In 1970, an American F-106 fighter suddenly failed at high altitude, but when the pilot parachuted, the plane did not crash, but continued to fly and land perfectly on its own!
In the fifties of the last century, in order to resist the attack of Soviet bombers, the United States spent a lot of resources to develop an F-106 fighter, in order to facilitate all-weather interception.
As the best all-weather interceptor in history, the F-106A has a very large change in aerodynamic shape, structure, ordnance and airborne equipment, and the biggest difference compared to other fighters is the MA-1 automatic navigation system.
This navigation system automatically connects to the communication network of the air defense system after takeoff, so the ground can control the aircraft directly.
Sometimes the pilot's job only needs to be responsible for the takeoff and landing of the aircraft, and the piloting and combat of the aircraft can be completely left to the ground command system.
Such a powerful fighter, there was a scene that made people cry and laugh, when the pilot felt that he could not save the situation and chose to parachute, and as a result, the plane went home on its own in an unmanned condition.
At that time, in order to test the combat capability of the F-106 fighter, the US military specially sent two colonels to fly the fighter for confrontation exercises.
The two colonels who practiced at that time, one named Curtis and the other named Jim Lowe, compared to Jim Law, Curtis is a veteran, and before getting on the fighter, he swore and said: "Dude, get ready to skydive." ”
Not to be outdone, Jim Lowe replied: "Who skydiving is not certain, you wait and see." "Before the competition began, the two drivers were already full of gunpowder.
After the two fighters set sail, Curtis quickly occupied the high ground, you must know that in aviation, the higher the flight, the greater the advantage, Jim Lowe piloted the fighter to dodge left and right, but was always suppressed to death.
"Dude, get ready to throw in the towel, I'm going to shoot you." Curtis arrogantly sent a message to Jim Lowe, and Jim Law did not reply to him, but silently gave him a middle finger.
"Haha, winning." Just as Foster was about to fire a drill bomb to defeat Jim Lowe's fighter, he was horrified to find that his fighter screen suddenly went black.
Foster hurriedly tried all the control devices and found that they were in a state of failure, and most importantly, because the tail speed was too low, the fighter fell into a stall tail spin state.
This state is a terrible flight phenomenon that pilots smell about, that is, the plane loses control, falls while reversing sideways, and the final result is that the plane crashes and dies.
In other words, once the plane fell into this state, it was basically unable to return to the sky and was sentenced to a "death sentence". In this case, Foster did not care about winning or losing the game, and he chose to escape by parachuting.
But what happened next was incredible. After Foster was ejected, the nose of the aircraft sank sharply under the push of the reaction force, and it actually resumed its continued flight.
The F-106 fighter abandoned by Foster entered a continuous gliding state under unmanned control. Flying over Foster, who was skydiving, he seemed to greet him: "You play slowly, I'll go home first."
"You'd better get back in the plane right away, or you'll be punished." Jim Lowe contacted Foster by radio, and his tone was full of ridicule.
"I want to too, but the current situation is that the plane has run away, what should I do?" Foster was also helpless, he had never seen such a situation, and he was confused.
It turned out that before Foster's parachute dive, he had always done his best to save the plane, which was actually quite important, especially since he finally set the plane to a state that was most conducive to its gliding, and also happened to push the engine to idle.
The reaction force brought to the aircraft at the moment of ejection, as well as the weight lost by the aircraft and the changed center of gravity after the ejection, all inexplicably adjusted its flight parameters to a perfect value, allowing it to recover itself from the flat spin and begin to glide.
Even more coincidentally, the field where it landed was a cornfield, there were no obstacles next to it to cause damage, and the ground effect came just right, when the F-106 approached the wheat field.
A good interaction between the wheat field and the wing is created, the drag decreases and the lift increases, causing it to "float" for a while before making contact, further reducing the damage.
When the plane, which had run away by itself, was found, the staff found that the fuselage was intact except for minor scratches, and even its engine and radar were on.
Although the staff did not find the reason for its loss of control, as an advanced fighter of the time, after repairs, it was sent to the battlefield.
Because of its "personality" and the fact that he landed in a cornfield at random, some people later called it the "cornfield bomber". Although I don't know if Colonel Foster has been punished for this, Colonel Foster must be famous because of this incident.
Resources:
"U.S. Air Force F-106A "Triangular Javelin" military network
