“The unintentional inverted spin and recovery was one of my first lessons concerning keeping calm no matter what the flying environment throws at you.”
The first half of undergraduate pilot training (UPT) involved flying in the T-37B Tweet (not so affectionately referred to as the 4000-pound dog whistle). One of the highlights of the T37 program was spin training, as in learning how to recover the aircraft from a spin.
The Tweet was designed for spin training, including a very specific spin recovery process. The T-37 Wikipedia page has a different opinion on the Tweet’s spinnability.
“…production aircraft remained tricky to correctly recover from a spin; it had a relatively complex recovery procedure in comparison to most aircraft.”
If that is correct, it seems the Air Force took advantage of the “flaw” and used it to train new pilots in spin recovery.
My T-37 IP (instructor pilot) was a young Captain who had previously flown F-4s. I was his first UPT student and I like to think we learned a lot from each other. I ran into him a few years later, and he told me I had been his best student.
The Spin And Recovery
To spin the T-37, we first climbed to 25,000 feet altitude. That was a long way up for the Tweet. To get into a spin, the throttles would be pulled to idle and the nose raised. When the jet stalled, the rudder would be engaged, and the T-37 would fall into a slightly nose-down, fast rotation spin. It was a very stable spin, and the spin recovery procedure had to be applied to recover the aircraft to normal flight. Here are the steps to recover:
Throttles – Idle
Ruder and Ailerons – Neutral
Stick – Abruptly Full Aft and Hold
Rudder – Abruptly apply full rudder opposite the spin direction (opposite turn needle) and hold
Stick - Abruptly full forward one turn after applying rudder
Controls – Neutral after spinning stops and recover from dive
Notice that the word abruptly is liberally used throughout the procedure. Abruptly is putting it mildly. It was a series of violent actions in the cockpit. Properly applied, the procedure worked almost every time and would leave the jet flying straight down, thus starting at 25,000 feet for spin practice.
A Lesson Learned
However, there was this one time. It was probably my second spin training ride from the five or so scheduled in the T-37 program. When I abruptly slammed the stick forward, the jet flipped all the way over into an inverted spin. Spinning upside down is definitely disorienting. My instructor pilot uttered the standard IP phrase, “I’ve got it,” and flew us out of the inverted spin.
The unintentional inverted spin and recovery was one of my first lessons concerning keeping calm no matter what the flying environment throws at you. I finished up the rest of the spin training rides without any issues.
A few years later, as an OV-10 instructor, I had the opportunity to recover from inadvertent spins a couple of times. I was in the back seat both times, with a student in the front, flying the aircraft. I will share those tales in an upcoming post.
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Land, Fly, Die (or exit and pop a silk canopy)…