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OT - Pilot shoots himself down :)

You might have seen this..

Quote:

On September 21, 1956, test pilot Tom Attridge was flying Grumman's new F-11F-1 Tiger. He fired a burst from his 20mm cannon while diving and accelerating. The cockpit was then struck by an outside object. Attridge immediately radioed that he was returning to base. While attempting to land, the jet lost power and crash-landed on the runway. Attridge, thankfully, escaped safely. A subsequent examination found three bullet impacts and one intact 20mm bullet in the plane. Attridge had managed to shoot his own fighter down.

How did this happen? The combination of conditions responsible for the event was: (1) the decay in projectile velocity and trajectory drop; (2) the approximate 0.5-G descent of the F11F-1, due in part to its nose pitching down from firing low-mounted guns; (3) alignment of the boresight line of 0° to the line of flight. With that 0.5-G dive, Attridge had flown below the trajectory of his bullets and, 11 seconds later, flew through them as their flight paths met.

LOL What an unlucky (or lucky?) pilot. One in a million?

I bet he was like, "Um, I meant to do that. Yeah."

Another linky for those in disbelief. (see Historical Note )
http://www.combatairmuseum.org/aircr...ummanf11f.html

AFAIK this also appeared in the Readers Digest.. not sure of the issue though.

I always liked the story about the first test of the M-61 cannon mounted in the F104 Starfighter.

The test pilot flying the one and only prototype got up to height, checked everything and pulled the trigger. The cannon exploded throwing the breach of the gun through the engine.

Rather than ejecting and loosing the prototype he glided back to base and performed a dead stick landing!

Did that test pilot have balls or what?

I vaguely remember seeing something like that on the F104 development program on film, but that was yonks ago. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger (Post 496790)

.. F104 Starfighter.
.. glided back to base and performed a dead stick landing!

My brain just exploded.
:grin:

Quote:

Originally Posted by theOden (Post 496802)

My brain just exploded.
:grin:

IKR? Might as well have been a telephone pole. That's one good pilot.