 |
| (Source) |
I remember when the guy in this incident came up for promotion to admiral. Not a good look for the Navy as I recall.
Sure, go read the article at the link above, but I like Ward Carroll's take on it as well.
Why yes, I got nothing!
Seriously though, check out Ward's YouTube channel, lots of aviation goodness!
I noticed the post title is a question, and I think the answer is, "On the water."
ReplyDeleteI bet I know what's playing on your mental jukebox.
:)
Uh, no...
DeleteAnd "thanks" for the ear worm.
That Air Force crew was lucky.....darned lucky. Note the first Sidewinder failed to fire.......that's reassuring eh?
ReplyDeleteThough the AIM-9 is generally a reliable missile, you do get failures from time to time. It's the nature of all things mechanical.
DeleteIt's failure rate is also enhanced by jolting takeoffs, "firm" landings and frequent bathings in sea water.
DeleteExtraordinarily lucky, newer Sidewinders pull a little bit of lead with the intent of hitting a bit closer to the front of the airplane. Also bailing out at 550K is gonna leave a mark as was mentioned at the end of the film.
DeleteAs the mechanical troubleshooters will tell you, "looks like an electrical problem"... As a non-Airdale failure to fire seems more electronic than mechanical. Then again, what do I know, just had these things taking off and landing on my roof. Side note, played rugby on the ship's team with a guy from weapons who assembled those goofy things.
DeleteSalute to both of you, OldAFSarge for digging into the jet's radar and juvat for having his finger on the trigger. We all did our part. (I'm guessing juvat may have had more fun)
Most of the time...But there were a few not so fun times.
DeleteAnd here I’ve always thought that the Sparrows didn’t fire on demand. I trusted that infrared thingee to see me through, when I had fired the sand seekers. Oh my, how close we come!
DeletePerhaps I should have said electro-mechanical, but it's a machine, they have their quirks. But as Fuzz says, still more reliable than a Sparrow of that era!
DeleteAnd a Sidewinder was an excellent choice for exiting a fight. Fire one at the bad guys let them worry about it for a bit while you skedaddle and try to exceed your previous high speed record. AiM-7s seemed to take FOREVER to arrive at the target and you had to be pointed in their general direction the whole time. I think AMRAAM has a fire and forget mode, but never got to play with that one.
DeleteWow. I do not think I knew about this. As Master Yoda might have said “Shot down your own aircraft, have you? How embarrassing”.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what was going on between his ears at the time.
DeleteI didn't know about this either. If you'd been a regular guy, that would have been the end. You might have been am mop handle in the deck department.... maybe... But, RHIP even for your worthless extrusions I guess. From what I read, any one else that bent the amount of aircraft that old Wet Start did in training, they wouldn't have been a pilot. "But daddy was a Admiral..." I guess that's why I'd rather have a Zenith.
ReplyDeleteRoger that!
DeleteOkay, how does one acquire his "call sign?" Is it bestowed, like a nickname?
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely "Bestowed". And only changed if something bigger, better or stupider happens.
DeleteThat’s correct, says “fuzz”
DeleteAny Mouse - Glad you asked, gives me an idea for a post that requires very little effort. Ward Carroll has a good video concerning call signs. Which, for your education and entertainment I will post tomorrow. (My brain is fried, we're going full video for the next cuppla.)
DeleteI was stationed in Germany when this happened and when I heard about it, I thought, "WTF?". The other shootdown that made me angrier was when USAF pilots shot down the two US Army Blackhawks. Friendly fire ain't friendly. I used to drill my guys on aircraft and armor recognition as if their lives depended on it (as it did). I fully expected my counterparts in the other services to believe the same.
ReplyDeleteI learned a saying early on, "I don't know what you are thinking, only what you are saying." Standardization of words, phrases, giving instructions and then having those instructions repeated back, and ensuring the team know the intent and desired end state. If confusion begins to rear its ugly head, slow down and think and ask questions! (Rant over. I am so-o-o-o happy that I'm retired from all of that stuff!)
Good Youtube channel this Ward Carroll has. Thanks for bringing it up. :-)
-Barry
I happen to know the flight lead of that F-15 Mission. There were a lot of mistakes made that day, ending in a mistaken ID of a Blackhawk as a Hind from dead astern at 2 miles closing at about 500K. The apparent target size at that range is extremely small so visual ID is difficult and is the least reliable of the ID methods available. Most reliable is IFF. This is a box on essentially all aircraft that ID's the aircraft to a radar. There are several modes that can be "Squawked" and the F-15 can interrogate all of them. Randy did and all came back negative friendly. Another method is in AWACS. If AWACs can track where the targets took off, they can declare it hostile based on that. AWACS declared it hostile. Another preventative measure broken was the F-15's were on a pre-op sweep of the airspace. The ATO (air tasking order) had the Eagle sweep as the first friendly air mission of the day. So...
