Some days you are the dog and others you are the fire-plug.

October 16, 2017 6:42 AM

Surviving a 15,000-feet fall. One very bad day over, in, and on the Pacific Ocean. (via)

Previously.

posted by doctornemo (22 comments total)

“This is very serious,” I thought.
posted by jedicus at 7:02 AM on October 16, 2017 [23 favorites]

Two weeks ago I went skydiving for the first time. The jump was from 10K on a beautiful, clear day. I was shocked by the overwhelming sensory experience of the free fall, and cannot imagine having useful thoughts in the situation in which this man found himself. Quite a vivid account, thanks for an exciting read.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:49 AM on October 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love the narrative voice of stories like this, aviation disasters from pilots. It's just so unvarnished. There's no writer's craft here, no flowery language embellishing things. OK, maybe a bit of a storyteller, but mostly it's just an extraordinary event that happened to a very well trained but mostly ordinary person. And holy shit his engine exploded and he was trapped in a burning plane and then his parachute didn't open and then he's drowning alone in the ocean. And here it is, his story.

I also like this aside because it's just another example of some improbable disaster coolly handled by a well trained but mostly ordinary person.

I learned later that [the spotter plane] headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.

Pretty sure they didn't teach that communication mode in flight school. Maybe they do now.
posted by Nelson at 8:13 AM on October 16, 2017 [10 favorites]

So two planes crashed after mid-air-re-fueling - did the USAF figure out what was going wrong ? (plane design error, incorrect refueling process, etc ?) And any after-action report on how both ejectors failed ?

(yeah, I like to read the followup detailed reports -- like the air france 447 report, wildly interesting on how they happen).
posted by k5.user at 8:17 AM on October 16, 2017

You gotta read till the end!

The Marine Corps discovered the cause of my flame-out, and that of Major Tooker, the day before, was the failure of an automatic cut-off switch in the refueling system. The aircraft’s main fuel tank was made of heavy reinforced rubber. When the cut-off switch failed, this allowed the tank to overfill and it burst like a balloon. This then caused the fire and flameout. We will never know why the ejection seat failed to work since it is in the bottom of the ocean. The parachute failure is a mystery also.
posted by stinkfoot at 8:25 AM on October 16, 2017 [7 favorites]

Nuts, how did I miss that ? Thanks, stinkfoot.
posted by k5.user at 8:42 AM on October 16, 2017

And any after-action report on how both ejectors failed ?

Major Tooker had ejected from his aircraft, the day before, in this same area, when his Crusader flamed out mysteriously during the same type of refueling exercise.

Only the second ejector failed.
posted by zamboni at 8:44 AM on October 16, 2017

Searching for Judkins lead me to the gloriously Web 1.0 Free Fall Research Page. Judkins is listed under the Other Amazing Stories section, but I'm kind of taken by the story of Unlucky Skydiver Michael Cox:

Fort Bragg, NC: In the summer of 1977, Michael Cox was a Radio-Teletype operator in the 82nd Airborne division. Jumping with a heavy equipment bag from 1,200 feet out of a C-130, Cox hit the side of the plane and spun as he fell, which prevented his parachute from opening properly. With his parachute streaming uselessly above him, he hit the ground in a sandy area. He was knocked out for about 45 minutes, but recovered well enough to hike back to the mustering point where the company commander ordered him to do fifty push-ups for arriving late. Cox collapsed and was taken to the emergency room where he was found to have a neck fracture. He recovered and jumped again about six weeks later.

posted by zamboni at 8:54 AM on October 16, 2017 [14 favorites]

But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.

What is it Lassie? What's wrong, girl? Did Timmy's engine explode, and his ejection system not work, and his parachute fail, and is he drifting around in the ocean with about a hundred broken bones? Where is he girl? Show me!


And overall, holy crap! It's like a Final Destination prequel. Death is pissed at that man.
posted by Naberius at 9:15 AM on October 16, 2017 [7 favorites]

You can't check that any individual ejector seat or parachute or similar emergency equipment is working, you can only hope that good design and engineering, and perfect manufacture and assembly will result in it working if needed. (There must be a name for this category of thing, anyone know?)
posted by thefool at 9:34 AM on October 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Only the second ejector failed.

Judkins's plane had two ejector activators, the main one and a backup, and both of those failed.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 9:42 AM on October 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

That's a damn good story. Did you all catch the bit where he had had his spleen removed earlier, and the doctor treating him after the fall said that if he had had a spleen it probably would have ruptured on impact, causing him to bleed to death? Crazy.
posted by freecellwizard at 10:09 AM on October 16, 2017

Totally amazing. Tends to put things in perspective, although, the dark side of me says that there is a "survivorship bias" in putting too much stock in stories like this -- the ratio of unhappy endings to happy ones is steep.
posted by Mid at 10:40 AM on October 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

You can't check that any individual ejector seat or parachute or similar emergency equipment is working, you can only hope that good design and engineering, and perfect manufacture and assembly will result in it working if needed. (There must be a name for this category of thing, anyone know?)

Single-shot or one-shot device testing. It's a special case of reliability engineering. Here's a short summary of statistical analysis of OSDs.
posted by zamboni at 11:11 AM on October 16, 2017 [9 favorites]

Only a while ago we had the story of the poor kid who fell down the stairs after a fraternity hazing and his spleen ruptured (which may have contributed to his unfortunate end), so it might seem like a preventive spleen removal might be good if you want to survive a drinking bout AND falling out of an airplane with no working parachute.

Also, I would have thought pilots carry a spare parachute, like paragliders do.
posted by Laotic at 11:40 AM on October 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

“On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

Best line of the whole story IMO.

Wow what a ride.
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:53 AM on October 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Though apparently, Mr. Judkin's protestations of perfect safety records notwithstanding, it sounds like it was just a matter of time before something bad happened. The Crusader appears to have been an astonishingly unsafe airplane.

According to the wikipedia article on the plane, "In all, 1,261 Crusaders were built. By the time it was withdrawn from the fleet, 1,106 had been involved in mishaps."
posted by Naberius at 11:56 AM on October 16, 2017 [10 favorites]

Fucking spleens
posted by gottabefunky at 5:27 PM on October 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Pretty sure I read this story in an ancient Reader's Digest when I was a kid. It made such an impression that whenever I read an article about surviving a parachute failure, my first thought is "spleen".
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:27 PM on October 16, 2017

SPOILER ALERT
posted by bendy at 9:14 PM on October 16, 2017

None of these incidents should have happened. I had just experienced three major catastrophes in one flight. My squadron had a perfect safety record. “Why was all of this happening?” was my thinking.

"Why was all of this happening to me?" would have been my thinking. I would have taken all this personally. What an amazing story.
posted by bryon at 9:27 PM on October 16, 2017

The lesson is: If you're ever thrown from a plane without a parachute, you should immediately begin to remove your own spleen.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:49 AM on October 17, 2017 [8 favorites]