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F-15 hydraulic failure
The F-15 Eagle still holds a combat record for achieving 104 air-to-air kills to no losses. It’s an impressive fighter in all respects, and it’s big! The top surfaces of the F-15 are so large that it was nicknamed ‘The Tennis Court’.
In production since the early 1970s, the aircraft is still in service with the US Air Force, which is just starting to operate the latest incarnation, the F-15EX Eagle II.
Popular with pilots, weapon system operators, maintainers, and enthusiasts alike, the F-15 Eagle remains at the leading edge of US defence.
On Aug. 15, 1988, F-15 pilot and future Lieutenant General Daniel ‘Fig’ Leaf had flown a training sortie in his role as an instructor pilot. While taxiing back to parking the master caution light illuminated, advising the pilot to check hydraulics. Explaining the episode in Key Publishing Bookazine Inside The F-15 Eagle, Fig said: “I looked at the panel which showed a utility A failure, so I pulled the emergency brake and steer handle, depressed the paddle switch, and kept it depressed so I could pull over to get the aeroplane chocked and shut down. I happened to be near the transient aircraft ramp, so I asked ground control to contact the people working at the transient alert office to bring me some chocks, because the F-15 has no parking brake, which is a rare negative thing about the F-15.
Avoiding collision with an F-4
“I saw an airman dragging chocks out, but he was in no hurry. As he walked under the tip of the left wing, the master caution light illuminated, advising me to check hydraulics for a utility B failure, a potential total utility failure. Suddenly the emergency brake pedals lost their pressure, so I had no brake and opposite me was an F-4 Phantom parked on the transient ramp. My aircraft started to roll, so perhaps I should have shut down both engines and accepted the fender bender with the F-4 but that didn’t come naturally to me. In addition to having no brake, I had no nose gear steering so I increased the power on the left engine in the hope the aircraft would move to the left. My aircraft lurched away from the F-4 without a collision but started rolling faster with the increased power.
“In my mind, the cognitive dissonance of thinking ‘this shouldn’t be happening’ was annoying. I tried moving every switch I could think of that might be relevant and decided it was too complex to get back to a runway and take a cable. Instead, I decided to taxi the aircraft to an area of the ramp with an intersection, where one taxiway had an uphill slope. I shut down the left engine to reduce the forward thrust, continued rolling forward to the intersection where my plan was to bear left.
Avoiding collision with an F-16
“At the point I was about to do that a blue security forces pickup truck with two airmen inside crossed my path. Clearly, neither of them thought I would bear left, so I was faced with a choice. Stick with my plan to turn and inevitably hit the truck and kill all three of us, or collide with an F-16 assigned to the 314th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron parked right ahead of me and kill me and destroy two aircraft?
“At the very last moment, the pick-up truck began to fade from my view, which meant I might not hit it. So, I pushed the right throttle into the afterburner range and closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see the explosion that was bound to kill. Under the additional power, my aeroplane lurched to the left, there was no explosion because I’d cleared the F-16 and yanked the power to idle.
“There were five light poles ahead of me, with an unpaved and uncultivated area beyond, so I applied a burst of power, then shut down the right engine, rolled the 42-feet wide aircraft between two of the poles and onto the uncultivated ground. The nose gear sunk into the soft dirt, pivoted around the strut, and the aircraft shuddered to a stop, and more to the point, I was alive! I got out of the aeroplane and knelt on the ground, shaking like a tuning fork, then sat down so I wouldn’t fall over.
F-15 Differential throttles after hydraulic failure
“It transpired that the issue was a previously undocumented failure mode on the left main landing gear. My aeroplane had a three- quarter inch wide gash on the tail plane, and the only damage to the F-16 was a broken wing tip light on its corresponding right wing very superficial damage for what could have happened. This made no sense because the tail plane and the wing of my aircraft should have impacted the F-16 as per my envisioned catastrophe. I accepted I was very lucky.
“Fast forward ten years when serving as the new commander of the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano [Air Base] and I was talking with Lieutenant Colonel David Goldfein one of the squadron commanders. He asked me if I was at Luke [Air Force Base] when that guy had that hydraulic failure and how he had used differential throttles to try and avoid a collision? ‘That was me,’ I said. He then said he saw the incident.”
Fig concludes;
“Turns out he was in an F-16 in the row behind the damaged aircraft waiting to taxi on his first solo flight in the F-16. He told me that when I applied the power on the right engine there was so much thrust, it lifted the right main gear off the tarmac and lifted the right side of my aeroplane which moved over the F-16 avoiding a serious collision. In short, that’s why I’m alive.”
Inside The F-15 Eagle is published by Key Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo credit: Senior Airman Erin Babis / U.S. Air Force
