Captain Emil Tipton was a friendly, garrulous individual who had the full respect of his peers within the camaraderie of an Air Force tactical fighter squadron during the early Cold War period of the 1960’s. Were he still alive I am confident that he would cringe at the current wide spread use of the term “African-American.” He was anything but race conscious, but the term “black” used in that time frame to denote his race identification was not offensive to him. Emil was a fine pilot and instructor and worked well with his students in the F-100 gunnery and fighter pilot training curriculum that was our prime mission at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. During our free time in our squadron ready room table tennis was a frequent recreational activity and Captain Tipton was the acknowledged champion of that sport.
In 1961 my reassignment from Luke was to the Royal Air Force Lakenheath station, located 60 miles northeast of London where I would spend three years in an F-100 Fighter Bomber Squadron. The prime mission of the three squadrons within the 48th Fighter Bomber Wing was maintaining twelve aircraft on continuous nuclear alert to cover numerous possible targets in East Germany and Russia. Lakenheath was one of several bases where United States Air Force units had a similar mission on friendly territory when two super powers had multiple warheads pointed at each other. At all of these bases a fifteen minute reaction time was the continuous order of the day. Should the klaxon sound it was the responsibility of the twelve duty pilots to quickly react to the beginning of a wartime scenario, or to a simple training exercise testing our reaction time, which was always followed by a written test on procedures and target knowledge. Obviously this type of mission entailed much proficiency training to maintain a combat ready status. Some of that proficiency training took place in the fair weather environment at Wheelus Air Base in Libya where we would spend extended temporary duty. This was, of course, when King Idris was still in power, Libya was our friend, and the name Moammar Gadhafi was unknown.
Emil Tipton left Luke shortly after I departed the States and he was assigned to Spangdahlem Air Base in friendly West Germany. His tactical assignment was similar to mine at Lakenheath but the aircraft flown in his unit was the Republic F-105D, an unusual looking aircraft with a long stiletto shaped fuselage. Like the F-100 this supersonic F-105 fighter bomber aircraft had some versions that were two place, but most of the front line craft were single seat and single pilot controlled.
The F-105 “Thunderchief”, popularly known as the “Thud”, “Lead Sled”, and “Squash Bomber” (if all else failed, the pilot could shut down his engine and squash the target with the aircraft), ended up as the heaviest United States single-engine, single-seat fighter ever. The F-105B version was briefly flown by the Air Force’s aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds, in 1964. However, the aircraft was found to be unsuitable for air shows and the team reverted back to the North American F-100D, the craft that the Thunderbirds had previously flown. The gross weight of the F-105 was over 52,000 pounds, unheard of in a fighter type aircraft, and it was powered by a turbojet engine that in afterburner produced 24,500 pounds of thrust.
All military units are subject to inspections and impromptu visits to affirm their readiness to perform their assigned missions. A cadre of official inspectors make continuous visits to flying organizations to affirm, in their supposedly unbiased determination, whether that unit can adequately perform its mission in a wartime situation. In the Air Force that visit was termed an Operation Readiness Inspection or ORI, a term that could put fear in the minds of many in command, knowing that a failure of an ORI could result in their loss of command. The pressure to perform well in these critical exercises extended to all air crew members as well as to all support personnel. Failure of an ORI meant not only a poor reflection on the organization, but assurances that a near term follow on inspection would be in order until the expected criteria was met.
Such was the scenario to which Emil Tipton’s unit was exposed. Mission turnaround times were compressed in order to simulate a wartime situation and air crews would be expected to fly several sorties within a short time frame. This environment would task the capabilities of maintenance and armament personnel as well as the flight crews. Success of the evaluation depended on a team effort by all members of the three squadrons within the command of the Tactical Fighter Bomber Wing. Normally the readiness inspection would be completed within two days, but duty hours were long and the normal peace time routine was anything but routine. The mission profiles flown would be randomly selected and would entail a selected routing and a low altitude approach to a target on a gunnery range. All aspects of the missions would be graded: fully maintained airworthy aircraft, proper armament procedures, meeting departure times, flying the route as mapped and prescribed, meeting bomb drop scoring criteria, rapid aircraft and crew turnaround times, and above all complying with established plans, procedures, and operational methods while employing the soundest of safety considerations.
