Just Another Mission
Sundays were generally quiet at Osan Air Base, with almost everyone not involved with the U-2 mission off for the weekend. There were no delays during startup and taxi. Holding in position on runway 27, the mobile officer, driving a radioequipped Chevy Camaro, slowly circled the U-2, visually inspecting my aircraft and confirming that the ground crew had removed the pins from the outboard wheels (or “pogos”), allowing them to fall away during takeoff roll as the wings, filled with nearly 3,000 gallons of fuel, began to generate lift. With a takeoff clearance from tower and Mobile’s thumbs-up, I was ready to go.
Yoke held slightly aft, with rudder and ailerons neutral, I released the brakes and smoothly advanced the throttle to full military power, a throttle position I planned to maintain throughout the nine-hour mission until it was time to descend for home. The GE F118 turbofan accelerated quickly to 100% rpm, and the aircraft surged forward under the influence of 17,000 pounds of thrust. At about 90 knots, the U-2’s 104-foot wing bit deep into the freezing sea-level air, and the 40,000-pound aircraft leapt off the runway in less than 1,000 feet, leaving the pogo wheels bouncing down the runway while the plane accelerated rapidly toward a 160-knot climb. With my left hand still holding the throttle full forward, I continued to pull the nose up to nearly 30 degrees above the horizon to maintain 160 knots; in this configuration, 180 knots was redline, and beyond that lay structural failure of the lightly built airframe. Entering the clouds at 600 feet, I shifted my attention inside to the 1970s-era flight instruments arrayed before me. On speed, with wings level and climbing, I raised the gear. A glance at the vertical velocity indicator showed it pegged at more than 6,000 feet per minute, although I knew it was actually running uphill at 12,000fpm. It was quite a ride!
At max power, holding 160 knots, the U-2 climbed aggressively upward with relatively little forward travel. The echoing thunder of the engine, tailpipe still pointed toward the base, could often still be heard for several minutes after takeoff even as the mobile officer and pogo crews were walking back into the squadron building. I smiled with satisfaction knowing I had just announced to a sleeping base that even on Sunday the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron “Blackcats” were on the prowl.
At 10 DME (distance measuring equipment), I
A GLANCE AT THE VERTICAL VELOCITY INDICATOR SHOWED IT PEGGED AT MORE THAN 6,000 FEET PER MINUTE, ALTHOUGH I KNEW IT WAS ACTUALLY RUNNING UPHILL AT 12,000FPM. IT WAS QUITE A RIDE!
began a slow turn toward the northeast, completed my after-takeoff checks, and set up for entry on the track I was to fly that day. Passing 25,000 feet, climb performance slackened and though the throttle was still full forward, vertical velocity was less than half that of takeoff and pitch was now down to only 10 or 12 degrees to maintain my climb speed. I began turning on mission equipment, completed my communication checks, and generally settled in for the nine-hour flight ahead. Passing 52,000 feet and still heading northeast, I engaged the autopilot, coupled it to the INS (inertial navigation system) and selected “Mach Hold,” commanding the autopilot to maintain a constant Mach number versus the 160 KIAS (knots indicated airspeed) I had hand-flown until now. As fuel was consumed and the weight of the aircraft decreased, the autopilot would now keep the aircraft at the selected Mach number, producing a slow continuous climb throughout the mission, resulting in altitudes higher than 70,000 feet by day’s end.
The mission progressed normally for the next six hours. I monitored the aircraft systems, confirmed my position, and completed flight logs while occasionally sipping Gatorade through a
long straw inserted into the feeding port of the helmet. Below, the clouds remained an unbroken sea of white stretching from horizon to horizon with clear blue sky above. Now cruising in the high 60s, the U-2 performed flawlessly, as this was her realm. Thirty-five-thousand feet below me, the speck of a westbound airliner pulled a long contrail across the peninsula. I was flying above the jet stream, so the winds were nearly calm, and the U-2 maintained a slow climb, unbroken since takeoff, with its nose gently rising and falling as the Mach hold adjusted for minute changes in the -73°C atmosphere.
Oh, Oh
At approximately 1352L (local time), as I was cruising comfortably above 68,000 feet, the engine suddenly stopped. Without any warning, the sound of a healthy turbofan engine inflight turned to a gut-wrenching low groan, shuddered, and then ceased. The rpm went from 100% to near zero in less than two seconds. A cross-check of the engine instruments confirmed the worst. Engine compressor speed, fuel flow, oil pressure, and EGT (exhaust gas temperature) were all zero or heading in that direction. I immediately placed the engine mode switch to SEC (or secondary mode) and cycled the throttle Off, then back to Idle in a feeble attempt to recover the engine.
