Dear Mr. Fenn: Noting the minor accident (minor?) picture inside the front and back covers of “The Thrill of the Chase,” the F100F appears to have a landing gear that failed. Were you or another pilot involved in a Sabre dance, or was there another reason for the accident? Just curious.   Thank you. Rob Johnson

 

Rob,

I don’t know that anyone has survived the sabre dance. It occurs in an F-100 when the plane is near the ground, has a high angle of attack, low airspeed, and not enough power to fly out of it. The plane stalls, drops a wing, and crashes.

The photo you referred to in my book was taken at Chateauroux, France. My nose gear came down for landing, but the 2 main gear would not. They foamed the runway for me and I landed. The guy in the white hat on the right, is me. f

 

 

 

Best of luck with all that you seek!  Always Treasure the Adventure!

 

 

 

62 Comments

      1. Hello, LuckyGuy.

        I’m lucky enough to see the F-100 Super Sabre at the Hill Aerospace Museum just a little north of me at Hill AFB. I live in Salt Lake City.

        I often hear the roaring fighter jets flying out of Hill AFB when I’m out in the west desert.

        Thank you for your service, Major Forrest Fenn.

        Sincerely.

        JC1117

    1. The second F represents the model #, which usually indicates improvements over the previous model # ~ ie: F100A, then F100D, then F100F .. The first F represents “Fighter”, which was a modification of the ‘Pursuit’ Aircraft of WW2 (P40, P51, P82, etc) ..

      Brad Hartliep

    2. In this case, the F100F was basically the Two-seat version of the F100D; the F100A and F100C having “development problems” that shortened their usefulness in Active Duty to a few years. The Ds and Fs, on the other hand, served for about 15 years and then were sold to Foreign Allies or converted to Drones ..

      Brad

      Brad Hartliep

      1. sorry, couldn’t resist.
        it’s idle’s fault, you can’t write “make the plane rub less” and expect a direct answer
        i guess lubing the runway means different things to different people.
        thanks for coming, hope you enjoyed the show and good night and god bless!

        DUMBFOUNDED

        1. now i’m seeing a cheshire grin.. telling me something about the nature of “luck”..

          perhaps I can go luck myself

          bare with me while I apply some Seussian logic here to the composition of luck..

          LuCk.. Lewis Caroll.. lUcK.. from Cheshire in the UK..

          to the moon, Alice!

          HappyThoth

  13. Bootes on the ground; don’t forget Detective (Comics) nose to the ground!
    land sakes alive!
    preservation of life and limb is 100% ~S~uper
    S+CAPE = space (s cape Earth’s gravity to get to the MOON)
    (did you know.. George Reeves’ original Superman costume was BROWN??)

    K nigh T
    think
    Mr. KenT, Know Thyself 😉

    dance de cancan
    quadrille
    he’s ~S~cadrille-ing it into our heads

    every indian should have their squaw
    squawk squawk

    Origin and Etymology of qua
    Latin, “which way”

    Q&A

    HappyThoth

    1. SOW (nose to the ground) HIGH is it that I must go

      in the film The Eagle Has Landed: an Irish secret agent working for the Nazis replies to a German general speaking of Germany’s shortly winning World War II, “Pigs may fly, General, but I doubt it!” Later, when the Irishman sees German soldiers parachuting before an attack, he says to himself, “Mother of God! FLYING PIGS!”

      HappyThoth

      1. The book was even better, as they have a wont to be. But I enjoyed the movie too. It did a pretty good job of sticking to the book.
        According to the book, those German soldiers are secretly buried in England, in honor to their valor and chivalry in a war against obscene depravity.

        Buckeye Bob

  14. Simultaneously, apply the opposite rudder to halt the yaw motion then push the yoke forward to reduce AOA on the wings. Then as your airspeed increases, coordinate your ailerons and rudders to level back out. Just keep your nose over the horizon or else you need to monitor the power being applied.

    RIP Richard 'Beebo' Russell

  15. Thanks Rob, Jenny and Mr. Fenn,
    That must have been hair raising, sitting in your seat, looking down at the runway, telling the tower to “Give Me Operations” and singing “Don’t give me a One-Double-Oh.” Lucky for all of us the “Slip and Slide” maneuver didn’t turn out to be a Whamo.

    Strawshadow

  18. I was in a fight (with my best friend) with real sabres from the civil war. It escalated from slow motion to full-paced fight for my life with a guy who had stellar hand eye coordination. I was maybe 10 years old. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to lose a limb or worse. Sabres are serious business. I will never forget the fear. Never.

