by Julie Tizard
She and Mike were scheduled to fly with Carter during the first and second periods while Jeff was flying with another IP. Carter briefed all three of them on the advanced aerobatic maneuvers. “These acro maneuvers were invented by the first fighter pilots as combat tactics used in air-to-air dog fighting. They involve high-speed and high-G maneuvering, and you guys need to know all the entry speeds and power settings cold.”
This was what distinguished Air Force pilots from all other pilots, and Casey could hardly wait to try it.
In the practice area, Lieutenant Carter demonstrated the first maneuver, an Immelman.
“This is a half loop followed by a half roll,” Carter explained. “Lower the nose, accelerate to two hundred and fifty knots, tighten your leg muscles, and then pull the stick straight back to your belly button.”
The five Gs of force pulled Casey’s oxygen mask down her face and pushed her into the seat. She clenched hard on her lower body muscles to withstand the G-forces.
“Check both wingtips are even as you pull through the horizon. When you are upside down at the top of the loop, pause, then roll upright to wings level. You should be at one hundred and twenty knots now. You try one.”
Casey’s attempt sort of looked like her instructor’s demo but she was too slow at the top, and when she tried to roll upright, the aircraft started to rotate into a spin.
“My jet,” Carter said as he took the airplane and recovered from the spin.
“We are now flying the jet at the edge of the performance envelope. You’ll be pulling high Gs and flying near the stall speed during all these maneuvers. Don’t screw that up again.”
“Yes, sir.”
He quickly went through the other acrobatic maneuvers—Cuban eight, split S, barrel roll, chandelle, lazy eight, loop, and cloverleaf. When they left the practice area for the auxiliary field, Casey was exhausted from pulling Gs, and her mind was spinning trying to remember everything she’d just seen.
Back on the ground, his debrief was short. “You will practice all the advanced acro you saw today on your next solo ride. Don’t let the jet get into a spin again. Chair fly this stuff. Overall grade, Good.”
Casey looked at her grade sheet where all the new acro maneuvers were graded U. She feverishly started writing notes in her book trying to remember what the different maneuvers looked like and the entry parameters.
The next day, both she and Mike were scheduled for their first area solo rides. Carter briefed them both at the same time.
“Check your orientation and don’t fly out of the practice area. I want you to work on all the acro maneuvers. Then go to the aux field for two to three landings, then back to Willie. When you see five hundred pounds of fuel remaining, call for a full stop landing. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” they answered in unison.
They went to the supervisor of flying desk for their solo brief.
“Lieutenant Tompkins, your tail number is 0086 and your call sign today is Hook 21 Solo. Lieutenant Harris, you’re in tail number 8081 and your call sign is Hook 22 Solo. Call me on the radio if you have any problems. Bingo fuel for landing is five hundred pounds. Any questions? Have a good mission today.”
Casey tingled with excitement as she checked her gear and walked across the noisy ramp to her jet. It’s my jet today.
She was thorough with her preflight checks and her takeoff was picture perfect. She started to relax as she flew the departure to the practice area. She meticulously completed her required in flight checks—oxygen check passing ten thousand feet, fuel balance check, instrument checks—all perfect. When she entered her practice area, she did a few clearing turns looking for other aircraft. She was right in the middle of her area at exactly the right airspeed and altitude.
“I think I’ll warm up with an aileron roll first,” Casey said out loud.
She pulled the nose up slightly, then sharply moved the stick to the full right stop. The airplane quickly rolled upside down, and she snapped the stick back to the left to stop the roll.
“Not too bad. I’m wings level right at two hundred and twenty knots. How about a loop next.”
She lowered the nose to accelerate to two hundred and fifty knots, tightened her legs for the Gs, then pulled the stick back toward her crotch. She checked her wingtips even with the horizon as the jet was pointed straight up at the sky, then threw her head backward to find the horizon.
“Wings level inverted, check airspeed—ninety knots. Crap. I’m slow. I’m supposed to be at one twenty. Keep pulling.”
She felt a slight burble in the stick warning her that she was close to the stall speed.
“Don’t pull too hard, just keep the nose tracking through the top of the loop.”
As the nose came through the horizon and she was pointed directly at the ground, she heard the sound of the airspeed increasing rapidly. She tightened her lower body as hard as she could as she completed the pull to wings level.
“I’m supposed to be at two hundred and fifty knots at the end of the maneuver and I’m at two seventy. What the hell did I do wrong?”
Casey did a few gentle turns as she checked her position and climbed back up to the correct altitude for her next maneuver. She tried the chandelle but got slow again at the top of the maneuver. Then she tried the lazy eight, and it sort of looked like it was supposed to, but not really.
“I think I’m ready to try another over the top one now. What was the entry speed for the Cuban eight again? Oh yeah, two hundred and fifty knots and one hundred percent power.”
She lowered the nose to accelerate and pulled straight back like she was beginning a loop.
“Three-quarters of a loop, pause, then half a roll. Find a section line on the ground to follow, then reverse back the other direction.”