The rpm remained about 6% as the engine-driven generators dropped offline. The nose dropped, and I quickly turned southwest, establishing a 120-knot flameout glide toward home. I selected Emergency on my transponder to squawk 7700, and made a radio call to our operations, “Black Ops, ILKA 12 Emergency…Engine failure!”
The SOF (supervisor of flying) responded immediately, asking me, “Confirm engine failure?!” When I replied that I had indeed lost the engine, he said almost nonchalantly, “Stand by; we need to run some checklists.” I wanted to say, “No s**t!” He began reading the high-altitude engine-failure checklist and gave me the best glide speeds for a flameout pattern. A call to check the weather produced a promising report, with ceiling and visibility good enough for a possible flameout pattern and landing. I was surprised and encouraged with the weather report and worked to complete the checklist items while receiving radar vectors to Osan.
I continued to glide southwest, with vectors from Osan Approach. The controller would interject with a vector and heading corrections, as our Ops team read me the emergency-procedures checklist. The help from Approach Control and our Ops was crucial as I now descended through perhaps 65,000 feet and the canopy seals deflated. Without engine bleed air, cabin pressure rose past 35,000 feet, and I felt the pressure suit begin to inflate and the neck ring rise up to my chin, effectively trying to take the helmet off my head. I countered with a few sharp pulls on the helmet hold-down device, a pulley system attached to the pressure suit designed to hold the neck ring down when the suit pressurized. With the suit fully inflated, I could barely move my arms. What had been a pliable six-layer pressure suit was now a rock-hard balloon trapping a 35,000-foot environment around my body to prevent my blood from boiling while I sat in the unpressurized cockpit at more than 65,000 feet.
Like pressurization, gone too was the cabin heat, and the canopy began to frost over on the inside. While the front windscreen was heated through the emergency battery, the Plexiglas canopy over my head frosted over, leaving me only a narrow view straight ahead over the long nose. I tried scrubbing the frost off, but it re-formed almost as soon as I stopped scraping.
The stiff sleeves of the inflated pressure suit made that task even more difficult, and I was gulping oxygen with the strenuous effort in the rarified air of the U-2’s cockpit.
Soon, the attitude indicator and gyro compass began to drift as their gyros slowly spun down. I shifted my cross-check to the standby attitude indicator and magnetic compass. I could still see some of the horizon through the windscreen straight ahead and tried to recall the basics of making turns while referencing a magnetic compass: leads north, lags south…accurate passing east and west…right? Throughout the glide, I also referenced a handheld GPS most U-2 pilots kept rubber-banded to the canopy frame. This was a first-generation civilian GPS, about the size of a TV remote control. With the pressure suit fully inflated, my glove fingers were too stiff to work the unit. I used my pencil eraser to push the buttons and confirm my ground track toward home.
With my pressure suit inflated, the canopy iced over, and the gyros tumbled, I flew on toward Osan. The U-2 had two batteries, with approximately one hour of combined life to run the emergency systems. I shed unnecessary power, turning off any systems I didn’t need, and kept my responses to radio calls as brief as possible.
Inbound: Is a Landing Possible?
On the ground, the squadron commander began to position everyone required for an emergency recovery. Our mission planner and mobile officer manned the Ops-room radios and checklists, and a call was made to alert the Jolly Green HH-60 rescue detachment. As the SOF departed ops to take up his position in the control tower, he immediately saw that the weather was not good enough for a flameout approach; it was still very much IFR. This was confirmed by a Navy F/A-18, which put the weather at 700 overcast— almost exactly where it had been for takeoff that morning. I needed close to 1,500 feet for a flameout pattern. A landing at Osan was a no-go.
Hearing this information, the commander
directed that I proceed to the controlled bailout area at the Koon-ni range, just off the east coast of South Korea. That would allow the aircraft to crash into the Yellow Sea or at least an unpopulated land area if I ejected. Passing 45,000 feet, I now changed course for Koon-ni range, thinking of ejection. At that time, the last successful U-2 ejection had occurred 19 years earlier, in 1984. There had been four ejections since then, and all had resulted in fatal injuries to the pilot. But I had known that fact coming into the U-2 program, right? Painted portraits of these brave men, wearing their distinctive yellow pressure suits, hung in the squadron Heritage Room at Beale Air Force Base (AFB).
