Jumping the gun

Pull up a chair, have a seat, grab a beverage of your choice. I'd imagine most new students are looking forward to their first solo and their first solo cross country.

Not me.

Well, that is not entirely true, for indeed, those will be tremendous milestones and I'm looking forward to achieving them, but for me I'm looking forward most to...

Emergency Procedures

Now, this may seem a little weird. "Why, Scott, are you looking forward to such things?" And to answer it requires a little bit of history.

A fresh out of ground school gunner boards the aircraft for his "dollar ride". We do the brief, it will be a short flight (four hours) and back. I strap myself into my ejection seat, lock the inertia reel for take off and we lumber down the runway. No steam on this G model, we're going on straight air power.

Aircraft Commander: "Committed, your throttles".
Co-Pilot: "My throttles"

Committed is the speed at which the aircraft has to get in the air, it is now going too fast to stop on the runway. Shortly thereafter pilot calls for rotation and the big BUFF is in the air. Suddenly, my station gets a lot quieter and I don't feel this is any cause for alarm, I've never been in a B-52 before, so I don't know what "normal" is.

The A/C announces that we've had complete failure on the port wing, all four engines flamed out. We declare emergency and limp to holding altitude and circle for two hours as the B-52 is a greedy bugger, she doesn't have a fuel dump like a KC-135 has so we have to burn it off. The engines won't re-ignite and I admit, I'm not feeling too good about this whole flying thing.

Granted, we have four good engines each one pumping out 14,000 pounds of thrust or so, but in my mind, we've lost half our engines and thus half our capability of flight. We're asymmetrical as all hell and this is not fun.

The A/C lands the plane without incident, we deplane and all is well with my world. I've gone from "half our capability" to "I've had my one incident I'll have in my flying career" in that overactive mind I have. We get debriefed by the wing commander and part of standard procedure is that after a mishap, the aircrew is asked if they wish to stop flying. You can yes, and right then and there you are removed from flight status and given your choice of non-flying post.

I respond with a very enthusiastic and only somewhat forced, "Hell yah, I still want to fly." and I continue on with flight training and my spirits continue to soar as high as that iron bird will take me.

Advance a couple of years to my being the mission gunner. We're coming in for a landing and there's a hydraulic failure, this means we have no brakes. It also means the gunner has to unstrap from his seat, open the bomb bay access hatch, clamber to the forward port landing wheel and actuate this lever 100 times. This then gives the pilot 1 application of the brakes. Rinse and repeat. I'm pumping that lever like my life depended on it, because, well, it did. I'm straddling a wheel that's revolving at who knows what RPM and the runway is a scant two feet away, streaking by at nearly 110 MPH.

Pumpx100, I feel the brakes, pump x 100, brakes, finally the runway is actually taking on texture as the plane battles inertia and my right arm is providing the outside force to counter Newton's Law about stopping an object in motion. We come to a stop about ten feet from the end of the runway and I can no longer feel my arm, I know I have an arm, I can see it, but I'll be damned if I'm actually able of feeling anything. I scramble down the wheel well and run to the pilot side window so he knows I'm alright.

So, now the point: flying a solo will be awesome, flying my first cross country will be awesome.

But, those won't save my life.

Knowing emergency procedures will.