PILOT'S FLIGHT COMMENTS

Flight No. 2-33-56

August 14, 1964

Pilot: Lt/Col. Rushworth

Everything seemed to be normal on the prelaunch. The source pressures were going down kind of fast. I didn't know whether we were going to make the launch or not. I launched with #1 and #2 at about 2500. On the launch I got a fairly good roll-off to the right and I planned to hold some left aileron in. I'm not sure that I got enough in or I'm not sure I got as much in as I expected. On the climbout up to 10° angle of attack when I first took a look at the angle of attack indicator I had gone to 14° so I let it settle back down to about 11° and I came in immediately with full aft trim to make sure that I got full trim and that took me beyond the 10-11° that I wanted, so I pushed back over and trimmed forward a little bit. A little later on I needed some more so I trimmed full aft again and full aft was just holding 10° a. Came on up to theta and over-shot theta a little bit because I had to retrim where there wasn't any trim motion. Trimmed back to theta and that seemed normal. Pushed over right as 37 seconds was going by and the g-meter at this point or for 1 g flight was indicating about 0.9 so I was planning to go over a -0.1 and I hit zero g and apparently the thing stuck because I went way past zero angle of attack and I could feel that in the seat of my pants. I pulled it back on up and checked the alpha and finally had to settle out for zero alpha. The speed brake call came just right and I got speed brakes out, full speed brakes, and went on through to burnout. I got 5200 fps at shutdown, my clock indicated 82.5 secs. I shutdown at 52 so I probably over-shot to about 53. Everything seemed to be normal there. I realized I was just a little bit high so I let it come on down to level and pulled it up to 5° angle of attack. I shut ASAS off and got set up on 5° angle of attack, shut the pitch damper off and got in a real good pitch pulse, the period seemed a little bit longer than I expected but we were about 100 lbs. low on q. I watched it through about 5 cycles and flipped the damper back on which stopped the oscillation effectively then turned off the yaw and roll damper and gave it a pulse. After one cycle I let go of the stick and it did another one cycle and at the end of that cycle the airplane flipped over about 75-90° in roll. The airplane seemed to be, at this point, pretty well trimmed out. I didn't feel that I was holding any force to hold it upright and I don't know yet whether the airplane was out of trim and flipped over because it was out of trim, but the oscillations seemed to be for a zero error in roll. I flipped the roll damper back on while I was bringing it up and this all seemed normal. I flipped the yaw damper on, pulled it up to 10° angle of attack for the second pulse and I did the second pulse with the dampers off. Everything was going along fine and just about the time I was ready to drop it over I got a loud bang and even though the bang was near the cockpit the associated or the resulting conditions that I had gave me quite a little bit of concern because the airplane began to oscillate wildly and I couldn't seem to catch up with it. I put the dampers back on and stuffed the nose down to about 5° angle of attack and it seemed to be fairly normal then except I had a sideslip in and I was then required to use left roll to hold the airplane level. A couple of seconds later I realized that this sound that I had heard was very much similar to the nose gear coming out on the landing pattern so that was the only thing I could think of. I announced that and then a few seconds after that I began to get smoke in the cockpit, quite a little bit more than I had ever seen before. This partially confirmed that the nose gear, at least the door was open. I wasn't sure that the gear was out but it was, there was enough of an explosion there to make me think that the gear was out. I didn't follow Jack's call on the speed brakes because I hoped to hold as much energy as I had. His next call on pulling the airplane up and getting our rate of descent down was a real good call. I was holding about 5° then because it seemed to fly better there but on easing it on up to 10° it was flying good there too and we came level. I decided not to put the speed brakes out because I was hoping that we could at least get the airplane home. I didn't particularly want to go into Cuddeback. (That was a good decision, Bob, you had a big flap out anyway). From here on all the way home the airplane seemed to be fairly normal. I was holding sideslip all the way and somewhere along the way, I don't know where this was, some of the sideslip came out. I had slowed the airplane down at one point somewhere around 40, higher than 40,000 ft., to 210 knots and I was still flying real good there with not any excess rate of sink. When I got into the traffic pattern at the high key point of course I hadn't taken a real good check to see where I was and I apparently over-shot a little bit in getting down the runway. In trying to make the turn and hold speed, or get a little more speed, I lost more altitude than I planned and, consequently, I had to stay inside the lakebed which required a diving turn onto the final. I wasn't really happy when Chase 3 confirmed that the gear was out, I was hoping it wasn't, but it was and the drag did not seem excessive even then. I didn't realize how much the drag was going to be until I got into that turn and I came down onto the downwind about 14,000 ft. I hadn't even made my touchdown point coming back, so I knew I was going to be low. The final turn was pretty steep and sharp and with a little speed brakes out I got up to about 320 knots. I didn't figure that was going to hurt the gear anyway since it had been out since Mach 4. I flared and leveled off a little bit high and got the speed brakes in. I would guess I got the speed brakes in about 280. I started the flaps down and the gear, when I pulled the handle it seemed like a long time before I felt the skids come down. Joe gave me a call at 10 ft. and I made two corrections, got right close to the runway and just let it touch down. When the airplane came down on the nose gear the landing force seemed to be real normal, like every other landing I've made except the last one. It wasn't sharp at all and immediately after I touched down the gear begins to buzz and throw rubber. I didn't know where that rubber was going, it seemed like half of it was going out in front of me. It wasn't hard to control on the ground. Everything seemed normal except the rollout that was considerably shorter. That's about all I have.

Q. You were right on profile?

A. Yes, when you called I had just gone up to 10° angle of attack and everything seemed to be normal. I -- a little bit above the profile. Everything was going good until it plopped out.

Q. When it went bang, were you actually at high alpha?

A. Yes, I was up at 10° angle of attack when it let go.

Q. Was that your highest flight alpha?

A. Yes, I was higher before and higher afterward, but that was the program, 10° angle of attack and that's when it came out. When this speed brake call came I had no indication of what the thoughts were, but my feelings on it was I didn't want to go into an alternate lake if I could get it all the way home and all I had to do was get it down on a low q and hopefully it would get all the way home. The drag wouldn't be too bad so I didn't follow that and was ready to discuss it except it never came out. Actually, I said I didn't put the speed brakes out because I figured there was enough drag on it to try and get all the way home.