It would have been the perfect vehicle for a Laurel and Hardy comedy act … except for the fact that it really happened. by RADM Paul T. Gillcrist, USN(Ret)
“Where are the clowns?”
— Robert Chason
It would have been the perfect vehicle for a Laurel and Hardy comedy act … except for the fact that it really happened.
George Clancy was a lieutenant commander with me in Class 20 at the Navy Test Pilot School. He had the classic Irishman’s broad facial structure with a pair of crystal-clear blue eyes and weathered, seamed skin around the mouth and cheeks. He was short and a little rotund. We had served together once before at El Centro and were now teamed together for a project flight as a part of the TPS syllabus. The project was a full-power climb in a Douglas AD-5, a side-by-side model of the propeller-driven Skyraider.
The right-hand seat of this airplane had no flight controls, so the left-seat occupant would log all of the pilot time, and the right-seater would be able to log only special crew time. Naturally, neither one of us wanted to sit in the right seat for two and a half hours recording engine performance data on a clipboard. So we decided on a switch arrangement in which we would change seats in flight. The rules permitted such a switch on this syllabus flight as long as we followed the guidelines in the TPS operating manual.
The procedure called for leveling at 10,000 feet altitude (no higher because of the danger of hypoxia), trimming the airplane up for hands-off flight at 180 knots, locking the friction knob on the throttle quadrant, unstrapping the seat restraints and simultaneously switching positions. It didn’t sound too difficult … but then neither of us had ever tried it.
The main problem was that the first occupant of the left seat only sat in it for about 15 minutes. The next 2 hours and 15 minutes would be spent in the right seat. There is a corollary in Naval Aviation that says that nobody wants to fly as a co-pilot if he has a choice. We could flip a coin to see who started in the left seat … or we could cheat.
We decided to cheat.
The cheating part had to do with the altitude at which we opted to change seats. We both agreed that any two reasonably coordinated Naval Aviators ought to be able to change seats in an AD-5 without making a federal case of it. After all, we reasoned, what could go wrong? It would be quite simple — and nobody would have to be the wiser if we just did the climb and changed seats halfway through the climb.
From the climb tables in the airplane flight manual, we calculated that on a normal-rated power climb to 28,000 feet, the halfway point as far as time was concerned would occur at about 20,000 feet. It was quite simple. We would simply change at 20,000 feet and not even bother leveling off for the change … which should only take 30 seconds for two seasoned aviators such as we. George won the coin toss and climbed into the left (pilot’s) seat and I sat on the right.
As a dutiful co-pilot, I wrote down the various engine performance instrument readings every 1,000 feet of altitude change. As we approached 20,000 feet, George told me to get ready to change, informing me that he would step over me as I stepped behind him. Since we had already shifted the engine supercharger to “high blower” and had long since started breathing oxygen, the procedure would have to be done quickly. George explained the procedure carefully but quickly, because 20,000 feet was coming up fast on the altimeter.
“You disconnect from your shoulder/lap harness, disconnect your oxygen hose connection and stand up,” he directed, “and lean over the top of the instrument panel as you lift your left leg over the center console and put your left foot on the seat behind my back. I’ll lean forward to make this a little bit easier. Then I will do the same and lean forward over the top of my instrument panel and step over in front of you and put my foot on the right side of your right foot. Then we will lean as far as we can and hook up our oxygen hoses on the other side of the cockpit. Once we are hooked up, then we continue the change. I step over all the way in front while you step over all the way in back. Got it?” he asked.
“George,” I answered a little skeptically, “this is beginning to sound a little more complicated than I thought. We need to be sure that we are disconnected from oxygen a minimum of time. I don’t want us both getting hypoxic in the middle of this little caper.”
I could tell from his expression that he didn’t like my describing his neat little plan as a caper. But I nodded my head in assent as he gave the signal.
“Now!” George shouted, and we both went to work furiously disconnecting things. I leaned forward and found there was not as much room for my head over my instrument panel as I thought. I lifted my left foot and stepped over the center pedestal, putting it onto the seat behind George. There wasn’t much room on the back of his seat so I jibed him a little.
“Move forward a little, for Chrissake!”
“I can’t move much farther forward because I am already pushing against the stick.” I thought his response was a little testy. Meanwhile, George had lifted his right foot above and across the center console and put his right foot directly on top of my right flight boot. There was no room in that confined space to put it anywhere else. It was at this point that my funnybone was tickled and I decided to pull George’s chain.
“Whatever you do, George, don’t fart!” This started him laughing, and in a second we were both giggling. The more George laughed the funnier it seemed to me. Here we were, two adults, aviators, test pilots in training, jammed together obscenely in the cockpit of an AD-5 at 20,000 feet over the eastern shore of Maryland, laughing hysterically.
Then it came to me in a rush. We were hypoxic! By now we had been deprived of oxygen for over a minute. Unexplainable giggling was one of the first symptoms. Dizziness was the next phase, followed by hallucinations, convulsions, unconsciousness and finally, death. This was not funny … but we were laughing uncontrollably by now.
“George, forget everything else and get your oxygen mask plugged in.” His answer seemed to be groggy now.
“OK, Paul. OK. Take it easy. Step over behind me.”
“Goddamn it, I can’t step over because you are standing on my foot!”
“Well pull it out. Damn, do I have to tell you everything? What are you, a cretin?” At this point I felt a shudder in the airframe. Looking over George’s back and out the center windscreen I could see that the airplane’s nose had risen dangerously and we were approaching a stall. I knew that the next thing would be for the airplane to enter a spin. If it did so with us not strapped in, it would be all she wrote.
“George, for Chrissake, push forward on the stick. We’re about to stall!” He was still laughing.
“Push forward? I can’t even find the stick! What do you think I am … a contortionist?” Realizing that death was imminent, I made one last lunge pulling my right foot out from under his and fell against the left side of the canopy. George seemed to come loose and fell to the right over into the right seat. This last lunge by the two of us caused our flight boots to hit dozens of toggle switches and controls on the center console. All sorts of lights came on in the cockpit simultaneously.
I felt a strange dizziness and my vision grayed as I plugged the oxygen hose into the left-hand console receptacle. Recovery of my senses was almost instantaneous with the sweet taste of oxygen to my mouth and lungs, and I noticed that the nose of the airplane had dropped as did the left wing, putting the airplane into a steep left-hand graveyard spiral.
As the pilot, I had to recover the airplane from its unusual attitude and re-establish ourselves in a climb in order to complete the syllabus flight. George’s recovery had been just as instantaneous, and he was by now all business as he set up to begin recording engine performance data on the clipboard that I had dropped during the seat change. Forty-five minutes later we completed our syllabus climb test profile and had begun our descent.
The question foremost in our minds at this point was how to explain the interruption in data recording that happened at 20,000 feet. The school instructors who would grade our report were certain to notice the interruption and question it. It was unlikely that they would catch on to the fact that we had changed seats without leveling off. It was also unlikely that anyone would correlate the split in flight time which we would log on the yellow sheet, because that would be recorded in the school’s maintenance department. But they would question what had happened. What to do?
We thought about it for a few minutes before George’s fertile mind came up with a solution. “Let’s just tell Joe Moorer (the school’s operations officer) that we were momentarily distracted by a disruption in cockpit communications and decided to run that portion of the climb over.” It was not exactly a lie while at the same time it was not exactly the truth. George was good at that!
After all, we had just performed the Keystone Cops act of the century at 20,000 feet over the eastern shore of Maryland. How do you top that?