Good Saturday Morning April 17.
Plenty of weekend reading here.
Regards,
Skip.
Today in Naval History
April 17
1778
The sloop-of-war Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones, captures British ship, Lord Chatham, in St. Georges Channel, during the American Revolution.
1808
Napoleon Bonaparte issues the Bayonne Decree, which authorizes the French seizure of all United States ships entering all ports of the Hanseatic League. Napoleon argues the decree will help the United States enforce the Embargo Act signed by President Thomas Jefferson in December 1807.
1915
Chief Gunners Mate Frank Crilley, a naval diver, rescues a fellow diver who had become entangled at a depth of 250 feet during salvage operations for USS F-4 submarine that had sunk March 25, 1915, with the loss of her entire crew. For his heroism on this occasion, he is awarded the Medal of Honor in 1929.
1918
USS Stewart (DD 13) is on escort duty in Quiberon Bay, France when nearby the American steamship Florence H suffers an internal explosion. Ships Cook Third Class Jesse W. Covington and Quartermaster Frank M. Upton dive overboard to save an exhausted survivor surrounded by exploding power boxes. For their actions, both sailors receive the Medal of Honor.
1942
USS Searaven (SS 196) begins rescue of stranded Australian sailors, airmen, and soldiers from Japanese-occupied Timor, N.E.I.
1944
Minesweeper USS Swift (AM 122) and patrol craft USS PC 619 sink the German submarine, U 986, in the North Atlantic.
This Day in World History
April 17
| 858 | Benedict III ends his reign as Catholic Pope. | |
| 1492 | Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spain to find a western route to the Indies. | |
| 1524 | Present-day New York Harbor is discovered by Giovanni da Verrazzano. | |
| 1535 | Antonio Mendoza is appointed first viceroy of New Spain. | |
| 1758 | Frances Williams, the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere, publishes a collection of Latin poems. | |
| 1808 | Bayonne Decree by Napoleon Bonaparte of France orders seizure of U.S. ships. | |
| 1824 | Russia abandons all North American claims south of 54' 40'. | |
| 1861 | Virginia becomes the eighth state to secede from the Union. | |
| 1864 | General Ulysses Grant bans the trading of prisoners. | |
| 1865 | Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. | |
| 1875 | The game "snooker" is invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain. | |
| 1895 | China and Japan sign peace treaty of Shimonoseki. | |
| 1929 | Baseball player Babe Ruth and Claire Hodgson, a former member of the Ziegfeld Follies, get married. | |
| 1946 | The last French troops leave Syria. | |
| 1947 | Jackie Robinson bunts for his first major league hit. | |
| 1961 | Some 1,400 Cuban exiles attack the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. | |
| 1964 | Jerrie Mock becomes first woman to fly solo around the world. | |
| 1969 | Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy. | |
| 1970 | Apollo 13--originally scheduled to land on the moon--lands back safely on Earth after an accident. | |
| 1975 | Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. | |
| 1983 | In Warsaw, police rout 1,000 Solidarity supporters. |
| 1970 |
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A repeat
This a follow on to H-Gram 44 and picks up the next phase of the Battle of Okinawa. Another great piece of work by Admiral Cox and the folks at the Naval History and Heritage Command. Only 17 days have passed of the 82 days the battle will last since the start of the battle on the First of April. The amount of the loss of men, Ships and aircraft will shock the nation. skip
Contents
The Ordeal of USS Laffey (DD-724)
The Naval Battle of Okinawa, Part 2
50th Anniversary of the Apollo 13 Mission
75th Anniversary of World War II
This H-gram covers the Naval Battle of Okinawa from the second massed kamikaze attack (Kikusui No. 2) through Kikusui No. 3 and No. 4 to 2 May 1945, with special emphasis on the ordeal of USS Laffey (DD-724) on 16 April 1945. It is a follow-on to H-Gram 044. For more on the background on the invasion of Okinawa, please see H-Gram 044's attachment H-044-1
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F-22 Demo video- Cockpit view along with airshow view ...
Major Josh "Cabo" Gunderson demonstrates each maneuver of the F-22
https://www.military.com/video/full-f-22-demo-look-inside-raptor?ESRC=eb_200403.nl
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Subject: What is a Thesaurus?
What Is A Thesaurus?
How does an attorney sleep? First he lies on one side, then he lies on the other side .
I have a few jokes about unemployed people, but none of them work .
"I have a split personality," said Tom, being Frank.
I Renamed my iPod The Titanic, so when I plug it in, it says "The Titanic is syncing."
How do you make holy water? You boil the hell out of it
When life gives you melons, you're dyslexic
It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally
What's the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One is really heavy and the other is a little lighter
Two windmills are standing in a wind farm. One asks, "What's your favorite kind of music?" The other says, "I'm a big metal fan."
Hear about the new restaurant called Karma? There's no menu - you get what you deserve
I went to buy some camouflage trousers yesterday but couldn't find any
What do you call a bee that can't make up its mind? A maybe
I tried to sue the airline for losing my luggage. I lost my case
When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane
A cross-eyed teacher couldn't control his pupils
She had a photographic memory but never developed it
Is it ignorance or apathy that's destroying the world today? I don't know and don't really care
I wasn't originally going to get a brain transplant, but then I changed my mind
Which country's capital has the fastest-growing population? Ireland. Every day it's Dublin.
My ex-wife still misses me. But her aim is starting to improve
Two fish are in a tank, one says to the other "how do you drive this thing?"
The guy who invented the door knocker got a no-bell prize
Need an ark? I Noah guy
I used to be indecisive; now I'm not so sure
Sleeping comes so naturally to me, I could do it with my eyes closed
What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing - but it let out a little whine
What do you call a super articulate dinosaur? A Thesaurus!
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Thanks to Micro once again
Could this possibly be true?
The Vax
And so, the cookie starts to crumble... Daylight killers... The masks begin to fall off!
NO!
It's not true. Now, there are lots more people that think this is true, and they won't bother looking it up, just like the ones that sent it to you.
Micro
And more from Mike
Skip, so many things wrong with this. A little research on the internet will refute almost every claim on this. The best one I found was from Reuters:
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Thanks to Barrel. Some good ones
Navy SEAL Mike Day Shot 27 Times
Slow motion video of eagle blink
Argentina
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ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED Thanks to the Bear
LOOKING BACK 55-YEARS to the Vietnam Air War— The List for Saturday, 17 April 2021... Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER JOURNAL post for 17 April 1966...
