive and flying today. Also, a generous helping of good old-fashioned Irish luck didn't hurt.

[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: MajorMadMax ]