ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 257312
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| Date: | Wednesday 26 November 1952 |
| Time: | |
| Type: | Lockheed F-94B Starfire |
| Owner/operator: | 59th FIS /NEAC USAF |
| Registration: | 51-5438 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: / Occupants: 2 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | Ernest Harmon AFB, Newfoundland -
 Canada
|
| Phase: | |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | |
| Confidence Rating: |  Little or no information is available |
Crash landed at Ernest Harmon AFB, Newfoundland.
Landing accident in an F-94b Lockheed “Starfire” at E. Harmon AFB, Newfoundland.
Landing accident in an F-94b Lockheed “Starfire” at E. Harmon AFB, Newfoundland.
Our squadron, the 59th F.I.S., had arrived at Goose Bay, Labrador a few weeks earlier. Winter was setting in. The land over which we were now operating was frozen and inhospitable. Only a few airstrips were available for us to land on, if we could not make it back home after an extended intercept. Our training included making cross-country flights to the fields that served as ‘alternate air ports’.
On November 26th, 1952, I filed a cross-country flight plan from Goose Bay to Pepperell AFB (St John’s, NFLD), to E. Harmon AFB (Stephenville, NFLD) and back to Goose Bay. My Radar Observer George M. accompanied me on this flight.
We climbed to our best cruising altitude for the initial weight of the aircraft and I set the power for long range cruise speed. We then sat back and relaxed, enjoying the afternoon looking down at the countryside, as we headed south/east towards St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland.
Our flight progressed nicely and we made good time. Over St. John’s we turned west to Stephenville, NFLD and then headed north to Goose Bay. The aircraft had gotten lighter as we burned off fuel. Following information from the LRC charts, I climbed and adjusted the air speed accordingly. With the air speed slowed, our speed over the ground slowed as well. At first I was not alarmed, but as I kept looking at the Strait of Belle Isle, the sea between NFLD and the Canadian main land, we hardly seemed to be making any progress, while our fuel got lower and lower. (In those days not much was known about jet streams; that came later.)
We were at a point not yet half way between E. Harmon AFB and Goose Bay. I had to make a decision about whether to keep going, or to return to Harmon, one of our alternate airports. To turn back seemed to be more prudent, especially so, since at the same time I was going to land there and become acquainted with the field at the same time.
We approached HAFB late in the afternoon as it was getting dark. (Days are short, that time of year in this part of the world.) I was cleared to land on a runway about 5,000 feet long. (The ones I had flown from in the past, were as rule at least 8,000 feet long for jet air craft and in addition to that, also had gravel over-runs on each end of the runway. This, in effect, made them twice as long as the runway I was now looking on.)
I made an approach to land, but this runway did not look right, it was short and I was perhaps a little too fast too. I declared a “missed approach” and came around for another landing. By then my fuel was down to minimum and I was going to land one way or another. To make sure that I would not have to go around again, I made a “bomber” approach. I came in with a low rate of descent and dragged “dragged” the plane onto the runway. Everything went as planned: Over the runway I chopped the power as we touched down and then I got on the brakes.
For some reason, the brake pedals moved all the way forward, but I could feel no braking action. We kept moving like the dickens! We were barreling down the runway and then the plane slowly lost speed. Suddenly the right wing settled down. The tip tank made contact with the ground and began to drag the aircraft into a right curve. A line of steel hangars came into view! This would never do! We were traveling fast enough where I still had aileron control. I picked up the right wing and tried to get us back to the middle of the runway. Then the left wing came down and that was it. We were now dragged in a gentle curve to the middle of the field, grass covered and open, until a building appeared in the view illuminated by our landing lights!
We had no time to think or wonder about what was going to happen next. The nose of our plane drove right through the wall and then we came to a stop. At least I sat there dumbfounded, waiting for us to blow up. This was what usually happened in situations like this. But nothing happened! I collected myself and decided to shut everything down and do the checklist. The cockpit got dark and all we could do was wait and see what would happen.
