My spine ached just reading about this attempt at survival!
Jeff
Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/13/2002 | Into the night
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3036280.htm
Posted on Sat, Apr. 13, 2002
Into the night
High over the Indian Ocean, the airmen knew they had to get out of their B-1 bomber. What they didn't know was whether they'd survive the escape.
By Steve Goldstein
The world on the night of Dec. 12, 2001, was a dangerous place. Violence surged in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians. In the United States, the anthrax threat lingered as spores used in the attacks were found to match anthrax produced by U.S. Army scientists in the early 1990s. The day before, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, became the first person tied to the Sept. 11 attacks to be indicted.
In eastern Afghanistan, the siege of the Tora Bora mountain-cave complex had reached a critical stage. Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces were being pounded by American B-1 bombers based 2,500 miles away on Diego Garcia, a 17-square-mile British-owned atoll of coral and sand in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
For the aviators based on Diego, this evening resembled so many others over the previous two months of Operation Enduring Freedom. The often-capricious weather was no better, but no worse, than usual, with heavy clouds and a few scattered thundershowers making for a dark night.
Shortly before 10 p.m., signals received by Diego's control tower and the destroyer USS Russell, patrolling off the coast of the island, gave fear a new shape in the war on terror.
A B-1 was going down.
About an hour earlier, Capt. William "Stainless" Steele and three crew members had taken off from Diego in a B-1 bound for the Afghan theater. The sleek, massive B-1 - roughly two-thirds the length of a 747 jumbo jet - can fly 4,000 miles with a full payload without refueling and is the only supersonic bomber in the U.S. inventory. One B-1 can carry more than eighty 500-pound bombs, a load that would otherwise require a squadron of fighters. It has been the workhorse of the Afghan campaign.
But a troubled workhorse: From its introduction in 1985 through 1998, six of the $280 million aircraft had crashed, making it far more accident-prone than the B-52, which it was built to replace. The pilots call the plane the Electric Jet, because it depends so heavily on complex electrical systems, resulting in a thin margin of error when those systems fail.
The four men in the Dec. 12 crew, part of a squadron of 60 aviators at Diego, were flying their first mission together. "Rooster," the copilot, 31, was out of Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, as was Allen "Lost" Griffis, 30, the defensive-systems officer, charged with watching for enemy radar "painting" the B-1, and with controlling electronic countermeasures. The two were acquainted.
The offensive-systems officer, who aims the bombs, was John "Iroc" Proietti, 27, originally from Englewood, N.J., and, like Stainless, out of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, where they knew each other casually.
Stainless was one of the first pilots checked out in the B-1, back in 1986. His crew, lean and muscled and trained and retrained to leave nothing to chance, prided themselves on being interchangeable parts, able to work with any other crew on the jet. Even though they told everyone it was just a job, they exuded a lot of that Tom Cruise/Top Gun confidence that came with flying a hot, sexy bomber.
They were a new crew, but it hardly mattered. "Anytime you fly over badguyland, it could be your last flight," Lost said, "so you bond quickly."
Leaving about 9 p.m., they expected to be over their target in about four hours, with midair refueling from a KC-10 tanker on the way back.
But about 15 minutes after takeoff, about 100 miles north of Diego as the jet approached its cruising speed of 600 miles per hour, Stainless noticed a glitch in the plane's onboard systems. Moments later, other systems failed. Faced with multiplying malfunctions, Stainless turned the B-1 back to Diego and radioed that they would attempt an emergency landing.
In less than five minutes, 60 miles from the airfield, Plan A was going to hell.
Fifteen thousand feet above the Indian Ocean on a moonless night, Stainless and Rooster were finding it nearly impossible to control the shuddering, diving plane with its payload of bombs. They went through every procedure to keep the B-1 flying. In a few short minutes the situation went from bad to catastrophic.
Stainless declared an emergency; landing was no longer an option. The choice was to get out or ride it into the ocean.
Ejecting from a B-1 is never an easy choice. "One of those things we don't like to think about," Rooster would say. In the six previous B-1 crashes, only 15 of the 26 crewmen who ejected survived. And never before had a B-1 crew bailed out over water - or in wartime conditions.
The ejection system - the best the Air Force has, one used in other jets as well - is routinely described by ejectees as the most violent thing they have ever experienced. Aviators are shot from the cockpit by rockets, with a G force that punishes them with 14 times their body weight.
