1973, Naval Air Station, Albany, GA (primarily A-5 Vigilantes stationed there)...a Marine F-4 flew in, landed, taxied and parked on the tarmac for a short while. Pilot called a little later for clearance to taxi back out...cleared him to taxi...heading to MCAS Cherry Point. As soon as the pilot was on the parallel taxiway, he started calling immediately for takeoff clearance. Not unusual for a pilot to do that...very often cleared for takeoff like that if there was no traffic. Couldn’t clear him though...had a T-38 on short final already cleared for touch & go. He was gonna have to stop at the end of the taxiway and wait for the T-38 to clear. Pilot asked a few more times, wanting to get out in front of the T-38...really pushing for clearance. Then I noticed smoke coming from under his aircraft...looked like a wheel fire. Grabbed the binoculars...sure enough, his left wheel was on fire. Told the F-4 pilot about the fire...”Roger, tower, shutting down.” Rolled the trucks and the fire was put out.
As it turned out, there was something wrong with the aircraft. Engines were spooling up and pilot couldn’t bring them down, so the plane was in an uncontrolled acceleration down the taxiway. The pilot’s answer? Stand on the brakes until he could get clearance...which led to the wheel fire.
He knew the plane was broken and he wasn’t going to be able to stop at the end of the runway. All he wanted to do was get off the ground, get to Cherry Point, call an emergency while inbound, land and be on a Marine base for dinner.
You were Navy AC? Marine ATC, here. 7312/22/24. I still miss Millington NATTC. Fun not to be believed and will never, ever happen in the Navy/Marine Corps again.