The REAL Truth About Kara Hultgreen's F-14 Tomcat Mishap

there's a saying in naval aviation natops is written in blood natops is an acronym for naval air training and operating procedures standardization so when you talk about boldface procedures in with any airplane most of the boldface emergencies the ones that you have to commit to memory were either created or modified based on a mishap the first mishap that caused the f-14 natops to be modified in terms of single-engine procedures was a vf-84 single-engine failure on the catapult aboard the uss nimitz we have our training aids f14 on the cat right so the airplane is in the knelt position flaps down we've gone over how this works in terms of the chronology in the carrier ops episode of the show so during the cat shot f-14a the airplane experiences a compressor stall of the right engine off the cat the pilot mismanages the situation and his first reaction is to raise the nose with aft stick no rudder no other controls but half stick again your first thought is i got to get away from the water so single engine first move so what happens is the airplane does the roll into the bat engine his next move was to counter it with left stick which is exactly the wrong move in a situation and the airplane rolled and the guys punched out about here and did not survive the ejection right off the cat as a result the procedures were created as you see here the ones that have an asterisk on them are the boldface those are the ones that aircrew have to commit to memory both pilots and rios so let's go over them first set a 10 degree pitch attitude on the water line and this is important 14 units angle of attack maximum along with looking at the horizon and where the nose is vertical horizon you have to keep angle of attack in your scan it can't be any more than 14 units next is rudder rudder first opposite the roll and yaw supplemented by the stick okay that's the important priority rudder supplemented that's the verb by stick both throttles not max power but as required for positive rate of climb gear up jettison if required so if you're not maintaining a positive rate by the time you get to step five jettison the tanks and whatever ordinance you have aboard so those are the single engine failure field catapult launch wave off boldface procedures in 1994 a nugget pilot was doing an approach case one day time to the uss abraham lincoln her name was kara holtgreen there's no way to talk about this mishap without dealing with the 800 pound gorilla in the room which is this era of female integration so i was lucky enough to fly the tomcat from february of 1984 until april of 1998 and in the process i basically dealt with every naval aviator that flew the airplane when i was a nugget i had the senior folks were the ones who transitioned from f4 f8 even the vigi to the tomcat all the way through the tomcat becoming a strike warfare precision strike warfare platform with digital flight controls and all the other stuff that the airplane got along the way until it was retired in 2006 2007 so i got to experience all of that and i feel very lucky to have served when i did but one of the other things i served through was female integration into carrier deploying squadrons and empirically equality and equal opportunity is the right idea the only thing that i would say about that is the airplane does not care what gender you are now the first cadre were pioneers and i know a number of them who were part of that and they should be lauded for what they did in terms of what it would take to be among the first female naval aviators who were introduced to sea going tomcat squadrons the other thing as i've said before the f-14 is a very hard airplane to land especially the a with the pratt whitney motor and pre-digital flight control systems and this is why in any given flight school class only the top folks would not only get jets but only the top of the top would wind up getting f-14s because everybody who wore wings knew that the f-14 was harder to land at the ship than a hornet or an a7 or an s3 whatever was in the inventory at that time there is a 60 minutes episode that's on youtube that i recommend to you if you haven't watched it before um and in that a guy named pepper burns is sort of the witness for those who are opposed to how gender integration was handled and tom sabiak who i knew when he was a top gun instructor ceo of the rag at that time is kind of caught in the middle and i think he does a good job of it once explaining what the pressures were on him to meet a quota as well as how he attempted to not dumb down the standards admiral arthur who was the vice chief of naval operations at this time a great combat pilot flew a4s in vietnam also talks in cryptic terms about what was the dynamic on naval aviation at that time so as you look on now all these years later if you go to squadron if you have the opportunity to go aboard a ship you will see that gender integration has been a success it's also true for submarines another warfare specialist that didn't have females 10 years ago or so however along the way there were some speed bumps to go through and folks like cara holtgreen and my friend carrie lorenz had to do some heavy lifting and face some pressures that other aviators in those squadrons did not at the same time the data doesn't lie in terms of pilot performance every landing at the ship is graded for your entire career so that's a rigorous standard that is unrelenting by the numbers carol holtgreen was on the watch list in terms of her ability to land at the ship that's not a political opinion that's just a fact she had flown e a six a's on a shore based squadron so she was a jet pilot when she was selected to be among the first however i want to talk about this mishap and naval aviation naval safety center does not use the word accident because every outcome has a chain of events that explains how something happened there's no acts of god there's no oh well stuff happens and there's great rigor put into a mishap investigation only to make sure it doesn't happen again it's not to prove a point for political purposes or to stymie a social agenda it's merely to ensure that other air crew don't do the same thing and suffer the same result and it's in that spirit that we'll talk about this mishap that occurred in 1994. let's look at the plot tape and listen to the lso calls uninterrupted one time weight off power raise your gear raise your gear power eject attack playing guard okay so let's break it down now so case one pattern coming to the break 800 feet level break downwind slow down wings move forward gear come down flaps dlc fuel harness landing checks complete get to the 180 start your turn so about the 45 kara experiences a compressor stall on the left motor that is the perfectly wrong time to have a compressor stall so at this time she's slow to on speed which is probably at the fuel weight she was flying with an f14a probably 138 knots no ordinance and the first move should have been in accordance with the