From the archives at http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com
"A Bad Day on USS Kitty Hawk"
http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com/rolling-thunder-remembered-17-april-1966/
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady's work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
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This Day in U S Military History…….April 17
1861 – U.S.S. Powhatan, Lieutenant D. D. Porter, arrived off Pensacola. Under her protecting guns, 600 troops on board steamer Atlantic were landed at Fort Pickens to complete its reinforcement. President Lincoln had stated "I want that fort saved at all hazards." The President's wish was fulfilled, and use of the best harbor on the Gulf was denied the Confederacy for the entire war, while serving the Union indispensably in the blockade and the series of devastating assaults from the sea that divided and destroyed the South.
1897 – The Aurora, Texas, UFO incident reportedly occurred on April 17, 1897 when, according to locals, a UFO crashed on a farm near Aurora, Texas. The incident (similar to the more famous Roswell UFO incident 50 years later) is claimed to have resulted in a fatality from the crash and the alleged alien body is to have been buried in an unmarked grave at the local cemetery.
1943 – Lieutenant Ross P. Bullard and Boatswain's Mate First Class C. S. "Mike" Hall boarded the U-175 at sea after their cutter, the CGC Spencer, blasted the U-boat to the surface with depth charges when the U-boat attempted to attack the convoy the Spencer was escorting. They were part of a boarding party sent to seize the U-boat before the Nazi crew could scuttle it. The damage to the U-boat was severe, however, and it sank after both had boarded it and climbed the conning tower. Both men ended up in the water as it slipped beneath the waves. Nevertheless, they carry the distinction of being the first American servicemen to board an enemy warship underway at sea since the War of 1812. The Navy credited the Spencer with the kill. She rescued 19 of the U-boat's crew and her sister cutter, Duane, rescued 22. One Spencer crewman was killed by friendly fire during the battle.
1945 – U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash commandeers over half a ton of uranium at Strassfut, Germany, in an effort to prevent the Russians from developing an A-bomb. Pash was head of the Alsos Group, organized to search for German scientists in the postwar environment in order to prevent the Russians, previously Allies but now a potential threat, from capturing any scientists and putting them to work at their own atomic research plants. Uranium piles were also rich "catches," as they were necessary to the development of atomic weapons.
1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a CIA financed and trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. The attack was an utter failure. Fidel Castro had been a concern to U.S. policymakers since he seized power in Cuba with a revolution in January 1959. Castro's attacks on U.S. companies and interests in Cuba, his inflammatory anti-American rhetoric, and Cuba's movement toward a closer relationship with the Soviet Union led U.S. officials to conclude that the Cuban leader was a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train and arm a force of Cuban exiles for an armed attack on Cuba. John F. Kennedy inherited this program when he became president in 1961. Though many of his military advisors indicated that an amphibious assault on Cuba by a group of lightly armed exiles had little chance for success, Kennedy gave the go-ahead for the attack. On April 17, 1961, around 1,200 exiles, armed with American weapons and using American landing craft, waded ashore at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The hope was that the exile force would serve as a rallying point for the Cuban citizenry, who would rise up and overthrow Castro's government. The plan immediately fell apart–the landing force met with unexpectedly rapid counterattacks from Castro's military, the tiny Cuban air force sank most of the exiles' supply ships, the United States refrained from providing necessary air support, and the expected uprising never happened. Over 100 of the attackers were killed, and more than 1,100 were captured. The failure at the Bay of Pigs cost the United States dearly. Castro used the attack by the "Yankee imperialists" to solidify his power in Cuba and he requested additional Soviet military aid. Eventually that aid included missiles, and the construction of missile bases in Cuba sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to blows over the issue. Further, throughout much of Latin America, the United States was pilloried for its use of armed force in trying to unseat Castro, a man who was considered a hero to many for his stance against U.S. interference and imperialism. Kennedy tried to redeem himself by publicly accepting blame for the attack and its subsequent failure, but the botched mission left the young president looking vulnerable and indecisive.
1970 – With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth. On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The mission was headed for a landing on the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon. However, two days into the mission, disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up in the spacecraft. Mission commander Lovell reported to mission control on Earth: "Houston, we've had a problem here," and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water had been disrupted. The landing mission was aborted, and the astronauts and controllers on Earth scrambled to come up with emergency procedures. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon, circled it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth. The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its air supply, as well as providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13's course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
2003 – US Special Forces captured Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti (5 of clubs), a half brother of Saddam Hussein. He was 3rd the list of 55 former Iraqi officials wanted by the US.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
CRILLEY, FRANK WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Chief Gunner's Mate, U.S. Navy. Born: 13 September 1883, Trenton, N.J. Accredited to: Pennsylvania. (19 November 1928). Citation: For display of extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession above and beyond the call of duty during the diving operations in connection with the sinking in a depth of water 304 feet, of the U.S.S. F-4 with all on board, as a result of loss of depth control, which occurred off Honolulu, T.H., on 25 March 1915. On 17 April 1915, William F. Loughman, chief gunner's mate, U.S. Navy, who had descended to the wreck and had examined one of the wire hawsers attached to it, upon starting his ascent, and when at a depth of 250 feet beneath the surface of the water, had his lifeline and air hose so badly fouled by this hawser that he was unable to free himself; he could neither ascend nor descend. On account of the length of time that Loughman had already been subjected to the great pressure due to the depth of water, and of the uncertainty of the additional time he would have to be subjected to this pressure before he could be brought to the surface, it was imperative that steps be taken at once to clear him. Instantly, realizing the desperate case of his comrade, Crilley volunteered to go to his aid, immediately donned a diving suit and descended. After a lapse of time of 2 hours and 11 minutes, Crilley was brought to the surface, having by a superb exhibition of skill, coolness, endurance and fortitude, untangled the snarl of lines and cleared his imperiled comrade, so that he was brought, still alive, to the surface.