Fourteen G's is enough to compress the human spine by one inch. Every time an aviator "punches out," he gets shorter. After two, or at most three, ejections, an aviator is grounded forever. The compression can cause bladder malfunctions and other internal injuries. One ejection too many - even if the system works perfectly - can result in death from a ruptured organ.
At subsonic speeds, the windblast on exiting the plane is itself enough to cause serious injury or death. Only one aviator is known to have survived ejection at supersonic speeds. In 1995, traveling at 780 miles per hour - more than 1,100 feet per second - Air Force Capt. Brian Udell punched out of his plummeting F-15 off the coast of North Carolina and was severely mangled - his clothes shredded, his right knee and left arm dislocated, his left ankle broken, ribs cracked, teeth chipped, and all the blood vessels in his face broken. His copilot died.
"Speed is life when you're flying a plane," Udell has reflected, "but not when you're trying to get out of one."
So Stainless' decision - three miles above the ocean - was a last resort. Each crew member knew what he would be facing. Or at least thought he knew.
The cockpit of a B-1 feels cramped, like a cave. Rooster sat to the right of Stainless. Iroc and Lost were eight feet behind them, separated by a partition. With substantial cabin noise, they communicated by radio headsets. In their flight suits, helmets, oxygen masks and parachute harnesses, with 9mm pistols and maybe a spare emergency flare tucked into the small of the back, the aviators looked like Michelin men. Tension made the tight quarters feel even closer.
As the B-1 bucked and dived, the four agreed to exit by pulling their own levers, rather than engaging an automatic sequence. The manual method allows better control but requires exquisite timing. Stainless reviewed the ejection sequence with the crew. Everyone was silently thankful for the "egress" training that B-1 aviators must take twice a year.
The rear seats exit first; otherwise, the explosive blast from the front seats would scorch the two in back. The cockpit of the B-1 contains hundreds of explosive charges to blow four hatches, eject the crew, and deploy parachutes.
Stainless radioed to the base that they were ejecting; then came the "air dump": controlled depressurization of the cabin, which the crew felt as a small explosion. Next, each man put his hand through the yellow metal D-ring alongside his knee. The ejection handles have to be pulled with 45 pounds of pressure - far more than you'd need to start a pull-cord lawnmower - so the chance of dislodging it accidentally is remote.
Pulling the handle is the last voluntary act. From then on, you're just along for the ride.
When a flier pulls the handle, an explosive called the shielded mild detonating cord blows off the hatch above him. Then his seat drops and slides back onto a set of guide rails. In a fraction of a second, an explosive charge blasts the 140-pound seat and its occupant along the rails and roughly 200 feet into the air. "Going up the rails" is aviator-speak for the ride.
As each man pulled his D-ring, his life now depended on his seat. Known as the ACES II, for Advanced Concept Ejection Seat, it was his ticket out of harm's way - but it could also kill him.
The ACES II vaguely resembles a commercial airline seat - about 50 inches high and 26 inches wide - but it is more akin to a cannon.
The $250,000 seat, made by Goodrich Corp., replaced the Martin-Baker seat beginning in the late 1970s. "Meet your maker in a Martin-Baker" was a common aviator's refrain. The ACES II has a far better success rate.
Aviators are taught to sit ramrod straight, with their heads back against the seat, to avoid serious spinal or neck injuries. Arm and leg restraints automatically deploy; if you don't have your arms and legs tucked in when you go up the rails, you may leave a limb behind.
The order of escape was this: First Iroc would pull his handle, followed at two-second intervals by Lost, Rooster and Stainless.
When Lost's turn came and he gripped the handle, he could feel his wedding ring digging into his left hand. A week before the mission - against regulations - he'd put the ring on. He yanked the handle.
In front, Rooster counted to two after he heard Lost go up, and tugged the D-ring flush with his palm. There was smoke in the cockpit and a gunpowder smell. His life spooled before his eyes. He was scared, knowing the consequences of a bad ejection. He sat upright and pressed his head back. After his hatch blew off, he could feel the heat from Lost's seat leaving the aircraft. Even with his eyes closed he saw a bright flash.
When the rocket engine shot him into the air, he was mashed back into his seat as if on an accelerating roller coaster.