As she talked herself through the Cuban eight, the G-forces increased and decreased as her speed changed throughout the maneuver. She rolled out thirty degrees off her section line with her airspeed accelerating through two hundred and seventy knots.
“Goddamn it, what am I doing wrong? These don’t look anything like the way Carter did them. I’m going to try one last maneuver, then go to the aux field. The cloverleaf looked pretty easy, and I think the starting airspeed is slower.”
She glanced down at the cheat sheet on her knee board to check the entry airspeed.
“Power ninety percent, entry speed two hundred and twenty knots, pull up smoothly like the beginning of a loop. When it feels like my feet are on the horizon, eyes right, roll, and pull to a point on the horizon abeam my right shoulder. I should be at one hundred and twenty knots inverted going through the horizon. Then three more leaves just like it. This should be easier than the other over-the-top ones.”
She pulled back on the stick at two hundred and twenty knots, at sixty degrees nose high, she looked to her right and saw a small white puffy cloud. This was her target as she slowly rolled the aircraft upside down toward the cloud and kept pulling back on the stick. Everything looked good until she checked her speed inverted coming through the horizon. She wasn’t quite wings level and was too fast at one hundred forty knots instead of one hundred twenty knots.
“Pull the nose up a little more on the next leaf,” she said to herself.
On her second leaf, she started at two hundred fifty knots instead of two twenty, and she continued the maneuver to try to fix it on the next leaf. She pulled up through the horizon, looked right again, and saw a mountain peak to use as a target.
“Up and over, nice and smooth.”
She glanced down at her airspeed indicator as she was inverted coming through the horizon. It read one hundred seventy knots instead of one twenty knots this time.
“Goddamn it. I’m too fast again. Fix it on the last leaf.” She was getting frustrated with herself.
She looked for the section line on the ground to try to straighten out the backside of the cloverleaf. She heard the air noise around her increase to a deafening roar as she realized she was g
oing way too fast. Her altimeter was unwinding at a furious rate, and her altitude was rapidly approaching the bottom of the practice area. She saw her airspeed going through three hundred knots toward the red line.
“Shit! Pull up!”
She yanked back hard on the stick to slow her screaming descent. Instantly, her vision went gray and she couldn’t see anything.
“Fuck! I’m graying out!”
She was pointed straight at the ground, and if she pulled any harder, she would black herself out. If she didn’t pull up hard enough, she would slam into the ground. She was blind but still conscious for the moment. She had to decide right now. Either eject, or fly the jet blind and keep pulling back on the stick, hoping she didn’t hit the ground.
“Pull, Casey, pull!”
Chapter Eleven
Kathryn was supposed to be finishing her quarterly wing safety reports, but instead she was standing at the big window in her office watching the planes fly around the traffic pattern. She never got tired of looking at all the aircraft in the crazy, organized chaos of the busiest airport in the world.
The radio brick on her hip crackled to life. “Flight Safety, this is the Control Tower.”
Her insides clutched and she keyed the mike button. “Tower, this is Flight Safety, go ahead.”
“Albuquerque Center is declaring an emergency for a T-37 aircraft, call sign Hook 21 Solo.”
“What’s the nature of the emergency?”
“They are reporting Hook 21 Solo as a missing aircraft.”
“When did they last have any radio contact?”
“Their last contact with Hook 21 Solo was when the aircraft entered the low-altitude practice area at 1545 hours. Time now 1605 hours.”
“Are there any search and rescue aircraft in the area?”
“They report Sage 85 is inbound to the practice area. ETA ten minutes.”
“Has the fire department at the auxiliary field been notified?”
“Affirmative.”
“Roger, Tower, I copy all. Is there anything else?”
“Sage 85 just reported a column of smoke southwest of the practice area.”
“Copy, Tower. I’m responding now. Flight Safety out.”
Oh, God, please give me a student pilot with a successful ejection on this one.
With that unspoken prayer, she ran as fast as she could to the blue Air Force pickup truck.
Kathryn raced across the desert to the coordinates of the smoke column as memories of another terrible aircraft accident five years earlier flooded her mind like a dam breaking. She had just finished flight safety school after eight weeks of training in aircraft accident investigation at the University of Southern California. The intensive training and getting a new job on the wing staff was good for her career, but she’d been very lonely for Marie.
Kathryn never believed in “love at first sight” until she laid eyes on Marie in pilot training. They were in different flights, but they noticed each other immediately. Marie was cute, smart, and funny, and everyone liked her. They started out studying together, but things quickly progressed to a physical relationship. They’d been very happy together, especially in bed, then they ran into a major hurdle.
Kathryn was doing well with flying, but Marie struggled right from the beginning. She tried to help Marie learn the huge volume of material, but Marie got flustered when she was in the sim or the airplane. She would make minor errors, get mad at herself, then fall apart and not be able to fly the jet. She couldn’t pass the first check ride because of her nerves, and she washed out of pilot training. Marie had done well academically, so she was offered a slot in navigator training. They parted tearfully when Marie got sent to a different training base but vowed to stay together despite where the Air Force sent them.