COVINGTON, JESSE WHITFIELD
Rank and organization: Ship's Cook Third Class, U.S. Navy. Place and date: At sea aboard the U.S.S. Stewart, 17 April 1918. Entered service at: California. Born: 16 September 1889, Haywood, Tenn. G.O. No.: 403, 1918. Citation: For extraordinary heroism following internal explosion of the Florence H. The sea in the vicinity of wreckage was covered by a mass of boxes of smokeless powder, which were repeatedly exploding. Jesse W. Covington, of the U.S.S. Stewart, plunged overboard to rescue a survivor who was surrounded by powder boxes and too exhausted to help himself, fully realizing that similar powder boxes in the vicinity were continually exploding and that he was thereby risking his life in saving the life of this man.
UPTON, FRANK MONROE
Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 29 April 1896, Loveland, Colo. Accredited to: Colorado. G.O. No.: 403, 1918. Citation: For extraordinary heroism following internal explosion of the Florence H, on 17 April 1918. The sea in the vicinity of wreckage was covered by a mass of boxes of smokeless powder, which were repeatedly exploding. Frank M. Upton, of the U.S.S. Stewart, plunged overboard to rescue a survivor who was surrounded by powder boxes and too exhausted to help himself. Fully realizing the danger from continual explosion of similar powder boxes in the vicinity, he risked his life to save the life of this man.
BURKE, FRANK (also known as FRANCIS X. BURKE)
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 15th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Nuremberg, Germany, 17 April 1945. Entered service at: Jersey City, N.J. Born: 29 September 1918, New York, N.Y. G.O. No.: 4, 9 January 1946. Citation: He fought with extreme gallantry in the streets of war-torn Nuremberg, Germany, where the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry, was engaged in rooting out fanatical defenders of the citadel of Nazism. As battalion transportation officer he had gone forward to select a motor-pool site, when, in a desire to perform more than his assigned duties and participate in the fight, he advanced beyond the lines of the forward riflemen. Detecting a group of about 10 Germans making preparations for a local counterattack, he rushed back to a nearby American company, secured a light machinegun with ammunition, and daringly opened fire on this superior force, which deployed and returned his fire with machine pistols, rifles, and rocket launchers. From another angle a German machinegun tried to blast him from his emplacement, but 1st Lt. Burke killed this guncrew and drove off the survivors of the unit he had originally attacked. Giving his next attention to enemy infantrymen in ruined buildings, he picked up a rifle dashed more than 100 yards through intense fire and engaged the Germans from behind an abandoned tank. A sniper nearly hit him from a cellar only 20 yards away, but he dispatched this adversary by running directly to the basement window, firing a full clip into it and then plunging through the darkened aperture to complete the job. He withdrew from the fight only long enough to replace his jammed rifle and secure grenades, then re-engaged the Germans. Finding his shots ineffective, he pulled the pins from 2 grenades, and, holding 1 in each hand, rushed the enemy-held building, hurling his missiles just as the enemy threw a potato masher grenade at him. In the triple explosion the Germans were wiped out and 1st Lt. Burke was dazed; but he emerged from the shower of debris that engulfed him, recovered his rifle, and went on to kill 3 more Germans and meet the charge of a machine pistolman, whom he cut down with 3 calmly delivered shots. He then retired toward the American lines and there assisted a platoon in a raging, 30-minute fight against formidable armed hostile forces. This enemy group was repulsed, and the intrepid fighter moved to another friendly group which broke the power of a German unit armed with a 20-mm. gun in a fierce fire fight. In 4 hours of heroic action, 1st Lt. Burke single-handedly killed 11 and wounded 3 enemy soldiers and took a leading role in engagements in which an additional 29 enemy were killed or wounded. His extraordinary bravery and superb fighting skill were an inspiration to his comrades, and his entirely voluntary mission into extremely dangerous territory hastened the fall of Nuremberg, in his battalion's sector.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for April 17, 2021 FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
17 April
1923: Lt Rutledge Irvine flew a Douglas DT with a Liberty engine to a world altitude record for class C airplanes with a load of 1,000 kilograms by reaching 11,609 feet over McCook Field. (5)
1923: Lt Harold R. Harris set a world speed record of 114.35 MPH for 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) in a DH-4L Liberty 375 at Dayton. He also set a speed record of 114.22 MPH for 2,000 kilometers in this flight. (24)
1943: Eighth Air Force made its first 100-plane attack on a single target at Bremen, Germany. (24)
1951: KOREAN WAR/Operation MiG. An intelligence operation behind enemy lines resulted in the recovery of vital components of a crashed MiG-15. A YH-19 helicopter flew a U.S. and South Korean team to the crash area south of Sinanju, N. Korea. Under friendly fighter cover, the party extracted MiG components and samples and obtained photographs. On the return flight southward the helicopter came under enemy ground fire and received one hit. The successful mission led to greater technical knowledge of the MiG. (28)
1954: The US Army announced that it was delivering the Corporal guided rocket and the Honest John ballistic rocket to troops for ground fighting. (16) (24)
1961: The USAF Cambridge Research Center launched a constant-altitude balloon from Vernalis, Calif. It stayed at 70,000 feet for 9 days with a 40-pound payload. (16) (24)
1962: Maj David W. Crow flew a MATS C-135B to 47,171 feet to set new weight/altitude records for payloads of 33,069, 44092, 55,115, and 66,138 pounds. (24)
1964: Mrs. Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly solo around the world when she landed her Cessna 180 Spirit of Columbus at Columbus after a 29-day, 11-hour, 59-minute flight. She made 21 stops in flying 23,206 miles and became the first woman to fly across both the Atlantic and Pacific. (9)
1967: The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird set a record for the longest Mach 3 flight in history. The Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) successfully launched a Minuteman II on its first attempt from Vandenberg AFB. (1)(6) At Bien Hoa AB, Vietnam, PACAF's 19 FS (Commando) transferred its F-5s to the Vietnamese Air Force's 522 FS. (17)
1969: After being dropped by a B-52, test pilot Maj Jerauld R. Gentry completed the X-24 Lifting Body's first free-flight over Edwards AFB. (3)
