Dad, the T-6, and the Engine Seizure
October 5, 1998
Another of Dad's flying stories:
Dad was instructing for the Army in Southern California sometime in the middle of WWII. He had a student under the blind flying hood in the back of an AT-6. In those days, these were nothing like the vision-limiting hoods and "foggles" we use now. A blind flying hood in those days was a cloth tent erected over your head inside the cockpit. You could not see out at all – no cheating. Dad was flying the takeoff and climb, and planned to turn the airplane over to the student once they got over the practice area. Dad lifted off, retracted the gear, and was just climbing through perhaps 300-400 ft AGL when there was a loud "bang" from the engine and the prop stopped instantly. Out of the corner of his eye, Dad saw a small black object arc gracefully out over the left wing. This turned out to be a complete jug and most of a piston. Simultaneously, the windshield in front got very dirty very fast.
Dad had already planned for something like this, since there was nowhere at this field for a straight ahead emergency landing. The land beyond the runway consisted of nothing but large boulders and a few scattered, but solid, trees. Realizing that he probably had just enough altitude, Dad immediately began a turn back to the runway, shouted to the kid under the hood to get the gear down manually, now, and declared an emergency over the radio, apparently all simultaneously. The T-6 has hydraulic landing gear, but with no engine rotation there was no hydraulic pressure. Dad said that the manual landing gear pump was a little hand lever in the cockpit that requires something like 75-100 strokes to get the gear down and locked. He said that the student, who had nothing else to do since he couldn't even see what was happening, managed to get the gear down in less than 15 seconds – BANG! That impressed Dad so much that it was always the main point of the story. Amazing what you can do when you're panicked.
They completed their turn and touched down almost simultaneously. After rolling to a stop just off the runway, they were greeted by the crash vehicles and Dad's CO, who proceeded verbally to tear Dad a new rectum for turning on a dead engine. When the CO was finished, Dad politely explained that, yes, he knew that turning on a dead engine at low altitude was forbidden under the standard operating procedures, but please note that the aircraft was undamaged, they were both alive and uninjured, and that if they had attempted to land straight ahead neither the aircraft nor they would likely have survived. This mollified the CO somewhat, but he did let Dad know in no uncertain terms that if he had spun in during his turn back to the runway he would have been in big trouble.
Bob
A followup comment from an aircraft mechanic who is knowledgeable about the AT-6:
N329DF wrote:
The landing gear on the T-6 is Hydraulic, however, it does not need hydraulic pressure to lower the gear. The gear is held up by a hook in each wheel well that is released when the gear is selected to the down position. The gear then free falls to the down on locked position. The hand pump is used for flaps if needed in the event of a hydraulic pump failure and for ground testing of the gear systems. On the T-6G's the hand pump was moved from the cockpit to the engine compartment. The only emergency gear system on a T-6 is on the SNJ series, you could lift on the gear handle to move it over a detent and push it a further 1 1/2 down to manually push out the gear lock down pins. On the T-6G's they had a separate lever on the left side of the cockpit to do the same job.
Matt.
Matt,
Thanks for the information. I was out at the airport yesterday afternoon and tried to confirm the story as Dad had always told it, before I posted it. My CFI is a contemporary of Dad's and also flew the T-6 (and still flies one of the two on our field, owned by a friend of his). He was unable to confirm the landing gear information (never needed to deploy the gear manually, I guess). I decided to post the story just as Dad had always told it, figuring that someone who knew could correct me. Dad wasn't an A&P, so may have never found out how the student got the gear down so fast.
Bob
Copyright Ó 1998 Robert T. Chilcoat