DeleteThe only less bad thing that came out of this was the Army finally got on board with the Joint Force Air Combat Commander policy, and started sending their flying plans to that agency to distribute to other assets that might want to know that they were flying in the area. Say AWACS or the guys actually flying the mission to make sure the friendlies don't get attacked by bad guy air.
This incident happened -1994, In 1990-92, I was in Army Command and Staff and SAMS (the Jedi Knight thing), I spent an awful lot of time explaining to my Army buddies why they needed to get on board with the JFACC program. Many were helo drivers and quite a few had their eyes opened when I showed them tapes of the F-15 Radar display of helicopters flying below 100' AGL. Their mindset had been in the weeds and electronically silent. I think that was the mindset of the Helo crews that day. May they rest in peace.
Remember we train the way we fight, young excited people with supposedly something to prove. Not in the same class but...I vividly remember a fire drill at Nuclear Power training unit Idaho, "smoke" rolling up out of a radioactive storage area, a staff pickup instructor and I grabbed PKP fire extinguishers and advanced on the smoke (generated by a smoke machine we couldn't see) when a Senior Chief instructor bellowed out "Discharge those fire extinguishers into that hole!" (was a rad area with a crane removable shielding lid) Staff pickup instructor did just that, caustic PKP powder all over the Rad storage area.... Me?? I was pounding mightily on the charging handle to pressurize the tank. Nothing was happening because I'd neglected to remove the safety pin. I learned to slow down that day.
DeleteJuvat, I went and looked things up and now I am better educated. The whole thing sounds like a complete mess. Did not realize a unit was closed down because of this.
DeleteBarry - I was also stationed in Germany when that incident occurred. Mistakes were made in many places, but the more I learn about it, the less I blame the flight lead for anything which occurred that day. The system failed him and the helo folks that day. People died because we weren't integrated across services. Juvat speaks words of wisdom regarding that day.
DeleteDV - Odd how the light just came on in my brain housing group, you were a Nuke. Awesome. (My oldest daughter works at NR, former Nuke SWO.)
DeleteI seem to recall Lex writing about the USN guy, and his eventual promotion. Maybe it was Phib, but the story has come up before. There are idiots among us, and some acts seem to go unpunished.
ReplyDeleteJohn Blackshoe
I think it was Lex, Phib probably chimed in as well.
DeleteThe RAF were at it as well....
ReplyDeletehttps://fighterjetsworld.com/weekly-article/when-raf-phantom-shot-down-a-raf-jaguar/2540/
Retired
Ouch.
DeleteI do believe we splashed a couple of RAF Tornadoes during Desert Storm with Patriot missiles. Blue on blue is always bad.
According to the report a kill marking was painted on the nose of the relevant aircraft,,,,
DeleteRetired
The only time we flew with live ordnance in the F-15 was sitting alert at Osan AB ROK. They'd scramble us every once in a while just to exercise the jets and get the pilots heart rate up. (Taking a nap in your flight gear and getting awakened by a extremely loud Klaxon going off nearby, does wonders for heart rates). Had to be airborne within 5 minutes of the scramble. We wouldn't be told that it was a practice until airborne and in contact with our controllers. If it was practice, we'd generally run intercepts against each other. I don't know about the F-14, but all the procedures could be done except launch if the Master Arm was not Armed. At the start of each Intercept, I would confirm with my wingman that the Master Arm was off just to be sure. I don't think (and thank the Lord regularly) that I never had to arm it other than shooting at the drone at Clark. We didn't even do it in normal day to day missions at home, because it was a pain for the ground crews to download the 20MM ordnance which would have negatively impacted the weight and balance of the aircraft. That's bad, Beans. Given that, I think the poor, yes dumb, LT probably actually thought he'd been cleared to shoot. I don't know how the flying formation with him for 15 minutes fit into his thought process (or lack thereof), but I think when it came to the point, his fangs were out.
ReplyDeleteAs to the first AIM-9 not firing, maybe that was a practice missile? The F-15 when the pickle button (that's for missiles, the trigger is for guns), the weapons panel would cycle to the next missile automatically. Since we usually flew practice with one AIM-9 simulator, when we hit the pickle button, it would cycle to the same station, so we could simulate more than one missile. If they'd have had a practice on and the other stations were loaded for war? Who knows.
Dad's squadron flew with war-loads all the time. So he had talked about how the gun ammo couldn't be 'used' for combat after X number of times going up and down. So they regularly trained not with training ammo but war shot. And I got the idea that sitting pad-alert or even tent-alert (this was right after the Korean armistice and the lack of permanent buildings was still a thing) totally sucked.
DeleteI too used to sleep in my green PJs with boots on. We got sirened out of bed occasionally to go joust with someone coming down from Korea. The boys at Gordon Control, serving the greater Kyushu area, didn’t like those up at the ROK. 68 FIS to the rescue! There wasn’t a lot of trust in the weaponry of the Deuce, except for the maneuver where we sliced off the wing of the intruder with our pointy vertical stabilizer. Didn’t practice that one much.
