So, anyone want to share the closest call you've had and how you managed to get your tender behind back home to tell about it on AW?
Here's an article from the Flying K about luck and close calls. Hope ya'll like it. (Sorry about the A-4 bullet A4s, but that was the way I remembered it.)
In The Break 03April09
I’m sure some of ya’ll have heard the old saw, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” I had a flight last Friday that got me to thinking about flying and luck. I spent the whole week carving ACM hops out of the low clouds covering South Texas and was on my final hop of the week. After a nice ACM check ride I detached my wingman to fly home as a single due to a 500-3,000-ft. under cast layer. I wasn’t particularly concerned about the approach back to home plate; I had a thousand pounds of fuel, the ILS was working, and I knew I would break out at around 500 feet. At 8 miles out, in pretty thick clouds at 2,000 feet, I threw the gear handle down. The nose gear failed to extend. As I began to go through possible scenarios it occurred to me that this might end up with awfully loud landing. To make this story short, I climbed to clear sky overhead
the field, began trouble-shooting and eventually got good indications. I found a hole in the clouds and descended VMC to an uneventful landing. I had the strange feeling the rest of the day that my bucket of luck just might be getting close to empty.
I remembered a night behind the ship in an Intruder when the flaps came down but the slats didn’t. That was a most unforgiving configuration for an Intruder and I came close to departing the jet at 1,200 feet. Fortunately, my BN and I trouble-shot the problem and recovered aboard uneventfully. On my first solo in the Hornet I lost
an engine due to a flameout. It was surprising, but the Hornet flies fine on one engine and I made it back to Cecil Field for an uneventful single-engine landing. One day on COMPTUEX in the Puerto Rico OP AREA, I was saddled in nicely, about to shoot an A-4 aggressor when my right engine caught fire. I used a new Comm Brevity term,( “Uh-oh”) which didn’t quite convey to my wingman the nature of my problem, but I knocked off the fight, shut down the engine and went through all the procedures and coordination with the Tower Rep on board. The deck crew performed an emergency pull forward and I recovered uneventfully on a single-engine straight-in. On the first night of Operation Iraqi Freedom I was part of a division of Hornets tasked with the destruction of the Ar Ramadi Palace. Each Hornet had two 2,000 pound JDAMs. At 3 miles from the target one of my smart bombs went stupid and wouldn’t release. A Hornet in the asymmetrical configuration in which I found myself was supposed to present many difficulties for flight, not the least of which was the back-side tanking which would throw the asymmetry completely out of limits. Also, shipboard landings were not authorized with that configuration. Well, the plane flew OK after the tanking in spite of the asymmetry and I was able to jettison the bomb into the Med and make an uneventful recovery back at Mother.
This is only a short list of little events that have occurred over the past 20 years, where I thought I might have
been using up my luck. In each instance, and many others, I was able to make an “uneventful” landing. Pretty
lucky, huh? As I thought more about it, I realized the reason my bucket of luck had never run dry is that a lot of what we aviators write off to luck is really an adherence to NATOPS, proper aircrew coordination, and plain common sense. Each of the events listed above could have ended as a major negative milestone in my flying career. What kept them from doing so was a combination of good equipment, sound procedures, thorough systems knowledge, and good aircrew coordination. This is why we constantly reinforce those things with all our students. We are filling their buckets with an unending source of luck that they will draw on their entire career.
Train hard and I hope you all have “good luck.”
God Bless You.
Cowboy
Here's an article from the Flying K about luck and close calls. Hope ya'll like it. (Sorry about the A-4 bullet A4s, but that was the way I remembered it.)
In The Break 03April09
I’m sure some of ya’ll have heard the old saw, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” I had a flight last Friday that got me to thinking about flying and luck. I spent the whole week carving ACM hops out of the low clouds covering South Texas and was on my final hop of the week. After a nice ACM check ride I detached my wingman to fly home as a single due to a 500-3,000-ft. under cast layer. I wasn’t particularly concerned about the approach back to home plate; I had a thousand pounds of fuel, the ILS was working, and I knew I would break out at around 500 feet. At 8 miles out, in pretty thick clouds at 2,000 feet, I threw the gear handle down. The nose gear failed to extend. As I began to go through possible scenarios it occurred to me that this might end up with awfully loud landing. To make this story short, I climbed to clear sky overhead
the field, began trouble-shooting and eventually got good indications. I found a hole in the clouds and descended VMC to an uneventful landing. I had the strange feeling the rest of the day that my bucket of luck just might be getting close to empty.
I remembered a night behind the ship in an Intruder when the flaps came down but the slats didn’t. That was a most unforgiving configuration for an Intruder and I came close to departing the jet at 1,200 feet. Fortunately, my BN and I trouble-shot the problem and recovered aboard uneventfully. On my first solo in the Hornet I lost
an engine due to a flameout. It was surprising, but the Hornet flies fine on one engine and I made it back to Cecil Field for an uneventful single-engine landing. One day on COMPTUEX in the Puerto Rico OP AREA, I was saddled in nicely, about to shoot an A-4 aggressor when my right engine caught fire. I used a new Comm Brevity term,( “Uh-oh”) which didn’t quite convey to my wingman the nature of my problem, but I knocked off the fight, shut down the engine and went through all the procedures and coordination with the Tower Rep on board. The deck crew performed an emergency pull forward and I recovered uneventfully on a single-engine straight-in. On the first night of Operation Iraqi Freedom I was part of a division of Hornets tasked with the destruction of the Ar Ramadi Palace. Each Hornet had two 2,000 pound JDAMs. At 3 miles from the target one of my smart bombs went stupid and wouldn’t release. A Hornet in the asymmetrical configuration in which I found myself was supposed to present many difficulties for flight, not the least of which was the back-side tanking which would throw the asymmetry completely out of limits. Also, shipboard landings were not authorized with that configuration. Well, the plane flew OK after the tanking in spite of the asymmetry and I was able to jettison the bomb into the Med and make an uneventful recovery back at Mother.
This is only a short list of little events that have occurred over the past 20 years, where I thought I might have
been using up my luck. In each instance, and many others, I was able to make an “uneventful” landing. Pretty
lucky, huh? As I thought more about it, I realized the reason my bucket of luck had never run dry is that a lot of what we aviators write off to luck is really an adherence to NATOPS, proper aircrew coordination, and plain common sense. Each of the events listed above could have ended as a major negative milestone in my flying career. What kept them from doing so was a combination of good equipment, sound procedures, thorough systems knowledge, and good aircrew coordination. This is why we constantly reinforce those things with all our students. We are filling their buckets with an unending source of luck that they will draw on their entire career.
Train hard and I hope you all have “good luck.”
God Bless You.
Cowboy
) ... leveled around FAF 1200' .... light puffy scattered clouds only about 300' high but spreading as far as the eye could see over the whole area .... suddenly at my 10 o'clock a white civilian twin-something appeared moving left to right in/out of the clouds --- right through the NAS approach corridor --- heading SE for Addison airport or at least in that general direction --- we missed each other by 
... as did the never ending replay of the plat camera tape of me that cruise. It was better than some nights movie. And it is still well remembered today by all my old squadron mates who still remark about it 38 yrs. later .... 
