Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  We continued across the plains and prairies where huge multi-coloured circles had me totally puzzled and the grid pattern street layout was repeated in virtually every town or city. It was long after that I learnt that the circles were made by vast, rotating irrigation machines. Eventually the country became more sparsely populated, vast fields with a farmstead in one corner and dead straight roads criss-crossing the panorama. After I had finished the contents of the cardboard box given to each of us by the way of victuals, had drunk yet another cup of mild American coffee and visited the flight deck, I went back to my observation post. We were now passing over sand, stone and scrub. I picked out buttes of Monument Valley, spidery tracks that seemed to lead nowhere and I thought of those families trudging west seeking a better life. ‘Just over the next ridge, honey. Then we’ll be there.’ I wondered how many times that had been said by those brave pioneers.

  Now there were jagged mountains, snowfields and conifers – the Rocky Mountains. I felt a real thrill at seeing something that I had read about and heard of since childhood. Then I heard the engines being throttled back by the captain, who, like his co-pilot today, was an ex-USAF pilot now flying the Boeing 737 for an airline. We descended into thick cloud, the first significant cover I had seen since we left Washington. We were stopping at Luke AFB in Arizona on the way to our final destination, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). When we landed, there was a solid overcast and it was raining. Of course we thought nothing of it. However, as we sat in a large aircrew room, we were the butt of such banter as, ‘No wonder it’s raining guys, the limeys are here.’

  After our onward flight to LAX and a long ride in the American equivalent of the RAF springless coach we finally arrived at the gates of Edwards AFB. There was desert all around us, with one large, flat, white dry lakebed alongside the road. Until then I thought that Boscombe Down covered a large area – but here it was about 10 miles from the main guard post to the base complex, where we were delivered to the Bacherlor Officers’ Quarters (BOQ). We were finally at our destination having travelled over 6,000 miles in about thirty hours. No wonder we were tired – we had been doing an average of 200mph since we left Brize Norton and had crossed eight timezones!

  During this visit we would be hosted and entertained right royally by the staff of the USAFTPS – barbecues, beer calls and dinners were all on the schedule. At the first of these I found that I had to take part in a bizarre, inter-school competition of which I had received no warning. It was apparently a tradition of questionable status that the two most recently arrived staff members would attempt to eat a slice of Key lime pie without using their hands; Key lime pie is a green variation on lemon meringue pie and this event would take the form of a race. So my opposite number and I were each supplied with a plate of the said dessert. We were allowed to support it with one hand, the other remaining firmly behind our backs. On the word ‘GO’ I went face down into the pie. The initial effect was that much of the soft meringue went up my nose hampering my breathing. However, I ploughed on. It was not a race against the USAF; it was one between the nasal ingestion of meringue and the gathering and swallowing of the delicious pie. I had no idea how well I was doing, there was lots of vocal support for us both, but when the pie had all gone I put the plate on my head and discovered that my opponent was still face down in green and white pudding. I had won! Much applause! Was this a good start to my ETPS tour, I wondered?

  There were also staff interchanges, briefings and even some flying on offer. On our second day I was slated to fly in the front seat of one of the school’s F-4 Phantoms. I met my pilot-in-command, Major Dave Spencer, the previous evening and he said that we were due to take off at 7.30 a.m. and would meet at the base canteen at 5.30 a.m.! So that night I set the radio-alarm in my room for 5 a.m. Waking was not too difficult because my body clock was still way ahead of local time, but when I stepped out of the door it was both dark and foggy – a real ‘pea-souper’!

  ‘Good morning, Dave,’ I said. ‘How long will this take to clear?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, how long does it normally take at this time of year?’ I pressed.

  ‘I dunno – in the two years I’ve been here it’s never happened before.’

  In the end it had not cleared by 7.30 a.m. and we were stood down.

  ‘We’ll try again tomorrow,’ said Dave. The fog had happened because of the rainstorms that had passed over the area the previous day; the same rain that we had experienced at Luke AFB. The huge Rogers Dry Lake bed, usually very dry, was now a few inches underwater and the moisture had caused the fog to form. The weather folks said that it should clear in the early afternoon.

