Mission control came on the air and said, "Si, one of the visiting generals would like to see that again. Do you have enough fuel?"
Si replied, "Roger, if the twenty-nines can get back into position in time." The bomber leader said they could be on another run in about five minutes, so we climbed into position to start another pass, little knowing that the general had just unwittingly signed Si's death warrant.
We climbed to 5,000 feet, waiting for the B-29s to arrive over the range at 500 feet. A voice crackled in my earphones: "Si, this is range control. The B-twenty-nines are two minutes out, altitude five hundred feet, heading zero-niner-zero. You are cleared for your attack."
"Roger. We'll hit them just in front of the stands," Si answered. He started a slow descending turn to get into position. When the bombers crossed the boundary of the range, we nosed down into a steep dive to the north and then swung to the right into a curve of pursuit on the bombers. As we completed the pass, we began a steep climbing turn to the right. I thought that it must have looked great from the stands, because Si had timed it right on the money. It's always a good feeling when a mission goes like clockwork.
The good feeling was short-lived, however. My eyes were glued to Len's P-80 when, suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw Si's P-84 disintegrate. The pieces hurtled into the ground, sending up a tremendous cloud of dust and debris. It happened so fast that I couldn't believe my eyes. My first thought was that he must have collided with another airplane, but we were past the B-29s, and our three P-80s were intact. I yelled into the oxygen-mask mike, "What happened, Len?"
"Beats the hell out of me," he replied. "The plane just broke into pieces. Si didn't have a chance." Just then range control broke in and tersely ordered all planes to return to Eglin and land. I took the lead, and we proceeded back to the field in stunned silence.
We were still in a state of shock when we joined the rest of the pilots, who had already landed, and told them that Si had just bought the farm. Len, Fred, and I related what we had seen, but there was so little to tell. We didn't have the slightest idea what had caused the airplane to come apart. Republic Aviation, which built the P-84, was well known for the sturdy aircraft it produced, and there was no record of structural failure in 84s. There had been some pitch-up problems in earlier testing, but they had occurred at 600 mph, and we had not exceeded 500 mph. We knew the airplane hadn't exploded, because there was no fire either in the air or on the ground. This was the first time anyone had been killed during a firepower demonstration. In fact, no one could recall any type of accident during a demonstration.
Si was a skillful and experienced pilot. We were sure he hadn't erred in any way. He was the operations officer of the squadron and was acting as squadron commander in the absence of Lieutenant Colonel Slocumb. In addition to being highly respected as a pilot and leader, he was also well liked. We all had lost a good friend.
Si and I had flown together in many airshows. Glyn and I often joined him and his wife, Rachel, at the local boat races where Si raced his home-built motor boat, which, next to his newborn son, was his pride and joy. Driving home, I thought about the pleasant times we had shared and how in an instant one's future can be blown to hell. I wondered how I could break this to Glyn. Si was the first pilot to be killed in our squadron in the four months that we had been married. He would not be the last, and this was only the first of many times that I would be the bearer of such devastating news.
It was not until the next day that we learned exactly what had occurred. All the events in the demonstrations were filmed by high-speed motion picture cameras. The film clearly showed that Si's right wing had sheared from the fuselage and the remainder of the airplane had gone into the ground in a high-speed roll to the right. The airplane broke into pieces on impact, and Si was killed instantly. Some speculated that he had hit the propwash or wingtip vortices from the B-29s, but we knew that the three P-80s and Si were well clear of both of those hazards.
In the meantime, as soon as Si's death was officially confirmed, our group commander and the chaplain went to Si's home to inform his wife of the accident. I didn't envy the chaplain and the C.O. their duty that day, but I did wish there were something I could do to help relieve her sorrow. My wife didn't know a lot about flying and fliers before we were married, but she had worked at Eglin for a year and a half and knew well that airplanes crashed and fliers were killed. She also knew, though, how I felt about flying, and to her credit, she never suggested or even hinted that I take up a safer profession.
In combat, the death of a fellow pilot is easier to accept for two reasons: it is expected (after all, kill or be killed is the name of the game), and combat pilots are seldom acquainted with each other's families, which distances them from the family's suffering when a husband and father is killed. Death is an ever-present threat in flying and an even larger threat in test flying, but it occurred, fortunately, far less often than in combat.
Death is not the major fear for test pilots. What we fear most is screwing up in a way that causes the loss of the airplane or the loss of someone else's life. Alive or dead, the flier's image as an outstanding pilot — a precious commodity indeed — would be damaged or destroyed. It would be tantamount to an Oriental's losing face.
Test pilots are not daredevils who foolishly risk their necks by taking unnecessary chances. Quite the contrary, all the good ones do only what is required to get the job done, and they know their aircraft's systems so thoroughly that they are well prepared for emergencies. Chuck Yeager's motto is a good one for all test pilots, indeed for all pilots, to follow: ''Always leave yourself a way out."
The reason for the structural failure that caused Si's death was not discovered until a few months later. Several of us were in Atlanta flying F-84s and F-80s in an Air Force Day airshow. Late in the afternoon, as we were preparing to take off for the second part of the show, we received a wire from Eglin stating that all F-84s were grounded until further notice. Two F-84s from the 20th Fighter Group flying in separate airshows (one in Fort Worth, Texas, and one in San Bernardino, California) had lost their wings that day in front of the spectators while pulling up from high-speed, low-altitude passes. By some miracle, both pilots parachuted to safety. Investigations determined that when the stick was pulled back for a moderate-g pullout at high speed with tip tanks installed, the F-84 experienced an aerodynamic phenomenon called stick reversal, probably caused by tip-tank oscillation. That is, after reaching a certain g-load the airplane would automatically tighten the turn until it exceeded the maximum structural g-loading, causing the wing structure to fail. It happened so quickly that the pilot could not reverse the stick force in time to prevent the wing failure. Republic Aviation, the builders of the F-84, solved the problem by adding small triangular winglets to the tip tanks.
I flew in many more firepower demonstrations during my remaining three years at Eglin, and I'm happy to relate that they were all accident free.