Ya think??

Canopy gone, aircraft in a 90 degree angle of bank, nose down, seat just fired.  You can tell that the ejection seat is already in a vertical orientation, something these new seats do quite nicely.  Martin Baker is the absolute King of ejection seats, and the NACES (Navy Aircrew Common Ejection Seat) seat is about as good as it gets.  It has various sensors – barostatic, pitot static -  in and around the seat that know – the instant you eject – where you are, how fast you are going and what attitude you are in (besides being pissed) and it goes immediately into the correct ejection mode – high or low altitude, fast or slow, sideways or whatever.  Definitely worth the taxpayer dinero spent to create.

The onboard multimode electronic sequencer (fancy name for “saved-my-ass-giddy-gapper”) figures out where you are and seat-man separation comes within microseconds (around a half-a-second, actually) of clearing the cockpit.

Boom.

This is called “Giving it back to the taxpayers” – and whether they are Canadian or American or Brit, its all the same.

Note the seat, heading to its ultimate destination of an impact with terra firma.  The pilot, Capt. Brian Bews, is out of the picture to the upper left.  He landed close to the smoking hole, but was not affected by the flames and debris that, a few seconds before, was his jet.

CF-18 crash pilot applauds ejection seat

Suffered compression fractures in three vertebrae

The Canadian Forces pilot who ejected from a fighter jet just moments before it crashed and exploded suffered back injuries but is expected to make a full recovery.

“I feel extremely lucky considering the magnitude of the accident — Martin Baker is my new best friend!” said Capt. Brian Bews, 36, in his first public statement since Friday’s crash in Lethbridge, Alta.

Martin Baker is the brand name of the ejection seat in the CF-18 Hornet that Bews was piloting. He was making a low-speed pass at low altitude on a practice run for the Alberta International Airshow when he had to eject from the jet seconds before it smashed into the airstrip at the Lethbridge airport.

Capt. Brian Bews, seen in a photo taken in California in 2007, is expected to make a full recovery. (Courtesy John Wright)

Bews suffered compression fractures in three vertebrae and will be wearing a back brace for a few months, the Department of National Defence said Monday.

“Given the incredible amount of force in the ejection sequence, this type of injury is very common in aircrew who eject,” said Maj. Rachel Morrell, a military surgeon. She said Bews will likely make a full recovery but there’s no timeline on when he will be able to return to flying duties.

“I will be concentrating on rest for the next while,” Bews said Monday. The pilot thanked first responders for their quick reaction after the crash and the staff at the Lethbridge hospital where he was taken.

“I would also like to thank my family, friends, my demo team and my air show family for their amazing support since the accident,” said Bews, who is from Eatonia, Sask.

The pilot learned how to fly in Okotoks, Alta., and joined the Canadian Forces in 1999. Five years later, he achieved his dream of being assigned to fly a CF-18 Hornet, according to Bews’s military biography.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. Bews was flying a CF-18 Hornet designated for air shows and demonstrations.

Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18s recently went through a $2.6-billion upgrade. But the Canadian government announced earlier this month that they will be replaced by the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter at a cost of $9 billion.

Hat tip and a big thanks to Dave Aldridge for the pics.

Checking out the menu…

There…!  I’ll take THAT one!

Dive, dive, dive!!!

Fillet of sole!  Some sort of flat fish, looks like.

Thrust-to-weight ratio finally allows takeoff….

Climb, climb, climb…!!

Heading home with the takeout.

I didn’t have time to switch to the motor-drive – which would have been something like 5 shots per second.  Still, kind of neat.  More fuel for the “Honey!  I need a new camera and a better lens!” argument…..which I always lose, unfortunately.

Headed home tomorrow….more then.

Hiring a Secretary of the Treasury who can’t even pay his taxes on time.

Engineering a financial environment where our public debt will increase from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion at the end of 2020, meaning as a percentage of gross domestic product, the debt will rise from 53 percent to 90 percent, meaning further that we will need to have either a 25 percent increase in taxes or a 20 percent reduction in spending, or some combination thereof.

Raising taxes during a recession.

Passing a “financial recovery plan” where the jobs that were created cost $150k/year to create and where the total amount of “recovery” money spent exceeded the recorded increase in GDP ($391 billion in stimulus money in “now” dollars spent to get a GDP increase of $340 billion (in 2005 dollars).

Unemployment firmly planted, rooted dying at 9.5%.

Passing  a Heath Care ”reform” plan that is not only totally irresponsible and won’t work but costing hundreds of billions more than advertised.

Making people actually long for the inept and malaise-ridden days of Jimmy Carter.

How does all this affect me?  My retirement plan rate of return for this last quarter?

Thank you, Mr. Obama.

Osprey, bringing home the bacon.

A different definition of the golf term “birdie”.  Osprey nest, Lunenburg Golf Club.

