“What!?” He asks looking over from his seat.
“I said you have the aircraft. Take us to Dobbins. You are the pilot-in-command for this hop. I’m just your co-pilot so tell me what you want done,” I say answering his incredulous question.
We start rolling forward and out to the taxiway. I can tell he is nervous by the way he corrects with sharp, jerky motions.
“Easy and relax. Small corrections and anticipate,” I say in response to his control inputs.
He nods and I notice the corrections become much more fluid. Pulling up to the runway, he stops the aircraft and looks out checking for anything coming in. Pushing the throttles up, we start rolling and turn to align with the centerline. The engines roar louder as the throttles are advanced and we pick up speed. Robert’s corrections are right on as we rotate; first the nose wheel lifts off followed a short moment later by the mains. He goes through the clean-up and levels off quickly. I see his head moving side to side as he tries to pick up Dobbins and the runway. I have it in sight already but wait to say anything wanting him to be in complete control.
“Oh,” I hear him say to himself. Evidently he has found the runway.
“Hard to find sometimes aren’t they?” I ask knowing exactly what he is going through and feeling.
“Yeah,” he responds. His mind is on a thousand things and having a conversation is not on the top of his list.
He begins going through the checks and I can tell he is a little behind the aircraft, trying to maneuver for final, get the checks done, and get the aircraft configured for landing. This is evidenced by the fact that the runway is growing larger in our screen yet we are not close to being configured to land. I can tell he wants to begin descending but we are not ready for it. He does edge down a little lower though; more a subconscious action than from any conscious decision, knowing we need to descend in order to land. He gets further behind and frustrated as he tries to speed things up to get configured but only manages to actually slow down the process by his anxiousness.
The runway disappears under our nose and he looks to the side at me. I do not say a thing as I want him to figure this out and come up with a solution on his own. It’s not like I will let us get into an unsafe situation. I let that happen before and I will not do that again. The memory surfaces of one time I let a student go too far. We were doing a high angle, slow speed maneuver and I allowed the student to get too slow before reacting. The jet flipped over on its back and began spinning toward the ground. My shoulder harness did not latch and keep me in my seat as it should. I found myself pinned against the top of the canopy with the world spinning below me through the canopy’s top. The blue sky that was supposed to be seen through the top of the canopy was now on the wrong side of the aircraft. The student panicked and let go of the stick. That was the absolute worst thing he could have done. I looked down at the floorboard, which was now up, and noticed the control stick free-floating. Looking back outside, the world began to spin faster. We were now in an accelerated, inverted spin; a completely unrecoverable situation in that aircraft.
We started the maneuver at 25,000 feet and moments later, looking at the altimeter, I saw it rapidly wind through 10,000 feet. We were going down like a brick. 10,000 feet was the minimum safe altitude for bailout for that type of ejection seat in an uncontrolled maneuver and I began to issue the command to bailout. As the first word escaped my mouth, I realized there was no way I would make it out being pinned against the canopy. I would be obliterated with the canopy blowing off and then the seat smacking up against me at close to 35G’s. I thought about issuing the command anyway to let the student escape, but I also instantly realized that, with the way we were going down, the canopy wouldn’t clear the aircraft correctly. He would just end up smacking into it at a high rate of speed and at an awkward angle. I continued to look at the world below me spinning and coming up fast. I remember there was not a hint of fear inside but just trying to reason through the situation. Not a thought went through my mind of hitting the ground; and we would hit hard.
I reached down and hooked my ankle around the mid part of the control stick and pulled it sharply back with my leg. The aircraft immediately righted itself, slamming me hard down into my seat. Not only that, but we also had flying airspeed. And, we were in level flight. At 2,000 feet. Yeah, WTF right!? I rammed the throttles into afterburner and stood the aircraft on its tail pointing skyward. It was then that I noticed the radios squawking loudly in my ear from the control center monitoring our practice area, telling me that I was off altitude.
“Seriously, Captain,” they would say. “What maneuvering and inputs did you use to recover? In what order and steps?”
See, like I said, this was supposed to be a completely unrecoverable situation.
“I told you, I hooked my heel around the stick and pulled it back,” I kept replying. Yeah, something was looking out for me that day and, yeah, I will never allow myself to go too far again.
The runway continues to pass by below us. Robert carries on through the checklist but more hesitantly.
“What do I do?” He finally asks.
“I don’t know. I’m just along for the ride,” I respond.
There is a slight hesitation, partly from frustration and partly from trying to come up with a plan. The aircraft begins a shallow right, climbing turn.
“I think I’ll just enter a downwind and re-enter the final from there,” he says in a questioning voice.
“Whatever you think,” I say but inside feeling very proud as that is the right solution.
Or, the most right. There were several actions that would have been correct. As I always told my students, make a decision and take an action. It does not matter what the action is because at least you are taking one instead of plowing along doing nothing. That is the only real, wrong thing to do - nothing. We configure for landing and he brings us around, setting it down firmly but not one of the worst I have ever experienced. Some of those worst being my own.
“Never feel trapped into having to make it in on the first try, or the second for that matter, or forcing it. It’s not a one shot and over deal. If you don’t like the setup, take it around and set up for another. At least you’ll be alive to try again,” I say as he takes the props out of reverse thrust and we roll out on the runway.
I see him nod his response out of the corner of my eye, not answering verbally and concentrating on keeping the aircraft on the runway. I tell him to park over where we were yesterday. We taxi over to the same location and shut down.
“What about getting fuel? I didn’t find any fuel trucks yesterday.” Robert asks.
“We’ll have to manually pump it out of the other aircraft here,” I say looking over at the other C-130’s parked next to us.
“Bri, will you go over and see how much fuel is in the 130 next to us? Take Red Team and have the aircraft cleared before you go in. The panel should be the same as this one,” I ask rising from my seat.
“Sure, Dad,” she says.
“Nic, will you stay here and teach Michelle the nav panel?” I ask.
“You betcha,” she answers.
We all stroll out onto the tarmac, the outside better than staying in the oven that is the cargo compartment. Mike follows at my heels and sits when I stop. I notify Lynn of our intentions and have her detail soldiers to get the manual pump and hoses from its storage place. The 130 is designed to be self-sufficient in any environment and operational in every contingent imaginable. There are missions that take it to places where there are not electric pumps or fuel depots so it has to be able to pump fuel from any source.
“Won’t that take a while?” Lynn asks as I finish explaining.
“Yeah, but it will take longer getting home if we run out of fuel part way,” I say, still tired from the morning’s events.
I have Robert climb on top of the aircraft through the overhead hatch and out onto the wing. There are over the wing fuel caps and we will be refueling through those; stretching the hose between the aircraft and operating the hand pump to transfer. It is a lengthy process but I do not see any alternative. It will also throw our time schedule off, like what has not done that as yet, but I would rather not use civilian fuel if I can avoid it.
Bri comes back and reports that the aircraft parked next to us is almost full. I send her inside our aircraft to operate the fuel panel. McCafferty is on the wing of the other aircraft to open the over-wing caps there and operate the hose on that end. When all is in place, we start the lengthy process of transferring fuel with soldiers taking turns at the manual pump. The heat builds throughout the day, baking us all as we sit under the shade of
