Posted on 09/29/2010 11:06:01 PM PDT by Neil E. Wright
On Sep 21, 1956 Grumman test pilot Tom Attridge shot himself down in a graphic demonstration of two objects occupying the wrong place at the same time—one being a Grumman F11F-1 Tiger [138260], the other a gaggle of its own bullets..
It happened on the second run of test-firing four 20mm cannon at Mach 1.0 speeds. At 20,000' Attridge entered a shallow dive of 20°, accelerating in afterburner, and at 13,000' pulled the trigger for a four-second burst, then another to empty the belts. During the firing run the F11F continued its descent, and upon arriving at 7,000', the armor-glass windshield was struck, but not penetrated, by an object..
Attridge throttled back to slow down and prevent cave-in of the windshield, flying back to Grumman's Long Island field at 230 mph. He radioed that a gash in the outboard side of the right engine's intake lip was the only apparent sign of damage other than for the glass, but that 78 percent was maximum available power without engine roughness occurring..
Two miles from base, at 1,200' with flaps and wheels down, it became evident from the sink rate that the runway could not be gained on 78 percent power. Attridge applied power and said "the engine sounded like it was tearing up." It then lost power completely. He pulled up the gear and settled into trees less than a mile short of the runway, traveling 300 feet and losing a right wing and stabilizer in the process. Fire broke out, but, despite injuries, Attridge managed to exit the plane and get away safely, to be picked up by Grumman's rescue helicopter.
Examination of the F11F established there were three hits—in the windshield, the right engine intake, and the nose cone. The engine's inlet guide vanes were struck, and a battered 20mm projectile was found in the first compressor stage..
How did this happen? The combination of conditions reponsible for the event was (1) the decay in projectile velocity and trajectory drop; (2) the approximate 0.5-G descent of the F11F, due in part to its nose pitching down from firing low-mounted guns; (3) alignment of the boresight line of 0° to the line of flight. With that 0.5-G dive, Attridge had flown below the trajectory of his bullets and, 11 seconds later, flew through them as their flight paths met..
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Hey, CV(S)-11. That used to be my address.
Jeeze, I thought that only happened to Irving — the 142nd fastest gun in the West...
It also was suggested in the Mad Magazine spoof of the original Star Wars movie (now known as “A New Hope”)...
:)
And do you know who keeps the NAVAIR pinglist????
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Not F-16 but a fun and interesting milcraft article if you would like to ping the crew.
It isn’t every day that conditions allow one to shoot oneself down.
That's why you always need to aim a little low when shooting downhill. :-)
I’m still guessing that he was traveling into bigger mach numbers than merely 1+. A 20mm projectile leaves the barrel at what... maybe mach 3+? With a line-of-sight trajectory, even with the explanation above it still seems unlikely that he’d be able to fly up under the bullet paths, unless he was moving considerably faster than mach 1. In a dive from 20Kft to 13Kft on afterburner... higher mach numbers than 1.0 don’t seem out of the question to me...
The F11F Grumman Tiger-one of the great ‘what-ifs’ of history. A great airplane that could have had a great future.
USS Intrepid (CV/CVA/CVS-11), also known as The Fighting "I", is one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II for the United States Navy. She is the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name. Commissioned in August 1943, Intrepid participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, most notably the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier (CVA), and then eventually became an antisubmarine carrier (CVS). In her second career, she served mainly in the Atlantic, but also participated in the Vietnam War. Her notable achievements include being the first US aircraft carrier to launch aircraft with steam catapults, and being the recovery ship for a Mercury and a Gemini space mission. Because of her prominent role in battle, she was nicknamed "the Fighting I", while her often ill-luck and the time spent in dry dock for repairs earned her the nickname "the Dry I".
Decommissioned in 1974, in 1982 Intrepid became the foundation of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City.
from the wikipedia page on the USS Intrepid
And thank you for your service in the cause of
Jimmy Mattern, famous Lockheed test pilot shot himself down while testing the machine gun installation on a new P-38.
He lived here in in Palm Desert Ca for years and used to have a little radio show where he would read stories, jogging his memory from logbook entries. I would listen every day that I could, he was famous in the early days of aviation.
He put the new Lightning into a shallow dive out over the Pacific coast and fired the .50 caliber machine guns at the ocean. When he pulled up the bullets ripped through the airframe from the bottom, sending fuel spraying out of the wing tanks.
As I remember the story, he made it back to the Lockheed runway and landed (and walked away).
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If he did it 5 times, would he be an ACE?
FIRST, he would have to survive his Crew Chief, a rather doubtful event!
My Dad told me about this problem back then when he worked for Republic.
Thanks for that memory.
From the article:
He pulled up the gear and settled into trees less than a mile short of the runway, traveling 300 feet and losing a right wing and stabilizer in the process.
It was close, but he didn't make it back to the runway he took off from.
I remember seeing a couple in 1967 that were used at NATTC Memphis as part of labs for the A schools. My first impression was that it looked like Junior Phantom.Both planes were craft work of Gruman.
The Tiger was destined to bow out about 1961 to the nimble F-8 Crusader and the muscular F-4 Phantom.
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Not an F-16 Ping!
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