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Comment by Jerry2 | Hacker News Reader

This reminded me of Taffy Holden, UK's RAF technician, who in 1966 accidentally took off in Lightning after making an error. English Electric Lightning was one of the fastest fighter jets of its time.

>The account has been widely published across the internet, but we make no apology for running the story here, as it’s a fascinating tale and it’s good to hear the original account of how Taffy Holden, an RAF Engineering Officer, accidentally selected reheat, then managed to fly several circuits in the Lightning jet fighter, position it for an approach and then land it with only minor damage. The flight in Taffy’s own words is reproduced in full below.

http://www.historicracer.com/aviation/accidental-fighter-pil...

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That quote makes it sound more deliberate and less a terrifying accident.

The Lightning was a high speed interceptor tasked to shoot down nuclear bombers, to say it was fast is an understatement.

He wasn't certified to fly that aircraft and was troubleshooting an electrical problem that couldn't be reproduced in the hanger. So he was taking short taxis down a closed portion of runway without a canopy. The equivalent of a car mechanic reving your engine in the parking lot.

The reheater (aka afterburner) on the Lightning was the last position on the throttle and there was a lock once engaged.

He wasn't having any luck reproducing the issue and so was going faster with each attempt. He accidentally engaged the reheater and went flying down the runway.

Before he could manage to disengage the reheater he had to avoid another aircraft and after that the runway ran out so he had to choose between crashing and taking off.

Once up it took him 4 approaches to bring it down without a canopy.

On a related note, I saw a video at the Pensacola Naval Air Museum of the USS Forrestal fire. Not a maintenance error, but an electrical anomaly caused a Zuni rocket on a McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom to fire, striking an external fuel tank of a A-4 Skyhawk. The flammable jet fuel spilled across the flight deck, ignited, and triggered a chain-reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. Future Senator John McCain was on deck and barely escaped the flames.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

We had to watch that video during naval basic training. IIRC, McCain was not merely on deck, but was strapped into his airplane.

I also remember that they were pushing fighter jets overboard rather than attempt to extinguish them as there was magnesium on fire that could not be put out quickly with the resources they had and they were afraid they would just melt through the ship, like thermite.

We watched it too - and since I worked on the fight deck I saw it many more times.

How the Forrestal fire was handled is a case study in how to do it wrong and the high number of casualties was the very sad cost of how poorly prepared the crew were.

in a video i just watched, it said that mccain's plane actually dropped two 1,000lb bombs into the fire that exploded shortly after it began

https://youtu.be/HfnlWKdD2fI?t=643

Reminds me of the time a brand new a340-600 was run into a wall, totaling it.

https://www.aviation24.be/website/who-remembers-this/a-brand...

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20071115-...

This reminded me of a TV show where a guy does a touch and go with a 737 after only a month of training:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5gfidl

It's pretty interesting, though, unfortunately, only in Dutch.

Brilliant! That's the kind of people and story we need more of.

But he wasn't a technician, he was an engineering officer and qualified pilot (though not on the Lightning) and commanding officer of the unit in question.

Or stories like the one about the TUI Airways pilot who managed to land a Boeing 757-200 at Bristol airport on October 12 with a 40kt crosswind:

https://videos.metro.co.uk/video/met/2018/10/14/876690853828...

What a great story! Thanks for posting it.

Taffy had a great commanding officer, too. At least from the account here, a truly humble leader. But you will have to read to the end to find out.

I just read that story, amazing.

It reads like an awesome Root Cause Analysis ticket.

What do you mean by ‘ticket’?

Normally if there a bug or other ticket I will write the root cause into the comments or notes of that ticket after its solved.

It makes it useful for future referencing and is searchable. Unlike writing it up in a word doc and uploading it to something like sharepoint where it is forgotten

Like an item in an issue tracker.

> accidentally took off

a likely story

Any chance he just couldn't resist to fly that plane?

With the canopy off? I doubt it!

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