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Two thousand feet up and flying over the forests of
Alpena County, Capt. Brett DeVries was running through his
mental checklist and most of the options were bad. With his
wingman flying just feet away and an Air Force maintenance
specialist patched in via a radio set up next to a speaker
phone, DeVries made the decision to land his badly-damaged
A-10 Thunderbolt II on the runway at the Alpena Combat
Readiness Training Center.
Despite the fact that his
landing gear wouldn't come down. And the canopy had blown
off the aircraft 25 minutes before. And his main radio
stopped working. Along with the first back-up.
There's an old saying in the Air Force: Any landing you can
walk away from is a good landing.
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Capt. Brett DeVries, an A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot of the 107th
Fighter Squadron from Selfridge Air National Guard Base, poses next
to the aircraft he safely landed after a malfunction forced him to
make an emergency landing July 20, 2017 at the Alpena Combat
Readiness Training Center. (Air National Guard photo by Terry Atwell)
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In this case,
DeVries expeditiously exited the aircraft - gulping deep
breathes until he was certain there would be no explosion.
But yes, it was a very good landing.
DeVries made the
landing on the afternoon of July 20 at the Alpena Center,
which shares a runway with the Alpena County Airport in
northeast Michigan. It is believed to be the first time in
the roughly 40-year history of the A-10 that a pilot had to
land with no canopy and with the landing gear up. While the
aircraft sustained heavy damage, the pilot, his wingman and
all the people on the ground were unharmed when the drama
came to an end.
"To this day, I really haven't
second guessed anything," said DeVries, leaning forward in a
chair in a side office at the 107th Fighter Squadron
operations building at Selfridge Air National Guard Base,
where he has been flying A-10s with the Michigan Air
National Guard for the past seven years. "In that moment,
your training kicks in. The training - that's what saves you
and your wingman."
It started off as a routine
training flight from Selfridge to the Grayling Air Gunnery
Range on a clear-sky Thursday afternoon in July. Four A-10s
were headed up to make the 30-minute flight to Grayling, to
drop dummy bombs and make several strafing passes
with the 30mm GAU-8 Avenger Gatling-style gun that protrudes
from the nose of the A-10.
The A-10, developed late
in the Vietnam-era as a deterrent for Warsaw Pact tanks
during the Cold War and universally known as the Warthog for
its lovable ungainly appearance, is the Air Force's
air-to-ground attack workhorse. A squadron of the aircraft
have been stationed at Selfridge since 2009, not long before
DeVries, a former enlisted Airman, earned his commission and
went to pilot training.
For DeVries and his peers in
the 107th, known as the "Red Devils," flights up to Grayling
in northern Michigan are routine affairs - comparable to
another day of batting practice for baseball players.
DeVries estimates that he's flown training missions over
Grayling some 300 times – training missions that came in
handy during his 119 combat missions flown overseas. And
training that can come in handy on a sunny afternoon in
northern Michigan when a routine flight turns anything but.
The four aircraft made six bomb passes over the gunnery
range, dropping their ordinance. Then each took a turn
firing the 30mm gun. Everything was just as expected - just
another day of batting practice.
But on his second
pass, DeVries' gun malfunctioned. Simultaneously, the canopy
of his aircraft blew off. With the canopy off and flying at
about 325 knots, the wind caught in his helmet and slammed
DeVries' head back into the seat.
"It was like
someone sucker punched me," he said. "I was just dazed for a
moment."
At the time, he was flying at about 150
feet. The Airman instinctively pulled back on his stick to
gain altitude. Climbing up to 2,000 feet to put some space
between his aircraft and the ground.
Flying behind
DeVries was Major Shannon Vickers, another 107th pilot. He
saw a "donut of gas" from the gun around Devries' aircraft,
but didn't see the canopy blow off. Vickers was making his
own strafing pass and was focused on the targets at the
range. The first indication for Vickers that something was
wrong was when DeVries climbed to altitude out of the normal
path for range traffic.
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Capt. Brett DeVries (right) and his wingman Maj. Shannon
Vickers, both A-10 Thunderbolt II pilots of the 107th Fighter
Squadron from Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich. Vickers
helped DeVries safely make an emergency landing July 20, 2017 at the
Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center after the A-10 DeVries was
flying experienced a malfunction. (Air National Guard photo by Terry Atwell)
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Inside his cockpit, DeVries
operated on instinct drummed into him from those past
training missions. First, he lowered the seat in the cockpit
- with no canopy, he needed to sit lower to try to escape
the winds that were buffeting his head back and forth. With
a lower seat and his head down, he was able to escape the
worst of the wind. The wind also meant that his maps and
checklists were blowing all around.
"There was paper
everywhere. And I was afraid to open up my emergency
checklist, because I knew that would just blow away and
maybe get sucked in to an engine," DeVries recalled.
Another issue as the pilot assessed the emergency: had the
blown canopy in any way compromised the integrity of the
ejection seat? If DeVries pulled the handles, would the
ejection system fail - or worse, operate only partially,
leaving him halfway in and halfway out of the Warthog?
