The Real Truth About Kara Hultgreen's F-14 Tomcat Mishap

There is a saying in naval aviation natos is written in blood natos is an acronym for standardization of operating procedures and naval air training, so when you talk about procedures in bold on any aircraft, most of the emergencies in bold are the ones that you have to memorize. created or modified based on a

mishap

The first

mishap

that caused the F-14 Natops to be modified in terms of single-engine procedures was a failure of the single-engine VF-84 catapult aboard the USS Nimitz. We have our F14 training aids on. the jack just right so that the airplane is in the kneeling position with the flaps down.

We've gone over how this works in terms of chronology in the aircraft carrier operations episode of the show, so during the cat firing of the F-14a, the plane experiences a right engine compressor shutdown shutting down the cat the pilot mishandles the situation and your first reaction is to raise the nose with the stern stick with no rudder there are no other controls except half stick again your first thought is that I have to get away from the water so first move a single engine so what? What happens is the plane spins into the bat engine, his next move was to counter it with the left stick, which is exactly the wrong move in a situation and the plane spins and the guys hit over here and didn't survive the ejection from As a result, the procedures were created as you can see here, the ones with an asterisk are in bold, those are the ones that the aircrew must memorize both the pilots and the rivers, so let's go over them first, set a pitch attitude of 10 degrees. at the waterline and this is important, a maximum angle of attack of 14 units, in addition to looking at the horizon and where the nose is on the vertical horizon, you must maintain the angle of attack in your scan, it cannot be more than 14 units, next is the rudder. rudder first opposite roll and yaw complemented by stick okay, that's the important priority rudder complemented that's the verb with stick both throttles not full power but as necessary for a positive rate of climb, raise gear, jettison if necessary necessary, so if you don't maintain a positive position Qualify by the time you get to step five, jettison the tanks and any ordinance you have on board, so those are the single engine failure field catapult launch procedures in 1994 , a nugget pilot was doing an approach case one day to the USS Abraham Lincoln. her name was

kara

holtgreen there is no way to talk about this mishap without dealing with the 800 pound gorilla in the room that is this era of female integration so i was lucky enough to fly the cat from february 1984 to april 1998 and in the process, I basically dealt with every naval aviator who flew the plane when it was a nugget.

I had the older people who were the ones who made the transition from f4 f8, including the vigi to the

tomcat

, until the

tomcat

became a precision strike warfare platform. with digital flight controls and all the other things that the airplane had along the way until it was retired in 2006 2007, so I got to experience all of that and I feel very fortunate to have served when I did, but one of the other things I served in through female integration into squadrons deployed on aircraft carriers and empirically, equality and equal opportunity is the right idea. The only thing I would say about it is that the plane doesn't care what gender you are now, the first cadre were pioneers and I know several of them. who were part of that and should be commended for what they did in terms of what it would take to be among the first female naval aviators to meet the Tomcat maritime squadrons.

The other thing, as I said before about the F-14. It's a very difficult airplane to land, especially the A with the Pratt Whitney engine and pre-digital flight control systems, and that's why in any flight school class, not only would only the best get airplanes, but only the best They would fly. I started buying F-14s because everyone who used wings knew that the F-14 was harder to land on the ship than a Hornet or an A7 or an S3, whatever was in inventory at the time. There is a 60 minute episode that is on YouTube. I recommend it if you haven't seen it before, um, and in that, a guy named Pepper Burns is kind of a witness for those who oppose how gender integration was handled and Tom Sabiak, who I knew when he was an instructor first level.

The CEO of the rag at the time is caught in the middle and I think he does a good job of explaining what the pressures were on him to meet a quota and how he tried not to simplify the standards, admiral arthur. who was the deputy chief of naval operations at the time, a great fighter pilot flew A4s in Vietnam, he also talks in cryptic terms about what the dynamics of naval aviation were at the time, so if you look now, all these years later , if you go to the squad. If you have the opportunity to get on board a ship, you will see that gender integration has been a success.

It's also true for submariners, another warfare specialist that had no women about 10 years ago, however, along the way there were some obstacles to navigate. and people like cara holtgreen and my friend carrie lorenz had to lift heavy things and face some pressures that other aviators in those squadrons didn't, at the same time, the data doesn't lie in terms of pilot performance, every landing on the ship is graded for your entire career, so it's a rigorous standard that is unforgiving based on the numbers that carol holtgreen was on the watch list in terms of her ability to land the ship, that's not a political opinion, that's just a fact, She had flown with six a in a ground squadron, so she was a jet pilot when she was selected to be among the first, however, I want to talk about this mishap and the naval aviation naval safety center does not use the word accident because every outcome has a chain of events that explains how something happened, there are no acts of God, there is no good, things happen and great rigor is put into a mishap investigation just to make sure it doesn't happen again, it's not to prove a point for political purposes or to hinder a social agenda, it is simply to ensure that other aircrew do not do the same thing and suffer the same result and it is in that spirit that we will talk about this mishap that occurred in 1994.