    LuckyGuy

  20. Thank you Forrest for sharing your expertise on all this sabre stuff. I’m gonna lower my angle of attack, stall anyway, and crash on my mattress below…and maybe I’ll dream of the girl with braids who’s coffee cup covers most of her face. White hat huh…and red shoes? It’s too late for me to be eating Oreos, so I’ll say: Goodnight all!

    tomtom

  21. Forrest you truly have lived a blessed life. I imagine after living through such experiences you no longer sweat over the little things. Or perhaps you never did. I’m thankful you survived that experience and many others so that you could give us “The Thrill of the Chase.” Each BOTG trip has been a thrill and I’m still holding out hope I’ll get in one more trip this season.

    Dampened Myth

  23. Thank you for the “Featured Question” Jenny, Rob, and Mr. Fenn. The Sabre Dance is horrible. I’m curious if it’s due to pilot error not making the right judgement or if there’s something much more to it. I’m glad you made a safe landing, Mr. Fenn. I think the training pilots might go through to prepare for things like this, going through it is a different experience.

    pdenver

  25. I was at Owl’s Head one weekend and among other military aircraft was a Corsair, which was very impressive in flight, a Jenny, and a big helicopter like the one that rescued f. Toward the end of the day we watched the museum’s Fokker triplane replica take off for an exhibition flight. They are highly maneuverable but difficult to fly, and the airstrip surface was, well, rough. On touchdown the plane abruptly flipped over and just sat there upside down on its third wing. The pilot was unharmed and so was the plane, more or less. I wonder if f’s plane was repaired and flew again?

    Madesquare

  26. Living between Owls Head and BIA we see a lot of strange craft in the sky. Lots of biplanes, a few single wing fighters, the only flying B-29, and one time through the trees on the farm road I saw the unmistakeable silhouette of a pby- it turned out to belong to Jimmy Buffet. Mostly what we see are pipeline planes, tankers from the refueling wing, and private jets bound for Trenton. Then there was that summer when they were upgrading the power lines and we had a big Sikorsky crane hauling sections of latticework towers and that one guy sitting in the open doorway of a Bell helicopter stringing transmission lines-

    Madesquare

    2. He’s just runs with a lot of luck on his side I’m guessing. Maybe he’s just one of those guys who was always in trouble for one thing or another. Chances are his dad being the principal helped to Greece his runway for him.

      Sammy

    3. Chateauroux Air Base is a real air base 448 miles from Ramstein. I can’t find any crash or service history of 563848 but it is carrying the marks of Bitburg 36 TFW. I don’t think he’s “doing anything” – he’s just stating the facts of his own history — I mean he is wearing a white hat ..

      B ..

      Brad Hartliep

  29. Is the minor accident a hint to a miner accident? 1903, Hanna, WY. Then again in 1908.

    Why do I think this might be significant?
    – What is Dizzy Dean’s middle name?
    – Hanna (etymon root Anna, Saint Anna the wise mother) is next to Elmo (Saint Erasmus, the blaze, a horse with a blaze named Lightning, a gut feeling, nails), and next to Sampo (allusion to foundry), but Hanna also had a former name of Chimney Spring (a foundry).
    – Forrest talks about scalding chickens to remove their feathers. “Quickly” has a weird synonym phrase of a scalded cat, “quickly down” could mean scalding something with feathers, like a chicken. A skald is a poet. In Hanna, a local poet, Betty Poulos (skald chicken?) has a headstone with the word “Echoes”. Hanna has/had a large population of Finns. If my quest to cease is a quest to Finnish, and I take “the chest”, or “the ark (arc)”, Tipperary Street to the cemetery, I am going to those who are resting in peace. Tipperary derives its meaning from Tiobraid Árann, the Well of the Ara in Irish. Ara is also a genus of macaws, like Sinbad.
    – Chateauroux is like “home of fawn”, if we are to include the colors of roux (red) and roux (tan), and a bit like a buttery golden brown gravy we also call a roux. Below Chateauroux is a river, the Indre. Indre etymon comes from antrum, or Latin for cave / tomb.
    – Chapters in TTOTC end with a square. In typography, this is called a “tombstone”. Why would our attention be drawn to tombstones?
    – There is a marble memorial observance slab in Hanna with the names of those who died in the miner accidents, some with asterisks next to their name. A by-product of processed coke is tar. A scant is a slab. Marvel with a fricative V sounds like marble.
    – In the cemetery and locally, there is a family named “While”.
    – There is a local creek called “Stink Creek”.

    So is it a minor accident, or a miner accident?

    E.C. Waters

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