Bad Miscalculation
Pointed nose-down and hurtling toward the ground at 8,400 feet per minute, F-16C fighter jet pilot Chris Stricklin came to a terrible realization： I'm not going to make it.
The next decision he made would send him on the ride of his life —— a tall order for an Air Force Thunderbird pilot whose typical day included heart-stopping maneuvers and high-speed dives with little room for error. Now one of those moves had gone terribly wrong. And Stricklin had to choose —— instantly —— between two lousy options： risk his life by staying with the plane or risk his life by ejecting.
Though ejection seats have saved hundreds of pilots, they're not exactly the easy way out of a crashing plane. Pulling that handle starts a reaction so violent and dangerous that pilots do it only when they are certain the alternative is much worse. For Stricklin, the moment had arrived.
That day at a 2003 airshow at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, the 31-year-old Air Force captain from Shelby, Alabama, was Thunderbird 6, the show opener. He planned a stunning solo maneuver： Taking off at high speed, he would initiate a sharp climb, roll the plane upside down, and complete the loop by diving and pulling up at the last moment. Then the rest of the Thunderbird jets were supposed to scream in for more stunts.
But now Stricklin realized he had badly miscalculated. He was roaring toward the earth at a speed that he knew was so high he could never pull up in time. His training and instincts kicked in. There was no time to study the situation. Things just happened.
“I was thinking, I'm going to have to eject, but throughout my entire time flying in airshows, the safety of the crowd was always on my mind. I said to myself, I can't eject yet.”
Seconds passed. Now Stricklin reached for the eject handle.
No, not yet. Got to steer away more.
There was a runway just below, Stricklin knew. He reached again.
No, not yet. This sink rate will kill me. I've got to get the sink rate under control first. The sink rate is, in essence, how fast the plane and the ground are rushing toward each other. Despite the rockets that shoot the pilot's butt out of the plane, no ejection seat can overcome a sink rate as high as Stricklin was experiencing. Again, he didn't need instruments to know this. He just felt it. So Stricklin stayed with the plane a little longer.
And the ground kept coming.
If I'm not going to survive this anyway, I might as well keep pulling and see if I can get farther around the loop, farther from the crowd.
Pulling up hard, Stricklin was trying to get the plane into a position in which he just might survive an ejection and still spare the crowd below. The Thunderbird pilot knew that the No. 1 cause of unsuccessful ejections is hesitation： The flier doesn't punch out when he should because he is afraid of injury, reluctant to give up the effort to save the multimillion-dollar plane, or too concerned about people on the ground. At that moment, Stricklin also knew that if he bailed too soon, he might die. And if he waited too long, he definitely would die.
His window of opportunity was about half a second.
“Anything before that, and the seat wouldn't have overcome the forces working against it, and anything after that, I would have gone too deep into the fireball after the crash. I wouldn't have made it.”
Stricklin's entire flight that day, from wheels up to wheels —— and everything else —— back on the ground, lasted just 22 seconds. From the time he realized he had to eject to the point he finally pulled the handle was less than a second. There wasn't time to be scared.
His third reach was all instinct. “My body just said, Now is the time.”
Pointed nose-down and hurtling toward the ground at 8,400 feet per minute, F-16C fighter jet pilot Chris Stricklin came to a terrible realization： I'm not going to make it.
The next decision he made would send him on the ride of his life —— a tall order for an Air Force Thunderbird pilot whose typical day included heart-stopping maneuvers and high-speed dives with little room for error. Now one of those moves had gone terribly wrong. And Stricklin had to choose —— instantly —— between two lousy options： risk his life by staying with the plane or risk his life by ejecting.
Though ejection seats have saved hundreds of pilots, they're not exactly the easy way out of a crashing plane. Pulling that handle starts a reaction so violent and dangerous that pilots do it only when they are certain the alternative is much worse. For Stricklin, the moment had arrived.
That day at a 2003 airshow at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, the 31-year-old Air Force captain from Shelby, Alabama, was Thunderbird 6, the show opener. He planned a stunning solo maneuver： Taking off at high speed, he would initiate a sharp climb, roll the plane upside down, and complete the loop by diving and pulling up at the last moment. Then the rest of the Thunderbird jets were supposed to scream in for more stunts.
But now Stricklin realized he had badly miscalculated. He was roaring toward the earth at a speed that he knew was so high he could never pull up in time. His training and instincts kicked in. There was no time to study the situation. Things just happened.
“I was thinking, I'm going to have to eject, but throughout my entire time flying in airshows, the safety of the crowd was always on my mind. I said to myself, I can't eject yet.”
Seconds passed. Now Stricklin reached for the eject handle.
No, not yet. Got to steer away more.
There was a runway just below, Stricklin knew. He reached again.
No, not yet. This sink rate will kill me. I've got to get the sink rate under control first. The sink rate is, in essence, how fast the plane and the ground are rushing toward each other. Despite the rockets that shoot the pilot's butt out of the plane, no ejection seat can overcome a sink rate as high as Stricklin was experiencing. Again, he didn't need instruments to know this. He just felt it. So Stricklin stayed with the plane a little longer.
And the ground kept coming.
If I'm not going to survive this anyway, I might as well keep pulling and see if I can get farther around the loop, farther from the crowd.
Pulling up hard, Stricklin was trying to get the plane into a position in which he just might survive an ejection and still spare the crowd below. The Thunderbird pilot knew that the No. 1 cause of unsuccessful ejections is hesitation： The flier doesn't punch out when he should because he is afraid of injury, reluctant to give up the effort to save the multimillion-dollar plane, or too concerned about people on the ground. At that moment, Stricklin also knew that if he bailed too soon, he might die. And if he waited too long, he definitely would die.
His window of opportunity was about half a second.
“Anything before that, and the seat wouldn't have overcome the forces working against it, and anything after that, I would have gone too deep into the fireball after the crash. I wouldn't have made it.”
Stricklin's entire flight that day, from wheels up to wheels —— and everything else —— back on the ground, lasted just 22 seconds. From the time he realized he had to eject to the point he finally pulled the handle was less than a second. There wasn't time to be scared.
His third reach was all instinct. “My body just said, Now is the time.”