The TRUE STORY behind the Blue Angels' F7U Cutlass featuring Edward "Whitey" Feightner | Podcast

you're watching a special edition of the Blue Angel Phantoms podcast on this episode we go back to the early years of the Blue Angels and get access to a never before released interview with World War II Ace Navy test pilot and Blue Angel Edward Whitey fightner responsible for establishing the f7u Cutlass program on the Blue Angels in 1952 fightner gives rare insight into the team's Reformation after the Korean War and the unthinkable technical challenges they face throughout the air show season also provides details about the capabilities of the Cutlass and shares the tragic story of this final day on the Blue Angels where the team suffered a fatal mid-air Collision over NES Corpus Christi this rare interview was conducted over two and a half decades ago by Aviation historian and author Nicholas veronico who has generously shared this incredible piece of history and joins us to kick things off so please join me as we go back in time and welcome Nick veronico to the podcast and welcome back to another episode of the Blue Angel Phantoms podcast as you got teased in the introduction this is a really special episode because uh we got access to a very special tape in an interview with a former Blue Angel Edward Whitey fightner he had a very brief tenure on the Blue Angels but an eventful one and I'm really looking forward to sharing this interview with you and the man we owe the gratitude for getting access to this never heard before interview is joining us now he's an aviation author Aviation historian Nick Veronica Nick thank you so much for joining me and more importantly man thank you so much for your generosity and sharing these tapes with me oh my pleasure Ryan thanks for having me of course and so I should say yeah it's more than just this interview you shared with me you've actually given me several tapes with some real Blue Angel Legends the founding fathers Butch Boris Ray Hawkins uh Ken Wallace uh Bill wheat just to name a few and so with your permission I look forward over the the next year of sharing that here on the Blue Angel Phantoms podcast but we should say really where the origin of these tapes come from and they come from your work on this incredible book Blue Angels flyby history it covers the first 60 years of the Blue Angels and I have to say since I started the work here on the Blue Angel Phantoms YouTube channel and podcast I use your book as research for every interview I do so I'm incredibly grateful for it but would love to get some background you know why did you do the book uh and you know like I said it covered the first 60 years of the Blue Angels history we have the 80th anniversary coming up in a couple years are we gonna get an updated version I hate putting you on the spot but I'd be a big fan of you if you didn't update yeah I'd like to do that very much the book came about I worked I had a colleague marja fritzy who was a fantastic writer she and I did the 50th Anniversary history she then went on to have other corporate successes and I she was out of the picture so I picked it up uh picked up the book and updated it for the 60th anniversary and my part uh in the in the 50th anniversary is I wrote uh up to the f-18s and I was really honored and humbled to have so many of the early Blues open up their homes and uh just generously give me their time to to sit down and tell me stories and I think every time I would leave one of their houses I had to scrape my chin off the floor because the stories were just incredible so I feel very fortunate and I'm looking forward to you sharing this material with your audience I think uh well I should say I hope everyone enjoys it I'm sure they will uh so let's talk about this the first interview Whitey fightner really revered amongst his peers a legend but share with our audience just so they know who they're about to listen to who's Whitey fightner so Whitey fightner was a fighter pilot he had a degree in chemistry and he went through the civilian pilot training Corps and got his pilot's license in June of 1941 so he was designated a Naval aviator in April of 42 and he went on to join vf10 as the assistant engineering officer and he was in combat in the South Pacific on the Enterprise he was also on the Bunker Hill he had nine aerial victories and he rotated back stateside in November of 44 and he went on to be the engineering officer of vf-98 um and then Gunnery officer vf21 so by 1948 you know three years after the end of the war he was a test pilot at Pax River and one of the airplanes he was assigned was the Vaught Cutlass f7u it was a radical airplane back then and probably would be today it was tailless and it uh twin engine it sat with the nose High attitude so the pilot was about 12 feet off the ground when the airplane was on the ground and the landing gear moved it had a launch position and a landing position so it was very complex the other thing is it had an incredible roll rate I if I recall correctly uh Whitey had told me something