Egret Blue Heron (thanks, JimmyT) looking for breakfast.

Good morning, Nova Scotia!

More later…

FFARP. Also known as the Fleet Fighter ACM Readiness Program. It was about a 2-week program where your squadron would go thru a series of escalating scenarios against both scripted and unscripted (but extremely wily) enemy air capabilities, ultimately ending up in numerous air combat sessions as the “war” escalates.

Dave “Doc” Hicks and I were in the middle of one of these furballs where you are up against an unknown number of bad guys. Could be you and your wingman against a similar number of bad guys (2 versus 2), or you, alone and unafraid against an unknown number of bad guys (1 versus unknown). The idea, of course, being that you never really know what to expect “out there” so you must tailor your tactics based on what you know and what you don’t know.

One of the things that aviators who must use their aircraft to the very limit of its capability learn (and this is a continuous process) is how best to fight your aircraft. This not limited, of course, to which weapon to use, but rather includes intimate knowledge of things like what the best speed is in each phase of the fight, what the capabilities are of the expected enemy aircraft, what the best turning speeds and rates are, what the max G’s are in any part of this flowing dynamic called air combat maneuvering, any number of a dozen or more factors that oftentimes determine life or death in an aerial duel.

A brief segue, if you don’t mind, and later on you will see why. There is a special place reserved in hell for cockpit design engineers who do not have a good grounding in ergonomics – that “applied science of equipment design, such as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort.”

The F-14 had a couple of what we called “dogfight radar modes”, or modes where we could command the radar to go into an automatic-lock routine where the first thing in its scan volume would get locked on. Typically, when you became engaged in a dogfight (or ACM – air combat maneuvering), the pilot might call for VSL high (or low), or Vertical Scan Lock-on, which would put the radar into a concentrated scan volume and would go to a single-target track lock on the first thing that entered into its scan.

The interesting aspect to this (and what the meat of this post is about) is that those aforementioned cockpit design engineers (I hope they are enjoying the heat and humidity where they currently reside) decided that the switch to activate VSL would be very happy on the left-hand side console, down just to the left of where my g-suit encased thigh was, and consisted of a toggle switch about an inch high. Surrounded by other toggle switches about an inch high. Needless to say, not a very easy switch to find in normal circumstances, let alone in the hectic world of a dogfight.

Yes, as you became more experienced in the management of your cockpit duties finding such seemingly obscure yet important switches and knobs and controls becomes easier, and ingenious “fixes” were thought up to assist in the usage of this particular switch – such as cutting a small 3″ piece of stiff plastic tubing to put over the switch so instead of looking down and searching for this miniscule thing, all you had to do was sweep your hand over in that direction and you’d hit that plastic extension and activate the VSL mode.

This particular plane we were in did not have such advanced technology, however, so I had to do the hunt and peck routine anytime we needed that particular ACM radar mode.

Anyhow, to make a long post shorter, Doc and I were in this one particular FFARP evolution, probably 1 v 2 (us against 2 other aircraft), and as the good, dutiful radar intercept officer, I was watching our backside (”Six is clear, Doc!”) as he was pushing the fight on one of the bad guys – meaning the other one was still out there somewhere. I just had to find him.

Doc shot the guy we were yanking with, calling “Fox 2, A-4, left-hand-turn, 12.5″ (translated: sidewinder shot on an A-4 Skyhawk in a left hand turn at 12,500 feet altitude), and I opened my scan up a bit from just the rear quadrant.

That’s when things got fun. We were probably at or close to our best cornering speed, meaning we had the best instantaneous g-available to the aircraft. Aerodynamics being what it is, speed is the all-powerful arbiter on what you can do with your plane. Too slow, and you can’t turn very fast or efficiently. Too fast and it takes the state of Texas to turn around in. We were around 400 or 450 knots, which makes the Tomcat, with its wings out at 35 degrees, a not-bad turning aircraft with a fair amount of available “oomph” to put on the plane.

Right about then, I caught sight of the other still-alive bogey, off the right side, a little high, not quite nose on to us.

It was important to get Doc’s eyes on the A-4 as soon as possible, so my call to him was short and succinct – “Right 2 o’clock, a little high!” – spoken with a fair amount of urgency and inflection (the normal dulcet tones of Pinch on the Radio gave way to an intercom call at a volume that probably did not need the intercom).

That call told Doc to get his eyes over to the right side of the aircraft, look just a bit to the right of the nose (12 o’clock being dead ahead, so 2 o’clock will be a bit right of that) and a little above the horizon.

Crew coordination is one of the things we work on incessantly in the Tomcat, and as soon as I made that call to Doc I knew exactly what he was going to do and I knew exactly what I needed to do. He was going to roll the aircraft to the right and get the lift-vector (the ideal aerodynamic position in the longitudinal plane of the jet to put the best G force on the aircraft) on the bogey and pull like crazy to get our nose on the target, and I would reach down and hit the VSL high switch to get the radar in that dogfight mode to try and get a lock.

