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Post by dude on May 23, 2009 12:09:34 GMT 9
 What was the scariest moment or situation you exerpienced on the flightline?
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Bullhunter
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Post by Bullhunter on May 23, 2009 12:18:43 GMT 9
On the flightline!
Well it is likely a toss-up between a massive jet fuel spill I was caught-up in or the evening I was running engines on a B-52 Bomber that my ground observer started yelling, you're on fire, you're on fire. what scared me was the bomber was going up on airborne alert and was carring two racks of sram missles.
Gives you the pucker factor.
It's possible those two stories I have already posted in a thread here someplace.
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az09
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Post by az09 on May 23, 2009 12:20:59 GMT 9
Many, many things
Starter failure on a Six - shelled out all the turbine blades and set a small fire in the fuel on the ground. Then after we got it put out, the crew chiefs elected to shut down the engine that had started, and they dumped gallons of fuel on the hot ground and restarted the fire.
The six that landed then went off the run way and careened into the taxi way, across the parking lot between two hangers and finally broke through a chain link fence to tip over on the public road that lead to the O' Club. Kind of funny to see a six out of its normal environment.
many more in the lists of Murphy Laws. LOL !!
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Post by Mark O on May 23, 2009 12:54:50 GMT 9
Do you mean other than anytime I saw QA driving around with that damn vulture on the side of their truck?!!
Probably when I was marshalling a guy backing some air-stairs away from the rear hatch of a KC-135 and the moron turned right into the wing and smacked it! You know the feeling. When you see an accident about to happen but really can't do anything to stop it? I saw it coming, yelled some profanities and screamed for him to stop. He didn't. He just told me he had no clue why he turned early and was very honest about the whole thing.
The next scariest was when I walked in the office and told the Chief what just happened as he was pouring dressing on his lunch-time salad. I think he gave up his diet that afternoon.
Mark
PS I've had a few tense moments in C-130s as an FE but training just kicks in and you know what? Training works!
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Post by dude on May 23, 2009 13:09:37 GMT 9
Climbing down off the backbone on a Six the crew chief had just waxed. I made it, but a buddy wasn't as lucky and ended up doing a fine impression on the drop tank of Slim Pickens from Dr. Strangelove.
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az09
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Post by az09 on May 23, 2009 13:17:56 GMT 9
Goose bay 1969
Trying to put the gust locks in the tail section elevators and flaps of a C-124 in a high wind.
Doing de-icing on a C-97 and being attacked by two large ravens while in the basket of a cherry picker. Extended all the way up in the air.
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Post by Mark O on May 23, 2009 13:20:24 GMT 9
Oh, I just thought of a "funny, potentially scary, wierd" moment.
I was deployed to Diego Garcia back in 2004 with KC-135s and about every couple weeks or so we would rotate one of the planes back home when they flew a replacement in. Well, the replacement arrived one night and it was due a 60-hour inspection which is mostly an engine thing. The CC's have to prep the aircraft so we opened up the cowlings and took care of few other details. When we opened up the #3 cowling a 3-cell, D-size Maglite fell out of it!! This aircraft had just flown from Grand Forks AFB to Diego Garcia with stops at Hickam and Anderson. That's something in the neighborhood of a gazillion miles (I'd have to google it!) and that flashlight made the entire trip - inside an engine cowling!!
So we pick the flashlight up off the ground and holler at the pro-super. After some chatting and a few phone calls they decide to make a report to include photos. The super asked me to come out and hold a light while he takes pictures and we actually sat the flashlight back on the ground where it landed when we first opened the cowling. (I know, I thought it was silly then too!) The funny part of that photo session was the super had set his brick (hand-held radio) inside the open cowling to take the photos. We drove back inside and as we walked in the office he realized he didn't have his brick! I never saw him lay it down so we drove back out to the jet to search for it. I found it in the cowling probably on the same shelf the original guy had set his flashlight!
Okay, now the wierd part. The flashlight was etched but when we did a search through our CTK database....the number was not in our system! At home or deployed!! I don't recall that we ever found out where that flashlight came from or from what tool kit.
Mark
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az09
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Post by az09 on May 23, 2009 13:28:31 GMT 9
Left or right side? Was there a recent engine swap? Could have flown all that time from the last major maint action.
