Revelation into the AV-2 XB-70 accident

REVELATIONS REGARDING 

MAJOR CARL SPENCER CROSS

AND THE NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION XB-70.

AIR VEHICLE #2 62-207

Graham M Simons

author,

‘Valkyrie The North American XB70’

Pen & Sword Aviation ISBN 184884546-4

Background.

In early 2015 an item appeared in the Rosamond Skypark Association webpage on the Internet. The Rosamond Skypark is a privately-owned and operated residential skypark located in Southern California's Antelope Valley (AKA ‘Aerospace Valley’). Their FAA designator is L00 (Lima-Zero-Zero) and their airport is open for public use.

One item was of particular interest and was brought to the attention of members of the XB-70 Valkyrie Facebook page, of which I am a member. The page in question was from the late Gene Earl Burton and has a URL of http://www.skypark.org/aero_memories/Gene_Burton.html. 

I found of great interest. Burton, worked for North American Aviation for 26 years, including on the XB-70. Quote: Routine flights were to be conducted out Of Air Force Plant #42 at Palmdale, California, while more dangerous or secret testing was to be done at nearby Edwards Air Force Base, California… In late 1959, I was transferred to the desert area and promoted to Flight Test Supervisor. We bought a home in Lancaster, California, the nicest place to live in a area. [sic]

The relevant part of the Gene Earl Burton transcipt regarding Major Carl Spencer Cross and the XB-70 accident is as follows. ‘During a debriefing at the EAFB hospital, Al explained that he had encapsulated and was set to eject when he looked over to see that Cross was not properly preparing for ejection. He was pushing on the panel trying to force his seat back into the capsule which was the correct procedure in a B 58 which Cross had been flying prior to his assignment to the XB 70A. Al said that he opened his capsule and was trying to show Cross what to do when the ship went out of control. Al had no choice but to eject. However, he did it so fast that he failed to got his right arm back inside the capsule. As a result, his right elbow was injured during ejection. We couldn't believe that Major Cross hadn't learned the ejection process. We went to the seat ejection simulator where all XB 70A Pilots were supposed to spend so many hours a week (I can't recall how many) practicing seat ejection. According to the log book, Major Cross had initialed the required practice time. However, the simulation crew told us that he never got in the seat   he just came, initialed the log book, and left’.

This raises several points, but please let me say from the outset, I am not doubting in the slightest that Gene Burton was there and recalled the events in the manner in which he describes them.  However, from the historical point of view the Rosamund Skypark web-page cannot be classed as ‘primary source documentation’. As their webmaster states ; ‘I may have missed a few scan-and-convert errors but otherwise it is presented exactly as received, including the personal introduction addressed to his family’.

This statement clearly shows that the original document was hard-copy typed, was then scanned into a computer and then converted to a file that was suitable for use on a web-page. Therefore what we are reading is almost certainly fourth generation from original author. The timeline is something like this:

1. Gene Burton tells story/writes it down.

2. Maybe types it, maybe has it typed for him

3. Original typed document scanned into computer

4. Scanned document converted to text file and ‘corrected’ by Rosamund webmaster.

5. Uploaded to web, the document we are reading.

From the webpage there are a number of obvious and even more not-so-obvious errors and it is possible that some or all of these were introduced at any stage during the timeline. Mr Burton may have remembered things incorrectly, there were typed errors introduced in the original hard copy, scanning errors were created when scanned, auto-correct errors appeared when converted to text file, the transcription was done by someone without technical knowledge – the possibilities are almost endless.

Mr Burton states: ‘…We went to the seat ejection simulator where all XB 70A Pilots were supposed to spend so many hours a week (I can't recall how many) practicing seat ejection…’ To me, this statement has the ring of unaltered believability about it in many ways, for it is written in what I call ‘millitary-speak’ in that he says ‘seat ejection simulator’, where civilians are more likely to say ‘ejection seat simulator’.

However, that said, the use of the word ‘simulator’ I do find slightly puzzling, and when it is linked with the second part of Mr Burton’s statement I think this could well reveal something that was previously unrealized about the XB-70 – If this statement is correct, and remember, this gentleman was there - pilots had to spend a fairly large amount of time – ‘…so many hours…’ practicing seat ejection.

Previous to this, I was under the impression that there was something that over here in the UK that given the time period would be called a ‘procedures trainer’ – in this case, a working dummy seat and capsule where a pilot could practice the procedures involved in election – or in this case encapsulation and then ejection.

This started me thinking what exactly was involved in the process, and was it of a sufficiently technical, complex nature that it needed practicing over and over again on a regular basis? I went to my copy of the XB-70 Interim Flight Manual, and straight away it revealed that ejecting from the XB-70 was a far-from-simple process:

Section 3, part 22, dated 25 June 1965 reveals all.

Crew encapsulation came in three forms, and was slightly different for AF62-001 and AF62-207. Before the Manual went into any detail there was an introductory note to the section:

‘Ballistic encapsulation can be accomplished only once. However, manual encapsulation can be accomplished as often as necessary before or after ballistic encapsulation.

