Testing Times

The wingless B-45

Test pilot John A. Harper looks back at August 14, 1952

I was serving as an Aeronautical Research Pilot at NACA (the forerunner of NASA) Langley, and we were flying a four-engine B-45A on the first flight of a research program to measure the load distribution between wing and tail under various flight conditions. The bomb bay was fitted with a pallet full of NACA instrumentation.

Herbert H. Hoover, chief of flight operations at NACA Langley, was the pilot. I occupied the rear seat, operating the instruments. The bombardier station was not occupied, as this was a standard instrument-calibration flight.

The first part of the test was to push over to -0.5g, then pull up to +2.0g. Herb’s first attempt didn’t get to negative g, so he tried again. This time he reached negative g and pulled up to reach the specified +2.0.

But the airplane went right through 2.0g, and then came the sound of breaking aluminum, and the airplane shuddered violently. I saw that the right wing was gone from the engine nacelle outward and the wing root was on fire.

The scene to the left was the same. It was apparent that we had overstressed the airplane – and it was making for terra firma in a steep dive. I felt wind in the cockpit, but the canopy stayed on.

“Pull the handle, John!” Herb called on the intercom.

I had already raised the seat armrests in preparing to eject, so the trigger was exposed when I reached for the canopy eject handle. The canopy went and the swirling wind forced me into a bent-over posture.

I pulled the seat-eject trigger and both elbows scraped the cockpit rails and the front of the seat struck my face. The windblast was violent, as our air speed was approximately 500mph – the USAF had not yet converted to knots. (I found out later that my ejection was made at the highest airspeed up to that date.)

Our escape system had neither an automatic seat release nor automatic parachute rip cord. Once clear of the aircraft, I released the seatbelt and shoulder straps and I remember watching the seat fall away.

I pulled the ripcord and felt the shock of my 24ft parachute, and almost immediately landed in a tree.

After extricating myself from the tree, I hitched a ride on a nearby road and asked the driver, a young woman, to take me to the crash site. It was clearly marked by a column of fire and smoke, perhaps a mile away. The girl was horrified by my bloody appearance, but readily complied.

Our B-45 had made a big hole in the ground between two houses in Burrowsville, Virginia. The homeowners were lucky, as the houses were only about 150ft apart.

The accident investigation concluded that a piece of metal had lodged in the electrical junction box during the negative g event in such a way as to drive the longitudinal trim in the nose-up direction, carrying the aircraft to 5g or more – until the wings came off. 

A simulation of the incident, which we conducted on a B-45 borrowed from the neighboring USAF squadron, showed that the wheel forces would have exceeded 400 lb – too much for Herb to overcome.

As for Herb Hoover, the investigation concluded that when he raised his seat armrests to eject the canopy, it would not fully separate from the airplane. He unstrapped and manually knocked the canopy off with his left hand. As his right hand was still on the trigger the seat fired with Herb about a foot above it. It struck him, throwing him out of the airplane. He also contacted the tail, probably knocking him unconscious. He struck the ground in a fatal free fall.

A little more research revealed that the B-45 squadron across the field from us at Langley had experienced five unexplained crashes that closely resembled ours. All crew members were killed in those crashes. I was the only live witness to see how the crashes might have occurred.

After I escaped from the hospital the same evening, we had a celebration at our house, followed by a wake at the Hoover home across the street.

HARPER’S STORY

Born Christmas Day, 1920 in Benton Harbor, Michigan, John A. Harper entered the Naval Service in April 1941 to attend flight training at NAS Pensacola and NAS Miami. After being designated a naval aviator in January 1942, he was immediately ordered back to Miami as a fighter gunnery instructor in Grumman F3Fs and Brewster F2A Buffalo, thence to landing signal officer training and assignment in just four months as the senior LSO on the light fast carrier USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24). In this role he officiated at more than 8,000 carrier landings and, while flying the F6F Hellcat with VF-21, shot down two Japanese intruder aircraft.

At the end of World War II Harper was left the naval service in 1945 and soon joined the organization Naval Air Reserve program to command two fighter squadrons, two carrier air groups, and one attack squadron.

After leaving the regular naval service, Harper served as an aeronautical research pilot for NACA where he flew the transonic wind tunnels mounted on P-51 wings. He continued his work with a leading role in the of an early version of the Navy’s A-7 Corsair automatic flight control system, flying the Vought F8U-1P Crusader. He ended his career as director of missile and space program development at McDonnell Douglas before retiring with wife Peggy in 1985 to manage their California avocado ranch and other real estate holdings. They had four children who have given them ten grandchildren and three great grandsons, so far.

Harper accumulated 3,700 flight hours in 61 different aircraft models and made 70 carrier landings.

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This is an extract from Trailblazers: Test pilots in Action.

It is available in the America’s from Casemate Publishing here or Europe from Pen & Sword here