It may have seemed like an eternity at the time, but really was only a few minutes and our rescuers from the fire department were chopping their way into the building. The ceiling had collapsed and fallen down on us. There was no way to raise the canopy. A brave and fearless fellow, the air plane could still have blown up any second as far as he knew, chopped a hole through the plexiglass and got George out. I was next. I came out without a bruise or single scratch on my body. I think that George did not fare quite as well in his cramped quarters behind me.
What did happen? Coming in for my landing, I had flared over an “over run” that was not there. It was marshland and where the runway started, the top of the concrete surface was about a foot above the ground! The nose wheel cleared the difference, but the main landing gears were too low to do the same. With no over run to touch down on, they hit the edge of the concrete slab, broke off and stayed right there until they were found next day.
Why did we not blow up? Who knows, luck, or maybe our time to go had not arrived yet. What may have had something to do with it, however, was the fact that I had forgotten to shut the engine off. This was not a matter of cutting off switches, which I had done, you had to move the throttle from the idle into the fuel cut off position, and this I did not do! The engine kept running until it ran out of fuel, and with the tail of the plane sticking out of the building, the engine acted like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking in all the fumes and burning them on the way out of the building, before they could cause an explosion. At least, that was my own theory.
No one else got hurt either. The building we leveled had still been occupied two weeks before. Since our presence up north was quite secret, the whole incident was squashed, no flight evaluation board was convened either and I was back flying again in no time at all.
George took the whole episode a little harder. Thereafter he would not fly with me anymore and I had to get another Radar Observer to go with me.
Lessons like this can be useful. The lack of over run on the runways at Harmon was soon corrected. I continued to learn from my mistakes too and after I got out of the military, I went to work for Eastern Airlines, where I flew for one third of a century, until my retirement in 1988. I never had another accident either. Hey, and I am still alive!
“Pintail 25” (Fayetteville, GA 1/24/00)
F-94b coming for a landing at Goose Bay, Labrador in 1953.
https://www.airliners.net/photo/USA-Air-Force/Lockheed-F-94B-Starfire/453275
"Our squadron, the 59th F.I.S., had arrived at Goose Bay, Labrador a few weeks earlier. Winter was setting in. The land over which we were now operating was frozen and inhospitable. Only a few airstrips were available for us to land on, if we could not make it back home after an extended intercept. Our training included making cross-country flights to the fields that served as ‘alternate air ports’.
On November 26th, 1952, I filed a cross-country flight plan from Goose Bay to Pepperell AFB (St John’s, NFLD), to E. Harmon AFB (Stephenville, NFLD) and back to Goose Bay. My Radar Observer George M. accompanied me on this flight.
We climbed to our best cruising altitude for the initial weight of the aircraft and I set the power for long range cruise speed. We then sat back and relaxed, enjoying the afternoon looking down at the countryside, as we headed south/east towards St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland.
Our flight progressed nicely and we made good time. Over St. John’s we turned west to Stephenville, NFLD and then headed north to Goose Bay. The aircraft had gotten lighter as we burned off fuel. Following information from the LRC charts, I climbed and adjusted the air speed accordingly. With the air speed slowed, our speed over the ground slowed as well. At first I was not alarmed, but as I kept looking at the Strait of Belle Isle, the sea between NFLD and the Canadian main land, we hardly seemed to be making any progress, while our fuel got lower and lower. (In those days not much was known about jet streams; that came later.)
We were at a point not yet half way between E. Harmon AFB and Goose Bay. I had to make a decision about whether to keep going, or to return to Harmon, one of our alternate airports. To turn back seemed to be more prudent, especially so, since at the same time I was going to land there and become acquainted with the field at the same time.
We approached HAFB late in the afternoon as it was getting dark. (Days are short, that time of year in this part of the world.) I was cleared to land on a runway about 5,000 feet long. (The ones I had flown from in the past, were as rule at least 8,000 feet long for jet air craft and in addition to that, also had gravel over-runs on each end of the runway. This, in effect, made them twice as long as the runway I was now looking on.)