1970: SAC emplaced its first Minuteman III into a 91 SMW silo at Minot AFB. (6) 1988: MACKAY TROPHY. Through 23 July, improved relations between the Soviet Union and the US led to joint verification experiments to monitor nuclear testing. Refueled by KC-10s, C-5s carried test equipment and scientists from the US to Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. To complete the first mission to Semipalatinsk, Capt Michael Eastman and fellow crewmembers (Maj John L. Cirafici, Capt James Runk and Kelly Scott; SMSgt Arthur Vogt; MSgts Robert Downs, Charles Finnegan, James Maurer, and William Tobler; TSgts William Nunn Jr.; SSgt Timothy Hahn; and Sgts Andrew Benucci, Jr. and Thomas Siler) had to overcome a void of information and numerous obstacles. For that effort, they received the Mackay Trophy for 1988. (18)
1989: Lockheed delivered the 50th and last C-5B Galaxy transport to the USAF. (16) Through 18 April, Lockheed test pilots Jerry Hoyt and Ron Williams set 16 time-to-climb and altitude records in a NASA U-2C at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards AFB. After the flight, the aircraft retired to a museum. (20)
1996: Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY. The operation in Haiti officially came to an end. The US only lost one soldier to hostile fire in the 18-month operation in which US military forces dismantled a military dictatorship. (26) 1998: The USAF accepted the first of two C-38A Courier aircraft. Two ANG pilots from the 201 AS flew the aircraft from St. Louis to Andrews AFB to replace the older C-21. (32) The 20 SOS at Hurlburt Field, Fla., received the Air Force's first production-modified MH-53J Pave Low III helicopter from Lockheed Martin. (AFNEWS Article 980545, 25 April)
1999: Operation ALLIED FORCE. The USAF sent the RQ-1 Predator on its first flights into a combat zone to perform reconnaissance over Serbia. (21)
2000: Through 20 April, a 437 AW C-17 from Charleston AFB airlifted Polish soldiers and equipment from Strachowice AB in southwestern Poland to Mitrovica, Kosovo, to augment NATO peacekeeping forces in the Yugoslav province. In four days, Air Mobility Command moved 130 Polish troops and 205,000 pounds of equipment. A single C-17 Globemaster III, flown by several aircrews, performed the shuttle missions between Ramstein AB, Strachowice, and Mitrovica. (22)
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Thanks to Dutch
When Bad Luck Shows Up Better Lucky Than Good
These stories are from his early days as a Naval Aviator -
I had the distinct pleasure of flying with Pat Patrick in two squadrons, VA-23 and VA27. What a fantastic man, a real gentlemen and superb stick - and the greatest flight lead, especially when going into combat
Hand Salute!
Dutch
From the A-4 Association
The flame-out and ejection of 16 December 1958
Pat Patrick
The ill-fated flight of 16 December 1958 was my sixth hop in the A-4A (it was designated A4D-1 then, the older designation current in 1958.) The aircraft was still very new and had the familiar new-car smell when I manned it. All of our A4D-1s were fresh out of the Douglas Aircraft factory within the past several months. On familiarization hop number five (FAM 5) we had dropped six Mk-76 practice bombs and fired four 2.75" folding fin aircraft rockets (FFAR) on "Switzerland Target" just south of NAS Jacksonville across the St. Johns River from the small town of Green Cove Springs, Florida. Consequently this was my second bomb and rocket hop in the A-4. We took off mid-morning on 16 December 1958, rendezvoused a four-plane formation led by the executive officer (XO) of VA-44 (the East Coast A-4 RAG at that time) and proceeded to the same target. We made a low-altitude, 500-knot pass over the target to set the trim tabs for release conditions and broke up the formation to establish a safe interval between aircraft. As the junior ensign, I flew the number four position. We fired the rockets first with a release from a 30-degree dive angle at about 1,200 feet above ground level (AGL) and 500 knots true air speed (TAS).
On my third firing pass I pulled up in a four-G climb and pushed the throttle forward. Instead of the usual acceleration, I felt the aircraft decelerate rapidly. My body leaned forward into the shoulder straps and I heard the engine begin to unwind. I glanced at the engine gauge and saw the RPM and tail pipe temperature (TPT) falling rapidly. The oil pressure and fuel boost flip-flop gauges went to OFF. I said the usual OH NO, with "no" as a four-letter word, then keyed the mike and broadcast, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Baker Boy 325, flamed out, pulling off the target." I then told the XO, our flight leader, that I would trade airspeed for altitude and try a relight going over the top when I reached the optimum relight speed of 220 kt. He "rogered" and told me he had me in sight. As I went over the top of the arc at 5,500 feet and 210 kt., I pushed the nose over slightly and adjusted airspeed to 220 indicated air speed (IAS), I went through the relight procedure and waited for the TPT to start to rise. It never did. We had no fuel flow gage in the A4A; nor did we have any other diagnostic instruments like those available in current Navy jets, so I held the airspeed at 220 and tried one more relight procedure. As I completed each of the four simple steps for a re-light I read it off to the flight leader and asked him if I was forgetting anything. He told me, "no, you are doing all you can."
I really didn't want to eject and explain why I had just destroyed a $425,000 aircraft. During the second attempt, I saw the altimeter descend through 3,000 feet and heard the XO say, "Quit fooling with it and get out. Eject now." I glanced up and saw that I was headed toward a small crossroads village, so I turned right toward a swampy area. I had been holding the nose up to stop the descent because the ejection seat was only good to altitudes above 1,000 feet and 125 knots IAS, straight and level. When I pulled the face curtain the airspeed was 125, altitude 1,800 foot and rate of descent about 2,000 feet per minute. When I pulled the face curtain, the canopy separated and I was blasted out of the aircraft.
So far so good, but I quickly found out that I was still in real trouble. In between my sophomore and junior years at the University of Florida, I had spent three years in the Army, during the Korean War. I had gone through parachute training as an enlisted troop in December 1952, and had 22 static-line parachute jumps while serving with the 10th Special Forces Group in 1953 and 1954. In the early stages of training we had to climb up into a tower about 20 to 30 feet high wearing a parachute harness, hook up to a cable that descended at about a 10 or 15 degree angle, jump out and slide down to the ground. The training taught us to exit the airplane in the right position and then to make a proper parachute-landing fall when we contacted the ground. There was always a grizzled old sergeant at the bottom of the slide. (He was probably about 30 years old.) As soon as you jumped out of the tower he would scream at you, "You had betta open yo eyes, look around, and see what you can do fo yo sef." (All paratrooper sergeants had southern accents.) That translated to: "Don't expect everything to work as advertised; as soon as you clear the aircraft open your eyes and take care of any malfunctions."