Kathryn excelled in pilot training, and at the time she was graduating in 1983, women were very restricted with the airplanes they were allowed to fly. She was fighter qualified because of her skills but women weren’t allowed to fly fighters, attack aircraft, bombers, or even reconnaissance jets. They could only fly air refueling tankers, big airlift transports, or training jets, because the men didn’t want those jobs. She was asked to stay on at the pilot training base as a T-38 instructor pilot, which was a great honor, but she requested to fly the old KC-135 tanker so she could be stationed with Marie. Her class commander was baffled but gave her the assignment she wanted.
Kathryn breezed through KC-135 school and was in lesbian bliss when she finally got to Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. Her life with Marie was perfect. She upgraded from copilot to aircraft commander as soon as she could, Marie was her navigator, and they flew around the world together.
Kathryn loved Marie with her whole heart, she thought Marie was her soul mate, and they planned their future together. When she was offered the job as a wing flight safety officer, she jumped at the chance to advance her career. She was optimistic when she got home from training and was looking forward to flying with Marie again. Little did she know the first accident she would be tasked to investigate would be the death of the love of her life.
“This isn’t the same accident. Stay focused on the present. The student might have gotten out.” She tried convincing herself as she drove faster through the desert.
She mentally assessed her emergency response kit—camera, maps, flags to mark debris, evidence bags. She had everything. She just had to steel herself to the possible scene that awaited her. The memories of that first accident scene came rushing back to her, and she couldn’t stop them.
It started the same way with the radio brick calling her to an accident scene. A KC-135 tanker had gone down at night in the traffic pattern at the Fairchild practice field. They were practicing instrument approaches with touch-and-go landings. It was a cold, clear night in Spokane, but the fire from the wreckage could be seen for miles. Kathryn had been focused, and scared, responding to her first real accident. The tanker had a midair collision with a light aircraft that flew right through the traffic pattern. They didn’t have a chance. The flaming debris was scattered over a relatively small area, but it was clear there were no survivors. Kathryn remembered that fateful radio call like it was yesterday.
“Flight Safety, this is Operations.”
“Go ahead, Ops.”
“We have the crew manifest for the mishap aircraft.”
Kathryn’s blood ran cold before she even heard the names. Somehow she sensed Marie’s name would be on the list.
“Stop it, Kath. This isn’t Marie. This is a student pilot who may still be alive,” she told herself.
As she rounded the corner in her safety truck, she saw the column of black smoke and the flashing lights of the fire trucks. She drove up to the accident scene slowly, staying out of the way of the emergency response vehicles. She got out of her truck and went up to the on-scene commander.
“Any survivors, Chief?”
“Sorry, Captain Hardesty, no news yet. We’ve almost got the fire out. I’ll clear you to go to the site in a few minutes.”
She walked around the perimeter of the accident site and started taking photos. The crash site was fairly contained, without a lot of wreckage strewn about, indicating the aircraft didn’t break up in flight but hit the ground intact. She looked up into the sky—perfect blue skies, no clouds, no thunderstorms.
“Flight Safety and Medical, this is the on-scene commander. The fire is out and the accident site is now safe. You are cleared to enter.”
“Flight Safety copies. Proceeding to the site now.”
As she slowly walked among the smoldering pieces of metal that used to be a beautiful airplane, she consciously put her emotions in check. There was an important job to do, and she was the officer to do it. She needed to know if the student got out. She went first to the smoking cockpit section.
Most of the airframe was gone, having burned up in the post-crash fire, and there was a scorched outline of the plane on the desert floor. It was a black shadow o
f a T-37 with only a few big pieces left—both engines, the tail section, and the cockpit section with a melted canopy. Oh, no.
Bile started coming up her throat, but she forced it down. She continued to take evidence pictures as she approached the black mass in the center of the wreckage. Then she saw what she’d prayed she wouldn’t see—the charred remains of the student pilot in the left seat. It was all she could do not to hurl the contents of her stomach when she inhaled the unmistakable smell of burning flesh. Keep it together, Kath. Keep it together.
She took pictures—the lap belt, the ejection seat handgrips, the parachute, the flight instruments—it was all there. The student had made no attempt to eject. Her job would be to figure out why. The flight surgeon came up and tapped her shoulder.
“Sorry you have to see this, Doc. This is your first aircraft fatality, isn’t it?”
The young doctor nodded, but he couldn’t speak. He looked like he was about to faint.
“Master Sergeant Gutierrez knows the drill. They’ll remove the remains, then have the body sent to Wilford Hall Medical Center for autopsy and toxicology testing. You just have to sign the death certificate when it’s ready.”
The aircraft maintenance team showed up to haul out the pieces and analyze the aircraft systems for any mechanical malfunctions.
“How’s it look, Captain Hardesty?” asked the team leader, Chief Master Sergeant Rand.
“Nothing obvious at this point, Chief. It looks like the plane was in one piece when it hit the ground, but we’ll look at everything. I want your best techs on the engines, flight controls, and avionics.”
“You got it, ma’am. We’ll figure out if anything was wrong with this jet.”