shanneba
Professional
In February 1970, a supersonic Air Force interceptor fell out of control over Montana, and its pilot ejected to save his life. The jet he left behind then did something no engineer had ever designed it to do. It broke its own spin, leveled its wings, and glided down to a gentle belly landing in a snowy wheat field, engine still idling, and it went on to fly for another sixteen years.
The local sheriff who drove out across the frozen fields near Big Sandy, Montana, on the morning of February 2, 1970, found something that should not have existed.
A supersonic Air Force interceptor sat upright in a farmer’s field, belly in the snow, canopy gone, cockpit empty, and its engine still running.
There was no pilot, no crater, no fire, just a Convair F-106 Delta Dart idling quietly in the middle of nowhere as if someone had taxied it there and walked away.
The pilot was miles off, hanging under a parachute in the mountains, watching in disbelief. His jet had landed.
The Flat Spin
It went wrong quickly. Maneuvering hard to keep his position, Foust let the F-106 slip into an accelerated stall at around 35,000 feet, exceeding the wing’s angle of attack while bleeding off speed.
The jet fell through a series of post-stall gyrations and settled into a flat spin, rotating nose-high around its own vertical axis while dropping like a plate. For a delta-wing aircraft, this was close to a death sentence. In a flat spin, the airflow over the wing and tail is so disrupted that the controls do almost nothing, and the F-106 had a reputation for not coming back from it.
Foust did everything the emergency procedures asked. He worked the anti-spin controls by the book, and when the aircraft ignored him, he reached for a last resort and deployed the drag chute normally used to slow the jet on landing, hoping it might drag the tail around and break the rotation.
Instead, the chute wrapped uselessly around the vertical tail. The Delta Dart kept spinning, kept falling, and the altimeter kept unwinding. After riding it down for what must have felt like a very long time, with the ground coming up and no recovery in sight, Foust pulled the ejection handle at roughly 15,000 feet. The canopy blew away, the seat rocket fired, and he was thrown clear into the cold Montana sky.
The Jet That Flew Itself
What happened next is the reason anyone remembers 58-0787. The violence of the ejection changed everything about the aircraft in an instant.
The seat rocket firing upward shoved the nose down, and the sudden loss of the pilot’s weight shifted the jet’s balance and center of gravity.
Crucially, Foust had earlier set the aircraft’s trim for takeoff and pulled the throttle back to idle as part of his recovery attempts.
With the nose now pushed below the stall angle and the trim holding that attitude, the wing bit into clean air again and started to fly. The spin broke.
The nose came up to level. And the pilotless F-106 settled into a shallow, stable glide at about 175 knots, descending across the Montana plains as if a careful hand were on the stick.
One of the other pilots, watching the empty jet fly itself out of the spin, radioed Foust, who was under his parachute, incredulous, telling him he had better get back in it. Foust could only hang there and watch, certain the aircraft was about to auger into the wilderness. It did not.
The Delta Dart flew on, wings level, and eased down toward the snow-covered wheat fields near the town of Big Sandy. There, it made a wheels-up belly landing, the snow cushioning and spreading the impact, and slid to a stop largely intact, having flown a controlled descent that no one was aboard to command.
hiwars.com
The local sheriff who drove out across the frozen fields near Big Sandy, Montana, on the morning of February 2, 1970, found something that should not have existed.
A supersonic Air Force interceptor sat upright in a farmer’s field, belly in the snow, canopy gone, cockpit empty, and its engine still running.
There was no pilot, no crater, no fire, just a Convair F-106 Delta Dart idling quietly in the middle of nowhere as if someone had taxied it there and walked away.
The pilot was miles off, hanging under a parachute in the mountains, watching in disbelief. His jet had landed.
The Flat Spin
It went wrong quickly. Maneuvering hard to keep his position, Foust let the F-106 slip into an accelerated stall at around 35,000 feet, exceeding the wing’s angle of attack while bleeding off speed.
The jet fell through a series of post-stall gyrations and settled into a flat spin, rotating nose-high around its own vertical axis while dropping like a plate. For a delta-wing aircraft, this was close to a death sentence. In a flat spin, the airflow over the wing and tail is so disrupted that the controls do almost nothing, and the F-106 had a reputation for not coming back from it.
Foust did everything the emergency procedures asked. He worked the anti-spin controls by the book, and when the aircraft ignored him, he reached for a last resort and deployed the drag chute normally used to slow the jet on landing, hoping it might drag the tail around and break the rotation.
Instead, the chute wrapped uselessly around the vertical tail. The Delta Dart kept spinning, kept falling, and the altimeter kept unwinding. After riding it down for what must have felt like a very long time, with the ground coming up and no recovery in sight, Foust pulled the ejection handle at roughly 15,000 feet. The canopy blew away, the seat rocket fired, and he was thrown clear into the cold Montana sky.
The Jet That Flew Itself
What happened next is the reason anyone remembers 58-0787. The violence of the ejection changed everything about the aircraft in an instant.
The seat rocket firing upward shoved the nose down, and the sudden loss of the pilot’s weight shifted the jet’s balance and center of gravity.
Crucially, Foust had earlier set the aircraft’s trim for takeoff and pulled the throttle back to idle as part of his recovery attempts.
With the nose now pushed below the stall angle and the trim holding that attitude, the wing bit into clean air again and started to fly. The spin broke.
The nose came up to level. And the pilotless F-106 settled into a shallow, stable glide at about 175 knots, descending across the Montana plains as if a careful hand were on the stick.
One of the other pilots, watching the empty jet fly itself out of the spin, radioed Foust, who was under his parachute, incredulous, telling him he had better get back in it. Foust could only hang there and watch, certain the aircraft was about to auger into the wilderness. It did not.
The Delta Dart flew on, wings level, and eased down toward the snow-covered wheat fields near the town of Big Sandy. There, it made a wheels-up belly landing, the snow cushioning and spreading the impact, and slid to a stop largely intact, having flown a controlled descent that no one was aboard to command.
An F-106 Interceptor Fell Into a Flat Spin at 35,000 Feet. The Pilot Ejected. Then the Empty Jet Recovered Itself and Landed in a Montana Field, Engine Still Running
An F-106 interceptor fell into a flat spin at 35,000 feet over Big Sandy, Montana, on February 2, 1970. The pilot ejected at 15,000 feet, and the aircraft, n...
hiwars.com
