Our carrier Pilots have lucky to be rescue very quickly ( VF-154 latest news ):

The two Americans bailed out of a failing F-14 Tomcat fighter jet in the
Iraqi desert, and when rescuers asked if they could walk, they didn't hesitate.
"I can run, just point me in the right direction," replied one crew member,
a lieutenant commander nicknamed Gordo.
Gordo, the plane's radar intercept operator, and its pilot, a lieutenant
who goes by Vinny, returned to their base on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk
on Wednesday after a frightening night behind enemy lines and a dramatic rescue.
Their F-14A Tomcat strike fighter - a versatile supersonic plane that dates
from the late 1960s and is among the Navy's oldest - crashed into the
desert in southern Iraq during a bombing mission at 1:50 a.m., after mechanical
failures left one engine dead and the other slowly starving of fuel.
It was the first confirmed report of a U.S. fighter going down in Iraq
during the war, but it was the third Navy plane to be lost to accidents or
mechanical problems in 24 hours. Pilots ejected safely from the other two
planes as well.
Rear Adm. Matthew G. Moffit, commander of the Kitty Hawk battle group, said
extra stress on pilots or the plane from the intensified U.S. bombing
campaign was unlikely to have caused Wednesday's crash. Unless an
investigation points to a problem that may occur in other planes, he said,
the F-14s will keep flying strike missions over Iraq.
Vinny and Gordo - who asked that they be identified by their radio call
signs instead of their names because they fear being identified from media
reports if they are ever captured - were on a mission that has become
routine for U.S. fighter pilots in Iraq. Take off, fly into a strike zone
and wait for commanders to assign targets - usually dug-in Republican
Guard
artillery, equipment or command posts just south of Baghdad - then attack
them with laser-guided bombs.
Having dropped their bombs, Vinny and Gordo were preparing to rendezvous
with a tanker plane that would give them the fuel they needed to return to
base. Vinny noticed a problem with the left-side engine.
Like rebooting a computer, the pilot shut down the engine, then tried to
fire it up again, but it wouldn't restart.
So the pair began making adjustments to equipment on board to reroute the
fuel from a tank feeding the left engine to the right engine, which would
let them fly safely to meet the tanker and, eventually, into friendly
territory.
But the transfer system failed as well, setting in motion an ominous
countdown. The men watched the right engine's fuel gauge tick down to
empty
as they rocketed south.

"We pretty much knew it was coming," said Vinny, 32, from Virginia.
Sitting
in the pilot's front seat, Vinny read out the dwindling numbers on the fuel
gauge to Gordo, sitting in the radio and radar controller's seat
immediately behind.
"I was just counting down, letting him know the fuel remaining," he said.
"At the point we got down to about 200 pounds (of fuel), the right engine
started to come down, the starter kind of hiccuped."
That's when they knew: "It's time to go," Vinny said. "Gordo called
Eject,eject, eject!' and pulled the handle."
The cockpit canopy exploded off and the two men were flung violently into
the air.

"It was a surreal experience, changing the warmth and comfort of the cockpit
to a violent wind blast ... then hanging off a parachute and floating down
over Iraq," said Gordo, 39, from Georgia.
Hanging beneath their parachutes, they saw their multimillion-dollar fighter
crash to earth and explode. There were few other lights and, thankfully,
none of the flashes in the sky that meant anti-aircraft fire, which they
had seen earlier in the mission.
Gordo said his initial feelings about having to eject were anger and
disbelief - "You can't believe it's happening to you" - which quickly
turned to fear.
"Once I was on the ground, I started shaking," he said. "It was not a very friendly place to be."
The Tomcats routinely travel in pairs or with F/A-18 Hornets, the other main
carrier-based strike plane. On Wednesday, another Tomcat was alongside the
aviators in trouble, watched them go down and quickly radioed their position
to helicopter teams on standby in Kuwait.

The second Tomcat then patrolled overhead, talking to the downed aviators
via radio gear they carried with them when they ejected, reassuring them
that help was on the way.
Moffit, the battle group commander on the Kitty Hawk, said the rescue team
reached the downed pilots "fairly quickly." For Gordo, it couldn't have been
fast enough.

Asked how long they spent on the ground in Iraq, he said, "I don't know.
It seemed like forever, I know that."
When the rescue crew first found them, they quizzed Vinny and Gordo about
who they were to "make sure there was nothing funny going on," before
helping them to the helicopter, Gordo said.

Apart from an abrasion on his left hand, Gordo said he and Vinny were
uninjured. The men said they would take some medical leave, but were ready
to fly again whenever needed.
"We'll go tomorrow if they let us," Gordo said. "We feel fine, but
discretion is the better part of valor, so we will hang low for a little
while before we get back in the game."

© 2003 The Associated Press


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