BOOM!! In an instant, the sky went from a brilliant blue to a muddled black. The sound was deafening. Something was trying to suck his helmet right off his head. Had his aircraft somehow exploded? He didn’t feel any G’s. They weren’t tumbling or spinning, that he could tell. He could no longer hear the engine, so maybe he had lost it. He was working to pull his helmet back into position when he realized it was his oxygen mask that was covering his eyes, blocking his vision. Pulling it back into position, he could see again. They were still flying, not out of control but headed toward the dirt. It was time to do that pilot thing and pull up.
Just ten minutes earlier the former Air Force test pilot and NASA astronaut Curt Brown was pulling the Hawker Sea Fury up off the runway for the first practice flight of the race season. Intending to burn what remained of the 100-octane low lead fuel used to ferry the aircraft from its home base in Minnesota to Reno, Nevada, he had just finished a couple of laps around the race course. A rookie needed the course to complete his check ride, so Curt pulled up to circle in the cool-down area, about 3,000 feet above the field. Cleared back onto the course by race control, he descended rapidly, rounding the first pylon about two and three hundred feet above the ground. Just another couple of leisurely laps ought to do it, he thought.
A second later he was trying to figure out what happened that caused such a violent disruption.
“Unfortunately I thought I was better than this, but it took me a few seconds to figure out what had happened. I heard a big boom, I thought something had exploded. I got might sight back, looked around, and saw that I had two wings and everything seemed to be normal but then I noticed that (just to my left) I had this big shard of plexiglass sticking out at me and I’m thinking, ‘oh my canopy’s gone.’ ”
That deafening noise was the wind at around 400 miles per hour of airspeed. It all began to make sense. Fly the plane, he told himself, just fly the plane.
“The first thing you gotta do is fly the airplane. If you quit flying the airplane, something’s not going to be good. You’re going to end up hitting the ground, or getting in an attitude you don’t like. No matter what happens to you, the first thing you’ve got to do is fly. I started flying and made sure my airplane was still working.”
Not sure if pieces of the wreckage had hit his tail feathers, and knowing he couldn’t turn around to look for fear of having the wind rip at his helmet again, he wiggled the rudder and felt the pitch trim. All behaved normally, so he knew he had a good airplane. It was time to communicate his situation.
“Race 71 with a Mayday. I’ve lost my canopy but have a good engine, heading to 26.”
That instantly started the process of alerting emergency vehicles on the field and signaled the safety/chase plane above to dive down to pull alongside for a visual check and to provide any assistance needed from the air.
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| Race Pilot Curt Brown looking for parts of his airplane in the desert. |
Landing safely, and pulling up to the flight line, a quick inspection revealed damage to the horizontal stabilizer and half a canopy frame ripped from the aircraft. It could have been so much worse. Asked if he had any thoughts from his experience for GA pilots, Curt responded,
“One thing I relearned was when you push the power up to take-off you gotta be ready for anything. I was going out to just burn gas and to have fun. We weren’t going to push the engine, we weren’t pushing the airplane, we were just burning fuel. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to have any problems at all. Especially losing the canopy. No matter what you’re flying, when you put the throttle into the fly position and you leave the ground, you’ve gotta be prepared. That means knowing your aircraft, knowing your systems, knowing the weather, and knowing what you’re going to do be doing. And then know the (possible) outcomes of what can happen from the maneuvers you’re (planning to) do.”
A good reminder for those of us lucky enough to ply the skies in a craft made by humans and machines, which like most things has the possibility of failing at any most inconvenient time. Hopefully, we've thought about that possibility before departing, and have pre-formulated a rapid and correct response that keeps us in the air long enough to safely get back on the ground.
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