Delta Four-Niner
by
Tony Fogarty
copyright all rights reserved 1992
'OVERHEAT'
The warning light flashed vividly against the cool grey of the instrument panel. Seconds later, a shrill tone in the pilot's headset confirmed the visual indicator.
"Shit, shit, shit!" The pilots voice buzzed in his own ears. He scanned the engine instruments; the exhaust gas temperature indicator flared and slowly receded.
"Shit. A fire!" He switched off the fuel boost pump and pulled the throttle back to "FULL OFF". The Tacho and Fuel Flow indicator needles slowly fell back to zero and he became aware of the diminishing whine of the single SNECMA jet engine.
"Mayday, Mayday. This is Delta-Four-Niner over the Avon training area. I have a flame out and suspected fire. Mayday, Mayday."
The pilot had practised for this event so many times. Now, what do I do? he thought. His head was numb. He had just spent two weeks leave with his wife and their new son. This was his first day back.
"God, what do I do?" I shouldn't have said that aloud, he thought. His reflexes were dulled. He had relaxed and enjoyed his family, not once having to think about flight plans or boggy student pilots. The Mirage was a simple aircraft to fly, and he had been flying them for three years here at the air force's advanced flying training school.
The altimeter fell alarmingly quickly. As it passed through nineteen thousand feet, he glanced at the Mach-Air Speed Indicator. It showed one hundred and sixty knots, and falling. The overheat light had gone out and things were strangely quiet. Perhaps there was no fire, all the alarms were dormant.
"Attempting a re-light", he told the black box recorder. "Altitude is eighteen thousand feet, airspeed, a hundred and thirty knots." As the compressor would already be windmilling in the slip-stream, he only needed to push the throttle to idle, switch on the fuel boost pump and hit the re-light switch.
The arcing of the high intensity igniters was audible above the slip-stream of the crippled jet. He waited for the "whump" of the kerosene-air mixture igniting to fire up the engine and restore the precarious balance of his reluctant aircraft.
Nothing.
Suddenly, another warning light lit up.
STALL.
Oh no! he thought, the boss was going to get this pilot's money's worth today.
The Mach-ASI fell below ninety knots and the Attitude Indicator dipped into the black half of it's spherical indicator. It showed the aircraft's nose was pointed at the ground. The altimeter spun off the height above sea-level and the ROC indicator went off the scale at over six thousand feet per minute toward the ground.
The pilot pulled the control column back into his groin. The Attitude Indicator slowly came back towards the horizontal, but it wasn't steady, and it wavered as the Horizontal Situation Indicator started to rotate rather quickly to starboard. The Slip Indicator showed maximum indication in that direction.
A flat spin, he thought, just like Maverick in "Top Gun". The altimeter showed less than nine thousand feet and airspeed was negligible. A flat spin was what he had alright.
"Eject, eject, eject", he said to himself. They'll love this in the crew room. He reached up behind his head and grasped the handle of the face-blind firing mechanism.
As he pulled the handle down to his chest, the blind would cover his face, protecting it from shards of fragmented perspex as he and the seat were blasted through the canopy and clear of the aircraft. Bo-yangs attached to his legs would pull them in against the seat, to prevent them from smashing against the windscreen as he was ejected from the cockpit.
He braced himself, and pulled the face-blind firing handle.
Seven thousand feet.
Nothing happened. The blind would not disengage from it's niche in the top of the seat and thereby initiate the firing sequence.
"Christ!"
Six thousand feet.
He pulled again. Nothing. He glanced down to the seat pin storage rack where there should have been six tagged safety pins that would indicate the ejection seat was "live".
Five thousand feet.
Canopy, Main, Drogue, Guillotine, Seat,.....
Four thousand feet.
There was one missing, the face-blind pin. It must still fitted to the seat, three thousand feet, which effectively meant he couldn't use the face-blind to fire the explosive charge.
Two thousand feet.
He had to use the seat-pan firing handle between his legs.
One thousand feet.
"Do I go through the canopy or jettison it?" His right hand jerked out the black and yellow handle above the annunciator panel. Then down between his legs, he heaved on the seat-pan handle.
A brilliant flash dazzled him and there was a roaring in his ears, then silence. A blinding glare suddenly lit up the cockpit as the canopy slowly lifted.
"Sorry Sir, you speared into to the turf." The simulator technician's mirth was evident in a wide grin.
"Yeah, thanks Corporal", said the pilot. "That's another fifty in the Squadron Liquidity Fund. The boss got my moneys worth today."
"By the way Sir, the canopy jettison handle is on the left hand side of the instrument panel. You pulled on the park brake! Kind of appropriate I suppose."
END