Flight No. 2-32-55
June 25, 1964
Pilot: Lt/Col. Rushworth
Preflight activities down to the 4-minute point there was no problem that I can think of except this source kept depleting all the way. I kept calling it out so that they could get a good idea of the rate in which they were going down. The number 2 system jumped about 100 lbs below number 1 system shortly after takeoff. The B-52 pilot took out half of my sideslip but didn't get it all out and it didn't seem to make any difference either at launch. When I fired up the pump I got one oscillation on the manifolds, went up to about 350 and oscillated one time, held steady, then the chamber pressure was up and it was steady. I launched hands-off and got a real good roll rate. I would estimate it about 30° of bank and it probably changed my heading as much as 5° before I got it back and got the engine light. The pullup to theta was real comfortable and I did run out of trim. I got it up to 10° and full back trim even before I got to theta, I was beginning to hold back pressure beyond trim to maintain the 10° angle of attack and theta bounced into the right position. Times were all looking real good. I got to speed on my indicator before I got to 64,000 ft; I had about 61 or 62,000 ft. when I had 2900 fps, so apparently the indicator is a little bit off. From there on everything went along real good. My next check at Mach 4 and 400 fps rate of climb I still had about 450 maybe 500 fps rate of climb at that point. Everything looked good right up to shutdown and I shut down when it hit 45 and I expected to have it overrun to 46. Speed brakes were good and speed brakes coming in were good. When I turned the roll damper off for the first pulse, I got an indication of this out of trim and I had already gotten a mis-trim indication by having to use a little left stick to hold the wings level. When I did the first pulse I let go of the stick and it started a roll rate to the right and before I got back on the stick again I was more than upside down - I was about, well I'd guess 120° around. I was looking down at Cuddeback and that's why I lost all the altitude. Without putting the dampers back on again I pulled the airplane around to the right attitude without any problem at all in control, pulled the nose back up and reset it for a pitch pulse. The first pitch pulse that I did with damper at low didn't seem to be as well damped as I expected. The second pitch pulse that I did with damper off seemed to be better than I expected and from there on all of the conditions were pretty normal. I tried real hard to just hold in the aileron for the mis-trim condition without using aileron. Everything went on good. I had plenty of energy and cut back into the area of the Base, my altimeter stopped at 60,000 ft., just about the time Jack was calling 55. I came on around in the traffic pattern and did another couple of pulses, one in yaw and one in pitch, also did a hands-off to see how much roll rate there was. "With dampers on?" That was with dampers on. Then I did a damper off pulse (yaw) and a damper-off pitch pulse and the airplane felt real good except for holding all that aileron in. Around the traffic pattern and down most of the way I was a little bit high and a little bit fast and had speed brakes out. On Jack's call I pulled the speed brakes in. I was holding 300 knots and everything looked good. I wasn't particularly interested in putting the airplane down on the point, although all conditions at 5,000 ft. looked like I would be very close to it and just started feeling for the runway to try and put it down about 200 knots and I guess I came out about 3,000 ft. short. The only explanation I have of that is because of the higher temperatures that I'm not quite familiar with right now, other than that maybe the airplane difference is just enough. I seem to be using more angle of attack to keep the nose up all the way around the turn by about 2° and I was in pretty good buffet at Mach 1 to 0.9 at 10° angle of attack. The main skid touchdown seemed real normal and I let go of the stick or pushed it forward and the nose came down pretty sharply. I looked at the airspeed indicator shortly thereafter and I was 180 so I knew I was pretty close to 200. When the nose came down it was a pretty sharp jolt. It corresponded to a minimum speed touchdown on the other airplane. The airplane started to roll or turn in one direction, I think it was left and I was beginning to head for those two vehicles on the side of the runway so I put everything hard over the other way and got it to turn a little bit to the right. I didn't use speed brakes on the rollout and everything worked normal as far as shutting off - SAS and everything. No, after the flaps were down I retrimmed and left the stick alone and when I got on the ground I had about a zero to 1/2 a degree nose up. That's pretty normal for what I have always used. That's as low as it came 60,000 I think that's the reading that I gave on the ground. I couldn't tell any difference on angle of attack.