MANUAL ENCAPSULATION

1. Encapsulate Order (Pilot)

Move encapsulate caution light switch to ON or use intercom to notify copilot to manually encapsulate. Watch for crew encapsulated indicator light to come on when the copilot’s capsule is closed. Receive copilot acknowledgement of the order.

If time and conditions permit:

a. Stow loose equipment.

b. Standby pitch trim arming switch – Check ARMED.

The standby pitch trim arming switch must be ARMED to ensure operation of the trim switch on the emergency descent control grip in each capsule.

c. Inlets* Engage manual control.

Inlets (Automatic AICS) **. No action required.

Bypass door switches (Standby ACIS)** Both down to OPEN as required to position shocks in the top of the crossbatch.

d. Throttles – MIL, or above.

e. Engine RPM lockup switch – RELEASE.

* = Airplane AF62-001

** = Airplane AF62-207

NOTE – Releasing engine RPM lockup provides the capability of getting rid of an engine stall when using throttle retard button on the capsule emergency descent control grip.

f. Intercom push-pull switch – pull out.

g. IFF – Check at NORM or LOW; MODE 3 selector at code 77. h. UHF – Check settings so desired communications can be maintained.

i. Pilot encapsulates first, and controls airplane unless immediate ejection is necessary.

2. Control Column – stow manually.

Press control column release pedal and push control column forward to engage the stowage detent.

3. Seat – unlock and retract.

Move seat lock release lever aft and push seat back into capsule.

4. Capsule Doors – pull close.

Pull feet into capsule and pull the door handle down sharply and forward to close and latch capsule doors. The capsule will seal automatically and, if necessary, pressurize.

BALLISTIC ENCAPSULATION

1. Encapsulate Order (Pilot)

Move encapsulate caution light switch to ON or use intercom to notify copilot to ballistically encapsulate. Watch for crew encapsulated indicator light to come on when the copilot’s capsule is closed. Receive copilot acknowledgement of the order.

2. Seat Handgrips – Pull Up.

This raises the seat handgrips, stows the control column, retracts the seat and exposes the ejection triggers.

WARNING!

• Do not touch either trigger when seat is retracted and handgrips are up, as seat is fully armed and the catapult can fire.

• Both heel pedals must be pressed back before capsule doors will close.

ENCAPSUALTED DESCENT IN THE AIRPLANE

1. Emergency descent control grip – remove from upper left survival kit and use trim button as required.

2. Throttle retard button – as required. (C and CP)

a. Pilot and Copilot must press and button momentarily and release to start movement of bypass doors and throat panels.

NOTE. When throttle retard button is used, the engine inlet bypass doors and throat panels move to a failsafe position (throat opens to 39 inches and bypass area increases to 2400 square inches). The resultant bypass door opening causes an airplane nose-up trim change. Therefore, be prepared to apply nose down trim immediately after pressing the throttle retard button.

b. Press either button in short beeps to retard RPM slowly so that large changes in airplane trim do not occur.

CAUTION

To prevent inlet unstart, RPMs must not be reduced to idle in less than 5 seconds.

NOTE

• All six engines are retarded simultaneously using the throttle retard button

• Throttle settings cannot be advanced until capsule is opened.

3. Seat handgrips – unlock and stow. Unlock and lower handgrips to the stowed position if an immediate ejection is not expected.

WARNING

Do not touch ejection triggers because the seat is fully armed and catapult could fire.

4. Decelerate and descend.

Descent at 450 knots IAS minimum to a cabin altitude of 42,000 feet. Because of the limited control available, maintain a wings-level descent.

Remember – this is only the encapsulation and ejection part of the process – manual de-encapsulation is covered in another section! Clearly the process was complex.

Mr Burton also appears to state that he was present during Al White’s de-briefing following the accident: ‘During a debriefing at the EAFB hospital, Al explained that he had encapsulated and was set to eject when he looked over to see that Cross was not properly preparing for ejection. He was pushing on the panel trying to force his seat back into the capsule which was the correct procedure in a B 58 which Cross had been flying prior to his assignment to the XB 70A. Al said that he opened his capsule and was trying to show Cross what to do when the ship went out of control.

I was fortunate to talk with Al White out at the Air Force Museum in Ohio in the 1980s and, by combining the notes from these interviews and the XB-70 Accident/Incident Report I was able to put together the following for my book. Incidentally, the XB-70 Accident/Incident Report has certain aspects to it redacted (blacked out). Nothing sinister or ‘conspiracy theory’ should be read into this; to quote the letter to me from The HQ Air Force Safety Center that was sent accompanying the accident report.

