by: Jim Gagalis
We were lumbering inbound to Corpus Christi International airport on a heading of 130 degrees at 1100 feet AGL in our Grumman S2B aircraft. It was a moonless night, dark but clear, the lights of Corpus were dazzling and in stark contrast to the dark invisible fields surrounding the city. We had taken off from NAS Corpus Christi a few minutes earlier, I was flying in the left seat with my flight instructor Lt Jerry Tedjck in the right seat, and Ens Tony Racette in the back. Jerry had commented on what a beautiful night it was to be flying. As we headed towards International he told me to look around and enjoy the scenery. He had an easy way about him, although we were being graded on everything we did from preflight to the debrief, Jerry always put us at ease, and encouraged our true potential as future navy pilots to be revealed.
The S-2 was a dog compared to the T-28, no loops, barrel rolls, spins, nor high speed low level runs down the railroad tracks in the “Tracker”! Originally put into service in 1952 as an ASW platform, the S-2’s one redeeming quality, as far as I was concerned, was that it was fun to land, but pretty much every plane is fun to land! And at twenty years old? I really would not want to drive a car that old, too much can go wrong, as we were about to discover. We went through the landing checklist, landing gear: down and locked, props: full increase, flaps down. As we droned in toward the runway we could see the runway lights stretched out before us, that was always a beautiful sight! I lined up on runway 13 and eased back on the throttles, when I noticed a faint brownish-orange flicker of light on the windshield. That’s strange I thought, no lights out here that would account for this, we were over pitch black farmland, with no moon!
I quickly scanned inside and outside the cockpit. There was a fire on our left engine! Playtime was over, it was now time to survive! I immediately got on the intercom and told Jerry “we have a fire on our number one engine” Jerry went through the emergency checklist and flipped a switch on the overhead console that deployed the fire extinguisher. I continued flying toward the runway, we were about a mile out. Then the intercom went dead. A few seconds later we lost all electrical power, including our panel lights! This was serious because we needed to know our airspeed so that we didn’t stall the aircraft, and with only one engine pulling the load, stalling would mean falling like a spinning rock! Jerry motioned to me, by tapping his chest, that he wanted to fly the plane, then I lifted my hands off the yoke to show him that you now have control of the airplane. I immediately reached into the ankle pocket of my flight suit and grabbed my government issued green
flashlight. As I brought it up I remember thinking please God work, because I’m not sure when I last checked the batteries! Since we were now flying with only our right engine we began a slow left turn, away from the runway! I trained the light on Jerry’s panel so he could see his airspeed indicator and attitude gyro. We were doing 85 knots, not much margin for safety there, so he dumped the nose and gave full throttle to our number
two engine, we picked up some speed. We were both stomping on full right rudder to try to maintain our original heading, but as I saw the runway lights disappear behind Jerry’s window I said to myself, “we are not making the runway”.
We both looked ahead into a black abyss….like driving 100mph down the highway and closing your eyes! Honestly, before I had time to get scared, say a prayer, or shit my pants we were already sliding across the Texas countryside. The newspaper the next day reported that we had: “ripped through a ground wire, bounced over a road, skidded under 2300-volt power lines and slid between a huge power transformer, a wellhead, and a battery tank”. We did not see any of this! As soon as the plane came to a stop I thought holy shit it might explode! The fire was still burning over a wing full of aviation fuel. I released my inertial safety straps and got out of my chute. I reached for the overhead hatch release handle and turned it….nothing….the cockpit was too crumpled for it to open more than a couple of inches. I turned around and jumped up facing backwards on the seat and put both hands on the hatch, glad to be wearing flight gloves, and pushed like hell! The fucker snapped open, like a plebe’s door being kicked in by a second classman! I shot through the hatch
facing aft and saw Ens. Racette running around the tail of the plane, I thought to myself “good, Tony’s out”. I slid my feet towards Jerry’s side of the plane, across a 4 inch ledge that remained, after the aircraft’s nose had been ripped off. Jerry was half-way out of his hatch, chute still in tow, so I grabbed his straps and helped pull him through his hatch. Then he jumped to the ground, and then I jumped to the ground. Tony was waiting for us at the front right of the plane, a safe distance away. We all watched in amazement as our hulking wreck, crumpled and battered, continued to burn, but never exploded.
Standing there contemplating what had just happened, I guess I did leave out one attribute
concerning the S-2 Tracker….it is one tough son-of-a-bitch airplane! Jerry turned to me and said “I’ll never get in the airlines now”.
A few days later at squadron headquarters Jerry pulled me aside, he told me that he was glad that I had been with him that night. I thanked him facetiously, then said to him, “if the airlines don’t let you in, they are passing up one hell of a good pilot!
I was later told that the main inverter, which was configured within the wheel well beneath the number one engine, had burned up involving a gas line running to the engine. That is what caused simultaneous emergencies including an electrical failure and engine fire. In retrospect if we had raised the gear, it would have reduced our drag. Whether or not this would have been enough to help us make it to the field, we will never know. Also, with an electrically actuated landing gear system it is questionable as to whether or not the gear would have come up.
That is how I remember it, some forty-six years later.
As to the question concerning brown shoe vs black shoe: This was a harrowing and in some ways a life changing experience for me. However, I do not regret, for one single second, the time that I spent in Naval Aviation! Flying planes every day, solo hops, doing acro, night flights, formation flying, solo cross country flights, flying 10 feet above the railroad tracks and then entering the Middleton Co. Airport air show by screaming down the runway at a few feet above the deck then pulling our nose up slightly and doing an aileron roll at midfield (courtesy of Lt. Frank Edwards), then getting to show off our plane to the locals and tail-chasing the charming southern belles….not to mention the dogfighting sessions vs Lt. Bob Baum, achieving the solo 300 club….well make that 295, it started to shake, and I didn’t want the wings to come off….then going to the local pub, and over a “few” beers rehashing, and rehashing, and rehashing, and rehashing what we had done that day, while establishing lifetime friendships! Nope, sorry guys, to each his own, but for fun, excitement, memories, and comradeship, you cannot beat Navy Air!