I reached up, grasped the face curtain firmly and pulled hard with both hands. When the curtain pulled out about ¾ of the way, I heard a loud, "BOOM", felt a sharp pain in the small of my back, and was blown clear of the aircraft. As soon as I was out in the air-stream, I could picture the instructor, who used to be at the bottom of the cable slide training device. I could hear him shouting in that pronounced southern accent, "You had betta open yo eyes, look around, and see what you can do fo yo sef." Consequently, as I cleared the aircraft I threw the face curtain back out of the way and looked around to see what I could do for myself. It made the life or death difference, because I was still attached to the seat by the para-raft lanyard. The lanyard was a yellow nylon ribbon that connected the survival raft located under the aircraft seat to the pilot's flotation gear.
The bright yellow-colored -lanyard was wrapped around the shoulder harness locking handle on the left side of the ejection seat holding the seat snug up against my right hip. I quickly reached out with my right hand and pulled the seat in toward me to get some slack. I then unwrapped the pararaft lanyard with my left hand, and threw the seat forcefully away from me.
Next, I felt for and found the D-ring for manually opening the parachute. I pulled it hard to try and beat the automatic actuator. It was like pulling on a well-anchored cable; it would not budge. I was plunging, head first, toward the tops of pine trees near the edge of the swamp I had aimed the aircraft at. My first thought was, "you are a dead man." I tilted my head back, looked toward the ground, and saw a huge dark red-to-orange fireball exploding out from among the trees as the aircraft hit the ground near the edge of the swamp. I then looked down at the nearest pine tree and could see individual pine needles. My heart nearly stopped because I knew that if the parachute were not on its way out by now, I really was dead. It is eerily quiet when you are falling through the air and I could hear a whirring noise. It was the familiar sound of rubber bands popping as the parachute was deploying. Rubber bands are used to hold the shroud lines, risers, and panels in place when the parachute is packed. They make a whirring sound when they pop in sequence as the parachute opens.
The automatic actuator had fired when I threw the seat away and had kinked the steel cable leading to the D ring, which was why I could not pull it. My heart started to race again as I looked at the pine needles and tried to tell whether the 'chute was going to open in time. I shifted away from the thought that I was a dead man, and said to myself, "Oh, S_ _ t, man this is going to be close, this is really going to be close." I then felt a hard jerk at my shoulders when the chute opened with me falling headfirst, face down toward the trees. The hard jerk swung my feet and legs down toward the ground and straightened me out. I had no time to enjoy the feeling because I was probably less than a hundred feet off the ground. I could see to my right front (about 2:30), a Y shaped intersection where three dirt roads joined. I then grabbed the two risers in that direction and pulled down hard on them to take a slip toward the little opening formed by that Y intersection. I had to lift my legs up to clear the last pine tree, but I made it into the small clearing and smashed into the Florida sand. I tried to do a parachute-landing fall to cushion the impact, but my timing was a little off and the impact stunned my whole body.
There was almost no wind so the parachute just collapsed around me. It was a good thing because all I could do was lie there for a few seconds. Almost immediately, however, I could feel a big grin growing inside my oxygen mask as a tremendous sense of elation welled up inside me. I stood up, popped the oxygen mask off, took my helmet off and looked up at the beautiful blue sky with puffy white, fair weather cumulus clouds drifting by. Life was good. The pine needles smelled like expensive perfume and my whole body unwound as I looked up at that beautiful sky and shed a few tears of elation and relief. I hurt all over, but it didn't matter. I was alive with no broken bones or other serious injury.
By the way the A4A parachute was only 26 feet in diameter and was designed for survival, not for a comfortable landing. My back hurt like hell from the ejection because the older seats were fired by a 37-millimeter cannon shell and were not as friendly as the rocket motors used today. The hard impact with the ground didn't help. (Many of my contemporary pilot friends have had serious, long-term, back problems stemming from their ejections. I have been extremely fortunate and have had no long term effect at all.) We had no survival radios, so I popped an orange smoke signal device in the intersection of the dirt roads where I had landed. I then spread my 'chute out, and stood in the middle of it to make myself more visible for rescue.
In less than ten minutes a reconnaissance version of the F9F-8 flew overhead and rocked his wings to let me know he had me in sight. He circled my position and guided the helicopter in. Roughly ten minutes later, still, I could hear the helicopter approaching and popped another orange smoke. I rolled up the parachute, held on to it to prevent it from getting sucked up into the blades and got out of the way. The helicopter landed in my little clearing and we exchanged big smiles and enthusiastic thumbs up signals. They loaded my parachute and me aboard and flew me over to the helicopter pad next to the hospital at NAS Jacksonville. The flight surgeons at NAS Jacksonville checked me over, gave me three fingers of rot gut brandy and a bottle of aspirin, then released in time for happy hour.
The accident investigation
The accident board had asked me for a detailed statement of what happened and I gave them probably more detail than they wanted. They did not let me read their draft report, however, until it was essentially complete. At that time the Operations Officer, Commander Jim Homyak, called me in and let me read the, almost smooth, draft. The story the report told was that the aircraft, side number 325, had flown a field carrier landing practice hop the night before and when it was returned to the line the ground crew failed to refuel it. I manned the aircraft the next morning and failed to complete the checklist including the push-to-test of the fuel gauge and check of fuel quantity. The aircraft would have had only about 2,500 pounds of fuel, which was exactly the amount that I would have needed to take off, rendezvous, get to the target, and make three rocket passes. Consequently, I had run the aircraft out of fuel and would have had no symptoms prior to flame-out. We had no low-fuel warning light in the A-4D-1. The mishap board said it was 100 percent pilot error.
While I was reading this I was picturing the huge orange-red fireball I saw while falling face down toward the pine trees, waiting for the parachute to open. I thought, "no way!" I described the fireball to Commander Homyak and he agreed to go back out in the helicopter and take another look. He found the swampy area where the aircraft impacted had been severely burned for 25 yards around the impact point and agreed that the aircraft was clearly not out of fuel at impact. He also noted that there was a substantial amount of JP-4 still floating on the water in the hole formed by the crash. The cause was changed to "undetermined." I have been very suspicious of mishap boards ever since. We would learn on 21 February 1959 the probable cause of the majority of the large number of flameouts we had during the fall and winter of 1958-1959. That story is next. After four working days and a weekend off, recovering from the soreness, I was back in the cockpit.