I made an approach to land, but this runway did not look right, it was short and I was perhaps a little too fast too. I declared a “missed approach” and came around for another landing. By then my fuel was down to minimum and I was going to land one way or another. To make sure that I would not have to go around again, I made a “bomber” approach. I came in with a low rate of descent and dragged “dragged” the plane onto the runway. Everything went as planned: Over the runway I chopped the power as we touched down and then I got on the brakes.
For some reason, the brake pedals moved all the way forward, but I could feel no braking action. We kept moving like the dickens! We were barreling down the runway and then the plane slowly lost speed. Suddenly the right wing settled down. The tip tank made contact with the ground and began to drag the aircraft into a right curve. A line of steel hangars came into view! This would never do! We were traveling fast enough where I still had aileron control. I picked up the right wing and tried to get us back to the middle of the runway. Then the left wing came down and that was it. We were now dragged in a gentle curve to the middle of the field, grass covered and open, until a building appeared in the view illuminated by our landing lights!
We had no time to think or wonder about what was going to happen next. The nose of our plane drove right through the wall and then we came to a stop. At least I sat there dumbfounded, waiting for us to blow up. This was what usually happened in situations like this. But nothing happened! I collected myself and decided to shut everything down and do the checklist. The cockpit got dark and all we could do was wait and see what would happen.
It may have seemed like an eternity at the time, but really was only a few minutes and our rescuers from the fire department were chopping their way into the building. The ceiling had collapsed and fallen down on us. There was no way to raise the canopy. A brave and fearless fellow, the air plane could still have blown up any second as far as he knew, chopped a hole through the plexiglass and got George out. I was next. I came out without a bruise or single scratch on my body. I think that George did not fare quite as well in his cramped quarters behind me.
What did happen? Coming in for my landing, I had flared over an “over run” that was not there. It was marshland and where the runway started, the top of the concrete surface was about a foot above the ground! The nose wheel cleared the difference, but the main landing gears were too low to do the same. With no over run to touch down on, they hit the edge of the concrete slab, broke off and stayed right there until they were found next day.
Why did we not blow up? Who knows, luck, or maybe our time to go had not arrived yet. What may have had something to do with it, however, was the fact that I had forgotten to shut the engine off. This was not a matter of cutting off switches, which I had done, you had to move the throttle from the idle into the fuel cut off position, and this I did not do! The engine kept running until it ran out of fuel, and with the tail of the plane sticking out of the building, the engine acted like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking in all the fumes and burning them on the way out of the building, before they could cause an explosion. At least, that was my own theory.
No one else got hurt either. The building we leveled had still been occupied two weeks before. Since our presence up north was quite secret, the whole incident was squashed, no flight evaluation board was convened either and I was back flying again in no time at all.
George took the whole episode a little harder. Thereafter he would not fly with me anymore and I had to get another Radar Observer to go with me.
Lessons like this can be useful. The lack of over run on the runways at Harmon was soon corrected. I continued to learn from my mistakes too and after I got out of the military, I went to work for Eastern Airlines, where I flew for one third of a century, until my retirement in 1988. I never had another accident.
F.J. Adam, 2nd LT. Pilot - “Pintail 25”
George D. May, 2nd LT, Radar Observer
Picture by F.J Adam - F-94b coming for a landing at Goose Bay, Labrador in 1953.
https://www.airliners.net/photo/USA-Air-Force/Lockheed-F-94B-Starfire/453275
Sources:
http://www.forgottenjets.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/F-94.html
Images:
Goose Bay, Labrador, 1953
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 04-May-2021 07:53 | ASN archive | |
| 16-Jul-2021 10:01 | Pintail 25 | Updated [Operator, Total occupants, Other fatalities, Narrative, Photo] |
| 12-Jun-2022 09:34 | Nepa | Updated [Operator, Operator] |
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