like uh over an average of five rolls it had a almost a 600 degree roll rate per minute and one of the stories he talks about is how he was able to compensate doing roles to keep the Horizon from moving and getting lost in his vision so he was an incredible pilot he flew the uh Cutlass with the Blue Angels for about nine months and then he rotated back and was a commanding officer of vx3 the development squadron at Pax River and he went on to a ship command some Shore commands and he retired as a rear Admiral in 1974. well he's a real legend uh unfortunately passed away in 2020 so really blessed that you captured this interview that we can share with this audience and so we're gonna head into the interview want to remind people this this was recorded almost two and a half decades ago if not longer ago uh wasn't recorded in a podcast format so we've cleaned up the audio and uh really looking forward to sharing it with you but I want to encourage you to stick around for after this interview because Nick is up to some incredible work right now and I'm gonna put a picture on the screen of this F-18 Hornet that you see out there in the desert of Yuma in the Boneyard so just to tease you so stick around for after the interview you're going to want to hear what Nick's been up to with his latest work so uh with no let's kick into it and uh here you go Nick veronico interviewing Whitey fightner Mr fightner this is Nick veronico how are you very good good you made it through the Million Man March yeah so so far I've survived it great I wanted to talk to you for a couple minutes if you got time about uh flying with the blues all right uh how did you get involved with the team well it's a story that most people even the team didn't hear about most of them I think even Butch Morris is not aware of it but when uh after um the Korean War where John Magda was killed uh you know as a team leader and um then the team came back and was disbanded more or less and uh because they got they got sent off as a team bow to the war out there um I got a call I was at Pax River as a test pout and I got a call and said that I'd been selected to be the new team leader and that uh we were going to fly F7 news well that took me about five minutes to get a hold of Mary and Carl and that airplane wasn't suitable for the thing and so we would we came to Washington and finally convinced them that they could not fly the f7u in the Blue Angel exhibition it wasn't a mature enough airplane in the con the control system wasn't adequate and they had in order to save face why they um they said well why can't we use them in the solo act then and I agreed that yeah they could do that both Marion Carl and I both agreed that uh it was suitable for that and with that we looked around and we selected the F9 F5 as the team airplane well about four days later they called up and said you know who who are you going to get to fly this airplane in the as the solo act because there weren't any f7u pilots in the world so I finally agreed that I would fly it as a solo and we looked around to find found out that Butch Morris was available and so they decided to recall him as a team leader so we got we found out that Butch was available and he agreed to come back and take the team for one season then and feel they could we get the team pre-organized and going again and so with that way we got two airplanes two F7 used ready and in January they went down to Corpus Christi to become part of the team and I got orders and went along with them and to that time Butch who I was just reporting it also that was January of 52 January 52 right and uh Harding McKnight yeah there wasn't anybody else there we had two airplanes and one pilot and uh I'd known old Mac McKnight from before and we got a hold of him and he agreed to come over and learn to fly the airplane and uh of course he had team experience before and so he had been he was at this point he was over in the training command and he wasn't too happy about it he was delighted to come over and so I got him orders to come over and fly the other f7u and what I take it these airplanes were at Patuxent River when you got him oh no no no they were these were new airplanes right out of the plan oh wow okay and we configured them especially for the Blue Angels you know we left out things that they didn't really need and uh such as and all the uh a lot of the uh the guns and the ammo cans and things like that you know were just excess weight in the airplane and then what uh what type of demonstration did you fly with them well as it turns out uh we got the the airplanes down there and I I started getting McKnight checked out of them and and the F9 F5s got grounded and we didn't have any airplanes and so we put the team back in uh in tv2s the Lockheed shooting star in lower type the Navy version was the TV too the two seat first and uh the first few shows uh I put on the air show with the one f7u McKnight didn't have enough time to even fly in the show and uh in the the um the team flew people around in the in the tv2s and in fact