9.) Rapid Opening Parachute
All of the IPs had an aircraft assigned to us: Name on the side and the whole bit. That doesn’t mean we flew it much. Which airplane you flew was a “luck of the draw” thing. Nevertheless, “513” had my name under the canopy.
One day, a student and his instructor were out on one of those early rides in the Tombstone Area (southeastern corner of Arizona). I don’t remember what the student was doing (aileron roll in manual reversion?), but he ended up pointing down, was not recovering, and his instructor told him to punch out which he did.
The A-10 has the ACES II ejection seat which has two hand grips just outside of your knees on both sides. Pull up on either handle and away you go. As happens many times in aviation accidents, a series of things “go wrong” that lead to tragedy. Apparently the student pulled with his left hand and had a firm grip on the stick with his right hand which imparted a twisting motion on the seat as it left the A-10.
The parachute trailed out “behind” him in the slip steam but due to the twisting motion, he was facing backwards when all of the slack was taken up in the shroud lines. When that happens, a charge of some kind is triggered which blows the canopy open quickly. (The idea is that you want the canopy to open as quickly as possible with a low altitude ejection.)
The sudden opening of the canopy while the pilot was “turned around” resulted in a tremendous yank on the straps attached to his harness. His head apparently whipped back so quickly due to the yank, that it broken his neck and he was dead before he hit the ground.
Something like that happened. Bottom line: A man died and “my” A-10 ended up in a smoking hole in southeastern Arizona.
10.) Cross-Country Low-Level
One of the nice things about the A-10 was that we could cruise at 240 knots. That makes for a nice even 4 nm a minute…and legal to fly just about anywhere at low altitude in the USA. (below 10,000 MSL you are supposed to be under 250K.)
At least that was our interpretation. If you cruised at more than 240K, you could only fly low levels along defined low level routes. Such routes are everywhere around the United States, but the hassle of figuring out where the routes are on a chart made it a pain to fly a low level route at other than your home base (where someone else created the low level maps for you).
In the A-10 if we kept it under 250K we could go anywhere as long as we abided by the “no closer than 500’ bubble around people and structures” rule.
On what was probably my last cross country in the A-10 a buddy and I dropped down to our 100’ cruising altitude as soon as we got outside the Tucson are. We weaved this way and that with map in hand taking advantage of any valley or ridge to hide in or behind.
I was leading (with my buddy flying in extended trail since our dodging and weaving made flying line abreast impractical) as we approached the northeast corner of Arizona. After turning this way and that along the route I had penciled drawn on my chart before the flight, at the last minute I popped up so we would sail over the four-corner area at more than 500’ so as not to disturb the tourists gathered around that unique spot in the USA.
Somewhere along the way we changed positions and my buddy took us up to Lake Powell where we dropped down below the canyon walls carved out by the river. After many miles of this we approached a bridge. I pulled up but my buddy (also near the end of this time in the A-10) went under the bridge! No one ever complained…or they never figured out where we were from.
All of this was done without inertial navigation system, moving map display or GPS, and that’s why I am such a good map reader.
11.) Cross-Country High-Level
Those huge engine nacelles on the A-10 are about 80% air. The little turbojet that spins the big fan that is up front is only about 20% of the volume that you see. Small engines and big fans mean nice mileage.
As squadron scheduler I had my pick of flights. When a flight to McClellan AFB up by Sacramento came along I took it. Single ship doesn’t happen very often so it is time to do what you want to do vs. worry about what the other guy wants to do.
That day I wanted to play around with max range. In a jet with an angle of attack gauge that’s easy to do. Climb up to something about 20,000 and pull it back until you reach max range AOA (angle of attack). In the A-10 that put the fuel flows down to about less than 1000 PPH (pounds per hour) per engine (the A-10 held 10,500# of JP4) and 200 KIAS which was around 300 KTAS.
I ended up flying over to NAS North Island where I did a no-kidding GCA (“ground control approach” — never saw the ground – in sunny San Diego), then climbed back up to altitude for the cruise to Sacramento. I was in the cockpit for five hours and had plenty of gas when I landed.
12.) A-10s at Oshkosh
Whew, pretty tame stuff. Thank you for allowing me to reminisce about my days in the A-10. I have one more A-10 story to tell you.
I have been active in the T-34 Association for 20+ years and have been to Oshkosh a few times to attend the annual T-34 Association’s members meeting. One year (2009?) I went for a walk along the flight line. I made it all the way down to the ultra lights and was headed back to the Warbird area when I saw an A-10 on the ramp where the military jets are parked.
We hadn’t seen an A-10 up close in a number of years and love to stand near the jet, listen to people talk about it, and kick in with my two cents when the situation presents itself. As I approached the Hog, I noticed two guys in green flight suits near the plane. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps I could talk them into letting an old Hog pilot take a look at the cockpit.
I walked up to one of the pilots who was opening panels on the bottom to expose the innards of the GAU-8 gun. He had his back to me and I could see a word sewn into the back of his baseball hat. It said “McGruff”. From 8 years or so of moderating the T-34 Email List and 10 years of reading the Mentor Monitor, I have come to know, but have never met, a lot of T-34 people.
McGruff, I knew as the call sign for Jamie Hunt, T-34 Association member and A-10 pilot. I said “Jamie?” He turned around, I introduced myself, and much to the chagrin of the general public that had gathered around the A-10 that afternoon, only one person got to sit in the cockpit of the A-10 that day. (There are about 20% more switches and dials in it vs. when I flew it. How do they keep track of all of that stuff? :-))
