Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [51]
As the runway lights came into view, I followed Blaine through the landing checklist, including making a computation of our touchdown speed…nearly 180 knots. We were full of gas, making a high-speed, single-engine landing on a high-elevation runway. To complicate things a thunderstorm had just passed over the field. The runways were sodden.This could get ugly was my thought. Assuming we made the runway, there was an excellent chance we were going to blow some tires. To run off the runway would probably result in death. That assumed we made the runway at all, which was far from guaranteed. The fire had already damaged the engine nozzle positioning system, which put it in the vicinity of the tail-control surfaces. If those failed while we were deep into our landing attempt, we would probably die. The ejection seat wouldn’t be able to save us in an out-of-control situation close to the ground.
The annals of military aviation are filled with stories of aircrews that died doing exactly what we were about to do…ignore the “Fire—Eject” rule, play the heroes, and attempt an emergency landing. “Crewmember death occurred when ejection was attempted out of the ejection seat envelope.” I had read that conclusion in accident reports a hundred times in my career. I could imagine the comments of our peers at the next Monday meeting: “If they had followed the checklist, they would be alive today.”
Eject? Stay? Eject? Stay? The runway lights were looming and I was in the agony of indecision. Finally I decided that I would stay. I put the checklist aside and resumed my death grip on the ejection handles. If the master caution light illuminated or there was any other indication of ongoing fire damage, I was gone. It might be too late by then, but that was my decision.
Throughout this period, which had been less than two minutes, I could hear Blaine’s breathing through the intercom. He had the respiration of a marathoner. He was stressed to the max.
We touched down and within seconds the right-side tire blew and the aircraft started a drift to the right. In correcting our trajectory Blaine blew the left tire. We were riding on shredded tires but at least we were skidding straight down the runway. Fire engines followed us.
It was soon a story for the ready room. We came to a safe stop. The firemen used handheld extinguishers to spray the smoking wheels. Blaine and I climbed from the cockpit and immediately walked to the back of the plane. Sure enough, we had been on fire. There was a hole burned in the bottom of the fuselage near the left engine nozzle. Later we learned a piece of the afterburner plumbing had failed and had served as a blowtorch when the throttle had been in AB. The problem was far enough aft to be out of the range of our fire sensors, which explained the lack of any firelights. When Blaine had pulled the left throttle from afterburner, the fuel source for the fire had been isolated. It was the remaining fuel in the engine compartment that had been burning as we made our landing. We had ignored the checklist and lived to tell the tale.
As we were being driven back to the operations office, I was thinking of what a great job Blaine had done. It wasn’t the stuff of legends, but it was a fine testament to his piloting abilities. He had handled a serious threat with confidence and poise. But then, that was to be expected. He was an astronaut and test pilot and he had merely been dueling with death. A far greater menace was about to leap from the shadows.
The radio scanner at a local TV station had picked up the words “NASA jet on fire” and a reporter had been dispatched to the scene. As we walked into operations, we were blindsided by the lights of a camera. A microphone was shoved in our faces. There was to be film at ten and we were to be the stars. Speaking into the lens of a camera was the most fearful form of public speaking. Fumbling for words in front of a Rotary Club didn’t compare with