We had a A-10 engine fly the life cycle off a new engine and when it came back for kit removal we found a very large wrench on top of the turbine case. Had set there thru 1000 hours of loop de loops to come back to our shop. Well of course the CTK that it was from had one in it. GI's, you got to love'em. Love to strangle them sometimes.
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Post by Mark O on May 23, 2009 13:37:55 GMT 9
Left or right side? Was there a recent engine swap? Could have flown all that time from the last major maint action. It was on the right (outboard) side and no, it hadn't had an engine change. (KC-135s rarely do actually. I only knew of three in the 6 years I was on tankers.) We did toss around the possibility of a depot mistake but honestly, I was to busy with other maintenance and 12-hour shifts to follow up to much on it. I haven't even thought of that incident for 5 years until tonight! Kind of neat what reading other memories does for your own. Mark |
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Post by MOW on May 23, 2009 16:41:43 GMT 9
It's tough to pick just one:
I'll start with one of my accident prone F-16 crew chiefs at Hill AFB during the 80's. Martin (last name), a small black kid, was one of the most unlucky men I've ever known. During a launch, me on on the fire bottle, he got sucked up into the F-16's intake and survived. The pilot was looking at him just at the moment Marty got too close to the intake and saw him disappear and heard something not quite right underneath so he instantly shut down the motor. It was almost as if Marty got sucked in at the exact time the pilot killed the throttle. We found Marty balled up against the front of the engine nose cone.
Another Marty incident occurred when he was closing up an F-16 on the line as a thunderstorm was coming in. As he was climbing down the ladder just about to pull it off the jet a bolt of lightening hit it and went through him to the ground. Again, survived, don't know how. I was 3 jets down, closing mine up, when we all heard the most horrendous... scream of swear words you can imagine. We didn't see it happen, didn't even really hear it, but we sure heard him as he lay there on the ramp hurting like hell.
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Post by lindel on May 23, 2009 19:55:25 GMT 9
Flightline??
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Post by dude on May 24, 2009 11:19:47 GMT 9
Yeah. That place where we parked the airplanes, but I think mock up troops referred to it as The Outer Limits.
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Post by Jim on May 24, 2009 11:59:24 GMT 9
Scariest moments or how to turn white shorts brown- I have 5 that are still vivid in my mind..........All with the 27th FIS- 4 at the Griff- 1 with F-94C and 3 with the Duece........1 at Loring with the Six...... 30 below zero, 21:00 hrs F 94 out of Pe and I am doing all of the post dock runs (the trim pad for night operations was located between the hangar and the warehouse and QC office- so all the noise was directed at the main part of the base - rather than pointed at the white house that was across the runway) Basic run checks where all fine til I went to min AB !!!!!! I had a cockpit full of flashing red lights along with overheat yellow lights and I can see fire coming out of the slide flipper doors and my crew running like hell over the top of 5' snowbanks........... Out of AB and the fire goes out and I get it shut down and I play hell convincing my crew that the fire is out......... Investigation reveals That when the aft section was reinstalled during pe that the AB mount clamps had not been properly secured...........RED X signed off by the dock chief, final QC and myself missed it.....When the AB lit , the tailpipe shifted enough for the flame to be partially deflected into the aft section.... I had always figed that it should have lived up to the " for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"........Besides changing shorts we had to replace all the overheat and firewarning bulbs.......... And threatened to kill my fire guards-- Little did I know that there be another opportunity for the same guys to prove how fast they could run on Ice..... More on that later
The Old Sarge
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Post by Jim Scanlon (deceased) on May 24, 2009 13:13:25 GMT 9
Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, April 1967. It was before the revetments were in place and the F4C's were unprotected. So were the troops. We were launching a night mission to someplace unfriendly. A flight of Phantoms was lined up at the west end of the runway closest to the flight line to take off and do it's thing to Charlie. Lead plane lit the burners and started down the runway. About the mid point there was a flash of light and a very loud boom. The bird came to a rather abrupt stop, two canopies departed and the pilot and GIB slid down the side of the plane and ran for the flight line. They cleared the plane before the really big booms started. Our squadron expedite truck picked the crew up and we all sat and watched the fireworks from a safe distance. The plane was from our squadron, so we had one less to take care of until a replacement came. Well, pilgrims, let me tell you. An F4 loaded with JP4, drop tank under each wing, weapons hung on every pylon they could use, and a plane exploding is a scary time to be anywhere near. There were pieces of airplane and weapons flying everyplace. There were several planes on the line that took some shrapnel, but no one was injured. It was thought to be a turbine failure, but never determined to be the cause. Were we scared out there on the unprotected flight line? You betcha! We were all running for cover, any cover, or driving to a safe distance from the runway. Even the fire trucks stayed away until the thing quit blowing and flaming. When it was all over, there was a massive hole in the runway and not much left of the Phantom. Didn't take many days and Red Horse had the runway operational. They did a remarkable job of rapid repair. Here is a brief of the incident: 04/28/67 F-4C 64-0720 Maj. V. Christian Cpt. Jon Bodahl RES 433rd TFS: Fire and explosion during takeoff roll. Suspect engine failure ruptured fuel cell. There is a sad ending to this incident. Capt. Bodahl asked for a second tour and on his 199th total missions, 100 at Ubon, his plane was lost over Laos. Below is the page from the VIVA records. I met his mother in Boise at a VIVA function and talked for some time about the Ubon incident. Name: Jon Keith Bodahl Branch/Rank: United States Air Force/O3 Unit: 388TFW Korat Date of Birth: 18 December 1937 Home City of Record: BOISE ID Date of Loss: 12 November 1969 Country of Loss: LAOS Loss Coordinates: 172800 North 1054000 East Status (in 1973): Category: 2 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F4E #67-0219 Missions: Other Personnel in Incident: Harry Smith, missing www.virtualwall.org/db/BodahlJK01a.htm - 11k The latest information I have is that they are both still listed as MIA. |
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Post by lugnuts55 on May 24, 2009 22:37:04 GMT 9
Like everyone else, I have had several scary moments. The first one I think of happened early in my flightline experience.
I had weekend duty at Minot and it was springtime. The weather was very nice that day and I remember thinking that if there isn't much to do at least the weather is nice. We had a six from another base on it's weekend cross-country trip. This was very common as you might remember. When it came in Friday evening, I guess there were some engine write-ups that were cleared on Saturday. This was Sunday morning and time for the return flight home.
Being a new 5-level, I was helping the launch by manning the fire bottle. The pilot was having dificulty starting the engine. There were several false starts. I was watching trying to figure out why it didn't want to go. On the third or fourth attempt, flames started shooting out the tail around the engine exhaust. It took a few seconds to realize they weren't coming from the engine and I ran up to the plane with the fire bottle. It was one of those big ones on wheels. I was on the left side of the plane and ran under the wing to the panel that pushes in for just this kind of emergency. I managed to get the flames out, but I don't know if it was due to my efforts or if it would have gone out on it's own. Next thing I know, everybody, including the pilot, was standing around me and the fire department was pulling up. That's when my legs went all rubbery. I thought I was in trouble for doing something unnecessary. Then I thought at least I erred on the side of safety.
I was quite relieved to learn that I was not in trouble, but rather a hero of sorts. I don't remember what the exact cause was but fuel was dumping into the tail section instead of going to wherever it was supposed to go. I didn't know much about engines at that point. Hell, I still don't know much about jet engines besides the basic principles of operation. Anyway, everyone was happy that I saved an airplane and maybe lives.
I didn't expect to get a medal or anything else for this action and I was not disappointed. I got lots of pats on the back but that was about it. Nothing was ever heard about this event again. I almost forgot about it until reading some of these posts.
I did get promoted ahead of my peers, though. The first three stripes were automatic as long as you kept your nose clean. I was surprised when I got promotion orders before the rest of my friends. I was able to make buck sergeant quicker because of this as well. I was also a candidate for Airman of the Month but lost that bid. All I did was what my trainer told me to do if something like this happened. Someone said in one of these posts that training kicks in and it sure does.
