It’s September 17th, a sunny Thursday afternoon. Two fighter pilots are participating in Operation Northern Cactus, an annual military training exercise based in Alpena. They’re flying F-16s westward across northern Michigan.
Then, around 2pm, one of the pilots radios a regional air traffic control tower in Minneapolis. The call is not from the pilot who crashes, but from his wingman flying alongside.
Audio is from LIVEatc.net.
The transcript from the audio is in bold.
WINGMAN: Center, Buck 1-1 we have a possible mayday. My wingman may have taken a bird. We are on VR-634.
“Center” refers to the air traffic control tower in Minneapolis.
“Buck 1-1” is the call sign for the downed pilot’s wingman.
“My wingman may have taken a bird,” is the only reference to what may have caused the F-16 to crash.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL (ATC): Buck 1-1 roger. You’ve got Frankfort airport at your twelve o'clock, 1-2 miles. You wanna go there? It’s foxtrot kilo sarah.
The air traffic controller is trying to direct the planes to make an emergency landing.
“Roger” means ‘affirmative’ or ‘I hear you.’
“You’ve got Frankfort airport at your twelve o’clock, one-two miles.”
Twelve o’clock is the clock position meaning directly ahead. The air traffic controller is saying Frankfort airport is directly ahead one-two miles. One-two is 12.
Based on the location of the crash and the fact that Frankfort was straight ahead, we can assume that the fighter jets were heading west.
Then the air traffic controller says “it’s foxtrot kilo sarah.” This is the phonetic alphabet for F-K-S, which is the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) identifier for the airport in Frankfort.
ATC: You wanna land at Frankfort? It’s at your twelve o’clock, one-zero miles. Otherwise Traverse City is at your two o’clock and about twenty five miles.
Now Frankfort is about 10 miles away. Traverse city would be to the pilot’s right about 25 miles away.
WINGMAN: Negative Buck 1-1. I need you to alert emergency services.
The wingman’s voice, as well as the message, seems to indicate that the situation has become more dire.
ATC: Buck 1-1 roger. So the aircraft is on the ground already then?
WINGMAN: He’s gonna have to get out in the vicinity of the town I’m overhead right now.
This is likely the moment just before the pilot ejected from the aircraft.
They’re probably overhead of Blair Township. The wingman is watching his buddy go down.
ATC: Okay Buck 1-1 roger. How many souls are on that aircraft?
WINGMAN: There is a single soul.
42 seconds went by between the initial mayday call and when the wingman told air traffic control that the pilot is going have to get out of the airplane.
The pilot survived the ejection and was reported in stable condition after the crash.
The remaining three minutes of audio has the air traffic control tower asking nearby aircraft to help with spotting the pilot.
Later, the wingman comes back on to make sure emergency services are on their way.
How does a pilot eject from a fighter — and what does that feel like?
To get a better understanding of what it actually feels like to eject from a fighter jet, we asked former Navy fighter pilot and northern Michigan resident Kagan Gill to explain. In 2014 he ejected from an F-18 fighter jet over the Atlantic Ocean and survived. His was the fastest ejection from an aircraft in Naval aviation history.
Below is the transcript of his conversation with IPR’s Austin Rowlader.
Kegan Gill Hey, thanks for having me with you, Austin
Austin Rowlader Kagan. What do you make of the conversation we just heard?
KG Yeah, you know, when an F-16 loses an engine … in an F-18 like I flew, you had the luxury of having two engines. So if you have one go out, you have the redundancies, and you can fly away and get that thing on the ground safely with a lot further range. But in an F-16, you only have one engine. So when that engine's out, you know the F-16 turns into a lawn dart.
Fortunately, they have the emergency power unit on that, which powered up and probably gave him at least the ability to control the aircraft and maintain the use of his electronics briefly. But still, without power, you can only go so far.
AR So you think it's likely that the pilot was able to, in some way, steer the plane to an open field as opposed to a heavily populated area?
KG I believe the F-16 has an emergency power unit on it, basically a little tiny generator that can fire up and power the hydraulics. So if you were to completely lose all power, you would have zero ability to maneuver the aircraft.
But it sounds like he was potentially able to get that online and give him a little bit of control to maybe point that in a direction that wasn't overly populated in the little bit of time he probably had to react in that situation—potentially saving the lives of those on the ground.
AR So you're someone who has actually ejected from a fighter jet, but I think a lot of us that have never flown a fighter jet before are wondering what that's like. I mean, just from the very basic mechanics of it, all the way down to how you feel. So is there like a button that you push, or is there a lever? How does it actually work?
KG Yeah. So it’s obviously a system of the aircraft that you hope you never have to use, but when you do need to use it, it can really save your life. I had an ejection seat save my life in an emergency where my aircraft had gone out of control, and I was able to eject before I impacted with the ocean, where I would have vaporized.
And while I certainly was injured, I was able to live. You know, lived to tell the story, but it's an incredibly violent process.
If it's similar to the F-18, I'd imagine that they have an ejection handle that is between the pilot's legs.
Once you're airborne, if an emergency happens, all you have to do is reach down between your legs. You assume a specific position to brace your body for that impact by sitting upright and tucking your elbows in tight and squeezing your arms and core and in preparation for when you pull that ejection handle. The instantaneous force is approximately 50 Gs, which is so strong that just that force of the rocket motor igniting will compress the pilot's spine, and oftentimes people will lose, you know, a half inch to an inch of their stature permanently just from the compression of their spinal column.
And then the canopy will blast away, and in the Super Hornet, that ejection sequence takes approximately .4 seconds. So less than half a second, the canopy is blown away, and you are clear of the aircraft. So it can get you out really, really quickly.
AR How much time do you think this guy had between when he realized that his engine was blown and when his plane actually hit the ground?
KG You know, if you're on a low-level route, which is one of the most fun things you get to do in a fighter jet, you know, raging around near the surface of the Earth, you can really feel the speed sensation of the aircraft. But it gives you very little reaction time when something goes bad.
You typically carry enough energy, enough speed on the aircraft so if something did happen, you can use that inertia to give yourself some altitude and climb up to try to cope with the emergency as quickly as possible. But you have seconds to figure out the problem. So it likely was very very quick.
AR Wow. Kagan, thank you so much for sharing with us a little bit about what it's like to eject from a fighter jet.
KG Hey, my pleasure.
AR If you'd like to know more about Kagan's experience pulling the eject handle from a fighter jet, he wrote a book called Phoenix Revival, which is available online and at many local bookstores.
To hear the full audio of this piece, check out today's Up North Lowdown.