one of the biggest demonstrations we had was a Pensacola in which it was a sick May of cruise which he had the all of the top uh in industrial people presidents and so forth down there for a cruise out on the uh on the carrier and we gave him an airshow or at least I gave him an air show over there and then the team flew a lot those that wanted to fly they put them in the back seat of the TVs and took them up for a a little cruise around over there the Pensacola area that we actually put on the air show out at softly field and that turned out to be a spectacular event especially since uh on the in takeoff because I had I had quite a bit of time in the airplane so we made the next performance takeoff and I hit the afterburners and uh this this airplane uh before I get into that one of the reasons we couldn't fly it in formation was this was the first airplane the Navy had that flew uh operational airplane that was had had a hydraulic control system in it and it was backed up by a mechanical system and the the hydraulic system wasn't all that foolproof and we used to lose it a lot it would fail an awful lot of times and when it did it took 11 seconds before the mechanical control system took over and you could control the airplane that's a lifetime this is three lifetimes this is why I have made the claim and and I think it's probably still good today I have more time more passenger time single engine airplanes in single place airplanes and any guy living I spent a lot of time waiting on that 11 seconds to to expire anyhow the uh I I made a take off I hit the afterburners and and you know this thing this thing was a spectacular Air Show airplane this whole thing as long as you could fly it tingly and uh so I took off and this thing goes straight up and about just about the time that I passed about 200 feet going up I lost the control system and the airplane just sort of went ballistic you know and sort of arced up and had about oh maybe 12 or 1500 feet Wyatt ran out speed and the nose dropped through and you know I'm still unconnected I'm just riding at this point never got high enough to actually eject because we didn't dare reject anywhere below a thousand feet because you wouldn't make it so I'm just sitting there watching the ground come up at me and finally everything connected happened the airplane did about a square turn and there's a little debate about when the wheels actually touched the ground or not but uh at least it's squared off and stopped and uh but by this time I was so low that I couldn't get over the trees at the end of the field and I carved a hole through them but when I did that it tore off the pork slap which went down the port engine and I lost the port engine and this was a really Gusty day and which one you know it was one of those things that I got the engine shut down all right and fire warning light went out and so I came around and declared an emergency because the minute you put the landing gear down with a single engine on this bird it was landed and so I got around to me they they got to feel cleared out for me and I dropped the landing gear and got it on the ground and uh it was a little hairy but it got on the ground all right and of course I rolled up to the crowd standing there and I got on everybody it was very quiet everybody's waiting to see how I was going to get out of the airplane because there was no ladder you know this was you're sitting 12 feet off the ground and we had a series of little steps that opened up when you put the landing gear down they watched me climb out of the airplane then the big cheer goes up about that time Admiral Pride the incredible price rather the trade hit a training command at that time I believe anyhow he was in charge of the of the air show and he came over and congratulated me and all this thing he said you know I really feel terrible about this but will the other airplane fly so I immediately got in the other airplane and went up and finished putting on an Airfield for him and where was this at this is It's softly sealed in Pensacola and about what time frame oh this was the wrong about in there maybe March March of 52. and then they you kept flying them out even after that huh oh yeah oh yeah we flew a lot after that because the we didn't get the F 9 F5s really ungrounded until about July and um fill the team you know they they did a lot of their practice in the you you'll have to check this with Butch forth I've forgotten how many um uh how many different I I think they flew though a lot of practice demonstrations in the in the um in the TV before they actually got into the f95 well we got the F we got one F9 F5 ungrounded what was the problem with the dash fives engine problem so what kind oh they were just fuel control problems primarily I think as I recall right now I know we had a lot of trouble with them at packed River and did stick that thing any number of times with this because the engine quipped in fact the first one was the one that Marion Carl broke his back in he was chasing me and uh I was doing spins in the f7u and