It was time to jump out, she decided.
She had never even come close to ejecting out of any aircraft before, not in ten years of flying the F-16. Air Force training always said, “Don’t hesitate. Trust your equipment,” and she was perfectly willing and ready to do so. McKenzie reached for her ejection seat lever and…
“Linda! This is Al! How do you hear? It looks like you’ve been fragged, but there is no fire, repeat, negative fire. How do you hear? Over?”
She was surprised to hear Vincenti on the radio — she had assumed, incorrectly, that everything in her stricken ship was out. She moved the throttle — no response, with FTIT and fuel flow in the red but rpms below idle power. She moved the stick — aha, the controls were stiff but responding. Emergency power unit had turned on automatically. She raised the nose, and the jet responded by climbing. If nothing else, she was able to trade airspeed for altitude and get a little higher before ejecting, but she had a few seconds to try to work the problem.
McKenzie took her hands off the ejection lever and back on the stick and throttle, then started to work on her caution-light analysis. The engine was stalled from a massive disruption of airflow through the engine, so she immediately pulled the throttle to idle, waited a few excruciating seconds as the airspeed bled off below safe engine-restart speed, then slowly advanced the throttle again. Just as she was convinced the engine was not going to come back, the rpms eased from 55 percent to 65 percent and the fan-turbine inlet temperatures subsided out of the red zone. Quickly but carefully she advanced the throttle, and the rpms responded. Airspeed climbed above 170 knots. She was safely flying again.
She set the throttles to 80 percent and, one by one, began working on the other malfunctions. As soon as she could, she tried to reset the generators with the ELEC CAUTION RESET button — no go, it kept on tripping off. She placed the emergency power unit to ON, and checked the power-distribution lights. With only the emergency power unit providing power to the essential bus, she had the barest minimum equipment running — but she was still flying. Only the UHF radio on the interplane frequency was operating — that’s how she could still hear Vincenti. “Al, how do you hear me?”
“Fine, Linda,” Vincenti said. “Roll out of your turn and get your nose down. I’ve got you at five thousand feet. How’s your controllability? Check your engines.”
“I cleared a stall, and I’ve got partial generators and EPU on line,” McKenzie said. She straightened her F-16’s wings and found the controls very sluggish. “Looks like I lost my hydraulics — the EPU is the only hydraulics and power I got left.” The EPU, or emergency power unit, used bleed air from the engine or hydrazine to power a simple power unit that supplied backup hydraulic and electrical power for about fifteen minutes. “System A pressure is good, and my essential bus is energized. What the hell happened?”
“Cazaux,” Vincenti replied simply. “He dropped something out the back end, a bomb or something. I can still see explosions. Just hold your heading. I’ll come around on your left side. Hang tight, we’ll be OK. Let’s start a slow climb to ten thousand and start working out what we got. What’s your fuel state?”
“I can’t tell — gauge is inop,” McKenzie said. “Fuel low and fuel hot lights came on right away, and I think one of my wing tanks is gone.”
“That’s confirmed, you lost one. You still got your right tank, and it’s pretty beat-up,” Vincenti said as he checked out McKenzie’s fighter with his ID searchlight. “I don’t think it’ll do a normal jettison because of the damage, so you’re going to have to land with it.”
It took Vincenti a few minutes to fly around McKenzie’s jet and look her over. In that time, they had climbed up to ten thousand feet over the sparsely settled ranches and farms south of Sacramento. “I see lots of damage to your underside, Linda. You may or may not get a good landing gear. What do you think, Linda? How does she feel to you?”
McKenzie knew what that question meant: did she want to eject or did she want to try for a landing? “I’m not jumping out of this plane, Al,” McKenzie said. “Lead me over to McClellan.” McClellan Air Force Base, just north of Sacramento, was a large military aircraft maintenance depot with lots of runways and crash equipment — McKenzie was going to need all the help she could get.
It was only twenty miles across the top of the city of Sacramento to get to McClellan, but for McKenzie it was the longest flight of her entire life. Her approach speed when starting her descent into McClellan’s north-south runway was 220 knots, much faster than normal, and it was nearly impossible to maintain it without considerable control problems. Several times the engine did not respond to throttle movements. “Better get ready for a flameout landing, Linda,” Vincenti told her. “We’re looking for two hundred knots landing speed — it’s gonna happen fast.”
“Just lost the engine, Al,” McKenzie said. Her voice was wooden, as if she were talking inside a bucket.
Vincenti knew that calm wouldn’t last too long. The toughest fighter pilots in the world get high, squeaky voices when their air machines start to crap out on them. “Okay, Linda, forget it,” Vincenti said. “We’re committed for a flameout approach. Check your JFS switch on START 2. Turn off your FUEL MASTER switch.”
“Got it… negative JFS RUN light, Al.”
“Okay, forget it. Turn the starter off — we’ll try it again in a minute or so. We’re six miles out.” They were surrounded by the city of Sacramento, a vast shimmering expanse of lights below them. McClellan was dead ahead, its rotating beacon and runway lights plainly visible. They had it made, but they still had a long way to go. “Check your air source knob on RAM and your defog lever forward. Keep your touchdown point eleven to seventeen degrees below the horizon. Stand by on the gear.”
“I’m ready, Al.” Her glide path was steady, right on Vincenti’s left wing. Her jet was a heavy toy glider right now. Actually, “glider” was a misnomer for the F-16 Fighting Falcon — with its short supercritical wings, the F-16 made a lousy glider. But as long as you had airspeed and a working EPU, though, a flameout landing was very doable. Her HUD, or heads-up display, was still operable, and the flight-path pipper was directly on the end of the runway— all she had to do was keep the pipper on the touchdown point and maneuver the fighter to keep the pipper within 11 to 17 of the horizon. So far it was going smoothly.
“Five miles, Linda, lower the gear when you’re ready.”
“Coming down.” She pressed the gear-permission button and tried to move the gear lever downward — nothing. “Gear handle won’t move,” she radioed. She hit the DN LOCK REL button, which mechanically allows the handle to be lowered — and she got no safe gear indications. “No green lights, Al.”
“I see your right gear, and a partial nose gear,” Vincenti said. “Cycle the gear handle.”
McKenzie raised the gear handle, waited a few seconds, pressed the DN LOCK REL button, and lowered the handle. “Did it,” she radioed. “No red light, no green lights.”
“Four miles out. Use alternate extension. Watch your airspeed, Linda, you’re sinking. Drop your nose a bit.”
“Copy.” She made the proper attitude correction. Three miles out — and the left landing gear came into view. “What’s it look like, Al?”
“I got two main gear, no nose gear,” he said. “Your nose gear might come down below 190. Let’s go to thirteen AO A and get ready for touchdown. Try your JFS to START 2 once more, and secure your throttle. Glide path looks good, and you’re cleared to land. Nice job, Linda. Little bit more nose up, you’re at eleven AOA.”