Passing about 33,000 feet, the pressure suit mercifully began to relax as cabin pressure equaled then exceeded the suit pressure. Osan Approach notified me I was over the range, and I rolled into a shallow right bank to stay over the controlled bailout area. I now descended in holding and completed the landing-gear emergency- extension checklist, manually releasing the gear uplocks and allowing the single main gear and tailwheel to free-fall into place. Without electrical power, the gear only indicated “in transit.” I would only find out if it was down and locked if and when I found a runway to land.
I had been gliding for more than 30 minutes when I entered the cloud tops about 25,000 feet. Now, the challenge of hard-instrument flying really began, as I lost what little horizon I had and went head down, fully fixated on the small standby instruments and Osan Approach’s radar vectors. I had to fight the reflexive urge to reference the now-useless main ADI (attitude director indicator) and HSI (horizontal situation indicator). Several times, I caught myself attempting corrections off the failed instruments, and I had to shake it off and return my cross-check to the standby gauges.
The U-2 emergency air-start system uses highpressure hydrazine to spin the engine for a restart, giving the pilot one shot at restarting a failed engine. The procedure must be initiated below 25,000 feet at a speed greater than 90 knots. I
prepared for the air start, with backup from the mobile officer. I hit the air-start button and advanced the throttle to idle. I heard the “whoosh” of hydrazine rush through the engine, spinning the compressor. The rpm initially increased to approximately 17%, and I held my breath hoping for a light off. Nothing. The engine stalled at 17%, making an awful grinding noise and vibrating severely. After several seconds, I placed the throttle back to Off, fearing a fire or worse and waited for the hydrazine to complete its cycle. The noise was terrible, and I was glad when the hydrazine was finely depleted and the engine spun down to near zero again.
Time for the Silk Elevator
After the failed restart attempt and now passing 10,000 feet, I had run out of options. I had resigned myself to an ejection in Koon-ni range when Ops advised me that the U.S. Army airfield at Camp Humphreys was reporting a 4,000-foot ceiling and directed me to attempt a flameout landing there. Camp Humphreys was about seven miles south of Osan, and with a vector from Osan Approach, I diverted a second time. The weather was heavier now. Clouds had become dark gray and freezing rain pelted the windscreen, as I continued my struggle to fly the standby instruments. The SOF called me again with altitudes for a flameout pattern, and the Mobile chimed in, reminding of ejection minimums if I didn’t break out.
Seconds later, things suddenly got very quiet. Airspeed was indicating a solid 110 knots, but the wind rush of the glide was gone and the yoke felt loose and unresponsive in my hands. I attempted a slight right and left deflection of the yoke. It felt as if I were in a full-stall landing flare at 80 knots—not the 110 knots that was still indicated. In a split second, I realized the battery was now likely depleted and the Pitot tube was iced up. I had a false airspeed indication, and I was about to stall! I was too low to deal with a stalled U-2 on standby instruments and a frozen airspeed indicator. I sat bolt upright, threw my head back against the headrest, and with both hands gripping the ejection ring between my legs, I pulled as hard as I could. For an instant, the
THE U-2 EMERGENCY AIR-START SYSTEM USES HIGH-PRESSURE HYDRAZINE TO SPIN THE ENGINE FOR A RESTART, GIVING THE PILOT ONE SHOT AT RESTARTING A FAILED ENGINE.
portraits of men in yellow pressure suits flashed through my mind.
When I pulled the handle, I had been gliding for one hour and six minutes, was down from more than 68,000 feet to approximately
7,000 feet, and had covered more than 100 nautical miles. Instantly, the canopy smoothly departed the aircraft, and for a moment, I was riding along in an open cockpit, with a perfect view no longer obscured by a frosted canopy. Then BANG! I blacked out briefly, as the ejection seat fired and I was catapulted up and out of the aircraft. Still in the chair, my eyes opened again to the sight of the big black airplane below me gliding onward and disappearing into the dark gray clouds.
There were now more pops and bangs, as I separated from the seat and the drogue from my backpack parachute fired and deployed, then I heard the swishing sound of nylon as the drogue deployed the 32-foot main chute. There was a sharp tug of opening shock and suddenly all was quiet, as I floated in the clouds without sight of the ground or horizon. Looking around, I saw debris in the sky around me. I saw the empty ejection seat falling away under its own drogue chute, and bits and pieces of debris tumbled about. Still in the clouds, I could not tell up from down, but I soon realized that while I had a good chute, I was swinging wildly under the canopy. I began to feel a dull, burning ache in my lower back.