he was the chief plane and he was flying the f95 which was brand new at that time and uh in the middle of my Second Spin he calms that up so I just had a flame out so I got on his wing and we come down and it was a really windy day at Pax River and he uh the the tower said well you're cleared to use the long Runway at your discretion and and he said oh never mind I'll use the I'll use the duty Runway which was the short Runway to the Northeast when it's right by the tower and so I would fly at his wing and he was downwind on this thing and as he turned into final I had to leave because he was getting so slow and uh so I pulled off away and boy about that time I heard the tower Screech and I and I look around and there's it's Mary and Carl about 2500 feet short of the runway the airplane flat on the ground and uh no fire or anything so when I landed I found out that went over and African well they had him over in the dispensary and ask him what in the world happened he said well I just tried to make it look too good he said I I was going to land on the end of the runway and I pulled the nose up to slow it down and he said about that point I felt the flaps come down in our our minimum Glide speed on that thing was uh oh maybe 160. of course he was going to slow it down the floor and let to land it and it Flaps in that airplane had a blow up switch on them and any any speed over about 140. why they they stayed retracted but if you got slower than that the flaps came down and he said he realizes at the time what was happening to him but uh the flaps came down and the airplane just spun on him and he had just yeah he was low enough at that point that he hit on the starboard wing and the nose wheel and ricocheted back up in here and then he it started to roll left on him and he hit on the left Peg and he just flattened the airplane out with that he dropped about 40 feet and it broke the back on the airplane broke his back but the engine was cold enough at that point even though there was fuel all over the place the airplane was completely full of fuel you don't even Airborne about 20 minutes he got away with it but anyhow that was the problem with the airplane at that point and uh so we had him down there and I guess they arrived along about oh I guess late January early February he had a little problem with him I used to get fire warning lights on them Butch would be leading the team and to get up there and just get inverted and uh fire warning light would come on and on somebody so they at that point they just decided they disconnected the fire warning lights to be better not have something happen in the middle of those and it and there are enough people watching them so if they actually were on fire what they wouldn't have a problem so so what type of Maneuvers would you fly during the solo routine well uh the solo routine I put on a oh the airplane was a spectacular it's the only airplane it had the fastest rate of roll of any airplane we've ever had before since in fact I have one instrumented role at Pax River doing some of the tests there which I did an average over the five turns with 576 degrees per second I've never seen a guy who could throw the stick over in that airplane and stop it upright so I you I used to use that feature in the in the air shows and to do spectacular roles and uh and it had the best set of speed brakes on any airplane ever invented I think it's absolutely no trim change when you threw them out and they stopped you like you you just caught the arresting gear you know they were they would really slow you down so after I got McKnight trained in that thing we used to one of the the final features in the thing we'd come at each other doing about 450 from opposite ends of the runway each one I was on the right side of Our Own side of the runway and just as we passed each other we would throw out the speed brakes and hit the afterburner and we'd never cross the other end of the field we'd just do Square turns and reverse and slide down past each other going the other way interested in an airplane like that there and the airplane also would I do these high rates of roll coming by in fact one of the things that we really stopped this thing I had all of the um they head to Southwestern Conference of high school had all the kids there in the bleachers and so forth and it was a day when we had a ceiling it was maybe about 800 feet I guess and anyhow they asked me if I could put on a show on it and so I agreed and it was one of these blue northern days down in in Texas when it's absolutely clear underneath but the clouds were really low you know yeah and so I put on a a kind of a flat show doing turns and rolls and so forth and as I came by I had a maneuver which I had worked out which I do full aileron rolls to the left and because of the high reader rule um are you familiar with this citrus centrifugal thing where they put you in a chair and spin you and then tell you to look at the spot on the wall and your house how the your eyes keep flickering on this well at that high rate of speed if