Looks like the E-3 pilot was over controlling. Perhaps clear air turbulence, but the refeuling plane seemed to be steady.
I believe (based on what I've read elsewhere) that the tanker boom causes pitch inputs to the tanker. When the boom flew up like that, it effectively forced the nose of the tanker down.
Doesn't the boom also cause control inputs to the 'female' plane? Once they're hooked up, the 'male' has some control over the the other plane too via the probe, I think I read? (Using plumbing terms... sorry if anyone's offended).
No, the boomer only controls the flight of the boom. See those black wings at the end of the probe... those enable the boomer to move the boom around to get close to the receiver aircraft. The pilot of flying the receiver aircraft needs to keep the bird steady during refueling. 137th is a National Guard AREF outfit. Pilot that missed his juice was a NATO noob. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I have my doubts that the boom could effect the pitch of the tanker since the boom is flexible and reacts to the ruddervaters without any inputs to the tanker. It appears to me that the receiver airplane was at fault here by pitching up so suddenly and recovering just in time. The tanker was stabile. Close call anyway. Reminds me of seeing a B-47 landing at Boeing Field in 1953 with about ten feet of tanker boom stuck in the receiver. The B-47 canopy was smeared in jet fuel and the landing was a near crash as it bounced high and veered towards the flight line and then careened left to a rather "drunken' run-out down the field. Those were the days when Boeing ran flight tests at BFI with the B-52 and B-47 before they went to Edwards. We saw some hairy near misses with those airplanes then.
From what I have read the AWACS didn't break away quite right and got sucked up into the tanker. I will ask some tanker guys at A/T A in a couple weeks to get their take. If I had to guess its tough with two equally sized aircraft as they both have the same strengths and weaknesses. A little fighter can get sucked up easier but is so much more maneuverable that it doesn't matter. A big cargo jet just pushes its own bow wave around and the tanker just rides up..... Just my speculation
Youtube comment, supposedly from the guy operating the boom: "Dude any time a 300,000 pound aircraft separates from the tanker there are aerodynamic forces that cannot be avoided. The AWACS starts down without moving aft, when all that low pressure is acting on the horizontal stab the auto-pilot starts to trim to equalize those forces. Thats what you see. The tanker crew did everything right out of the -1 and vol. 3. Hope that helps. And by the way I was there in the boom pod yelling GO GO GO after clamly performing breakaway procedures."
Wow. The sun was in the pilots eyes too. Did you see how big his and his coplilots eyes got when there was almost contact? Man, I just know they saw their lives flash before them.
Yep. Think how hard and quickly both of those AWACS pilots pushed DOWN on the controls when they saw the collision coming. Yikes. .
Watch the boom and it's pretty clear the first downward movement was done by the tanker. At 38 seconds watch how the boom moves suddently along with the tanker. If it was AWACS doing the movement I don't see how or why a boom would react that way without any input from the plane it's connected to.
It appears that the boom disconnected when it went beyond the angular tolerances between the receiver and the boom. The receiver started to come up, closing the distance and angle. Look in the upper left corner of the video when the receiver pitches up. You can see the relationship of the tanker to the horizon. There is no movement of the tanker. I have never heard of the boom" flying" the tanker so I'm going to check with my tanker buddies.
I did, at one time, (years ago) read that once they were hooked up, the tanker, in effect, 'flew' the receiving plane. That may have been long enough ago that the tankers had props though.
I was wondering about that. A hard push over would have anyone in the ceiling if they weren't belted. 2G maybe. I experienced that several times in 1945 in B-24's . It doesn't take much to put you on the floor or into the ceiling. I just got a response from a high time tanker pilot who viewed the video. Quote, " It appears to me that the AWACS crew screwed up big time. If they weren't strapped in, they got bruised."
Did you do that purposefully (hard pushovers) or was it unplanned in B-24s? I can certainly imagine injuries if any of the AWACS crew wasn't belted... imagine that they all should have been, no?
The first incident was when I was " initiated' by the crew on my first ride. I was passing from the waist to the flight deck and when I was in the middle point of the bomb bay *****-footing my way on the catwalk to go forward, the pilot pushed forward and had me floating in mid air, bouncing around in the overhead and bomb racks and frantically grabbing for something. Then a firm flattening out put me hung up on one of the bomb racks and luckily over the catwalk. The positive G incident was on the pull-up from a buzz job on the Portsmouth River. After roaring past the radioman's home and his family waving on the river bank, the pilot (a colonel) pulled up into a chandelle and it put me on the waist decking after my legs buckled. Hanging on to the right waist gun, I was looking straight down at the landscape as he banked and climbed up for another run. We dropped like a streamlined brick when he was far enough east and made another VERY LOW pass with a pull-up to the left this time. Then I was looking out of the left waist window at the rapidly shrinking landscape, legs locked but still fighting to stay upright. Climbing to 12,000 we continued on our flight to Pinecastle Air base near Orlando. That guy knew how to handle a B-24. Best ride ever! I recall our flight to Florida that day. We were jumped by a flight of P-47's out of Richmond Air Base who made many gunnery runs on us. They did them all; frontal like an FW-190, parallel peel-offs for a blinding pass in the opposite direction, tail end passes, and for a good finish they flew circles around us. I'm glad that they weren't firing at us. We could hardly track them.
Had a feeling you'd have a good story or two about it My brother and I tried to get my father up in the Collin Foundation's B-24 for his 70th birthday, but it was out for maintenance that weekend so he had to settle for a B-17 ride... don't think they would have done any of those moves though! Edit: UPS just delivered my copy of "The Wild Blue: the men and boys who flew the B-24s over Germany 1944-45", can't wait to finish the book I'm working on and dive into this one...
