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NO BRAKES by
I looked at my airspeed instrument and it indicated 80 miles per hour. The end of the runway was coming up fast so I released the downlock solenoid and retracted the landing gear. The nose wheel settled to the runway and the main gear retracted. The RF-80 skidded along on its drop tanks, off the end of the runway, and about halfway down the dirt overun. I opened the canopy, turned off the electrical switches, disconnected my seat belt and oxygen mask, and stepped out on the wing. When I looked at the tail of the airplane, I saw a cloud of dust. I had forgotten to stopcock the throttle. I reached in the cockpit and cut the engine off. Maintenance came over, lifted the airplane with a sling, lowered the landing gear, and towed it back to the ramp. I was surprised at how little damage there was. It was flying again in a short time. Camera Repair removed my film, so the mission was a success. Our Group Commander was Colonel Robert R. Smith. He wanted to see me in his office. "Why didn’t you ride out the landing instead of retracting the landing gear?" he asked. I told him it was the only way I could stop. "Why didn’t you check the brakes on base leg like the checklist states?", he followed. "The brakes worked when I took off and I had confidence they would be working when I landed," I answered. When I left his office, I still felt that I did the right thing, and my judgment would be validated by an event that happened one or two weeks later. The runway at Kimpo Airfield, at that time, was paved, narrow, about 5500 feet long, and on one end, a short, dirt overrun. At the end of the overrun was a hill, and halfway up the hill was a barbed wire fence. Close to the fence was a roll or two of continua wire. An F-86 from the 4th Fighter Wing landed in the same direction I did without any brakes. The pilot elected to ride it out but he ejected the canopy on the landing roll. When the F-86 hit the hill at the end of the runway and overrun, it broke apart. The sad part is, one or more strands of barbed wire slid over the nose, into the cockpit, nearly decapitating the pilot, killing him. That was the last I ever heard from Colonel Smith about my accident. Copyright (C) 2000 Cecil H. Rigsby |
Returning from a
combat mission in an RF-80, I made a normal landing at Kimpo Airfield (K-14) in
Korea. A little more than halfway down the runway, I applied both
brakes. The right brake pedal went full travel with no braking action
whatsoever. Applying the left brake would pull the airplane off the
runway, so in effect, I had no brakes.