Photo by Lt. Paul Nickell, VP-26.
Two Down, Two to Go Less than three minutes after completing the emergencyshutdown checklist for the No. 1 engine, the flight engineer called out malfunction indications on the No. 2 engine. By Lt. Mark Yedlowski
ust before 0600 on a January day, our crew departed our home base for a SAR operation 200 miles off the coast of Oman. We were the third in a series of P-3C maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft launched to aid in the search. Because it can stay airborne more than 10 hours and search large areas of open water, the Orion is one of the most capable platforms for this mission. Arriving on-station shortly before 0800, our crew quickly began the SAR mission. Our efforts were coordinated with the surface ships and helicopters in the vicinity to ensure complete coverage of the search area. While we kept an eye on our fuel state, we spent the next five-and-a-half hours fervently searching the water with all our sensors, including electro-optical and infrared cameras, radar, and observers. We covered hundreds of square miles of water, with no positive sightings. The sad call to secure SAR efforts came at 1336, a little less than eight hours into our mission and minutes before we had burned down to our go-home fuel. As we turned toward home and began climbing to our tranNovember-December 2008
sit altitude, we restarted the No.1 engine, which had been shut down to save fuel. Shutting down an engine in-flight (also called loitering) is a normal operation to conserve fuel at low to moderate altitudes. Ten minutes later, our controlling unit requested we return to investigate an object spotted in the water. Now below our go-home fuel, we would have to coordinate a stopover field for refueling. On our way back to the search area, we soon discovered getting gas was about to become the least of our problems. At 1346, with the aircraft at 6,500 feet inbound to the datum, the flight station was alerted by two intermittent activations of the fire-warning horn and light on the No. 1 engine, shortly followed by a steady indication. While executing the immediate actions of pulling the emergency-shutdown handle and activating the fire extinguisher, we turned and climbed toward our nearest suitable divert airfield, about 250 miles away. For about 15 seconds after the engine was shut down, the flight station continued to receive intermittent fire indications, but there were no signs of smoke or flames. The 9
