Trapped: THE CRASH OF THE NORTHROP XP-89

THERE IS AIM OLD SAYING "Some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you." Little did I know that on the morning of February 22, 1950, the bear was about to eat me.

The scheduled pilot, Fred Bretcher, was ill, so I was assigned to make a demonstration flight in the Northrop XP-89 to show the Air Force 689 Board (the people responsible for purchasing the airplane) what their new toy looked like in the air. Things like this were usually "milk runs"-just make a pass or two down the runway so the airplane can be seen in flight.

I should have known that something was not quite right when Northrop hangar chief Jean DePue said, "Chuck, I had a very strange dream about your flight today. I dreamed that the west end of the field at Hawthorne was covered by overcast. You made two passes over the field to the west, and on the second pass, the tail came off the airplane."

I asked him if I was killed in his dream, and he said that he didn't know. Jean was a very good friend of mine and not usually given to exaggeration, but I tossed this off as just a weird dream and forgot about it. I finished breakfast and continued with my day.

Northrop engineer Art Turton was to ride in the back seat on this flight. The official reason for the flight was to run elevatorpulse tests, but the real reason was to show the airplane off to the Air Force officers at Hawthorne. Each flight had to have an official reason-something to test or investigate. Just showing off was not an acceptable reason to make a flight.

We got off the ground on schedule (at about 1300 hours) and finished our elevator-pulse tests in good shape. Then we headed for the airport across the mountains at Hawthorne.

As we approached the airport at Hawthorne, I noticed that the sky to the west end of the field was overcast, but I thought nothing of it. I called the tower and was cleared to make a low-level pass down the runway. I started the pass at about 495mph indicated air speed (IAS); the Northrop engineers had asked me not to exceed 500mph IAS. As we came down the field, I heard an odd noise coming from the airplane. It was sort of a low-frequency hum like a musical note-very steady. I asked Art whether he could hear it, and he acknowledged that he could. We didn't know what it was, but it didn't seem to be affecting anything, so I finished the pass and pulled up. The tower called me; the Air Force wanted another pass, and I told them I would comply.

On the next pass, I came in just: a bit faster-maybe 497mph IAS, but still below the 500mph limit. As we started this pass, the humming sound began again, but this time, it was much more pronounced, and the airplane started to shake and shudder. Then the airplane began a gradual pitch up, and I couldn't stop it with forward stick; the elevator control was completely ineffective. This was bad and getting worse by the second. I still had aileron control, so I put the airplane in a bank to prevent it from going straight up and then coming straight down. At this point, we entered the overcast at the west end of the field. I couldn't see what was going on, and I couldn't reduce power because I had to keep the plane's speed up to stay in the air. I didn't have any elevator control, so I had to be very careful about doing anything. I knew we had lost the hydraulic actuator that controlled the elevator. I told Art we had to bail out, and I jettisoned the canopy. When the canopy came off, all of the dirt and junk that had accumulated in the bottom of the airplane flew up from the floor in a big cloud; it was in my eyes and made it difficult to see what I was doing. My helmet and mask also came off, and with them went all my communications capabilities. I went through the ejection procedure: I put my feet in the stirrups, my arms on the armrests and pulled the handle to eject the seat. The seat was supposed to drop on its rails and trigger a charge that would propel the seat up and away from the airplane, but instead, it went down and stopped; the ejection charge hadn't fired. I got my seatbelt and shoulder harness off, but the G-forces held me in the airplane, and I couldn't climb out of the seat. I was trapped! Panic! I'm going to die, and this is a rotten piece of crap of a way to die. You can't believe the thoughts that go through your mind at a time like that. I remember saying to myself, "Son of a bitch, I'm dead!"

All of a sudden, I felt a violent lurch, and then I was clear of the airplane and floating through the air. My left knee had been caught momentarily in the seat, and I felt a terrible pain in it. I reached for the ripcord, but just as I touched it, the chute opened. The wind had ripped it out of the pack and opened it. The opening was a big shock, but I was alive! I looked up and one of the panels had blown out of the canopy, but other than that, I seemed to be in good shape. I landed in a peach tree near a housing development that was under construction. As a matter of fact, it was the last tree left of an orchard that had been cut down to make room for the houses. My descent through the tree ended with me hanging head down from my knees and right arm. A construction crew on lunch break saw me land; they got me out of the tree and called an ambulance. As I lay on the ground, I told them that I wanted to be put on something solid because I felt I was moving, but they told me that I was already on the ground. I discovered later that this feeling was caused by my broken pelvis.