  However, the alternative activity arranged for us did not disappoint. We were taken to Palmdale airfield, the home of the USAF Plant 42, a part of Lockheed’s Skunk Works Facility, and Rockwell’s Space Shuttle construction and refurbishing works. It was amazing to walk into the vast Rockwell hangar where three of these unique and very special air vehicles were being built. We were shown how they glued the black heat-absorbing tiles underneath the wings and fuselage. We climbed onto elevated walkways and looked down into the cavernous payload bay. We were briefed on the Space Transporter System or STS (the official name of the Space Shuttle) programme and told that the first launch was due only three months later.

  After that we were allowed to look over and get inside one of two B-1 supersonic bombers that were sitting outside. They were large, impressive aeroplanes and the cockpits for the four-man crew were state of the art. But, as someone had said – for the price of one B-1 bomber you could have 200 cruise missiles. President Jimmy Carter cancelled the B-1 programme in 1977, but testing of two of the four prototypes had continued. In fact the B-1 programme was resurrected a year after our visit, in January 1982, under President Ronald Reagan and the B-1B Lancer is still in USAF service today.

  I did get to fly the Phantom the next day. When we had walked out to the big jet I climbed in the front cockpit so that Dave could give me a quick tour of the real estate. It was very spacious, with ample room for even the biggest Texan fighter pilot! In fact the seat was set at its lowest position and, with the hydraulic power off, the stick was resting at its fully forward position, away from me. The two throttles were large and topped with rather fetching, turned wooden handles. I couldn’t help but ask, ‘Can I have a smaller size, please? This one’s too big!’

  Dave had asked me what I would like to do and I told him that a low-level navigation exercise would be my choice. He bravely agreed (he was a fighter pilot by trade and not a ‘mud-mover’) and drew up a route, which he loaded into the inertial navigation system. There was no moving map display in the F-4 like that in the Jaguar – I just had to follow a steering command on the compass. I got the mean machine started under Dave’s tutorage and he offered to make all the radio calls. An offer that I gladly accepted; US radio terminology can be quite different to what I was used to.

  We taxied for what seemed like miles to use the 15,000ft long runway, and then we stopped at the place short of the runway itself that they called ‘Number One’. There a man with ear defenders on his head walked around and under our jet for what seemed like hours, looking for anything untoward. Eventually he gave us a thumbs-up, Dave called for departure, we lined up and I wound up the engines to maximum dry power, let the brakes off and applied full afterburner. The acceleration was similar to that of the Lightning. The big jet unstuck very cleanly and I got the gear up and away. Dave gave me instructions as to heights and headings until we reached the area where we could go low level. Now I was in my element and started to follow the valleys as we climbed further up into the mountains. Dave became very quiet in the back – I was enjoying myself and now feeling very much at home in this large cockpit. Holding 420kt was easy, there was plenty of power to spare from the J79 engines and the controls felt just right for the job. I could see the top of a mountain peak up ahead. We were now above the snowline.

>   ‘That’s the top of Mount Whitney, let’s go over the right-hand side of it,’ said my ‘navigator’.

  ‘OK,’ I replied.

  As I got near the top of the ridge I swung right so that I could over-bank to the left and minimise our time above the skyline, a standard low-level flying technique. So we crested the ridge with the snow, ice and rocks above our heads. Dave had obviously never seen this before, as there were a series of unintelligible grunts from the back seat! Once on the eastern side of the Sierras the ground dropped away rapidly towards the Owens Valley and its dry lakebed. I could fly this section of the route with the engines throttled well back and still maintain my height and speed. It was fascinating to see the altimeter unwinding from around 14,000ft as we passed the peak of Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, back to less than 2,000ft as the ground rushed by about 300ft below us. By the time we reached the dry lake Dave had obviously had enough of all this bomber pilot stuff.

