Warbird Information Exchange

Be that as it may, I have seen gear-up landings in $30 million F-15Es and $3 million T-38s where there was nothing wrong with the jet other than the gear handle wasn't in the "down" position. The audible warnings in both those jets were completely functional and going off at the time of "landing" (as was the red light in the gear handle, but the three green gear lights were conspocuously not illuminated).

Bottom line is, mistakes happen even given systems to prevent those mistakes.



I can't recall, Senator.

Found this here:
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/119080

Vintage plane's mishap at D-M to get FAA look
By Carol Ann Alaimo
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The Federal Aviation Administration is looking in to why the landing gear of a vintage warplane failed to open during an air show practice run in Tucson on Saturday.
The Korean War-era F-86 Sabre owned by a California air museum landed "gear-up" around 3 p.m. Saturday at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said Tuesday.
An eyewitness said the 53-year-old aircraft scraped to a stop, sending a 20-foot plume of flames into the air. The pilot was not harmed and the aircraft escaped major damage.
The pilot didn't seem to realize his aircraft was about to land with its wheels still up, said Tucsonan Tom Colvin, 48, a military aircraft enthusiast.
He said he watched the mishap unfold from outside the northwest edge of the air base, and monitored D-M control tower communications on a portable scanner.
"The pilot landed as if he thought his landing gear was down," Colvin said. "There was no chatter on the radio" to suggest the aircraft was having a problem, he said.
D-M vice commander Col. Michael Isherwood said the pilot didn't alert the control tower of anything amiss. "There was no problem indicated at the control tower at all," he said.
Retired Air Force Maj. Jack Boileau of Tucson, a former F-86 pilot, said the aircraft's instrument panel has display lights that clearly indicate when each of its three sets of landing gear is in the "down and locked" position.
Colvin said as the F-86 came to a stop, sparks seemed to ignite one of the two gas tanks beneath the wings, creating a brief flash and flames. "That pilot was very lucky," he said.
The pilot's name has not been released. Officials at the Air Combat Command in Virginia, which arranged the flying event at D-M, said the pilot was a contract employee with Case Management, a private firm whose location was not immediately clear Tuesday.
The F-86 was one of dozens of warplanes in Tucson last weekend to practice formation flying for the 2006 air show season. Flights were stopped after the incident on Saturday, but continued on Sunday.
Kenitzer, of the FAA, said agency officials will decide "in the near future" whether to conduct a full investigation of Saturday's incident.
Mark Foster, general manager of the Planes of Fame air museum in Chino, Calif., which owns the F-86 involved in the incident, predicted the vintage aircraft would be back in the skies in no time.
"We've got about a day's worth of work to do on it and then it will be flown home" to California, he said.
"A little bit of touch-up paint and it will be back on the Air Force circuit."

A little more:

Top Gun pilot forgot landing gear
Jet skidded, caught fire at D-M; FAA calls mishap 'pilot induced'
By Carol Ann Alaimo
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

