If either of them slid out into the wind stream, they immediately flailed out behind me, and that was definitely not good.” As a matter of fact, all that I could do was hold my arms into my chest. I attempted to reach the upper handle but the wind prevented me from getting a hand on it. With a little more panic induced strength I tried again, but to no avail. While he was still trying to breathe, Gallagher thought that Baden would never have tried to land and he decided to start the ejection sequence once again: “ I grabbed the lower handle with both hands and pulled-it wouldn’t budge. My arms were dragging along behind me until I managed to pull both of them into my chest and hold them there.” I couldn’t seem to get a breath of air amidst the wind. It was like trying to drink through a fire hose. My helmet and mask had ripped off my head, and without them, the full force of the wind was hitting me square in the face. The sensations experienced by Gallagher during this wild ride were extreme: “I couldn’t breathe. This was worse than I ever could have imagined – I was sitting on top of a flying A-6!” It took a few moments for this image to sink into my suddenly overloaded brain. These questions were quickly answered, and replaced by a thousand more, as I looked down and saw a sight that I will never forget: the top of the canopy, close enough to touch, and through the canopy I could see the top of my pilot’s helmet. “Did the canopy blow off? Did I eject? Did my windscreen implode?” All of these questions occurred to me amidst the pandemonium in my mind and over my body. Confusion reigned in my mind as I was forced back against my seat, head against the headrest, arms out behind me, the wind roaring in my head, pounding against my body. Before I could complete that thought, there was a loud bang, followed by wind, noise, disorientation and more wind, wind, wind. For a brief moment I thought that I had failed to tighten my lap belts, but I knew that wasn’t true. Although the tanker pattern can be pretty boring midway through the cycle, we were alert and maintaining a good lookout doctrine because our airwing had a midair less than a week before, and we did not want to repeat.”Īfter the third fuel update call, Lizard 515 aircrew decided that the left outboard drop was going to require a little help and as recommended by NATOPS (which is The Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization program, responsible for rules and regulations governing safe and correct operation of all naval aircraft), they applied positive and negative Gs to force the valve open.Īs explained by Gallagher, when the pilot moved the stick forward: “ I felt the familiar sensation of negative “G”, and then something strange happened: my head touched the canopy. We were the overhead tanker, one third of the way through cruise, making circles in the sky. Luckily, it was followed immediately by a whole slew of miracles that allowed me to be around for my 27 th. On my 26 th birthday I was blindsided by a piece of bad luck the size of Texas that should have killed me. Fortunately for me, however, he failed to follow through. Both the crew members released their accounts of the mishap to Approach Magazine in November 1991 and the full story is today reported on Gallagher himself explains: “ Murphy’s Law says, “Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect it.” (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator). Keith Gallagher, who were the pilot and the bombardier and navigator (BN) of the Intruder “Lizard 515”, experienced a very unusual incident: a partial ejection from the aircraft. 9, 1991 to a VA-95 Green Lizard Intruder during an aerial refueling mission overhead its aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). ![]() ![]() One of the most famous events that involved a KA-6D during its operational life spanning from 1963 to 1997, took place on Jul.
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