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Post by Jim on May 25, 2009 9:35:05 GMT 9
Priceless brown shorts moment #2 or how fast can a deuce make a left turn?  There was a problem with the AB fuel control being too rich causing ignition and other problems, so it fell to POST DOCK and FCF section to get it done.. Th trim pad was located about halfway to the compass rose and parallel the old inactive runway (that I got to use for hi-speed taxi checks after brake change- at that time there were only 5 of use maint types that were authorized to taxi)... As there were 2 tie downs on the pad, my crew would tow one out and hook it up while I taxied one out and they would hook up with the test equip needed and we would get that one adjusted and I would shut down and go do the other one while the crew towed the 1st one back and tow out another one and would taxi on back and get another one...We managed to get about 8 done that day. The next morning we started again, only I taxied out before the crew was ready to tow one out..............This turned out to be one hell of a BIG BLESSING.......... After they hooked up the tie-down cables and I eased fwd to take up the slack and got the signal to go to full power to put the strain on the cables they put the chocks behind the wheels and I retarded to idle the cables stayed tight. The crew hooked up the test equip, did the wet/dry bulb temp check double checked field altimeter setting and went up to min AB and lit it and advanced to full military came out of AB and went right back into max AB...... Now is when all hell breaks loose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As soon as the burner lit, the a/c lurched immediately to the left and before I could chop the throttle to off, I was sitting parallel with blast deflector and in the spot where the 2nd a/c would have been........ Blew both nose tires, cracked both wheels and found the rt. tie-down lug still connected to the cable............Of course I got blamed for having slack in the tie down cables and when I showed the big mouthed TSgt from the hyd shop that the broken lug was 2 different colors indicating a previous crack - his reply was "you are full of $hit".......Head QC guy told him to shut his trap and asked me if I knew how to do a dye penetrate insp (NDI did not yet exist).....I did and we found 3 more A/C that had evidence of cracks so then we went and did the whole sqdn with ZyGlo insp which used ultra Violet light and found 3 more..... So the answer is "immediately".......... Now some of you will ask why weren't the chocks in front of the wheel??? Because we have had the squashed down tires spit the chocks out is why...............The Old Sarge |
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Post by Bullhunter on May 25, 2009 12:06:15 GMT 9
Yes indeed Jim that will pucker you up and maybe soil the shorts.
Your story has me recalling an incident one cold winters day while doing engine runs on a KC-135 Tanker.
We were dispatched to do a maintenance run for some work that had been done hours prior. It's been so long I don't recall the reason, just the doing.
I was to sit the pilots seat and my friend and co-worker sat the co-pilot's seat to help with the breaks. Another engine troop would be ground observer and fire guard.
I got out of the truck and as I looked the area over I yelled "whoa" to our dispatch truck expidator. He wanted to know what my problem was. I explained that before I would run-up this aircraft I wanted a de-ice truck to de-ice around the landing gear tires. The expidator TSgt was not pleased but called out a de-ice truck for me.
After the de-ice truck finished we got ready to run engines. It was cold and we were operating the engines with intake anti-ice on.
Things were going good. Had all four engines operating very well and we had to do power checks.
I told the technician riding breaks in the co-pilots seat that I would only take one engine to power on each wing at the same time because I was worried about the ice. I wound not risk all 4 engines at power all at once. To damn dangerous.
Well I increased power on #1 and #4 engines first and all was well. I brought those back to Idle and took #2 and #4 to power and we sat there for a few seconds.
All of a sudden the nose swung to one side and I retarded the throttles fast. We guessed that the nose moved about 45 degrees as one set of main tires creeped onto the ice. We were lucky that no other aircraft were parked close.
Always some excitment on the flightline.
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Post by Jeff Shannon on May 25, 2009 12:14:12 GMT 9
Well lets see like Old Sarge I have a few but I remember one in particular. It was on an F-16 at Misawa Japan. I had the good (?) fortune to be able to go out to the Trim pad with my roommate who happen to work in the engine shop.
We were out at the trim pad getting ready to run a jet with an afterburner blow out write up. we have the jet tied down and Mike Johnson hops up into the cockpit and starts it up. He does everything by the book (I'm on the "Y" cable listening in) and he goes into burner. the jet is doing just what its suppose to do and Mike is putting it though its paces and nothing. So Mike puts up into burner again and runs it for a full minute or so when all of a sudden the jet burps and I mean burps, flame shot out the intake a good 50 feet, the nose drops down and before Mike can retard the throttle the burner relights!!! Then it shuts off again and relights, each time the fire ball coming out the front was getting longer and longer. Later Mike said he knows what its like to ride a bucking bronco.