“Canopy, visor, seat kit, LPU (life-preserver unit), six-line, steer, prepare, release.” The postejection checklist rang in my head. I looked up and confirmed a good chute. I popped open the sealed visor of the pressure-suit helmet and reveled at fresh air now filling my lungs and washing across my face. I kicked the spur cables free from my boots and reached for the handle of the seat survival kit tucked firmly against my backside. Pulling the handle should have released the kit to fall and hang on a 20-foot strap while deploying a single-man life raft. But the handle was jammed and would not release. I tugged at the handle, unable to get good leverage while hanging beneath the chute; additionally, the pain in my back worsened with each
tug. I stopped and rested, noticing that I was still swinging pretty significantly under the canopy. I pulled the six-line jettison lanyards on the back of each riser, releasing six pairs of the chute’s rear shroud lines, allowing air to spill freely from the back of the chute. This stopped the swings and provided a knot or two of forward drive.
Again, I tugged hard on the seat-kit handle, and it finally opened but only enough to fall about one foot and come to rest just behind my knees. I kicked at the kit and had finally worked it down another foot or so when I began to see the ground through the broken cloud deck. I left the kit alone and began trying to pull the left riser down in an effort to turn into the wind and slow my ground speed before the inevitable collision with the ground. My efforts were futile as the pain in my back prevented me from holding the riser down for any length of time; the oversize chute simply rolled back and ran with the wind.
The ground was now coming up faster, and I could see a series of rice paddies, with a large raised dike separating them. A paved road with a power line ran along the top of the dike, and at first glance, I thought I would clear the power lines and land in the field on the other side. Then I realized that I would not clear the lines and that I might even be headed straight for the pole! I turned sideways and braced for impact, but about 100 feet in the air and just short of the lines, the wind suddenly died and I drifted straight down to a textbook parachute-landing fall. Terra firma at last! As I lay there on my back, I gave a weak smile. After one hour and 10 minutes of gliding, flying using standby instruments, holding over Koon-ni range, running checklists, diverting twice, and finally ejecting, I was alive!
Cell Phone to the Rescue
Impact with the ground opened the seat kit, and I scrambled to take inventory of the survival gear. I tried to sit up but couldn’t—my lower back was shot. I was not in any severe pain but knew that I had injured something and it was probably best not to move. I lay back and pulled the survival kit toward me. I located the PRC-90 radio and portable GPS, and switched them on. As I was doing that, a Korean civilian driving past me on the road stopped his car and came down into the field. He spoke no English but offered me the use of his cell phone. I called our operations landline and, in the background, heard them calling me on the UHF radio as our mission planner answered the phone. I told him I had ejected and hurt my back. I read him my GPS coordinates, and he said he would pass them to the Jolly Greens, who were just getting airborne. When I hung up, the Korean gentleman calmly asked for his phone back, placed it in his pocket, walked back to his car, and drove off!
The HH-60 was overhead a few minutes later and, after landing to drop off two pararescuemen, took off again and circled the field. In the meantime, a Korean woman happened by, and she came down to the field to see if I was OK. Sirens began to sound, and a fire truck and ambulance arrived. A crowd began to gather. The scene was getting busy, so the helo was called back to get us out of there before the LZ (landing zone) got too crowded to land. A short helicopter ride later and we were on the ramp at Osan, and although still stretcher bound, I was soon shaking hands with my commander and the Ops team as I was loaded into an ambulance.
The accident investigation later determined that the failure of the number four bearing in the rear of the engine resulted in complete and nonrecoverable engine failure.
And Life Continues
Ahead, lay six months of recovery, physical therapy, back braces, and X-rays. The ejection had crushed two vertebrae by nearly 20 percent, borderline acceptable for returning to the cockpit. There was talk that I might not fly again and certainly not in an ejection-seat aircraft. But I was determined to do so, and with the unwavering support of my commander and the heroic efforts by flight surgeons at Osan and back home at Beale AFB, I was granted an ejection seat waiver. With a clean bill of health, I returned to Beale for a short requalification course. I returned to Osan, and by August, I was rolling down the runway on another routine U-2 mission.
THE ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION LATER DETERMINED THAT THE FAILURE OF THE NUMBER FOUR BEARING IN THE REAR OF THE ENGINE RESULTED IN COMPLETE AND NONRECOVERABLE ENGINE FAILURE.