Jeff
Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/13/2002 | Into the night
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3036280.htm
Posted on Sat, Apr. 13, 2002
Into the night
High over the Indian Ocean, the airmen knew they had to get out of their B-1 bomber. What they didn't know was whether they'd survive the escape.
By Steve Goldstein
The world on the night of Dec. 12, 2001, was a dangerous place. Violence surged in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians. In the United States, the anthrax threat lingered as spores used in the attacks were found to match anthrax produced by U.S. Army scientists in the early 1990s. The day before, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, became the first person tied to the Sept. 11 attacks to be indicted.
In eastern Afghanistan, the siege of the Tora Bora mountain-cave complex had reached a critical stage. Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces were being pounded by American B-1 bombers based 2,500 miles away on Diego Garcia, a 17-square-mile British-owned atoll of coral and sand in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
For the aviators based on Diego, this evening resembled so many others over the previous two months of Operation Enduring Freedom. The often-capricious weather was no better, but no worse, than usual, with heavy clouds and a few scattered thundershowers making for a dark night.
Shortly before 10 p.m., signals received by Diego's control tower and the destroyer USS Russell, patrolling off the coast of the island, gave fear a new shape in the war on terror.
A B-1 was going down.
About an hour earlier, Capt. William "Stainless" Steele and three crew members had taken off from Diego in a B-1 bound for the Afghan theater. The sleek, massive B-1 - roughly two-thirds the length of a 747 jumbo jet - can fly 4,000 miles with a full payload without refueling and is the only supersonic bomber in the U.S. inventory. One B-1 can carry more than eighty 500-pound bombs, a load that would otherwise require a squadron of fighters. It has been the workhorse of the Afghan campaign.
But a troubled workhorse: From its introduction in 1985 through 1998, six of the $280 million aircraft had crashed, making it far more accident-prone than the B-52, which it was built to replace. The pilots call the plane the Electric Jet, because it depends so heavily on complex electrical systems, resulting in a thin margin of error when those systems fail.
The four men in the Dec. 12 crew, part of a squadron of 60 aviators at Diego, were flying their first mission together. "Rooster," the copilot, 31, was out of Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, as was Allen "Lost" Griffis, 30, the defensive-systems officer, charged with watching for enemy radar "painting" the B-1, and with controlling electronic countermeasures. The two were acquainted.
The offensive-systems officer, who aims the bombs, was John "Iroc" Proietti, 27, originally from Englewood, N.J., and, like Stainless, out of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, where they knew each other casually.
Stainless was one of the first pilots checked out in the B-1, back in 1986. His crew, lean and muscled and trained and retrained to leave nothing to chance, prided themselves on being interchangeable parts, able to work with any other crew on the jet. Even though they told everyone it was just a job, they exuded a lot of that Tom Cruise/Top Gun confidence that came with flying a hot, sexy bomber.
They were a new crew, but it hardly mattered. "Anytime you fly over badguyland, it could be your last flight," Lost said, "so you bond quickly."
Leaving about 9 p.m., they expected to be over their target in about four hours, with midair refueling from a KC-10 tanker on the way back.
But about 15 minutes after takeoff, about 100 miles north of Diego as the jet approached its cruising speed of 600 miles per hour, Stainless noticed a glitch in the plane's onboard systems. Moments later, other systems failed. Faced with multiplying malfunctions, Stainless turned the B-1 back to Diego and radioed that they would attempt an emergency landing.
In less than five minutes, 60 miles from the airfield, Plan A was going to hell.
Fifteen thousand feet above the Indian Ocean on a moonless night, Stainless and Rooster were finding it nearly impossible to control the shuddering, diving plane with its payload of bombs. They went through every procedure to keep the B-1 flying. In a few short minutes the situation went from bad to catastrophic.
Stainless declared an emergency; landing was no longer an option. The choice was to get out or ride it into the ocean.
Ejecting from a B-1 is never an easy choice. "One of those things we don't like to think about," Rooster would say. In the six previous B-1 crashes, only 15 of the 26 crewmen who ejected survived. And never before had a B-1 crew bailed out over water - or in wartime conditions.
The ejection system - the best the Air Force has, one used in other jets as well - is routinely described by ejectees as the most violent thing they have ever experienced. Aviators are shot from the cockpit by rockets, with a G force that punishes them with 14 times their body weight.