Let's watch the tape of the plot and let's also listen to the uninterrupted calls once weight off lift your equipment lift your equipment be able to eject attack playing guard okay so let's break it down now so case a skipper reaches the break 800 foot level break in favor of the wind decelerate wings advance equipment lower flaps dlc fuel harness landing checks complete reach 180 it begins its turn, so at about 45

kara

it experiences a compressor shutdown on the left engine, which is the perfectly wrong time for the compressor stalls, so right now she is slow at top speed, which is probably due to the weight of fuel she was flying with. f14a probably 138 knots without ordinance and the first move should have been according to the bold we have already seen was to control the angle of attack remember to set a pitch attitude of 10 degrees at the water line 14 units of angle of attack, what?

OK? Just like that first mishap that caused the boldface rewrite, if your first impulse is that I need to do it, or I'm rolled to the left, I need to level using just the stick, or I need to climb, then that will only exacerbate the role you already have. has caused. on that plane you have a compressor shutdown, so your indication will be that you get a spoken tone. The tit is rising and that's how you know you've had a compressor stop. She has exceeded the center line with the approach, so she is returning now. She's already there. dealing with a single engine situation and your reaction is with the side stick to try to move back to the level of the wings, you did not use rudder supplemented with the stick, which happens just as we have already described with that cat shot, if you do that, then what?

What you're

real

ly going to do is make the situation worse as we described in the why the goose died episode a few months ago, just like with a flat turn, if you're at a high angle of attack and you try to roll, which is going to pass is the plane is going in the opposite direction, so the plane is decelerating, its attack angle is increasing, try using the side stick as a way to level the wings instead of the right rudder, it may have been monitoring or not the angle attack, because you can see it in the result. that didn't keep it under 14 units at all and the plane rolls and also screams ejection, which is what saved the river's life, but again, as we described in the goose death episode, the ejection sequence when either of the crews pulled the handle in this case.

I'm sure Rio pulled the handle, he pulls the handle, the canopy releases half a second later, Rio goes 0.4 seconds later, the pilot goes, so that was enough, you can see the first flash occur, that's the River Matt Klemisch coming out just above the horizon and then the second flash happens and that was a bad trajectory for Carol Holtgreen and she died and talk about ejection, this is kind of a side note, but the crews would have contracts on who had what responsibilities around the ship and usually in the fleet squadrons, Rio had the responsibility. about when to make the decision to eject, so the pilots, you know, try to fly the plane as long as they can and then my contract with my pilots was: hey, mooch, if you think it's time to go, we'll go, so Right away, this was me.

I was good with that responsibility, but it was also a nightmare about when you would make that decision in a very dynamic rapid decision environment, so, for example, if you took a cold shot, you would have to initiate ejection before the plane left the front of the plane. boat or else the pilot wouldn't come out if a pilot was flying a low ball and then at the end of the game he let it sink even further and the Alices are screaming power that you would have to eject before it hits the ramp to save them both. of their lives as we see here matt klemisch received that timely call from the lso to expel and started the expulsion immediately maybe he was already thinking about it but in any case he made the call in time to save his own life he would have had to make the call when the plane was straight and level to save Carol Holtgreen's life again.

It takes almost a second to remove both crews from an F-14. I was a rag instructor at the time and one of the instructor pilots at rag was tasked by the mishap investigation team to recreate this mishap in the simulator she recreated the control inputs she made and the airplane did exactly what you see it happens on the checkered tape or the braided tape and then she did what would have happened if she had followed the procedure in bold so she flew the approach now she is doing her approach turning person at the console another instructor gives her the style of the compressor now has to react to meet both sides first control the angle attack then the right rudder complemented with stick but mainly rudder to get the wings and you don't care what your yaw looks like at that moment the plane will fly all day so you have that monitoring the angle of attack you also don't care where you are in relation to the carrier, as long as you're not going to hit it by flying to the island, so in your case you could have flown on the left side without any problem, the most important thing is the angled attack rudder, supplemented by the stick, now the power needed to make the Another thing that didn't do Carol Holcorn any favors is that it also screams power, so for her it meant that both rattles grind, but as You can see it in bold, it is the power needed for a positive climb rate, it is not a maximum mill or even going to afterburner.

So in his case, going full power just exacerbated the role, so frankly the Isos didn't do him any favors, they told him to pick up the gear, which was a good decision according to bold, but at the time It was too late, this instructor demonstrated it. objectively that situation was recoverable 100 of the time if the pilot complies with the bold letters that is not a political argument it is just the facts if you do not learn from a mishap then you are prone to repeat that mistake again Cara Holgren's memory is well served In terms of those who followed her, a book called Revlon was published which is about her life.

There are many tributes to her as a pioneer of naval aviation and I support them and I accept that idea. I flew with female pilots after that and they. They were pretty good in fact one became an astronaut there is no agenda here like I said the plane doesn't know what gender the pilot is okay that will do it for this episode I thank you again for your support of the channel please help me take it to the next level by becoming insponsor on patreon.com wardcarroll your support will allow me to take this channel to the next level in terms of number of episodes and other things we can do here to make this community even bigger than it already is, if you are a first time viewer, ring the bell, subscribe, likes are very important for each and every episode in terms of visibility. comment, I love comments, I say this every episode, but I

real

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