Now you know why I touched on ergonomics. As soon as I turned my head down and to the left to find that VSL switch, Doc rolled the aircraft right and snapped a good 10 g’s on the aircraft in getting the jet moved around to face the new threat.

Which meant my head, leaning down and looking to the left side console for this idiotic little inch-high switch, instantaneously became fused with and part of my left knee.

10 g’s is 10 times normal gravity. Your neck usually supports your 8 or 10 lb head (unless you are one of those 40 lb brainiacs), so making that puppy weigh 80 or 100 lbs does nice number on the posture your mother worked so hard to instill.

Still, I managed to hit that VSL high switch, wrestled with getting my head back up into a more elevated environment (by now I was past my knee and down around my ankles, I think), and getting my eyes back into the fight.

VSL locked on, we got a good shot off and killed the second bogey rather expeditiously, and by then it was time to head back to Oceana and down the jet for overstress. And wonder if I should call a chiropractor. Doc had no problem – he was set and ready for such a maneuver, while I, even though sorta-kind more-or-less knowing what was coming, still had to look over for that damn switch.

10g is 10g no matter how you slice it and it immediately gets all your attention, but there is no way that the airplane or your bod will sustain that kind of acceleration for any appreciable length of time. (i.e. for all practical purposes, it’s an instantaneous thing.) An instananeous 10g pull on the aircraft can create some problems for the airframe (microscopic cracks, metal fatigue, etc) but the humans inside the machine couldn’t possibly hold consciousness and body in one piece for a sustained 10g’s even if wearing three g-suits (the inflatable bladders around our lower torso that inflate to help push blood back into the all-important brain-housing-unit).

The ability for the aircraft to sustain g-force is limited to speed and energy which relates directly to how much power the engine(s) have. In this particular case, the 10g’s lasted a few, perhaps 3-5 seconds as Doc snapped the nose around and pulled like crazy. When that happened, we bleed airspeed, got slower, and the “g” eased off as the aircraft assumed its new position in space. Didn’t make my back/neck/head feel any better though.

Anyhow, as I recall we didn’t get into too much trouble when we got back (overstresses are expected sometimes in this training regime – the Tomcat allowable max-g was only 6.5, so 10 was more than a tad outside the envelope – note: the manufacturer’s, Grumman, advertised “g” limit on the aircraft was higher than 6.5, but the Navy dropped it to this lower limit to extend service life on a rather pricy investment), but we did get told that if we did it again, the next flight would be without g-suits.

Incidentally, Doc and I ended up at the end of that particular FFARP program tied with 2 other aircrew on the east coast with the best kill-ratio in the business that year – a perfect 23-0 record over the 2 week “war”.

That and $2.75 gets me a cappuccino at Starbucks

My great grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Head Raddall,  is buried in France, killed in action on 9 August, 1918 while serving with the 8th Bn, Manitoba Regiment. 40 years old.

Born in Farnborough, Hampshire 9th December 1876. Enlisted Valcaster, Quebec, Canada, 22nd September 1914.  Husband of Ellen Raddall of 71 Duncan Avenue, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Buried Manitoba Cemetery, Caix, Somme, France. Grave reference A.4.

Prior to enlisting he had served 21 years in the Imperial Army and 2 years in the Permanent Force (Canada). He served for several years at the School of Musketry, Hythe, Kent .  My great grandmother lived in Halifax at the time, along with my grandmother and great aunts and uncle, thus beginning our ties to Nova Scotia.

War Memorial, Ottawa

Honor Guard, Ottawa.

Detail of the memorial.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Head Raddall, D.S.O.

The All Powerful Lord of our Existence on an aircraft carrier is the Air Boss, more succinctly known as simply “Boss”. The flight deck belongs to him, as do all airwing aircraft within 25 miles of the ship.

Kennedy Air Boss Cdr Larry “Bulldog Francisco

His perch is atop the island, the very tip-top enclosure known as “Pri Fly”, or Primary Flight Control. From there he dispenses his power and effect, sometimes in dulcet tones designed to calm a frazzled young naval aviator wrestling with snakes in his cockpit (go read Lex’s “Rhythms” for a superb description of this), and sometimes in a voice that, quite literally, evokes images of God’s Wrath.