  ‘OK, let’s head west again and climb to 20,000ft,’ he instructed. I complied as he dealt with contacting ‘Eddie Radar’ for our return to base. On the way he suggested I try a roll or two and then slow down until the AOA reached the maximum allowed. At that angle and speed he said that I should not use aileron to keep the wings level but use the rudder instead. It was an interesting characteristic that certainly worked. After not very much longer we were descending over Edwards AFB and joined the visual pattern (USAF-speak for circuit!). The Phantom was less responsive now and needed a bit of a firmer hand. However, there was really not that much difference between flying it and the Buccaneer around the circuit and down the final approach. Landings, of which I did four, were easy. The big, low-mounted wing cushioned the arrival so the ‘naval’ style of the Buccaneer wasn’t on the menu! It was a great experience to fly such a legendary jet and I felt very privileged. I would fly the UK version of the Phantom twice more later that year while leading the ETPS Preview Team at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

  During this visit I also flew a very special old jet trainer – a T-33. A company called the Calspan Corporation, which had originated from the New York state based Cornell University’s Aeronautical Laboratory, operated it. The Calspan pilot was one Mr Rogers Smith, whom I would get to know well over the coming years. The T-33 was equipped with a selectable fly-by-wire control system, a side-stick and an HUD. It was used for giving the test pilot students an insight into modern flight control systems and their problems and some potential solutions. I had a really fascinating flight being shown and experiencing many aspects of this technology.

  My third flight was in a Blanik sailplane from an airfield in the hills west of Edwards with the delightful name of Tehachapi, no doubt of Native American origin. A day later we were on another flight – back to Blighty. In fact it was a series of flights; the first in the back end of the USAFTPS’s Boeing KC-135, a modified Boeing 707. This took us to Alameda AFB in San Francisco Bay, where we boarded an old Air National Guard C-130A Hercules for a ten-hour transcontinental voyage to Patuxent River. Then ground transportation to Washington for the following day’s VC10 back to Brize Norton and home.

  The following January we repeated our visit to Edwards AFB and added a few days at the USNTPS on the way back. Our sponsors had made similar transcontinental flight arrangements and this visit to Edwards was memorable for me on three particular counts. The first being two flights and the third one of those almost surreal events when you continually want to pinch yourself to make sure that you are not dreaming.

  The latter was an evening get-together in the Officers’ Club at which several distinguished and famous test pilots were present. Among them were men such as X-15 test pilots Pete Knight and Bill Dana, Col Jimmy Doolittle III and the legendary and apparently evergreen Chuck Yeager. I had actually met the latter the previous day – more on that later. We were first shown a gallery of photographs in a room in which the walls had been covered with grey wooden planks. This was a tribute to the collection of similar photographs of past test pilots made by the formidable aviatrix who had owned an airstrip and stables on the edge of the base area – Pancho Barnes. In the film The Right Stuff the future Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper (played by Dennis Quaid), who has just arrived as a new test pilot at Edwards, boasts that he will soon have his photograph up there with all the others. His considerable ego is instantly deflated when Pancho tells him, in her usual direct manner; ‘Sure you will, sonny. All those guys are dead.’

  This guided tour of the gallery was followed by a convivial dinner at which many pilots of all ages sat around shooting down their wristwatches as they told their flying stories. However, eventually Chuck Yeager announced that Pete Knight had agreed to tell one to top them all; something, Yeager said, that he rarely does. So Pete stood and started a story that was so amazing that had anyone else told it you would have had difficulty believing it. It was about one of his many flights in the X-15 hypersonic research aircraft that NASA flew in the early 1960s. Pete Knight would later set a world speed record of 4,520mph (6.7 Mach) that would last for nearly twenty years, until the Space Shuttle started flying.