This was one of about nine aircraft that the A4 community lost in a matter of just a few months. The flame-outs were occurring without any prior symptom and several were at an altitude too low to eject, so we also lost about four pilots.
The flame-out and ditching of 21 February 1959.
February 21, 1959, was one of the coldest days that NAS Jacksonville, Florida, had experienced in several years. While I was briefing the instructor pilot (IP) on my navigation and weapon delivery plan, it was 27 degrees. It had climbed only to 29 when I hit the water just before noon. I was scheduled, on a Saturday morning, for a high-low navigation flight with a simulated nuclear weapon delivery at Stephens Lake target, near the end of the flight. The target was just south of NAS Cecil Field, Florida. I had two 150-gallon dropable fuel tanks on the wing weapon stations and a 1,200-pound, concrete filled, "shape" of a Mk-12 nuclear weapon on the centerline bomb rack. With me in the lead and the instructor pilot (IP) flying wing, we took off and climbed to 41,000 feet. The A-4A weighed only 8100 pounds dry and had 7800 pounds of thrust, so at light weights it climbed like a rocket. Even with the extra fuel and shape it took us very few minutes to level off at 41,000 feet, with no afterburner. (It was really impressive when you climbed out after flying a loft maneuver and then zoomed up to climb back to just over 40,000 feet from which you cruised climbed during the trip back to the carrier. I have timed the climb out from the escape maneuver at less than six minutes from 100 feet to over 40,000 with a clean A4A. The climb schedule was 370 knots indicated to .80 indicated Mach number (IMN).
We flew down the East Coast of Florida to just south of Homestead AFB, turned and crossed the Everglades, then returned up the West Coast of Florida to Deadman's Bay. I then descended to 100 feet at 420 knots, and flew in to the target. It was an incredibly beautiful day with crystal-clear visibility and a few puffy cumulous clouds. As we cruise climbed from 41,000 to just over 47,000 feet during the high altitude portion of the flight, I could see the entire peninsular of Florida and I thought, "man this is the life for me."
I led our two-plane formation on the final run in to the target at 100 feet and 500 knots. I delivered the weapon with a 45-degree medium-angle-loft maneuver and went over the top, inverted, while completing the half-Cuban-eight escape maneuver. We ran out away from the target at the planned 1,100-foot burst height and 570 knots indicated air speed. When clear of the simulated safe overpressure ring, we climbed to 5,500 feet, turned across the Orange River bridge, and headed north up the St. Johns River to enter the traffic pattern for runway 5 at NAS Jacksonville. Soon after crossing the bridge and near the East bank of the St. Johns River, I felt that awful deceleration again. I was involuntarily leaning forward in the shoulder straps. I glanced to my right to pick up the instructor pilot who was sliding by on my right side with full speed breaks extended. I shook my head as he went by and deployed the emergency ram air turbine (RAT) to keep electric power and hydraulic pressure while I set up for another relight attempt.
I had read everything I could find about flying since I was about eight years old, and one consistent bit of advice from all of the old aviators had been to always have a place to go when you are in trouble. They counseled that when you change operating areas you should always look around and find the safest place to go when the engine quits. I had selected the two-mile-wide section of the St. Johns River just northeast of NAS Jacksonville. My fallback plan was to fly to the middle of the river, line up with the long axis of the river, stall the airplane, and eject. That would allow the aircraft to fall into the river and do no harm to the people and houses on either side of the river. The shallow river was also a good parachute landing spot close to both helicopter and boat rescue facilities. It was also close to the hospital at NAS Jacksonville if I needed medical treatment quickly.
For now, however, runway 27 looked like a good option for a flame-out approach and, again, I really didn't want to eject—especially since I now knew how much it hurt. I traded airspeed for altitude while turning in toward runway 27, broadcast the Mayday, and told the tower what my intentions were. The tower and the instructor pilot both "rogered" and the tower cleared me and gave me priority for the landing. As I turned through about 45 degrees of turn to go, I was now descending again through about 5,200 feet with a little excess airspeed, but not enough to make the runway. My landing gear and flaps were still up, and drop tanks still on. I could soon tell I wasn't going to make it. The velocity vector that I drew with my mind's eye ended in the water about 50 feet short of the concrete seawall. The flame-out approach was no longer a good plan.
I immediately shifted back to the original plan and headed for the center of the wide section of river. I still had electric power from the RAT and told the IP what I was up to. He "rogered" and I could see him doing a weave back and forth over the top of me as I headed the few thousand yards up the river. I kept bleeding off airspeed so as to reach a stall as high off the river as I could manage. When I arrived over the center of the river headed north, I pulled the nose up into the stall. I was at 2,800 feet and 112 knots. The aircraft shuttered and banged as it entered the stall and I pulled hard on the face curtain with both hands. I pulled hard three times against a hard metal stop and it didn't budge. I knew immediately that I was dead because never before (or since) was I able to recover an A-4 from a full stall in less than 3,200 feet. (Of course, I have never practiced one starting in the very dense air at 3200 feet either.) I liked my reaction to the circumstances because my next thought after, "You are dead," was, "At least you can look good."
What I meant was that I wanted to show my squadron mates that I never gave up and was fighting it all the way. So, in order to "look good," I released the face curtain and noticed that the aircraft nose had already fallen through the horizontal and was nosing over toward the river while I had been pulling on the face curtain. I grabbed the stick and shoved it further forward to increase airspeed as rapidly as possible. During the stall, the left wing had rocked down in about a near 90 degree angle of bank, so as I shoved the stick forward I was now aligned 90 degrees to the long axis of the river, headed almost due West, instead of paralleling the long axis. While pushing the stick forward with my right hand, I reached down to the emergency release handle, pulled it, and blew the drop tanks off the wings. I had wanted to land on them if I could have shot the flame-out approach, but now I needed them gone for two reasons:
1. To get airspeed as quickly as I could to recover from the stall, and
2. To have the flat undersurface of the wing and fuselage available to ditch on without having a drop tank dig in and cartwheel me at impact.