you roll that thing more in a couple of turns The Horizon is is flipping back and forth about 40 degrees and you can't you never know what the Horizon is and I had found out that if I did about three turns to the left and then reverse at a full throw going the other direction about three turns it would counteract it and it would it would have actually The Horizon would be steel for me so I used to roll about three turns left and then three turns right and go on off fly on off the other way well when I went into my three turns to the left I was in the middle of that thing on a little light plane popped out of the overcast right ahead of me and I was right in front of the grandstand at this point well I shoved forward on the stick and up into the overcast and missed the guy somehow they tell me it turned it turned that little light plane completely over the turbulence when I went went through close to him anyhow it tore off the doors on my landing gear uh it had strawber stretch the airplane so much so that negative G on there and big pieces of this thing went all through the crowd because I went rolling at the time you know and it threw those pieces out because some of them even went over to stand fortunately nobody got hurt they picked up some pieces about the size of your fist you know that came off of the airplanes it was one of those thin Cloud things that was only about 200 feet thick and where I bloomed out on top of that and it did uh it did tear off one of the slaps and again I lost an injured on that thing and had to go back but that's the sort of a thing we kept running into and the thing with the maintenance nightmare of course it was a that hydraulic system with a pearl Bob belt the uh the maintenance officer he said just Terry's hair on this thing in the middle of uh are getting ready for the season the Navy decided to change from a hydraulic fluid red hydraulic fluid to a thing called hydrol which was a non flammable type of fluid they forgot to stress how much they had to flush out the system and this uh just formed all kinds of gunk in there the two the little bit of hydraulic fluid was left mixed with that high Troll and just made a kind of a Gunk so we had to completely strip the hydraulic system on the airplane and reinstall it you know and so it did cause a lot of consternation around there what was the deciding factor to get rid of the uh the Cutlass well uh because because of these things we had uh you know I uh that plus an incident or which I lost all the electrical things in the airplane was up above and overcast and actually had to make a GCA with zero instruments you know on uh fortunately the airplane was a nice stable airplane and I'd floated enough to I knew the airplane would stay upright and so I I managed to get through the clouds with this thing with juice on the GCA vectoring mirror back and around it's got the thing on the ground but uh you know it was a pretty hairy airplane the two of you had put on a number of air shows in the the dash along with Buddy Rich who was flying the F9 F5 and we had one F9 F5 in existence and I guess that we did that between about March and June that time at the F9 F5s got ungrounded uh an episode that they were practicing with him but they weren't ready to put on the show when we got a request to go to the opening of the new Pittsburgh airport and they were going to have some Pax River airplanes up there and so forth so McKnight and I started off I guess we went by way of St Louis to get refueled because it was a pretty short-range airplane we we left there and I McKnight had a hydraulic problem that had to drop out over Columbus Ohio and I went on to Pittsburgh and Mac arrived about the next day he got the hydraulic thing fixed and we had a more or less a one fly over an aesthetic display the rest of the time for the airport up there we put on a little bit of a show up there but we had one problem and had to have an engine flown in and we changed and one of the engines in the f7u at that point but today we were we were to go on then from there to Glenview and it was raining the morning we took off and I lost an engine on right shortly after takeoff when we were climbing up the overcast but with a single engine on that thing I wasn't about to go back in make an instrument approach there and so we headed on for Glenview and I got over Glenview and told him my situation and told him that I was declaring a deferred emergency because but once I put the landing gear down I had to land and we came across the airport at about 1500 feet doing about maybe 300 and uh about right over the center of the field McKnight says hey I have a fire warning light on the right of the engine he said whoops there goes the left one and I turned around to see what was happening and I said hang on a minute we're over the water you eject about that time I looked around McKnight is inverted flaming like mad and hit it down and he actually split-assed that airplane from 1500 feet there is no other jet in the world you could split it from 1500 feet that I know of anyhow he