On this day Captain Tipton was tasked for his third mission late in the afternoon during his unit’s Operation Readiness Inspection. He had flown two previous sorties without incident and with satisfactory results. As he was assisted in being strapped in the cockpit of the F-105D by his crew chief, it was reported that he commented, “Watch this take off.” Knowing Emil Tipton as I did with his effervescent personality, the comment would have been considered innocuous, or without any specific meaning. But the comment would prove prophetic.
The take off roll was routine in the heavily laden jet aircraft. The crew chief was in fact observing, and as the large fighter lifted off the gear was too quickly retracted. What followed had profound repercussions. The airplane remained extremely low on the runway and as rotation was being accomplished for a climbing attitude the dorsal fin under the tail was dragging the pavement and laying down a trail of sparks from metal dragging on concrete on the long runway. The aircraft continued to accelerate but the proper angle of attack to establish a climbing attitude could not be attained. This situation prevailed the total length of the runway as the aircraft’s speed increased but without the capability to establish the desired climb. As the runway end approached one wing contacted a barrier stanchion, and the aircraft, with a forward speed of nearly 300 miles per hour, crashed in a fireball beyond. Captain Emil Tipton had made his last flight.
This fatal accident drew the attention of everyone and quickly became a serious subject of discussion. The Headquarters at United States Air Force Europe at Ramstein Air Base, through their Flying Safety Office, dispatched a briefing team which toured all of the fighter bases in Europe to enlighten all fighter air crews as to the specifics and uniqueness of this accident. I am sure that the subject was also briefed to all stateside fighter units as well.
The briefing followed this outline. For whatever reason the landing gear was retracted too soon by Captain Tipton on the F-105, or there was some unknown power loss immediately after lift off that was cause for the aircraft to continue just a few feet above the runway surface. Under that condition the pilot was obviously attempting to climb away from the runway but could not. All aircraft rotate in pitch attitude around a center of gravity, a point on the aircraft that is generally, but not always, near the center of the fuselage. In this case, due to the long fuselage of the F-105, the rotation to establish the climbing attitude was simply not possible because the effect was an impossible attempt to push the runway away from the airframe, hence the tail dragging the pavement. Even though the aircraft was airborne with sufficient power to sustain flight and was actually accelerating it was placed in a situation where it could not possibly gain altitude. It was pointed out that even if the two mile long runway had been a much greater distance but a pure flat surface, the aircraft would never have been able to rotate around the center of gravity to enable it to establish a sufficient angle of attack (the angle between the relative wind and the longitudinal axis of the aircraft) to allow the airframe to climb away from planet earth. Had the runway at Spangdahlem had a dip in the runway surface or had a downslope, the F-105 could have possibly gotten the necessary separation to allow for the climb attitude to be established.
To my knowledge this is the first and only situation in which this type of accident has ever occurred. However, the Flying Safety briefing team pointed out that even though this happened to an F-105 aircraft, with its elongated fuselage, it was possible for the same scenario to occur with other aircraft. I can imagine Emil Tipton’s reaction under those conditions. He had taken off from the runway, the gear was retracted, his craft was near the runway due to his premature gear retraction or due to an inopportune loss of power, but he was accelerating and even though he felt the drag of the tail on the runway he had expected to soon climb out of his precarious predicament. Had he been fully aware of the dire situation and impossibility of establishing a climbing attitude, he could have stopcocked, or shut down the engine, and rode the “Lead Sled” to a screeching halt prior to the runway end, and perhaps been able to walk away from the aircraft had it made a reasonably straight line deceleration.
It was a horrendous ending to the life of Captain Emil Tipton, who it had been my privilege to know and to be associated with. I have no idea as to the final outcome of that Operational Readiness Inspection at Spangdahlem Air Base, but the impact of that accident had Air Force wide implications. Aircraft accidents are never anticipated at any point in time but the Air Force has had dramatic results in reducing their accident rates over the years. However, there is a certain amount of realistic thought that recognizes that accidents will happen in the peace time environment, as is anticipated and expected during war time situations. Most aircraft accidents with which I have been familiar present some learning experience from which other pilots can gain some knowledge, and perhaps make an adjustment in operational methods to lessen the chances of another similar occurence. This was most certainly one of those accidents.
It had been only four years earlier at Luke Air Force Base that Betty Tipton, Emil’s wife, in conjunction with her family’s business had catered the large two squadron elk barbecue feed that I co-hosted in 1959. In an ironic twist of fate, it would be just a few months later that I became aware of the death of Ray Bishop, my co-host of that event, in an F-100 accident on the other side of the globe at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.
Wings Over Cumberland 