Frank Harvey, in his excellent 1968 book Air War – Vietnam (very likely out of print, but a great read if you can find it) has a definitive description of what the Air Boss can do:

The most fearful accident I have ever seen on a flight deck…happened on the way down from Japan to Subic Bay. An F-4, with a 600-gallon auxiliary fuel tank mounted on its centerline, was being launched from the port waist cat. It was a hot day and the plane was grossed out to the max, so it was necessary to go to full afterburners during the holdback. The burners were roaring and belching flames when the big F-4 broke her sheer link and leaped down the deck. But the massive G-loads of the catapult were too much for the teardrop tank, and it came apart like wet paper, spewing raw jet fuel over men on the deck and in the catwalk. Some were drenched. A fraction of a second later the blazing afterburner torched the fuel and the whole forward part of the deck was a rolling cloud of fire. Out of it raced human torches, screaming in agony. The whole sequence occurred – from everything normal to a sickening horror in about a tenth of a second.

[Air Boss] Comdr. Ken Enny earned a full years pay in the next 10 seconds. Men were screaming at him over the phones to pull the chain and flood the place with seawater, lest the whole carrier turn into a torch. At the same time , an A-4 Skyhawk was sitting on the adjacent catapult, completely enveloped in fire, engine pulling full power, with the pilot not knowing if he’d be launched any second.

But Ken Enny didn’t panic and pour tons of saltwater on the fire, since the fuel was going to burn out very quickly by itself anyway. Besides, the seawater could have done so much harm to the catapult mechanisms as it poured down the groove to the insides of the ship that the waist cat would have been out of commission for weeks. So Enny sat tight. Then he picked up his mike and began giving his orders – calm, deliberate, positive.

He told the A-4 pilot to hold full power lest he be accidentally fired off the cat in the excitement. He told the below-decks crew to secure all launches immediately. He called Damage Control and Sick Bay and told them to move in on the double. Because he was cool and deliberate, he did not make any mistakes and he got his messages fast and ungarbled. What might have turned into a real nightmare was stopcocked in a few minutes. Thirty-two men were burned, four critically, but nobody was killed.

Frank Harvey, Air War – Vietnam, Bantam Books, 1968

Anyhow, it came to be one fine morning onboard USS DWIGHT D EISENHOWER that the catapult crew was getting ready for a scheduled launch. SOP (Standard Operating Procedures, for you landlubbers) dictate specific times to man up your work/watch stations prior to a launch, and all members of the V-2 (Catapult and Arresting Gear) were in place – except one.

Getting ready for a launch evolution is an exercise in watching a visual jigsaw puzzle coming together. Aircraft are taxing up to catapults, weight boards are being shown by deck crew and rogered by aircrew. Holdback units (that hold the aircraft in place as they go to full power while hooked up to the catapult) as are being readied and inspected, trouble shooters are eyeballing their aircraft, ordnancemen are getting ready to arm weapons, catapult crews are inspecting the cat tracks and making sure there is no loose gear about the deck, the ship is starting to make a big turn into the wind to help provide the “lift” needed to “slip the surly bonds of earth”.

Now, aircraft carrier catapults, for the time being (check back to the Instapinch in about 10 years and we can talk about electromagnetic catapults) live on steam. Hot steam. High pressure steam. As in 520 pounds per square inch of steam pressure. Depending on what else may be going on in the ship at the time, that steam pressure may not quite be at the requisite 520 PSI for launch. Happens sometimes – fire drills may be drawing off pressure, some other evolution may be tapping into the steam network, whatever. When that happens, the call to the Boss is usually “Waitin’ on steam Boss!” to let him know we’re all set but waiting on the snipes (engineers) in the dark bowels of the ship to get us our steam.

So, to set up the finale to this over-long post, there are aircraft hooked up to the catapult, weight boards are rogered,the  aircrew are ready, the ship has turned into the wind, the amber “5 min to go” light is almost turning green, and the catapult crew on the number 1 cat is…..short one man.

The Boss up in the tower usually gives us a quick phone call or radio call just prior to going green, asking if all is set.

Frantic phone calls down to the V-2 office – “#$%^!!! GET that sonuva@#$^% up here right now!!!” was the best that could be done at the moment. Grasping at ANYTHING that could gain a few extra moments, and like true naval aviators, never wanting to look bad in a dire situation, the call went out to the Boss:

“Ummm…we’re….ahhh…waitin’ on steam, Boss!”

At that moment, Petty Officer *#$%, the missing catapult launch petty officer, pops up in the catwalk, eyes as big as soup plates behind his goggles, and takes off like the proverbial scalded rabbit across the deck to his watchstation.

In the hectic, organized chaos that is an aircraft carrier flight deck seconds away from a launch, it was hoped that he’d make it across the deck unnoticed and all would be well.

But over the radio came this call, from the Boss:

“Hey Bow! I think I see your steam, running across the deck!”

Who said God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

SO, for you nostalgia freaks out there, *here* is the placard up in PRIFLY that is used for that little litany.  Chant to your heart’s content!

Or this 90,000 ton type?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Billboard, north side of I-295 in downtown DC, almost withing spittin’ distance of the Capital building.