  On this occasion he had been dropped from the NASA B-52 that air-launched all the X-15s and had carried out the first part of his acceleration and climb profile. At the apogee the aircraft’s electrical system failed. Up at the edge of space in a complex flying machine this was not a desirable situation. Pete told us how he used those instruments that were not electrically driven to fly the re-entry manoeuvre and then looked around for somewhere to put his sick, supersonic steed down safely. He spotted the white acres of what he recognised to be Mud Lake and set himself up for the curving descent onto the dry lake bed. Using his considerable skill and experience he landed successfully. However, he told us that the deceleration felt stronger than usual. He was down safely, he was alive, but his troubles were not over. Raising the heavy canopy took considerable effort; he then jumped down to the lakebed and found himself standing in several inches of water! That’s why the X-15 had slowed down so quickly. Meanwhile, back at base nobody was sure just what had happened. The electrical failure had affected the device that helped the radar track the X-15 and radio contact had been lost. The fear was that Pete had lost control during re-entry. So it was now a case of finding the wreckage. NASA’s DC-3 was fired up and dispatched back along Pete’s last known track. Eventually they spotted an apparently intact black delta shape sitting in the middle of the white expanse of Mud Lake. Pete had now been there for some hours and was relieved to see the DC-3. However, when he saw that it had lowered its wheels he realised that they were going to land. Not a good idea with the water on the lakebed. He started waving to discourage the crew of their intent. Of course, they took this as signals of delight and relief! The DC-3 landed and just avoided nosing over. Pete closed his story with the line: ‘So NASA now had two airplanes stuck in the mud at Mud Lake!’

  The following day, 7 January 1982, I met up with Capt. Jay Jabour, a man who would later go on to higher rank within the USAF, so that he could brief me and then take me flying in a Northrop T-38 Talon. The T-38 was the USAF’s standard advanced flight training aircraft and at Edwards it was used by the school for some of its exercises and by Test Operations Wing for continuation training and chase sorties. The latter stemmed from the long-standing USAF philosophy of ‘chasing’ virtually all test flights; this practice often paid off, especially if something went wrong. We Brits did not use chase aircraft habitually, but reserved the practice for photographically recording certain types of flight test profiles. Not only was it expensive but also it meant that if the chase aircraft went unserviceable then the test could not go ahead. This practice became a real headache for the tests that Edwards AFB was undertaking with cruise missiles. The count of aircraft required soon mounted: a B-52 launch aircraft, a spare B-52, one or two chase aircraft for the launch, a KC-135 tanker to refuel the chase aircraft and two specially equipped F-4s to chase and monitor the missile on its lo
ng flight from a launch position out in the Pacific to its target on a local bombing range. A minimum of seven airframes were to be available, ready and manned and co-ordinated for the launch day. Only the Americans could do programmes like that!

  My flight in the T-38 was very interesting mainly because this one had modifications to its airbrake that allowed it to make glide approaches to the lakebed runways at Edwards that followed the landing flight profile to be used by the Space Shuttle. Jay briefed me on the pattern, which was to climb to 30,000ft and set up at right angles to the final approach. The throttles would be closed, the speed reduced, the landing gear lowered and the extra large airbrake extended. Then one had to hold 230kt and at 23,000ft turn on to the final approach, holding 230kt and a glide angle of 23°. The airbrake could be modulated to bring everything right. Having absorbed all that we walked out to our pretty, white-painted jet, strapped in and got the two little engines going.

  Jay called the tower and we taxied out. After the usual pre-flight inspection at ‘Number One’, he talked me through the take-off, I retracted the wheels and we set off on our climb to 30,000ft. Jay directed me into the ideal position; he then took over and closed the throttles to demonstrate the approach. The first thing that happened was that my ears popped, the cabin pressurisation felt like it had failed! He said that it always did that. With everything hanging down we set off earthwards. It was just like a very big version of the glide approach in the Hunter. The Shuttle runway was marked out with black lines and the touchdown area was clearly visible. We continued rapidly earthwards and at 1,500ft Jay raised the nose to point at the ground just before the touchdown markers; the speed reduced and at 150kt we continued our descent until we were a few feet above the ground. Jay had said that we were not allowed to land on the lakebed so he pushed the throttles fully forward and we went back up for me to have a go.