he got away with it and uh I caught up with him just as he was going over the fence onto the airport and had him blow the gear down we had a an air bottle that would blow the gear right through the gear doors so he blew the gear down and it's really flaming every Tower was screaming I didn't even know that but at that point just as the main gear touchdown I saw the the nose gear come out and and locked and the minute the nose gear hit the runway McKnight went over the side parachute and Holly went up the left side of that airplane and that that's 12 feet in the air and doing about 80 knots at that point some reading the wheel didn't run over him but he rolled off of that wing and out across the tarmac and the airplane went out and did about a yeah ground Loop and stopped and the fire crew came out and put out the fire with that my we had to take a good look at the airplane but I took the uh R5 team went down picked up a bunch of them there so the aircraft the uh vault crew and four new engines for the airplanes and and we headed back for Glenview and uh no but not without a little bit of a mishap I I was climbing out of uh out of Dallas and at 9 000 feet both engines on that R5 C10 oh no I had a chief in there with me and uh the chief AP and so I had him get everybody into their parachute harness and because we couldn't get any fuel pressure we had absolutely zero fuel pressure and couldn't get any more so that we turned around we're headed back toward Dallas and the city said we'd get out at 5 000 feet but since everybody was in there harnessing about that point I was getting into my the chief had we're flying the airplane and I got into my harness and he said Sandra look over the nose I can see the steel from here we can make that should I looked it sure enough that wind had really blown us back toward the airport so with that I made a decision I told him that the other guys that anybody wanted to jump to jump but I was going to take the airplane in to try to land at things and I gave his chief the same option and he he went back and talked to me a little bit he came back and said everybody's going to stick with us so we we did stick it in the in the Dallas ran you know downwind with that much wind it took us we ran clear out to the middle of the lake there on the runway the runway goes out in the lake anyhow got to stop took them about uh 10 minutes to find out that somebody hadn't tightened the clamp on the main fuel line and the big three and a half inch line and it had just falling off so they fixed that and we were ready to go and uh and we need to file a flight plan told the chief to get the crew loaded and we be going in a little bit came back and said those guys are over at Love Field they're going to take the airliner up to Chicago so the Steve and I flew the thing back and but anyhow we gotta we got uh up to uh Glenview we we found out that we actually could fix the airplane and uh the Vaught guys the fire hadn't really done that much damage it was just fuel burning Prime Fuel and hydraulic fluid it was burning primarily and it really didn't damage the airplane that much there was just a little sheet metal work that had to be done and so we fixed the airplanes up and sure enough they were ready to go well I decided I would take the the repaired airplane and I put Mac in the airplane I'd been flying and uh it only had one new engine in it so Mac took it up to break in the new engine on the test flight got up there and this airplane Had A peculiar feature the the main gear you put it in one position for takeoff you had to shift it Forward about 18 inches and uh for the takeoff so you'd have enough elevator power to lift the nose wheel off and for landing the gear was actually an act that 18 inches and uh did it the main gear test down with the nose wheel came down and you couldn't if you didn't have enough until you got well over 150 knots you didn't have enough speed to pick the nose wheel off again so anyhow so we had this two position landing gear on there in fact uh when I took it out of the board ship the first time they had us sitting in the chalks and the gear was in the landing position of course and I got ready for takeoff and and when I put the gear in the the forward position for a takeoff because the wheels couldn't move there and Chuck the whole airplane reared back and it sat on its tail for a minute because the crew ran like mad because nobody's warned him about this and so you know it was pretty spectacular really when to see it happen but we did that every flight so we always put it in the takeoff position for takeoff and then when you put it down to land it came down in the landing position to make a long story short McKnight was up on his flight he put the gear handle down one of them went to the landing position the other stadium in the forward position and he had a nose gear and when I when I they got a hold of me told me what is he was having a problem he couldn't tell whether his gear was down or locked I ran out on the field and there was a marine taxiing out in him and a beer