Fly The Aircraft...Never Give Up!
 

When confronted with difficult situations especially those involving Flight Control Malfunctions or any situation not trained for or even discussed during training.....the key to survival is never giving up and "flying" the aircraft using whatever resources you have available.

One such example....a Chinook decides upon its own to yaw left then roll inverted...and refusing to allow the Pilots to move the flight controls to combat the actions of the aircraft in a "normal" manner.

It and the crew survived.

The Crew's Accounts of the event......

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/Fl...x_May_1998.pdf

Just wow!

Did the accident board uncover the source of the problem?
By the account, this was a top tier crew which went the extra mile to be sure they had a fully serviceable aircraft, yet they were almost killed by it.

Contaminated flight control hydraulic fluid is what I remember.

On a side note, this is the same airframe you see in the ground resonance video.

Another good account of a serious problem is that of the Gulf of Mexico 412 Crew that had a Tail Rotor failure at night while in cruise....went inverted...and eventually made a safe landing with everyone walking or swimming away.

Impressive.

If you can walk on water, what the hell are you doing offshore.

The right question is if you cannot walk on water....what are you doing offshore?

I met a few people offshore that thought they walked on water but I never saw one do it.

Anyone can walk on water......for a very, very short time!

SASless what an amazing story. Surely other than the failure itself everything went right for them. You have to wonder if the overspeed reduced the ROD to reasonable value. Perhaps if they were higher they would have had another roller coaster. Astounding they walked away.
Was it Bob Hoover quoted as saying “fly through the crash as far as possible” ? Or something close to that. That is one I like to remember too.

SASless,

Thanks. Not only an excellent example of never giving up, but also, a wonderfully lucid description from each of them about what it felt like. It is not often that one reads about such vividly described perceptions of what it was like at the time.

Walking on water is easy it’s just the depth that might catch you out.

Bob Hoover wrote ' fly as far into the crash as you can'

Walking in water is not the same as walking on water.

There was another “interesting” story that I recall, about a British army Lynx helicopter that snagged a cable above a Norwegian Fjord. It was suspended inverted by its skids for a while, before falling free and being flown away. Late ‘70s or early ‘80s I think and probably featured in “Airclues”.

The benefits of a rigid rotorhead.

During my time in the Army National Guard flying Kiowa's and Huey's....at an Annual Safety Training Weekend....we were treated to a very fine presentation by a USAF Lockheed T-33 Pilot who had survived a crash that occurred following an engine failure below a safe Ejection Height.....which forced the Two Man Crew to ride it down.

They crashed.....like really crashed....hitting trees....catching fire....causing both broken bones and severe burns....before fortunately (in his words) winding up submerged into a River.

He reckoned the total immersion of the cockpit section in the water extinguished the fire that was causing him such grievous injuries....and they were severe.

He talked of flying the aircraft as far into the crash as possible but at the same time bracing oneself as possible to prevent head/face/extremity injuries....and never giving up.

He emphasized the need to wear your equipment and clothing in a manner to cover all your skin possible....wear stout footwear that covers your feet and ankles....and the use of Flame Retardant clothing and never wear nylon or similar manmade fabrics.

I wish I had a video of his presentation as it was one of the very best I have ever attended.....as when he made a point...such as always wearing gloves.....he held up his hands and noted that day he was not....and one peek at what was left of his hands proved his point.

My own experience with a severe fire in flight and the benefit I got out of gloves and Nomex have made me an advocate for such practices.

I stil have my hands today only because I had Leather/Nomes gloves on.....which very much reduced the severity of my burns.

Same for my legs...which due to the construction of the nomes trouser with the multiple pockets and multiple layers of Nomex Cloth....those burns were localized pretty much to where there were only single layers of cloth.

Side note: Nomex does nothing re stopping bullets....proved that along with the previous aforementioned benefits in reducing thermal injuries.

One thing such events reminds you of is that "It" can happen to you and not just to others!

Given that kind of experience, why is Nomex not mandatory for combat crew garments?
I do remember horror stories of UK sailors clothed in burning and melting uniforms during the Falklands episode, has there been no learning since?
I also very much remember the crew of a USAF KC-10 donning gloves as they prepared to land, so at least some of the message has gotten across there.

We used to get quite a few of the US forces flight-safety publications shared around the RAF units on which I served - I particularly remember one article from an OV1 Mohawk pilot who clearly agreed with everything SASless says about Nomex. This individual chose to wear it even though cockpit temperatures under normal circumstances were pretty severe; saved his life when the aircraft landed (arrived) in a manner different from how anyone but the enemy intended. I used to see quite a few of my contemporaries flying with sleeves rolled up and used to wonder how long they would last under similar circumstances.

One of my instructors also pushed the "fly the aircraft as long as you can" line, but he had a codicil - if crashing is inevitable, undo your straps, drop your keks and sit on the cyclic. It won't do anything to help improve the outcome, but it'll give the accident investigators something to try and - er - work out.

When I was instructing at RAF Shawbury in the early 90's, we had a visit from a very pretty young lady who had been a passenger in a 2-seat Harrier a couple of years before - they had had an emergency and ejected but she drifted back down into the burning wreckage.

Her lifejacket wasn't fire proof and she wasn't wearing a cotton layer underneath her flying suit - she was gracious enough to show some of the scarring and it convinced me to always wear a cotton layer under my flying suit and also to wear gloves when flying.