cursed Cutlass: The USN's Ensign eliminator, The

Flight Journal, Oct 2003 by Tegler, Jan

"In the carrier-landing configuration, the F7U-1 was really stable. The airplane's drag was so high that you sat on the power all the time. You controlled your altitude by moving the throttle and the airspeed with the stick by bringing the nose up or down. You could change it one knot at a time. It was great to bring aboard in that respect.

"A task I didn't look forward to was proving the yield point on the nosewheel. Everyone was concerned about that because of the nose gear's length. Normally, it was very easy to land the F7U on a runway. But then we were told to start slammin' it down to find out whether that nosewheel yield was high enough. We began to make harder and harder landings in the evaluation at Pax, and I never even got halfway to the yield point. Finally, we decided the only way we would ever make the nosewheel fail was by making a 'flying engagement' (catching an arresting wire while still in flight, wheels off the ground). The first time we tried it, I came in dragging the hook on the ground and went to full power. The hook caught the wire, swung the airplane up as high as it would play out and just slammed it back down on the runway! Even so, we didn't get it up as high as it needed to be, and the nosewheel didn't fail. That's all my back could take though. You sat right over that nose strut, and the force through your spine was incredible. At that point, we quit and said, 'Nothing will happen to that nosewheel.' Of course, on the F7U-3, it didn't turn out that way.

"During the field carrier-landing practice, we noticed a problem with visibility over the airplane's nose, but it didn't seem too bad. The angle of attack on approach was very high, but you could still see a bit of the runway over the nose as you lined up. The LSO and I had worked out a way to cope with this when we did it for real aboard ship. Because you sat on the jets in the landing configuration, the airplane dropped really fast when you chopped the power. It felt as though it came straight down. The LSO said, 'On the first landing, I'll give you a late cut so that we'll be sure to get you on the deck.' That seemed reasonable. But we hadn't painted a simulated 'deck' on the runway. Nobody ever thought it was necessary.

"When we went to the [USS] Midway (CV-41), an old straight-deck carrier, to do the first carrier landings, we discovered that the problem was worse than we had thought. On the first landing, when I got in close, I didn't realize that I was skidding the airplane to keep the LSO in sight. He was almost abeam of me when he gave me the cut signal. When I took the cut and looked forward over the nose, I couldn't see any part of that carrier-nothing, not even the stacks- just water. I knew I had been cut late and I did what I had schooled myself never to do: I dipped the nose because I thought, Tm really going up the deck! I'll miss the barricade and go into the pack [of parked airplanes] up front!' Well, instead, I snagged the number-one wire. The minute I dipped that nose, the airplane fell straight down. I barely made the flight deck! The tail hit eight feet from the ramp and scared the LSO to death.