cap an f8f and I jumped underwing and convinced him to get out and give me his airplane which he did I never found a guy to thank him since but anyhow he got out I climbed in the airplane went up and found out and I looked at the airplane and I by flying up underneath I could see the booth gear were locked so I gave him ignite the the option he could either try to land it that way or bail out nobody ever landed one like that before but he opted to land it and it worked like a charm we've dropped detective got the airplane and the other one I just stopped it it turned out all right so we we headed for Memphis we're going to meet the team there for the first show the F5 were ready to go so we flew on down there got to get near the Memphis and McKnight started losing hydraulic fluid so I finally could see it just was pouring out of his airplane and it shifted already was by this time he was on the mechanical system so we got an emergency declared landed on the runway and there was just one big sheet of hydraulic fluid behind him on there on them and so I landed shortly thereafter and we had a little conference and decided that Bob belt just gave up on the airplane he just said and I I can't maintenance anymore so we gave him up and came to him to the training center of Memphis and they used him as test bids for all of their mechs and things that came through from then on they never left there by that time Patrick ever wanted me back to uh to check on the to fly the f7u3 now these were f7u1 and by now they had the f7u3 ready to go and since I was the only one that ever flown an f7u3 aboard they wouldn't be come back and arming the f7u experience the board ship why they had me come back to take the f73 award so the day I was detaching were on the uh see a plane ramp down at Corpus Christi and and this was a Gusty day and but the team was putting on our show in the F9 this is their first show and then Dash fives yeah right well no they had actually put a show on in Memphis okay so there's their second oh we got all the midshipmen down there this is the midshipman show that they brought them in on the Constitution and they were all out there on the ramp and uh which forest was leading the team Let's see we had uh Pat Murphy on One Wing Ray Hawkins on the other one and wood I guess it was and what were you doing yeah I was uh uh getting ready to detach and I was just uh talking on the radio down there like uh being interviewed we had an announcer was telling the crowd what was going on okay and I was there with him helping out on that part of it okay and uh so and we always had one guy who was in contact with the team all the time on a team frequency and that that was me that particular time and uh and then they would tell me you know Butch would say where he was and it's coming in what his next maneuver is going to be and so we passed that on to the guy on the radio anyhow they came around and uh they were in a diamond formation and making a uh high speed left turn and of course we never fly over the crowd so they so they made this high-speed pass and I guess they the bottom of the pass was probably about a little 1500 feet I guess just as they started pulling out of that thing pieces started flying all four airplanes getting together the uh took off Ray Hawkins uh starboard tip tank he was on the left thing uh took off the elevator off of Butch's airplane um the the port elevator and and stabilizer it uh took off the the pat Murphy's Port he's on the right in the starboard weight and took off his support tip tank you know they were really tucked in there and when it took up when when Ray Hawkins tank hit that Port stabilizer we had a horn balance on the elevator which when you're pulling out the elevator is up but this horn balance is ticked out in front is down below the elevator and apparently that's where the contact was made well immediately when when that came off it pitched which his nose down airplane nose down he was headed for the water when when the number four man which is Bud wood uh hit him from the bottom and it hit so hard it took the nose completely off of the the slot man but wood airplane clear back to the firewall and if bent Butch's tail forward and Butch and budwood's nose slid off and whipped through the starboard elevator and as it did so it pulled Butch out of his dive and we had some spectacular pictures of that which in one frame he went from 15 Mills down to about 20 degrees and it was nose up on a high-speed film now you know that's pretty sudden and uh so anyhow it pulled Butchy out of the dive uh Bud woodwind I mean yeah but wood without that nose on there and of course you know probably was pulling back on the stick design it went straight up in the air and of course it stalled and he ejected at that point and unfortunately he never got out of the seat we they had a picture for a while there him sitting in the seat with the parachute on a drug shoot on the thing and he just went into the bay right in front of that whole crowd and including his wife and uh that and and and um that