Warnings Unheeded: Twin Tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base by Andy Brown

Author:Andy Brown [Brown, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: WU Press
Published: 2016-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

Lt Col Robert Grant was a flight surgeon at Fairchild. He was fairly new to the Air Force, and although he had flown the B-52 a few times, he wasn’t fully sure of its capabilities. Dr. Grant had seen Holland fly in the 1993 air show and thought his maneuvers were unsafe, especially the high-pitch-angle climb. He became concerned when he heard that Holland was going to fly in the 1994 air show. Dr. Grant saw the 17 June 1994, practice flight. “I was standing outside … watching him do the maneuver, and he banked very sharply, came around, across the base and then did this very high straight-up maneuver … to the point of near stall and then pulling the nose over.” Dr. Grant spoke to his colleague Dr. Earl, who had flown with Holland on a 1993 air show practice flight. Dr. Earl told Dr. Grant the climb had “to be perfectly timed, otherwise the plane would literally fall backwards on itself.”

Dr. Grant said, “Pushing anything to that limit bothers me, obviously. I like a little more cushion underneath me.” His colleague seemed to agree. Dr. Grant said, “Dr. Earl didn’t want to fly on it again. I know that.”

When members of the bomb squadron came to Dr. Grant for routine medical appointments, he probed them for information about Holland and his maneuvers. At least one of the fliers told Dr. Grant that he refused to fly with Bud Holland.

When the 92nd Bomb Wing’s chief of safety, Lt Col Michael McCullough, showed up for an appointment, Dr. Grant expressed his concern about Holland’s dangerous maneuvers. Dr. Grant said the chief of safety assured him that Holland was a good pilot who had done the maneuvers before, so they must be within the limits of the airplane. He recalls, “At the time, it seemed to allay my concerns somewhat, not totally … because I was not comfortable with the whole concept of the air show.” Dr. Grant was not the only flight surgeon with concerns about the safety of Holland’s flying. Dr. Isaak, the chief of flight medicine, began making inquiries into the safety of Holland’s maneuvers but stopped pursuing the issue when he heard that it had been brought to the attention of Fairchild’s chief of safety.

When the chief of safety, Lieutenant Colonel McCullough, was asked about the conversation, he could not recall the specifics. But he later said, “I probably mentioned the fact that I flew in the practice … in the [1993] air show and had seen everything he had done and had no problems with it.”

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