Don't ever miss your fifth wedding anniversary

Approach, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Michael Tsutagawa

It was Feb. 20, and I was spending my fifth wedding anniversary as a geo-bachelor forward deployed in Japan. My pregnant wife was in Monterey, Calif. Sound familiar?

I was a department head in a squadron that just had completed day and night carrier qualifications (CQs) for 10 of 11 pilots on the first day of flight ops--a rare occurrence.

In a one-week period, I had single-handedly hard-downed four Hawkeyes for various reasons, and I was beginning to be known as the black cloud. But this night was going to be different. I was flying with the ComAEWWingPac pilot of the year, who was in the left seat; I felt comfortable. He was our last remaining pilot to finish CQ for VAW-115--little did we know.

The night started off uneventfully, as we launched into the moonless dark waters off Tokyo. I noticed a quick, white flash off my right side. I checked my windshield quarter panel but saw nothing. The flash must have been a white strobe from another airplane. About 20 minutes later, another white flash came from the same side. I again used my white light to check on the windshield. I saw nothing wrong; the flash must have been a thundercloud underneath us. A third white flash continued into an arcing fizzle and confirmed the flash definitely was in the copilot's windshield quarter panel.

The pilot instinctively turned off the windshield heat, and I opened the pocket checklist (PCL). We went through the emergency procedures and donned our oxygen masks. The next step of the procedure had us pull the windshield anti-ice circuit breaker (CB). After I slid back my seat and looked for the CB, the mic cord to my oxygen mask disconnected from the ICS adapter--another unwanted distraction. Another check of the quarter panel revealed a five-inch crack. Even though the crack was determined to be on the outside pane (the inside pane is the load-bearing member), we played it safe and headed back to the ship with our masks still on for an early recovery.

After going through strike and marshal, we eventually wound up at 1,200 feet and eight miles on final. Thinking we were close enough to landing, we dumped down to 200 pounds above max trap and dirtied-up. As we ran through the landing checks, I stared at the landing-gear indicator. The right main-landing gear indicated unsafe, with light in the gear handle, flashing wheels light, and no AOA indexers--great. We now had a gear emergency, along with a cracked windshield; I sucked oxygen from my mask. We cancelled the approach and requested angels two for troubleshooting. "Deferred emergency. No rush," or so I thought.

I went to the landing-gear-handle-down-with-any-unsafe-indication procedure of the PCL and executed the items while my pilot kept flying the aircraft. The combat-information-center (CIC) crew in the back inspected the right mainmount; it appeared to be down. After checking the hydraulic pressure, the procedure called for resetting the wheel-and-flap-indicator CB. Again, I slid back my seat, leaned back to find the CB, and, for the second time, my mic cord to my oxygen mask disconnected. After I told my pilot of this problem, we decided to put away our oxygen masks because they were causing too many complications.

We used ORM techniques and decided not to put positive and negative Gs on the aircraft while dirty, at night, and during CQ. We also decided not to cycle the landing gear to avoid aggravating the situation. I felt confident blowing down the gear would fix the problem, or so I thought.

The ship's combat-information-center officer (CICO) maintained situational awareness and crew coordination regarding our fuel state of 3.6. He also calculated the dirty bingo numbers for 135 miles to Atsugi, with 40 knots of wind in the face at 10,000 feet. As I tried to proceed with the emergency blowdown procedures, the CICO said our fuel state was at dirty bingo. I fumbled back to the bingo table and confirmed we were right at our dirty bingo of 3.6. Time was of the essence.

Counting on my past experience with a successful, main-gear blowdown, I made the call first to go through the blowdown procedures before we decided to bingo. This action only would take a few moments, and, if the gear came down, all my problems would go away. My pilot, meanwhile, used good judgment, kept flying the aircraft, and began a slow climb toward Atsugi, our primary divert. I continued to work the PCL. Though not a memory item, "20, 20, 120" was what I always used to remember this procedure. As we went through the PCL, we put down the gear handle and the emergency-landing-gear handle.

Nothing. Great. Now we really were at dirty bingo, with an unsafe landing gear and a cracked windshield. After reviewing our configuration requirements, I recomputed the numbers for gear down, flaps up (previous numbers assumed gear down, flaps down). We flew a textbook dirty-bingo profile, climbing at 155 knots, minus 1 knot per 1,000 feet. We cruised at 155 knots and caught our breath.

Meanwhile, the CICO coordinated with the boat while I raised Tokyo Center and dialed the transponder to emergency. The time was about 2230 on a Friday night, and we still had a cracked windshield quarter panel. I did not want to climb any higher because of this fact, but I had to stay at 10,000 feet for dirty bingo profile to maximize our gas.