bold face that we've already viewed was get the angle of attack under control remember set 10 degree pitch attitude on the water line 14 units angle of attack okay so just like that first mishap that caused the rewrite of the bold face if your first impulse is i need to either i'm rolled left i need to level using stick alone or i need to climb then that's going to just exacerbate the role that's already caused by that airplane have a compressor stall so your indication is going to be you get a oral tone tit is rising and that's how you know you've had a compressor stall she's overshot center line with the approach so she's working her way back now she's already dealing with a single engine situation and her reaction is to with lateral stick try to roll back to wings level she didn't use rudder supplemented by stick what happens just like we've already described with that cat shot that if you do that then what you're going to actually do is make the situation worse as we described in the goose why goose died episode some months ago just like with a flat spin if you're at high angle of attack and you try to roll what's going to happen is the airplane is going to go the opposite way so the airplane's slowing down her angle attack is rising she tries lateral stick as a way to level the wings instead of right rudder may or may not have been monitoring angle attack because you can see from the result that absolutely didn't keep it under 14 units and airplane rolls the lso screams eject which is what saved the rio's life but again as we've described in the goose death episode the ejection sequence when either aircrew pulled the handle in this case i'm sure the rio pulled the handle is pull the handle canopy comes off half a second later rio goes 0.4 seconds later pilot goes so that was enough you can see the first flash happens that's the rio matt klemisch going out just above the horizon and then the second flash happens and that was a bad trajectory for carol holtgreen and she died and talking about ejection this is sort of a side note but crews would have contracts of who had what responsibilities around the boat and so generally in fleet squadrons the rio had the responsibility on when to make the decision to eject so pilots would you know try to fly the airplane as long as they could and then my contract with my pilots was hey mooch if you think it's time to go we'll go so at once this was i was good with that responsibility but it was also nightmare fuel about when would you make that call in a very dynamic snap decision environment so for instance if you had a cold cat shot you would have to initiate ejection before the airplane left the front of the the boat or else the pilot wouldn't get out if a pilot was flying a low ball and then at the end game he let it sag even more and the alice's are screaming power you would have to eject before the ramp strike in order to save both of your lives as we see here matt klemisch got that timely call from the lso to eject and he initiated ejection immediately maybe he was already thinking about it but in any case he made the call in time to save his own life he would have had to make the call when the airplane was straight and level to save carol holtgreen's life again it takes nearly a second to get both crews out of an f-14 i was a rag instructor at this time and one of the instructor pilots at the rag was given the task by the mishap investigation team of recreating this mishap in the simulator he recreated the control inputs she did and the airplane did exactly what you see happening in the plaid tape or on the plait tape and then he did what would have happened had she complied with the boldface procedure so he flew the approach now he's doing his his approach turn person at the console another instructor gives him the compressor style now he has to react so he complies with both face first gets the angle attack under control then right rudder supplemented by stick but primarily rudder to get the wings and you don't care what your yaw looks like at that time the airplane will fly all day like this you've got to monitor the angle attack you also don't care where you are relative the aircraft carrier as long as you're not going to hit it flying to the island so in her case she could have flown up the left side no problem at all the most important thing is angle attack rudder supplement by stick now power as required so the other thing that did carol holcorn a disservice is the lso yells power at her so for her it meant both rattles to mill but as you see from the boldface it's power as required for a positive rate of climb it's not max mill or even going to afterburner so in her case going to full power just exacerbated the role so quite frankly the lsos didn't do her any favors they did say raise your gear which was a good call in accordance with boldface but by that time it was too late this instructor proved objectively that that situation was recoverable 100 of the time if the pilot complies with boldface that's not a political argument that's just the facts if you don't learn from a mishap then you're apt to repeat that mistake again memory of cara holgren is well served in terms of those who followed her there was a book put out called revlon that's about her life there are many tributes for her as a pioneer of naval aviation and i support those and i embrace that idea i flew with female pilots after that and they were quite good in fact one became an astronaut there's no agenda here as i said the airplane doesn't know what gender the pilot is all right that's going to do it for this episode i thank you again for your support of the channel please help me take it to the next level by becoming a patron at patreon.com wardcarroll your support will allow me to take this channel to the next level in terms of the number of episodes and the other things we can do here to make this community even greater than it already is if you're a first time viewer please ring the bell subscribe like likes are very important to each and every episode in terms of visibility comment i love the comments i say this every episode but i truly do love hearing from this community that's growing at a rapid clip and share on your other social media channels and i look forward to talking to you again soon

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 1,984,178

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, Kara Hultgreen, aviation mishaps, flight accidents, aircraft carriers, LSO, naval aviation, DCS, DCS World, fighter pilots, Radar Intercept Officer, VF-213, pilots, emergency procedures, USS Abraham Lincoln, Tailhook, female intergration, female fighter pilots, Top Gun, Top Gun Maverick

Id: rFUXshaaMQM

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MVAF4]

I know video has a clickbaity title but the content itself is interesting. I came across this guys channel a month or so ago and he's got a bunch of interesting videos and he's also a good storyteller. He was a Tomcat RIO from the early 80s to the late 90s.