DeleteThe worst thing about all that for this, then 24 year old, was to suddenly realize at angels twenty in full blower, that you had forgotten about you zero lanyard.
Oh dear!
DeleteOkay... Gee, clustercopulate much? And they wanted to promote him, let alone keep him in the Navy? Yikes. Well, I guess he had protection from above or something.
ReplyDeleteTop men...
As to ejecting, the only thing I've heard positive about it is you mostly survive. Beats dying or something. Always expect to be injured, sometimes severely injured.
That's a hard bargain from where I sit. Feeling your bird clank up as systems go offline and hydraulics bleed out, FIRE warnings are going, and your other option is to Casey Jones... I bet that option isn't hard to select at all.
DeleteOne of the things I thought about on that mission, on THAT DAY, in the first few seconds, was to tell my GIB, “don’t eject”. I was worried that he’d only hear “eject”!
DeleteDefinitely a worry!
DeleteIf one is a nav or radar nav in a BUFF, ejection is a special concern. They have NO interest in pattern work. Their seats go DOWNWARD. And minimums are 100 knots at 400 feet! Had the extra pilot sitting in the jump seat one day for takeoff, and he spilled his cup of coffee on himself and said "Oh, shit!" over the intercom. Much excitement in the lower compartment!!!
DeleteThings you don't want to hear from the flight deck!
DeleteWhy were war shots loaded on what was planned as a two ship training exercise? Common sense would say if this was standard practice then you are dramatically increasing the odds of a training mishap.
ReplyDeleteIf you're talking about the Blackhawk shootdown, it was more of a combat flight lead check ride than a Training Mission. If you're talking about the F-14/RF-4 my Naval Aviator friends here can better explain why, but I think they flew with live weapons a lot. But, you're right, it's an awful lot harder (but not impossible) to knock someone out of the sky without them aboard.
DeleteThat is also why Chrome Dome ended in the BUFF world...
Delete(Don McCollor)...One question. Did he get to have an American flag with an F4 silhouette painted on his aircraft?...
ReplyDeleteMost assuredly not.
DeleteDark humor.
DeleteCopy that. But he wasn't a popular guy, not at all.
DeleteFount it! LEX did write about this incident on 24 Feb 2012. Here it is with all 42 comments, courtesy of the Wayback Machine:
ReplyDeleteJohn Blackshoe
http://www.neptunuslex.com/2012/02/24/fortunes-of-war/
Yup, the complete path is https://web.archive.org/web/20120226151129/http://www.neptunuslex.com/2012/02/24/fortunes-of-war/
DeleteI did some digging, Dorsey wasn't promoted.
The Zweibrucken RF-4 was on a PARPRO mission along the wall with the USN activity at the end of run. I was the USAFE Watch Officer and my team was monitoring the PARPRO flight. When the ELTs sounded, the various listening posts close to the action reported it, but we had no indication of who did the shooting until one of the stations heard a USN helicopter crew talking about picking up the crew.
ReplyDeleteWhen I called the USNAVEUR Watch Officer, he refused to talk to me and said to call back. I got a Navy Captain who didn't want to talk and when I explained that either he gave me the information or I would upchannel brief that he refused. Out came the details and the Captain attempted to classify the incident as Secret or above. I denied that opportunity to him and finished the OPREP process.
On the USAFE side, after this incident, the RF-4s were prohibited from full air combat maneuvering. So, after establishing a maneuver they had to break it off, essentially Level 1 maneuvers only. Never mind that they needed training also and the Navy was completely at fault.
As a note on the No Fly Zone Blackhawk incident, I have listened to officers involved in the investigation pedal the Eagle pilots story that the fault was the system and the AWACS crew. That is an excuse. The Eagle pilots failed in their duty.
The AWACS crew was filled with lower ranking NCOs and officers. Captain Wang was prosecuted for the AWACS actions and found not guilty. Why? He was not fully qualified. Why was he not fully qualified? Because the USAF senior staff had removed qualified crew members in ongoing force reductions. Previously, AWACS was a career choice and you stayed there with all your knowledge and experience and in that small community did not have huge opportunities for promotion. You had experience and the ability to deal with unusual situations quickly and accurately. Instead, there were newbies at the controls.
No matter how much others may squawk about the electronic IDs not showing up, or that they may have been Hinds, or that they were flying a fast intercept. The Eagle pilots showed that the even then, the USAF fighter community was filled with pilots who could talk big at the bar, but not accomplish the basics. A visual ID at two miles or so doesn't cut it after all the bragging at the bar that they flew the best fighter in the world and were the best pilots in the world.
In later remarks at the Air University, one of the general officers who investigated the crash site noted that as they departed the site, he could see the US Flag decals on the Blackhawk external fuel tanks in fading light from a mile away with his old eyes. He was an old fighter pilot who believed in doing the job properly with close visual ID. That is to say, you could see the markings on the intercepted aircraft.
Both the senior USAF leadership and the Eagle pilots should have been removed from the service with general discharges.