Vipers…In a Viper (F-16)?
From strategypage.com comes this story of life imitating art:
Snakes on a Plane Bring F-16 Down
Apparently, a poisonous insect or snake in the cockpit brought down a Dutch F-16 in Afghanistan last August. After a 11 month investigation, that ended up as the only plausible explanation for the loss. The dead pilot did not eject, and radioed a brief "Mayday" to his wing man (flying about four kilometers away), before the aircraft went out of control and crashed into a mountain below. Ground crews have found poisonous spiders, scorpions and snakes around aircraft on the ground, and, in a few instances, inside the aircraft. The wreckage, and what was left of the body, were carefully examined, and many simulations were run to explore various other explanations. The most likely one was an unexpected poisonous bite at 32,000 feet. ")
It wasn’t on a plane, but YHS well remembers coming back to the BOQ at GTMO after one particularly long CD-OPS flight to find himself in a standoff with a very large scorpion just outside of his door. An attempt to cut off the vermin was fruitless as it scuttled under his door and disappeared into the room. Two hours later after tearing the room apart looking for the cursed beast, YHS opted for discretion and returned to squadron spaces at the hangar for the remainder of the night.
The only experience I’ve had with nasty critters while “on duty” is all the friggin’ fire ants down at Maxwell during FT. I never got whole on attacked by them, but was always on the look out. There were quite a few around…I think one of the funniest incidents was when our flight commander (who was half high on muscle relaxants at the time) stepped in a fire ant hill during PT. Then after stepping out and brushing them off, stepped back in the hill. And then after brushing them off AGAIN, stepped in the hill. Again. Either that or when we were practicing low crawling and a dude low crawled straight into a hill.
One of the best tails I remember about “Snakes In a Plane” was about Adm. Paul “Punchy” Gillchrist (as conveyed by Barrett Tillman in a where are they now article for Tailhook):
A Gator and a Snake in the Same Cockpit
Of all the memorable flights at El Centro, none compares with what Paul later called “The Sidewinder in the Cockpit.” Part of his job between classes was to ferry airplanes to an outlying field for bore-sighting and harmonization. The head of the bore-sighting team was also in charge of the school’s desert survival exhibit. He often gave Paul specimens he collected around the gun butts . . . asking him to transport them back to the school. “They were scorpions and horned toads and things like that,” Paul recalls with a smile.
En route to base, Paul set his boxed specimen on the Cougar’s port console, neither knowing nor caring what it contained. But entering the break, the cardboard box came open and its occupant emerged — an 18-in. rattlesnake, “mad as hell and coiled to strike!”
In an adrenaline surge, Paul instinctively sought to escape, but doubted he could pull the ejection handle before the sidewinder struck. He did the only thing he could do: loaded six g’s on the airplane, himself and the viper. A series of nose-high maneuvers quickly bled off his energy, and Paul remembers seeing El Centro from directly overhead with his nose pointed straight down. With the tower operator watching with horror and demanding to know Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Paul found that the rattler couldn’t strike with a load on the airplane. “He’d obviously never fought in a high-g environment before!”
Taking momentary advantage of the situation, Paul grabbed the ‘winder, stuffed it in the box and sealed it with a piece of masking tape. He then managed a shaky landing at El Centro.
Damn…. Forgot the Link…. http://www.tailhook.org/Gillcrist.htm
🙄
IIRC, there was also a tale of lobsters on the loose somewhere – maybe it was a Youthly Puresome or Grampaw Pettibone column…
– SJS