How I Almost Died, In the Hammerhead!
Author: Eric Meyn
How I almost died... in the hammerhead! - I taxi out for takeoff on an instrument ride with a student.. Rwy 35C at Reese AFB, TX., so we are facing roughly NW toward the T-38 pattern, which used the outside runway on the west side of the airfield. We called number one with Tower, and they told us to hold short for arriving emergency traffic.
Of course, we both craned our necks around to see who was in distress. Couldn't see anything. Clear and a million day. Strange. We keep watching. Nothing, nothing, nothing.... I'm about to key the mic to ask a dumb question when I catch, way up high, a smoke trail. Careening at the ground from 14,000 feet, smoking like a chimney, not because he was on fire, but because that's just what F-4s do, was a Navy Test Pilot School Phantom.
He was in a STEEP dive and finally pops up on freq and asks Tower if their barrier is available on the center runway. Tower says negative, and he pulls out of his dive over the approach end overrun, screaming like a scalded dog. He goes, "Tower, Phantom blah dee blah is low approach pulling left closed, emergency fuel." Tower says, "Roger, call Reload." (I think that was the RSU call sign for the 38 pattern; someone might correct me on that.)
Of course, he has no idea what the 38 RSU frequency is, and he's got a HANDFUL of jet on his hands and, I'll find out later, a teaspoon of gas. He cobbs in the burners and pulls the most Sierra Hotel "closed pattern" turn at about 100' AGL and probably 6-8 Gs, I've ever seen. All of the 38s in the pattern over there bomb burst towards the breakout point. I figure Tower called the RSU on the landline.
Now the F-4 has teardropped back to the runway, opposite direction! He is pointed roughly toward the middle of the 38 runway and roughly directly at.... me. As he approaches midfield of the 38 runway I'm expecting an ejection and I'm seriously considering just jamming in full throttle to run across the center runway and out of his current vector. But the F-4 then reverses his turn, still at an incredibly low altitude and back into 90 degrees of bank, pulling some serious Gs. Now dangerously close to scraping a wingtip on the hardscrabble ground just west of the 38 runway (I am NOT exaggerating his altitude!) he maneuvers over and aligns with the 38 runway at about midfield. I think the runway was roughly 10,000' long. I'm guessing he touched down with about 4500' of runway remaining. Besides me and my student not dying in a fireball, the most amazing thing about this was that he touched down, popped the chute, and taxied past me like nothing happened on his way to Base Ops, dragging the chute the whole way.
The funny part of the story was that the Base Commander tried to ground him. I heard this part of the story second hand from a buddy that worked Base Ops. The navy guy was a lieutenant commander (major) and told the Base CC (colonel) that he was getting gas and leaving. Which was kind of impressive as the reason this whole thing happened was because he had a fuel transfer issue that caused him to run out of gas enroute to someplace else. (I'm not an expert on the F-4 fuel system so I'm going on some old memories; but this is at least 10% accurate.) He told the Base CC to pound sand, gassed up his jet, got back in, and left about an hour later. I think he must have donated his drogue, or maybe he bundled it up and stuck in a pod or something. I'm not sure.
I will never forget the front aspect silhouette of the F-4. I almost got it tattooed on my forehead... permanently.