I also locked my shoulder harness with my left hand, just in case. I still didn't really believe that I could pull this off, but that was a part of looking good. They would find me properly set up when they fished my body out of the water. When the drop tanks blew off, the airspeed needle zoomed up immediately to 155 knots and I started trying to pull the nose up to round out the descent. During the stall I had no electric power and therefore no radio, but when the airspeed came up the RAT began to function. Consequently, I again had electric power and better hydraulic boost for the controls. I pulled back on the stick until I felt the airflow just begin to separate from the wings, then I would ease off and pull again to the edge of separation. I kept it, by feel, at or near the optimum angle of attack until I rounded it off about 10 to 15 feet clear of the water. When I had stopped the descent and still had not hit the water, I thought, "Hey, maybe!"
I could hear the IP's voice on the radio. His voice was very deliberate; he was enunciating every word carefully, because he knew he did not have time to say it twice. He said, "You had better put it on, you are running out of river." I had planned to hold it off the water until I reached 125 knots then ease it onto the river very flat. His call was just in time because as I glanced up I could see very large trees, very close. I glanced at the airspeed indicator, saw 135 knots, and thought, "that's close enough." I then eased off on the back-pressure against the stick to put the belly of the aircraft onto the water as flat as I could. Because my eyeballs were now less than seven feet off the water, I could see that I was drifting very slightly to the right with a quartering tail wind. There were very small ripples on the water, which gave me good depth perception but not enough wave height to catch a wing tip. The conditions were near perfect for impact.
When the aircraft hit the water I can remember starting forward and to the right and then it was lights out. There was no pressure and no pain of any kind. I just entered a very deep sleep instantaneously. The next awareness I had was waking up with my head hanging down on my chest and the helmet feeling very heavy. I could not believe it. I was still alive. No one had ever survived a ditching in an A-4 or F-8, the two newest aircraft in the fleet at the time. I could see translucent light straight up and thought I was resting on the bottom of the shallow river. I thought, "Okay let's get out of here." Emergency procedures say pull the ditching handle and it will blow the canopy off and cut you loose from the seat with your parachute and para-raft still attached. So, I pulled the ditching handle on the right side of the seat and stood up. I banged into the canopy, which was still locked and closed. I sat back down and thought, "You have got to be s _ _ _ _ ing me. What else can go wrong?" My next thought was, "I have survived this ditching and I am not going to die in this airplane." I reached for my survival knife, which was strapped to my right calf and started to pull it out to scribe an X in the Plexiglas and bash my way out. We had been taught this for a last-ditch escape effort.
Before I got the knife all the way out of the scabbard, I thought, "Wait a minute, dummy, you haven't tried the manual open handle." So I slid the knife back into the scabbard and reached over with my left hand with a backhand motion and pulled the canopy handle aft. Boom! The canopy blew aft and up a few feet, but it was still attached behind the seat. I stood up, put my right foot onto the seat, and pushed the canopy further out of the way with my helmet. I was very surprised to learn that I was still on the surface and the river was just beginning to flow over the canopy rail and into the cockpit as the aircraft settled toward the bottom.
I learned later from the air controllers in the tower, who could see all of this plainly, and from the IP who was also a close-in witness, that it was only about 12 seconds from when the splash went up until I crawled out of the cockpit. The reason I thought I was on the bottom was that the huge splash was still subsiding while I was going through all of the emergency procedures and made it look like I was under water. The IP said that he could not believe what he saw. The little A4 left a small rooster tail in the water just before impact, but when it hit the water it did not plane or skip across the water as he thought it would. It dug in, stopped within the length of the aircraft, and turned almost 90 degrees to the right while stopping instantly. It then was totally obscured as the huge splash went up and covered the aircraft completely for the next several seconds. When the splash subsided, the IP was very surprised to see that the aircraft looked essentially intact and was still afloat.
I pushed away from the aircraft as it settled and inflated one side of my Mk-3C flotation gear. I then started working on getting rid of my parachute and para-raft and realized that I was tangled up with the para-raft lanyard and a couple of shroud lines from the partially opened parachute. I couldn't get the shoulder harness fittings released with my flight gloves on. They were very slick when wet. So I took off the gloves, released the fittings, and once again reached for my knife. It was still there. I pulled it out, cut the para-raft lanyard and shroud lines, then put it back in the scabbard. Those cuts freed me from the parachute and life raft, but it was all I could do with my hands. When I pulled them out of the water I couldn't believe what I saw— my hands were so cold they just stopped functioning. It looked like my fingers were locked in a partially curled position. I wanted to inflate the other half of my flotation gear, but the hands just didn't work.
I could hear a helicopter approaching, and when I looked toward the sound there were two HS-3s with Marine markings just crossing the riverbank headed for me. I though, "Well, at least one thing is going right; that is a very fast response." As luck would have it, the two Marine helicopters were departing on a cross-country flight, returning to New River, North Carolina and just happened to time their departure right for me. One of them had an old "horse collar" rescue device and lowered it to me from a hover. My hands didn't work, but I managed to work my right elbow through the horse collar, roll through to my right, and hook it with my left elbow too. They reeled me up and delivered me, once again, directly to the hospital at NAS Jacksonville.
The flight surgeons only kept me long enough to fill out some forms and reassure themselves that I was uninjured. I had a dark bruise under my right eye from having stretched the shoulder harness far enough to make contact with the glare shield. I also had a minor cut on my left thumb from cutting it while freeing myself from the entanglement. Other than that I was just sore all over. Every muscle and bone seemed to hurt but all body parts were intact.
The aircraft that I ejected from in December was side number 325 and the one that I ditched in February was 326. Commander Homyak announced to the ready room that I would never, ever, be allowed to fly 327.
This accident produced several important changes to the A-4A and B and subsequently to all modern jets. Because I could not eject and was able to ditch the aircraft pretty much intact, the long-running problem with the engine could finally be conclusively diagnosed. We had lost many A-4As over the previous three months. (I believe we lost nine aircraft and four pilots, but my memory is not clear on the exact numbers.) The engines had quit with no advance warning or symptom of any kind. The evidence was destroyed when the aircraft crashed and burned. Included among the destroyed aircraft was the A-4A I had ejected from following the flameout on 16 December 1958.
Lessons learned, and fixes
This ditching revealed the reason for the numerous flameouts. The high-pressure fuel pump spline that connected the fuel pump to the engine's accessory gear drive was failing after only 20 to 100 hours of operation. Instead of being mounted on a firm track to keep the spline normal to the plane of rotation, the pump was mounted on four bolts. When any bolt loosened, the pump would lose its alignment normal to the plane of rotation and the spline, (which operated at extremely high RPM), and would grind itself to a nub immediately. This shut off all fuel flow to the engine instantly and a no-symptom flame-out resulted, with no chance for a relight.
