Dealing with adversity
By lex, on February 28th, 2007
The story of the grounded Raptors in Hawaii reminds me of one of the first TRANSPAC tales I ever heard. I was an ensign, or maybe a JG in Meridian training in TA-4J’s, and one of the Marine IP’s started talking about a WESTPAC pump his squadron had been on.
It seems that eight Yuma-based A-4F’s were on the way to the P.I., herded by a USAF KC-10 – and unlike the high-tech F-22, they didn’t have to worry about navigation systems that might fail. For the A-4′s, it was TACAN and NDB only, neither of which was worth a damn more than 200 miles or so from a land station.
Anyway, about half-way between California and Hawaii, the site of their first lay-over. One of the guys was in the basket, replenishing his go-juice – A-4′s didn’t carry much gas, so it was pretty much a constant cycling through the tanker to try and maintain options if something should go wrong aboard the tanker itself. Fatigued, I guess, from all of that form flying and refueling in the cramped environment of a Skyhawk cockpit, he hit basket with too much closure and a little off-center, the result being that the basket ripped off the hose. The still-pressurized fuel hose dumped JP-5 straight down his intake causing the (only) motor to cough and finally quit.