With DeVries getting his aircraft under control, Vickers
flew under him, performing a visual inspection of the
damaged aircraft. When the gun malfunctioned, it blew
several covers off the bottom of the A-10. The two pilots
quickly conferred, with DeVries making it clear that while
Vickers' opinions were highly valued, DeVries would be
making the final call about ejecting or trying to land.
"I didn't want him to feel like he would be in a
position where he told me to do something and it didn't
work. I wanted his full, honest input," DeVries said.
In addition to having been an A-10 pilot for the past 10
years, Vickers brought a little extra knowledge to the
table. The Michigan native started his military career as an
enlisted weapons specialist, working on A-10s at the 110th
Attack Wing in Battle Creek.
Quickly, the two Red
Devils determined the best course of action would be to fly
over to Alpena, just a few minutes away by air, and attempt
a landing there. While flying there, the Alpena control
tower called down to Selfridge, some 250 miles to the south,
in metropolitan Detroit. Soon, several A-10 maintenance
specialists were on a speaker phone, chiming in with their
ideas and recommendations, which Alpena then relayed to
Vickers and DeVries, who was now down to using his
third-best radio system.
For seemingly long minutes,
they debated about DeVries attempting to lower his landing
gear. Landing a plane with the gear down is good. Landing
with it up is not ideal. Landing with some of it up and some
of it down, well, those stories seldom end well.
Finally, with Vickers flying little more than an arm's
length away underneath DeVries, the pilot of the damaged
Warthog tried to lower his landing gear. Two things were in
Vickers mind at the time - needing to sound off immediately
if there was any problem with the gear as it began to lower
and the very real concern that some loose or broken part
might fall off DeVries' plane and damage Vickers'.
DeVries reached forward and grabbed the lever affixed with a
clear plastic stroller wheel in the cockpit of his damaged
bird. He pushed it down. And the gear started to come down,
but, as they feared, the nose gear was hung up from the gun
damage.
Quickly, Vickers shouted into the radio -
"Gear up!" Fortunately, the gear all returned to the up
position.
"I just thought, 'There is no way this is
happening right now.' It all was sort of surreal, but at the
same time, we were 100 percent focused on the task ahead of
us," Vickers said.
And so, with gear up and the
canopy off DeVries lined it up for a landing.
"As he
made final approach, I felt confident he was making the
right decision," Vickers said. "We had talked through every
possibility and now he was going to land it."
Shallow
approach. Not too fast. Minimal flare.
On the A-10,
the two main landing gear wheels are exposed, even when in
the up position. It is part of the combat resiliency of the
aircraft. And so, Capt. Brett DeVries landing his 'Hog,
right in the middle of the runway in a near textbook landing
- caught on video by another pilot who was on the ground at
Alpena.
"I flew him down, calling out his altitude,"
Vickers said. "He came in flat, I mean it was a very smooth
landing."
"Capt. DeVries skills as a pilot were put
to the test in this incident," said Brig. Gen. John D.
Slocum, the 127th Wing commander and himself a seasoned
fighter pilot. "He demonstrated not only superior skill as a
pilot but remained calm in an extremely challenging
situation. To walk away from this scenario with no injuries
is a true testament to his abilities as a world-class
fighter pilot."
After watching DeVries land, Vickers
was directed to return to home station at Selfridge.
"That's probably only a 35-minute flight, but it just felt
like hours," Vickers said.
After flying alongside
DeVries during the landing, Vickers circled the field and
saw his fellow Red Devil exit the aircraft on his own and
run to the fire truck.
"And I am thinking, did this
just happen? That was the longest flight ever back, to
Selfridge," he said.
"There is a reason why we train
as a two-ship or greater," said Col. Shawn Holtz, Commander
of the 127th Operations Group and an A-10 pilot. "We rely on
each other and need to have mutual support within the
flight. Maj. Vickers was the definition of what a Wingman
should be in this flight. He stuck with Capt. Devries and
did everything in his power to see this through to a safe
landing. Both of these pilots demonstrated not only superior
flying skills, but represent the type of teamwork and
professionalism that should be the goal of every Attack
Pilot."
In all, the flight lasted about 25 minutes
from the time the canopy blew off until landing, though it
felt longer to the two pilots in the air. An investigation
is underway into the cause of the original malfunction.
Thanks to DeVries' skills in landing the aircraft, the
damaged Warthog is expected to be able to eventually be
returned to flying status. As for his fellow Airmen, the
107th as a whole stood down from flying for several days,
but have since returned to regular flight ops.
Slocum
said the two men will be submitted for appropriate
recognition for their superior Airmanship during the July 20
flight. DeVries also received an email congratulating him
from Gen. David L. Goldfein, the Air Force Chief of Staff.
"Again, I want to stress the training," DeVries said.
"Sometimes, perhaps we think, ‘Why do we have to do this
training again and again?’ Well, in this case, the training
took over and it is what made the difference."
The
A-10 is still at Alpena where it is being repaired and will
return to the flying inventory at Selfridge.
By U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Daniel Heaton
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2018
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