All A-4A and B aircraft were grounded for inspection and replacement of the pump mounting as soon as the cause was determined. The seriousness of the problem was apparent when all remaining A-4As and Bs on the VA-44 ramp (about 60 aircraft) were inspected and about 30 percent of them were found to be on the verge of failure. Fixing this problem alone probably reduced the A-4 accident rate by a very large factor.
Additionally, the failure of the ejection seat resulted in the addition of the alternate ejection handle between the pilot's legs to back up the face curtain, which was at the top of the ejection seat behind his head. Prior to this accident, Navy jets had had only a face curtain with no alternate handle. Later it was discovered that many crews were saved because under high-g loads they could not reach the face curtain but could grab the alternate handle and eject. Also, immediately after catapult launch the alternate handle can be activated faster than the face curtain and that has also saved some lives. So, the addition of the alternate handle proved to be useful beyond the original intent of providing a backup in the event of face curtain failure.
Seven years later, in October 1966, the Chief Petty Officer who had run the ejection seat shop at VA-44, had a confession for me on the day of his retirement from VA-125 in Lemoore, California. As the shop supervisor, he had told me at the time, that the problem with the ejection seat was a bad design. That the way the cable, between the face curtain and the actuators, was placed was faulty, but they had figured out a fix and it wouldn't happen again. The later confession was that they had lied about the design problem. The riggers had just installed the cable wrong and it was pulling in the wrong direction when I yanked on the face curtain. A change was made that allowed the cable to be routed only in the correct direction.
Also, because I demonstrated that a pilot could survive a ditching at 135 knots, downwind, a pressure relief valve was installed in the side of the cockpit to equalize pressures and allow the pilot to get the canopy open and exit more easily under water. There had been no survivors of ditchings in A-4 or F-8 aircraft up to this time, so there had been no incentive, before this crash, to be concerned about underwater escape.
Because I had had trouble releasing the parachute connections with wet gloves in the water after escape, new "Koch fittings" were also designed with serrated edges to allow actuation with slick, wet gloves.
Many lessons were learned from this experience and the key fixes were made quickly, before A-4s were allowed to fly again. In addition to all of the necessary mechanical fixes that this accident brought about, the biggest lesson learned was, "Don't ever give up. Keep fighting it all the way, even if it is just to look good."
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Note: this was a decade before I climbed into the A-4F. A much improved version but would every once in a while flame out when doing a long idle descent from very high altitude. Always better to observe how the new thing works and get those bugs out.
It is never over until the light goes out permanently.
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"Civility costs nothing, and buys everything"
- Mary Wortley Montage
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Thanks to John
That happened only once, and it was Colonel Bruce Carr of the USAAF who took off on a mission in a P-51D, and was shot down by flak while strafing ground targets over Czechoslovakia. He landed near a Luftwaffe field with the intent of surrendering to the Luftwaffe troops since they were generally much more friendly to U.S aircrew than were the soldiers of the German army, but it was becoming dark just as he got there and from the trees he watched two mechanics fuel up and then run up a FW-190A-8 and shut it back down again.
Col. Carr next to his P-51D "Angels' Playmate"
He decided well, that seemed to be a perfectly good airplane, why not give it a try. Near dawn he snuck out and jumped in the cockpit, and having no knowledge of it he went with the theory that if he kept flipping switches and moving controls to the opposite position of where they currently were, he'd find the starter somehow. And damned if he didn't, and luckily the FW-190A series included the most advanced throttle system for a WW2 aircraft called the Kommandogerat, where boost pressure, fuel flow, mixture setting, and prop were all controlled with a single lever, making it about the only plane in WW2 that an enemy pilot could steal and manage to get going down a runway with less than 30 minutes of experimentation.
A FW-190A-8. It was built in greater numbers than any other FW-190A series. Image courtesy of B. Huber (CC BY-SA)
Luftwaffe personnel were already coming out to see what was going on, so Col. Carr didn't really have time to line up on the runway, he just gunned it across a corner of the field on a path that had him pass between two hangars before he was airborne. He was very pleased with himself when he managed to get the gear up.
He then later said that he decided to fly back at treetop height in hopes of not drawing any Allied fighter attention, but said that the choice wasn't great, because he was convinced that every .50cal M2 machine gun in existence in the 200 miles between that German airfield and his home field had taken shots at him.
When he got close to his squadron's base in France, he decided not to mess around at all and line up with the runway some distance out and fly straight in before anyone could man the AA defenses - at this point in the war the Allies had pretty much total air control and there was almost no threat of German attack.
The only problem was that he couldn't get the landing gear back down. Rather than make himself a target while trying to figure out what the problem was, he decided to just belly land it. And that's what he did, as American soldiers ran for the quad .50cal guns.
Needless to say everyone was very confused when they found (then) Captain Carr sitting in the cockpit. It was an awesome opportunity for a one liner, like "yeah, I never liked the P-51 anyway", or maybe "you wouldn't believe what happened in that fight yesterday, but some German is flying my P-51", but unfortunately he was too exhausted from the adrenalin and just said something to the effect of "**** you, I'm Captain Carr of this goddamned squadron" when the first soldiers arrived and pointed lots of guns at him.
Col. Carr later earned the Distinguished Service Cross when he and three other P-51s climbed (very bad idea) into a formation of 60 German fighters, and shot down seven, with Col. Carr being credited with five. He finished the war with 15 confirmed victories, three probables, and seven ground kills. He also flew combat in both Korea and Vietnam, before finally retiring in 1970.
His P-51D in 1997, painted in his original wartime colors and markings. Flying this is how you arrive in style for a dinner. Unfortunately this small image is the only one I can find, she was beautiful.
I had the honor of meeting Col. Carr , I think it was 1997 down at Kermit Week's air museum called Fantasy of Flight in Florida, and he arrived at aged 70 something, flying a P-51D that blew over our heads at about 300kts and 50 feet before breaking into a perfect entry to a final on the runway. We got to then listen to him tell this entire story, and ask him questions afterward.
A better view of the nose art on Angels' Playmate
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