Twenty Seconds From Death

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30586, 31 October 1964, Page 5

Twenty Seconds From Death

I By

JACK PERCIVAL

in the “Sun-Herald." Reprinted by arrangement]

A half-conscious R.AA.F. pilot plunging earthward at an estimated 1750 m.pJi. had 20 seconds left to save his brand new £l} million aircraft and his life. 1 his dramatic incident was enacted only a few miles from Sydney, eight miles high in rarefied atmosphere with little oxygen content. Early in his hair-raising four-miles dive, the semiconscious pilot could have pulled the “next-of-kin” switch to operate his ejector seat.

If he had done that he might have escaped with a “scalding” from slipstream blast and bruises caused by being blasted through the cockpit canopy. Instead, he chose to ride it out to save one of the first of 100 Mirage fighters ordered by the Australian Government for the R.A.A.F.

The high-speed descent was caused because the pilot blacked out when his oxygen supply flow failed. The pilot, a Western Australian, fully recovered a few minutes after he made a safe landing. But what the stresses of the great velocity—believed far beyond those for which it was designed—did to the plane has not yet been fully decided. The only outward sign of any damage to the aircraft is rippling in the jet engine's air intakes. The engine is being stripped down to search for any other damage. Later the plane will be flown to Melbourne for detailed examination by factory experts and officers of the Commonwealth Aeronautical Laboratories. The incident, which has incited international interest from other countries which have bought Mirage fighters, happened when Flight Lieutenant Colin Ackland, of the Williamtown Air Force Base near Newcastle was on a routine test flight. Pressure Suit Thirty years old, with a wife and one young son, he lives in the married quarters at the base. Before he joined the R.A.A.F. he was a cadet bacteriologist with the Queensland Department of Agriculture at Townsville. He went to France to learn to fly the Mirage and study modern supersonic fighter flying a new type of aviation for the R.AA.F. On the day of the incident he climbed into a highaltitude pressure suit with a bubble helmet which fits on to a jerkin. A pipeline feeds oxygen into the bubble helmet. This pressure suit for highaltitude flying in a Mirage is far more complex than most deep-sea diving rigs. For the high-flying supersonic pilot it is as important and necessary as the diver’s suit. Without it

he cannot go very high and very far. He made a normal take-off and all went well until he reached his selected highaltitude level. The exact height is “restricted ” by the Air Force. But it is believed to be well over 50,000 feet. Vision Dini There In the wide silent, purple-hued world with a vast expanse of New South Wales and its territorial waters spread out below him like a gigantic relief map, unsheduled things began to happen. In his own words: “I got a bit of a headache . . . my vision started to dim ... I lost ability to control limb movements. “My faculties began to deteriorate ... I realised I was lapsing into semi-conscious-ness. “The sensation was something like mountain sickness. “I knew something had gone wrong with my oxygen supply. I decided to put the Mirage into a dive and get down to an altitude where there is more oxygen. “I got down there in a very short time and immediately felt better. The aircraft eased out of the dive and I made a normal landing. “Soon after landing I felt much better . . . it’s amazing how quickly you recover from oxygen starvation. “During the emergency decent the Mirage handled very well . . . it’s a fine aircraft and I like it very much. “I inspected the airframe and saw rippling in the air intakes.” “Lucky Boy” One of Flight Lieutenant Ackland’s flying colleagues told me: “I think he is a lucky boy. As the length of his dive increased the main risk was from turbulence in the heavier air at lower altitudes. “If he had encountered severe turbulence between 20,000 and 15,000 feet the fighter might have broken up. “If he had been too foggy to ease the aircraft out of its

dive gently he could have pulled its wings off.” A high-ranking Air Force officer said: “It shows that the Mirage justifies the reports we received about it from our experts. There is no doubt it can take terrific punishment.”

Factory specifications for the Mirage state that its speed capability is Mach. 2.15, more than twice the speed of sound, and that it can climb to 40,000 feet in 2 minutes 30 seconds.

Estimates ‘of the maximum speed Flight Lieutenant Ackland reached in his semi-conscious state in the dive vary from 1750 m.p.h. down to 1500 m.p.h. Dassault (makers of the plane) factory test pilots in France claim that it can be flown at 1800 m.p.h. plus with risk of minor damage but no risk of breaking up. Even if the speed during flight Lieutenant Ackland’s dive was near 2000 m.p.h., it was less than half that achieved by the American X-15 rocket plane, which recently flew at more than 4000 m.p.h. over California.

Few Faster Only United States and Russian astronauts in rocketlaunched capsules have gone faster. As a result of the report on Flight Lieutenant Ackland’s experience it is expected that a modification will be made in the method of ensuring the flow of oxygen supply.