Tanker Trilogy II
1982
I am proud to say I flew the “Water Wagon.” The Air Force KC-135A Stratotanker was a military version of the four-engine Boeing 707. The fleet was as old as I was, and they are still in service today (with new engines) thirty years after I left them! When the original engines on these aerial-refuelers were first designed, presumably in the early 1950’s, it dawned on some engineer that more thrust could be achieved by adding a little bit of water into the combustion chambers, achieving more action-reaction thrust by simply throwing more matter out the back of the engine than went into the front. It worked, when it worked, adding another six to seven percent thrust. The on-board water tank would last for about two minutes – enough time for the airplane to take off and retract the gear and flaps. Pilots would watch for a jump in EPR (Engine Pressure Ratio) to confirm proper operation during the initial part of the takeoff.
Once, we were deployed for six weeks to the Pacific Tanker Task Force which was based in Guam. One of our assignments from there was to Osan Air base in South Korea. In keeping with procedure, we aborted our first takeoff attempt on that mission because the number 3 engine did not “take water.” The abort was at low speed and the ever-hoovering maintenance support team mobilized so quickly that it would have rivaled a rescue crew. They wiggled some things and said it would work. It did, and we were on our way to Korea. The story I am getting to is really about the return trip to Guam, which I knew would be in the same airplane.
As a 24-year-old Lieutenant, I suffered from the delusion that I could see the “big picture,” a vantage that that seems to become more elusive with age. With four days in Korea, I allowed myself to overthink the possibilities if the engine misbehaved in the same manner for the return trip. Without canceling the mission, I was thinking about how we could safely handle the takeoff if we experienced the same problem again. I thought, correctly or not, that an abort like the one in Guam would mean an unconscionable delay measured in days rather than minutes because Osan had very little tanker maintenance capability. I imagined that such a delay would inconvenience many people from the lowest space available traveler right up to the commander of the Strategic Air Command himself. To me, the prospect of a repeat performance from engine number 3 was likely enough to justify devising a contingency plan. This was over and above my training or what was expected of me. Maybe from my point of view a little extra time planning for this was a patriotic service. As I saw it, I was the only one with the perspective to avert the mission failure that was looming. I was that rare Air Force officer that cared. When it came right down to it, my actions would be for the citizens of the United States of America! It almost makes me want to put my hand over my heart to think about it.
Here are some of the reasons I considered myself uniquely qualified to solve the problem that nobody else even knew existed. I was the last one to fly the jet and knew the engine ran fine, except for its possible reluctance to take water during takeoff. I probably had more expertise with KC-135 takeoff data than anybody in Korea on that particular day since I was the only KC-135 copilot in the country. Though I was not technically a mechanic, I had spent enough time around airplanes to surmise that whatever the mechanics wiggled in Guam did not permanently fix the problem. If you threw in my degree as an aerospace engineer and my internship at Eastern Airlines, I was unquestionably the man for the job. Did I mention that I was staying at a Holiday Inn Express? (Just kidding, but in hindsight none of the above amounted to much more than that.)
My simple solution was a masterpiece. Just like any other day, I would plan for the worst case scenario that one engine could fail during takeoff, but only one engine. This is the planning assumption that heavy aircraft have been using with great success for decades, and history has proven it to be safe. The chances of two completely unrelated critical failures happening at the same time is treated as statistically impossible. I am not aware of it ever happening to have two engines fail beyond abort speed on the runway, military or civilian. I was only going to alter one thing; instead of the remaining engines running at full strength after one failed, I would assume that one was minus the benefit of water injection. I pitched the idea to the aircraft commander and showed him that there was a way of getting this information out of the charts. He bought it. But when the day came to put my plan into action, a couple of surprises crept into the mix.
The first surprise was related to the importance of the Air Force base to the local economy in South Korea. Stepping outside of Osan was like stepping into a flea market with super deals. I only bought a few keepsakes. I remember buying a handmade quilt, a brass sailboat, and a pottery vase glazed and crazed in the traditional Korean Celadon manner. Just about anything else could be obtained. All the fashions of the time were available in knockoff counterfeits. If they didn’t have the Calvin Klein purse or Nike shoes you wanted, they could make them in about a day, as unbelievable as that sounds. So, on the day of our departure, I was surprised to find the boom operator battening down not only suitcases and boxes belonging to our space available passengers, but also large items like teak dressers, microwave ovens, and roll-top desks. Our procedure was to figure 250 pounds for each passenger and his or her luggage, so my mistake was a passive one for not questioning the numbers.
So now I have allowed two compromises. The way I had accounted for the possibility of number 3 not taking water was valid but procedurally incorrect. And allowing only 250 pounds per passenger was procedurally correct, but not really valid. Either of these could have spelled trouble for me if somebody like, say, a two-star general officer were to observe in the cockpit. That became the other surprise. There he was in all his glory, figuring that since he was traveling anyway, it would be fun to watch from the jump seat just inches from each of us. Generals can do stuff like that. I would try to claim that the coincidence of top brass being there right then was a wild card that blindsided me, but truthfully, it would take hindsight for me to recognize my exposure. I was not awfully mindful of the plan for the misbehaving engine because we had a worked out a tidy contingency plan for it a day or two prior, and under-accounting for the passenger weight was a passive mistake.
We had calculated the takeoff roll based on the correct runway length, which was only about 75% as long as the standard SAC runway, so it was bound to look less forgiving to us. It would be my takeoff. When we were cleared, I advanced the throttles and, as you probably figured, number 3 did not take water. Since we had pre-briefed this circumstance, it took only a mumble and a nod for the aircraft commander to confirm our plan to continue. The torturous roll took most of the runway. It said someplace in the book that if you get to the last 1,500 feet and still don’t have enough airspeed to rotate, rotate anyway. I did finally have the airspeed, but was rotating in the last 1,500 feet and breaking ground just at the end of the runway. I could picture the swirling dust coming off our wingtips as we wallowed into the air over the farmland beyond the overrun.
After cleaning up the airplane (our underwear would have to wait) the aircraft commander turned and said, “Ah, we knew that might happen, General. So we briefed a plan in case it did.” He responded with a, “WeeHa! Reminds me of the time I…” And he launched into a war story that was probably fascinating, but its meaning to me was that my career would survive this faux pas (or whatever the Korean word is for that) and I would likely not hear any more about it. Lesson learned, maybe I didn’t quite have as much of the big picture as I thought.
Captain’s Log 