A former Navy Top Gun with decades of flying experience forgot to put his plane's landing gear down during an air show practice run in Tucson in March, the Federal Aviation Administration found.
Retired Capt. Dale "Snort" Snodgrass, a seasoned pro on the military air-show circuit, was piloting a Korean War-era F-86 Sabre that scraped to a stop and caught fire in the March 4 mishap at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Snodgrass, 57, was given counseling as "corrective action," according to the FAA report, obtained by the Arizona Daily Star under the Freedom of Information Act.
The pilot was unhurt in the incident, which shut down air-show practice at D-M that day. The vintage warplane he was flying, owned by a California air museum, sustained minor damage when one of its wing fuel tanks ignited.
The F-86 was one of dozens of warplanes in Tucson to practice formation flying for the 2006 air-show season. The event was not open to the general public.
Snodgrass remains on the Air Force schedule this season. The service still has "total confidence in his abilities," according to a statement from the Air Combat Command.
Snodgrass, a Florida resident, declined to comment on the FAA finding.
Mike Abraham, a spokesman for CASE, LLC, the Virginia-based defense contractor that hired Snodgrass for the March 4 flight, said the pilot did not want to be interviewed.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for pilots to land without putting their landing gear down, said Arvin Schultz, president of the Phoenix-based Arizona Pilots Association.
"It's something that shouldn't happen, but when it does, the course of action the FAA takes is pretty standard," he said.
If damage is minor and the incident is a simple oversight, discipline usually consists of giving the pilot a talking-to, Schultz said. The lecture would be "kind of demeaning" for a highly accomplished aviator, he said.
Snodgrass, who retired from a 26-year Navy career in 1999, is renowned in the air-show world.
He has 10,000 hours of flight time under his belt, half of them in the F-14 Tomcat, a Navy record for the jet.
In 1985, Snodgrass was a Top Gun graduate and the Navy's Fighter Pilot of the Year. From 1994 to 1997, he was commander of all the Navy's F-14s.
He flew the Tomcat in air shows for more than a decade, and is qualified on at least six other aircraft, including several vintage warplanes.
Retired Air Force Maj. Jack Boileau of Tucson, a former F-86 pilot, said he can't fathom how someone with those credentials could forget such a basic rule of aviation.
"It's hard to believe that a guy with all that experience would not put down his landing gear," said Boileau, adding that the F-86 has warning lights and a cockpit alarm to prevent such a mistake.
The FAA report made no mention of the warning systems. It said the landing problem was "pilot induced."
Because a fire resulted, the D-M mishap "could have been serious," Boileau said.
"It's lucky that things ended as well as they did."
On StarNet See the online version of this story to view a PDF of the FAA report at azstarnet.com/metro

Forget the gear the first time, shame on pilot.....

Forget the gear for the third time, shame on plane's owner.....

Plane returned to Chino shortly thereafter.

HawHaw!

Copy, Roger that!

_________________
Regards,

Jase
www.b26marauder.com
"I'm having a BLAST!!" 2007 CAF Wing Staff Conference

RIP Gary Austin..always in our hearts

Saw the F-86 at Chino last month; it's in fine fettle, spoke with one of the technicians who said they had a pile of NOS gear doors, flaps, etc so all they had to do was unbolt the damaged units and bolt on new ones. Took some pics of the damaged fuel tanks and gear doors, stacked against a hangar door... got a few of the Sabre as well, aside from an extra ding or two on the paint, you can't tell that it was ever on it's belly.

Gotta be embarrassing for "Snort", though... just goes to show you that no matter HOW good you are, disaster is just waiting for you to screw up.

Lynn

_________________
Wisdom, courtesy of shrike: "In aviation, as well as marriage, it's often just as important to be seen to be doing something as is to do it properly in the first place."

Where was Forest GUMP?

Maybe Forest GUMP was focused on trying to figure out where the mixture and prop controls are in an F-86 ?

Man, I'm carrying a grenade whenever I fly my T-6. If I groundloop, KABOOM! No evidence...

You guys sure are a tough crowd.

You know what they say,

There are two kinds of pilots...

1) Those that have landed gear up.

2) Those that have done it repeatedly.


Or something like that!

_________________
"Hindsight is usually 20% off!"

As I heard it sung at Oshkosh about Paul Poberezny and the P-64:

"There are those who have... and those who will."

_________________

All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

Thanks for the update. For some reason I missed this thread and had never heard about the incident, which for me is unheard of.

John

Yeah, I'm sure that the guy with the most-ever flight hours in the F-14 would have trouble operating a jet.

Absolutely not , Randy. I know and respect Snort immensely. I was just alluding to Oscarduece's GUMP reference. I was trying to point out in a subtle way that it would be hard to use that acronym in an F-86.

Snort flew a particularly nice show at Pensacola last year and some of his passes were at 50-75 ft. We asked him when he got back to the parking area why he was flying his high show ! He got a kick out of that.