Fighting 1 v 1 on instruments - VFA-105 basic flight maneuvres - Column - Statistical Data Included

Approach, August, 2002 by Nicholas Mungas

We were scheduled for a good deal 1 v 1 BFM (basic fighter maneuvers) sortie. The flight would be just good old-fashioned bending the jet around, while trying to maintain sight and consciousness--the type of flight that brings all those 1 v 1 briefing items to reality. I was scheduled as flight lead, flying with our safety officer.

We settled in for the brief after the usual rounds of JOPA vs. Hinge trash-talking in the ready room. The brief was thorough but somewhat shorter than normal, since we only had to cover comm flow and the sequence of BFM sets for the tactical portion of the hop. Training rules were covered in detail, including departures and out-of-control-flight (OCF) procedures. We slow-walked to our jets. Weather was fantastic in the whiskey areas off the Atlantic coast, and it was shaping up to be a great hop.

Butterfly high-aspect BFM is truly an enjoyable way to spend a flight. Neutral merges and the ability to be as slow or as fast as you'd like at the first merge always has been my favorite. At the "fight's on" call, we aggressively went nose low. More of the same followed until we met near the deck with a nearly neutral pass. I had a positional advantage but was slower, and I expected my opponent to go two-circle across my tail. Looking through the HUD, I saw 240 knots passing 6,000 feet. I decided to extend into the merge and then go aggresively out of plane, nose high.

At the merge, my opponent turned across my tail in two-circle flow. At 5,700 feet and accelerating through 258 knots, I started up. I was on the HUD, following the 10-percent rule for the first 30 to 40 degrees of climb, then looked over my left shoulder to verify my opponent tracking in two-circle flow. That sneaky Hinge had reversed into a one-circle, nose-high, right-hand turn in the oblique. Based on his lift-vector placement, it appeared I was going to be the first one downrange--not good. His reversal had given me a little turning room to work with, so I got the nose back to the horizon. I reoriented my lift vector, stopped my downrange travel, and transitioned to a flat scissors. I rolled the aircraft and increased alpha to get the nose to the horizon. A couple of seconds later, I heard the AOA-limit tone.

Did I mention I still was looking at my opponent? We were now in one-circle fight, and the aircraft had continued to track nose high. I wasn't rolling into the oblique, but I was rolling around the near-vertical. Because of this situation, my increased pull did nothing more than bleed the remaining airspeed. When I heard the AOA tone, I thought I was tickling the limiter by pulling too hard and had bunted the nose. I finally looked at the HUD when the tone didn't go away. What I saw was not good. I was 70 degrees, nose high, and decelerating rapidly through 100 knots. I made one last-ditch effort to salvage an impending departure by rolling the aircraft inverted with rudder and then pulling the nose to the horizon. It responded crisply to my roll inputs, but when I tried to pull, the nose did not track, and I was living in tone. Somewhere in all this, a "Knock it off, I'm ballistic" call was made, and, as the aircraft stopped responding to control inputs, I initiated OCF procedures. After I released the controls, the nose pushed over--just as the NATOPS flight-characteristics chapter says it should--bringing me closer to vertical. As I reached my apex, I saw 48 knots (the lowest that can be displayed), 7,800 feet, and greater than 90 alpha in the HUD. I retarded the throttles to idle and placed both hands on the towel racks.

The aircraft violently pitched, nose forward; it was strong enough to make me feel like I was coming out of the seat and to give me a great view of the blue water below. FA-18 OCF procedures state, "Passing 6,000 feet, dive recovery not initiated, eject." I was 100 percent certain I was about to become intimately familiar with that passage. I didn't think there was any chance to be in control by 6,000 feet.

One thought slowly trickled through my mind as I stared at the HUD and the water below: "Someone's going to have to call the skipper and tell him I just put a jet in the water." I was so convinced of my imminent chute ride as the nose broke the horizon, I took my hands off the towel racks and placed them on the ejection handle.

The aircraft went through some post-departure gyrations. The nose initially went to 90 degrees, nose low, pitched back up near the horizon, then back down where it wandered around pure nose low. Approaching 6,000 feet in the HUD, I still had spurious gyrations in yaw, and airspeed was only about 120 knots, but the nose had stabilized nose low. Seeing this, I had a glimmer of hope. I took my right hand off the ejection handle, grabbed the stick, and made a small, coordinated, rudder and aileron input as my wingman called out, "Passing 6,000 feet." I saw the same in the HUD.

The aircraft rolled. I transmitted, "I've got it, it's flying." I did not want to snatch on a pull with my airspeed still slowly accelerating, so I waited another second until airspeed accelerated through 180 knots. Then I began the recovery. Post-flight HUD-tape analysis showed I started recovery below 5,000 feet. I still was concerned about over-rotating and departing again, so I did not max-perform the jet in the recovery and bottomed out at 2,300 feet. As I climbed, my wingman broke a long period of silence on the tactical frequency with the understatement of the day, "That was a little scary."