Since my dad passed in 2009, I’ve slowly accumulated as much information of his 30 year military career as my mother’s situation will allow. Some of it comes to memory as stories heard over the years, and others have come as quite a surprise. Like his C-119 time.
I discovered this well worn document last night while going through one of his many file folders. I had only a faint recollection of the incident, most likely from childhood while based in England. Or maybe later during a discussion of flying the Super Sabre, of which he had 1317 hours PIC. So now I know the rest of the story. I hope that you can read it.
It’s really important that you’re preserving documents like this because this is how history stays around instead of falling through the cracks. It’s easy to record things like elections, legislation, and public events.
The stories and perspectives of the people living it though? That’s all too easy to forget. I certainly hope you’ll post more!
Hey thanks a bunch guys. I hoped that you would find it more interesting from a flying an engineering point of view rather than self-promotion or bravado. What impressed me was how long he stuck with the recommended recovery, full rudder in one direction, full opposite aileron in the other, and full back stick. I’m not sure that I would have stayed in the saddle that long.
Then when one wonders about the determination that the test pilots had in order to determine the correct recovery procedure. I found this article discussing adverse yaw in the Hun.
@chipwich As others have said, please keep these documents for histories sake. If by chance your own circumstances or that of your family cannot keep these documents, I would urge you to donate them to some aviation museum or aviation based history organization for future generations.
Thanks RedBravo65. Yeah, there are a few more like this that I’ve found that I should post. The paper on which this one is printed is so thin, that it’s actually harder to read than the scanned version. The stock is whatever sufficed for copy or carbon paper 60 years ago. Had I not recovered a few of my dad’s briefcases, the flat spin would have probably been a fading memory. That’s why I was thrilled to discover it last night.
Really cool letter/report to read @chipwich. The air up there at FL380 and higher is very unforgiving. You have to fall a long way to get the aerodynamic pressures back that things start to work properly. Early in my jet flying career, as a brand new captain, I was doing some paperwork in the right seat while my FO flew from the left seat. We were staggering up to FL430 to try to make it to some distant location and I didn’t realize he was in vertical speed mode and had commanded a rate that was unsustainable. I was looking at my lap doing paperwork, felt a rumble, and in the second or two it took for me to figure out what was going on, we were already coming out of around FL420. I told him to bunt the nose over, I called ATC and told them we couldn’t make our assigned FL and that we were coming down (regardless of clearance). We didn’t really “recover” normal flying speed until around FL380. We got lucky.
I can imagine rolling into 3G turns and stuff up there could get dicey real quick. Good thing the engine kept running through all that.
Great story!…well, not really a “story” but you know what I mean. It is pretty cool how the dry military language required for such a report can actually impart the tense drama of the event.
Something to take a shot at in my FSX MILVIZ F-100!
Hey Beach, thanks for linking that video. Had not seen it. Yeah, as the video stated, the Thud and Phantom get most of the glory, but the truth is that the Hun flew many more missions than both combined. There’s probably a good book on the subject.
I would sugest Osprey. I have read from the same author about why Phantoms were pushed into the MiG killing misions while the Starfighters were put aside.