Mike finally gets it shut down when the Wing Commander (then) Col Mike Ryan shows up to see whats going on. We explain everything to him and he has a good laugh, and tells us we broke windows in base housing about 1/2 mile away. At the time we were all smokers and I bet we each smoked half a pack before our nerves calmed down. They removed the engine a couple of days later and tore it down and could not find anything wrong with it. when they took it to the hush house to run it, the engine did the same thing as it did in the jet shut down and relight, shut down and relight. I think they ended up shipping it back to depot.
Side note when running the engine at the hush house CE left an aluminum ladder at the back of the house and as we we running the engine the vibration was making this ladder move and before we could get to it the darn thing took off like it had wings and went down the tube and up the stack and landed about 50 feet in the woods behind the hush house. What was left did not look like a ladder. After the run we checked the tube for damage and only found a small scratch.
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Post by lindel on May 25, 2009 23:48:35 GMT 9
Not necessarily a scary moment, but for a few seconds it was a real shocker! I was at Tyndall, getting the hands on training following MA-1. We were on the flightline, working on one of the birds when I heard a plane taxi by. Not thinking much of it, I glanced up to see what it was, it was a B-57. Nobody was onboard!!
It didn't dawn on me for a few seconds that it was one of Sperry's drones, but for a few seconds I thought there was an airplane on the loose!!
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az09
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Post by az09 on May 26, 2009 0:16:43 GMT 9
F-106 days at the trim pad. We would sit around talking about engine run-ups, what if's and just general work related stuff.
The subject of the air craft hold down bridle assembly came up. Jim Pitts said there were documented cases of the cables snapping due to fatique, corrosion and general misuse. He told a story of a F-106 that had snapped the right cable and the plane did a 90 degree spin at the trim pad. We wondered how the trim run guy felt in cockpit. Then we transposed that question to us. How would we respond? I know I thought about every time I lit the AB after that talk.
We ordered a new set of bridles and when they came in we changed out the old ones and sent them off to the NDI shop.
The old ones had some broken braids in the internal bundle. We ordered another set of bridles and did our trim pad preventive maintenance by the book.
Now this leads me to a story of trying to make everything "GI proof."
Most of the junior NCO's that had shipped in with a bout a year left in AF, had either got out or re-enlisted and were sent somewhere else. We were short handed for a while.
The NCOIC went and asked the Branch Chief for another body or two. On the spot he offered us a guy from the J-33 section in shop. Now this guy was an OK fellow to talk with, but he had a history of bad stuff following him around. Our NCOIC didn't want this person. The Branch Chief said, take him or leave it. Well, the NCOIC relented and thought the rest of us would ride herd on him and keep him out of harm's way.
We did all the basic training that we all had to do when we first arrived. Slowly we got this fellow up to speed where we could feel that he could function safely on a daily basis. Not one of us got the TLC training that this guy received.
We had a phase dock trim run to do and three of us launched out to the trim pad. The 431's pulled the "six" onto the pad and had it in the wind at the allowable angle. One guy grabbed the right bridle and hooked it up, Sgt "Swifty" grabbed the left bridle and struggled to get it hitched up. Finally he gave us the OK sign. The tug driver pulled the plane forward and the left tightened up, but the right one didn't. It was hanging slack. I walked over to the left landing gear and our guy had wrapped the cable around the front of the gear strut and brought it to the rear and hooked it up.
We had to back the plane up to get the left bridle unhooked and rehook the bridle the proper way. We asked The bad luck guy why he hooked it up wrong? He said he just wasn't paying attention. Holy cow, he had to go out of his way to that wrong.
When we got back to the office the run guy told the NCOIC about this averted mess up. This Sgt was closely watched the rest of the time I was there. I don't know what happened to him after I left Hamilton. 3 of us left first but when the week end duty started coming every other week 2 more guys volunteered and followed us to Chanute AFB.
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What was the scariest moment or situation you exerpienced on the flightline?