Fourteen G's is enough to compress the human spine by one inch. Every time an aviator "punches out," he gets shorter. After two, or at most three, ejections, an aviator is grounded forever. The compression can cause bladder malfunctions and other internal injuries. One ejection too many - even if the system works perfectly - can result in death from a ruptured organ.
At subsonic speeds, the windblast on exiting the plane is itself enough to cause serious injury or death. Only one aviator is known to have survived ejection at supersonic speeds. In 1995, traveling at 780 miles per hour - more than 1,100 feet per second - Air Force Capt. Brian Udell punched out of his plummeting F-15 off the coast of North Carolina and was severely mangled - his clothes shredded, his right knee and left arm dislocated, his left ankle broken, ribs cracked, teeth chipped, and all the blood vessels in his face broken. His copilot died.
"Speed is life when you're flying a plane," Udell has reflected, "but not when you're trying to get out of one."
So Stainless' decision - three miles above the ocean - was a last resort. Each crew member knew what he would be facing. Or at least thought he knew.
The cockpit of a B-1 feels cramped, like a cave. Rooster sat to the right of Stainless. Iroc and Lost were eight feet behind them, separated by a partition. With substantial cabin noise, they communicated by radio headsets. In their flight suits, helmets, oxygen masks and parachute harnesses, with 9mm pistols and maybe a spare emergency flare tucked into the small of the back, the aviators looked like Michelin men. Tension made the tight quarters feel even closer.
As the B-1 bucked and dived, the four agreed to exit by pulling their own levers, rather than engaging an automatic sequence. The manual method allows better control but requires exquisite timing. Stainless reviewed the ejection sequence with the crew. Everyone was silently thankful for the "egress" training that B-1 aviators must take twice a year.
The rear seats exit first; otherwise, the explosive blast from the front seats would scorch the two in back. The cockpit of the B-1 contains hundreds of explosive charges to blow four hatches, eject the crew, and deploy parachutes.
Stainless radioed to the base that they were ejecting; then came the "air dump": controlled depressurization of the cabin, which the crew felt as a small explosion. Next, each man put his hand through the yellow metal D-ring alongside his knee. The ejection handles have to be pulled with 45 pounds of pressure - far more than you'd need to start a pull-cord lawnmower - so the chance of dislodging it accidentally is remote.
Pulling the handle is the last voluntary act. From then on, you're just along for the ride.
When a flier pulls the handle, an explosive called the shielded mild detonating cord blows off the hatch above him. Then his seat drops and slides back onto a set of guide rails. In a fraction of a second, an explosive charge blasts the 140-pound seat and its occupant along the rails and roughly 200 feet into the air. "Going up the rails" is aviator-speak for the ride.
As each man pulled his D-ring, his life now depended on his seat. Known as the ACES II, for Advanced Concept Ejection Seat, it was his ticket out of harm's way - but it could also kill him.
The ACES II vaguely resembles a commercial airline seat - about 50 inches high and 26 inches wide - but it is more akin to a cannon.
The $250,000 seat, made by Goodrich Corp., replaced the Martin-Baker seat beginning in the late 1970s. "Meet your maker in a Martin-Baker" was a common aviator's refrain. The ACES II has a far better success rate.
Aviators are taught to sit ramrod straight, with their heads back against the seat, to avoid serious spinal or neck injuries. Arm and leg restraints automatically deploy; if you don't have your arms and legs tucked in when you go up the rails, you may leave a limb behind.
The order of escape was this: First Iroc would pull his handle, followed at two-second intervals by Lost, Rooster and Stainless.
When Lost's turn came and he gripped the handle, he could feel his wedding ring digging into his left hand. A week before the mission - against regulations - he'd put the ring on. He yanked the handle.
In front, Rooster counted to two after he heard Lost go up, and tugged the D-ring flush with his palm. There was smoke in the cockpit and a gunpowder smell. His life spooled before his eyes. He was scared, knowing the consequences of a bad ejection. He sat upright and pressed his head back. After his hatch blew off, he could feel the heat from Lost's seat leaving the aircraft. Even with his eyes closed he saw a bright flash.
When the rocket engine shot him into the air, he was mashed back into his seat as if on an accelerating roller coaster.