Murphy and Ray Hawkins both managed to keep their airplanes flying they'd lost really they're being damaged to the airplanes they've lost their tip tags on this on their inboard wing on that boat if Butch was in real trouble and you have no down the elevator now it had broken the cable on the face he was unable to get the canopy open he couldn't bail out and in those days he couldn't inject through the canopy so he was sort of shocked and he was going to have to put that airplane down someplace and so uh I got a got on the horn with uh there's Tower and then they cleared him we decided we'd send him over King wheel the land because he had a nice long Runway and in the meantime I talked to Butch on the radio on that found out he had no down elevator on that thing and we I got him talking to you enough to find out that he could get it slow enough that he could actually put it on the runway with power and if he couldn't get out he had no other choice he had to do it so he had him leave the landing gear up and just to go over there to Kingsville where they had a Crash Crew and everything and they had broom enough for him and he put that thing in very gently down on the runway doing about 160 and the thing skipped off but he didn't have any down elevator and so he just had to ride it until they had settled down again but fortunately it's fell down came to a stop and didn't burn and they had to cut him out of the cockpit until you you might have you talked to him about this uh now that you mentioned it I believe I have yeah now that was a gear up Landing it was a gear uplift wow catching up and out of come that you raised the question I've forgotten now whether he got the gear down or not I think it was a gear up Landing but it may not have been that didn't I can't remember didn't Ray Hawkins have to jump uh bail out of uh a cougar later on yeah when when Ray had the team later on though he would he went direct to the factory to pick up the first F9 F6 and he was doing just great with nothing when the Dale ran away with him you know it had this uh a full flying teal on it and he had an electrical malfunction of some kind put that thing in a hard nose up in there and he had to bail out of the thing and he got out of it well I guess he went and goes down yeah really but and he had to get out of it supersonically he had to get out above oxygen altitude and it tore his mask away and he had to survive on grunt breathing you know where you just pressurize your lungs you know with your with your muscles that's the way he survived that one but that's the Saga the F7 news and most people most of the time none of the history's ever even mentioned the f7u they were so so what an incredible interview is uh just a different world back then with that Cutlass uh and the reliability issues that he had to deal with just insane stories but uh Nick as I said at the beginning of the interview you're working on some pretty impressive work right now so I wanted you to share a little bit about some of the projects you've been working on over the last year or two here that are pretty exciting thanks I finished a book on the military aircraft Boneyard known as amarg a-m-a-r-g at Tucson they store right now about 3 500 aircraft the Blue Angels F-18 when they retired the Legacy airplanes those that didn't go to various memorials or museums went to the Boneyard and Blue Angel Number Two that you saw is now at the Castle Air Museum in Atwater California and the castle guys trucked it up from Tucson to Central California they refreshed it did a little bit of restoration it's now on display and it looks fantastic and I just came out with a book with my friend Jim Dunn on navy colors at Fallon called High Desert deployment and the forwards by uh Gil Rudd Duster so that will be in stores pretty soon and right now I'm finishing another book on looking for historic aircraft crash sites and the history behind those airplanes so lots of fun stuff happening yeah your books are incredible uh several of them sit on my bookshelf which I'm thrilled about and uh can again express my appreciation enough for your generosity and sharing this material with me looking forward to picking up some of your new books and uh we'll play some of your interviews uh as the year progresses here with some of the other Legends so hopefully I can get you to come back for those and in the meantime thanks again Nick really appreciate it thank you Ryan I appreciate it

Channel: Blue Angel Phantoms

Views: 86,864

Keywords: Blue Angels, 1952 Blue Angels, F7U Cutlass, Whitey Feightner, WWII Ace, Fighter Pilot, Blue Angels Podcast, Blue Angels Interview, navy test pilot, test pilot school, F7U, Cutlass, 1952, What really happened, aviation, aviation history, navy history, Midair collision, Blue Angels crash, Pensacola airshow, blue angels airshow, lost tapes, never before heard, pilot interview, Corpus Christi, blue angels Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi airshow

Id: Fwyk18aow70

Length: 48min 50sec (2930 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2023