Sometimes things don’t go quite as expected at work…
You know, little things like being out of coffee, the AC dying, the copier breaking at a critical time, the boss on a roll, minor little problems like that…
In the military however, when things go sideways, they can go in really ‘interesting’ directions!!!
Take off in perfectly good weather, get told to come back ASAP, and land in something like THIS…
This was in 2003, actually predicted by the weather guessers, and it literally shut air and most other operations down for a couple of days… Similar thing happened in GWI, with us racing a dust storm to land in Jedah…
And then there are the true Oh CRAP moments…
And the rest of the story is HERE.
What ever else it may be, life in the military is usually hours upon hours of boredom and moments of sheer terror…
h/t Stretch
“O Crap Moments”: Section III (Emergency Procedures) of the USAF Flight Manuals were written in blood. Since you could not predict what type of emergencies could occur on an airplane, each one ended up being unique. If you lived, that was “your” emergency procedure, and whatever you did to recover or land the airplane was yours to brag about. If you didn’t survive, some other poor schlub had to determine what “went sideways” and figure out how to compensate when it did it again.
Looks like whoever stacked that deck of cards forgot The Man, who slipped all the aces in the right places!
WN- Yep, Section 5 in NATOPS… You DID NOT want to be a featured player in it…
xS3- That he did!!! The odds of Gallagher’s survival are so outrageous you can’t even calculate them…
I have seen this before but not in this much detail. Very interesting and so damn luck (with a little of God’s hand involved, too). I cannot imagine the force of the wind. I bet he tried to poop and kept passing the same one five or six times. Strong wind.
That is some hair-ball event – I’m glad he survived that wild triple e-ticket ride.
Learned something new today. Didn’t know you can have a sandstorm at sea.
That was a nice rabbit hole to visit this evening. Thank you from the distraction from my troubled day!
CP- Yep!!!
NC- Oh yeah, the A-6 was the E-ticket ride through the Cascades, but this??? O.M.G.
WSF- Oh yeah, they CAN and do cross water, including the Med! We had a small one in Sicily when I was there in 87.
Michael- Glad you enjoyed it!
I sure can’t complain about my week at work after something like that – may we never have any such “exciting” times in our future!
True Dat Wing!!!
With those engines sucking in sand, all I can think of is how they would be getting weaker and weaker by the minute.
They may be able to pass lots of FOD, but.
@Jon Spencer: The amount of FOD passing through an engine is directly proportional to the size of the bricks the pilot is passing!
The pilot may have won the medal, but his RIO was the stud who returned to flight duty, 6 months later, after that ride. Helluva sailor.
Jon- Excellent point, LOTS of engine changes in the desert!!!
Scott- THat too! LOL
Matt- Yep, truly interesting guy! And he never gave up, got back in the cockpit and went on down the road!!!