‘Portions of the safety report have been redacted (blacked out). They are not releasable for the following reasons:

a. The safety investigation board’s analysis and recommendations are exempt from disclosure under the United States Code, Title 5, Section 552(b)(5) and Department of Defense Regulation (DODR) 5400.7/Air Force Supplement C3.2.l.5. Release of this information would have a stifling effect on the deliberative process of Air Force officials.

b. The statements of any witnesses giving unswom testimony before the safety investigation board, as well as any direct or implied references to such testimony, are exempt from disclosure under the United Sates Code, Title 5, Section 552(b)(5) and Department of Defense Regulation (DODR) 5400.7/Air Force Supplement C3.2.l.5. In order to promote full disclosure, some witnesses are promised by the safety investigation board that their testimony will be used solely for mishap prevention and for no other purpose. This promise of confidentiality is made in order to encourage witnesses to disclose to the investigating board everything they know about the mishap even though the statements they make may be against their personal interest or possibly incriminating.

Pursuant to his authority, when a mishap report is deemed historical, the Air Force Chief of Safety can, under certain circumstances, release the safety board’s findings. He has done so in this case.

Now, to what appeared in my book:

Al White: ‘The airplane yawed abruptly and very violently to the right. It was so violent I thought the nose would break off. Then it was upside down and nose down, and then right side up and nose up. It did this twice and the second time around a big piece of the left wing broke off.

These were unstabilized rolls and the G forces were fierce. It was probably the Gs that finally tore the wing off after it had been weakened when Walker fell on it. The force on me was violent, throwing me ahead and to the left. I couldn't move against the Gs. But then it settled into a flat spin. This gave it a more or less fixed axis somewhere back along the fuselage and it was more stable but out of control, of course. Centrifugal force was still shoving me forward, but at least I could move a little.

When it nosed up out of the second tumble, I began trying to encapsulate'

To encapsulate and eject from an XB-70A required two conscious, deliberate actions on the part of the pilot to touch off a finely integrated sequence of events, most of them powered by explosive charges.

The first action was to pull up either or both hinged, yellow hand-grips built into the front edges of the armrests. The second action was squeeze either left or right or both triggers set into the yellow handles. This simultaneously slammed the pilot's seat back about one and a half feet deep into the upright box of the capsule and jerked his shoulder harness so rigidly tight that he can scarcely move. It also forced the aircraft’s control column forward to provide room for the capsule's clamshell doors to snap shut from top and bottom. The doors respond to an involuntary human act when, being whipped back into the capsule, the pilot's heels whack into a pair of ‘kickers’ as his legs are being doubled up into a near-fetal position.

When all this has been done, the pilot is sealed up tight in an individual metal box which carried its own life-support system.

The pulling of the triggers set off the final sequence: first the overhead hatch blew off, rapidly followed by the firing of a rocket which shot the capsule, pilot and all, 300 feet above the aircraft.

White's first action slammed him back into the capsule recess and, according to plan, jerked his shoulder harness tighter than any corset. His heels struck the door-triggering device and set off that charge. But he was immediately conscious of excruciating pain. Fighting the forces of the XB-70's spin, his right elbow had been doubled outward as he pulled the yellow handle, and now it was trapped outside the capsule at the hinge point of the clamshell doors. As a result the doors could not close shut, six inches of his own doubled elbow was outside the capsule and, with the shoulder harness straining backward, his right hand jammed against the yellow handle and the elbow locked outside, he could not get free.

‘The capsule not only had me trapped, but it hurt like hell. I was sure the arm was broken—at the minimum.’ White recalled later.

Using his left hand, White pried painfully at his right fingers, trying to work them loose from the yellow handle. They would not come free. He could have pulled the left trigger and fired his capsule out of the aircraft. But the clearance between the ejecting capsule and edge of the hatch frame was only four inches. Had he pulled the trigger, part of his elbow would have been sliced off as though by a guillotine. Spinning, in agony, and being hauled in two directions, he knew what the prospect was.

This part clearly shows that White was following/had followed the first part of the Ballistic Encapsulation part of the Flight Manual process – a process was irreversible.

‘It didn't help any that, with that crazy tumbling and the spin, I was completely disoriented. And I could see Carl Cross. His head was bobbing around as though he was working real hard at something himself. I don't know why, but I knew he hadn't begun to encapsulate because he was still forward in the thing: his seat didn't move back. That was why I could still see him out of the corner of my eye. I wanted to talk to him and tried to yell, but I guess with the pain and confusion I was only grunting.’

The doomed Valkyrie was falling fast and White, having been pulled away from the instruments, had no way of knowing how soon the XB-70A would hit. He wrestled frantically with his arm.

‘I stopped once. It sounds insane, but I debated whether to eject and cut my arm off or stay and go in with the airplane. And there was Carl to think about, even though there was no possible way I could physically help him."

These comments show a number of things – firstly, Cross had not begun the encapsulation process, and secondly Al White knew there was no way he could help him. Mr Burton’s statement of ‘ Al said that he opened his capsule and was trying to show Cross what to do when the ship went out of control…’ is seemingly at odds which what Al White told me and the Accident Investigation team, and is also at odds with what was and what not possible in the Aircraft’s Flight Manual.

One only has to look at the illustrations at the end of this report to see how little visibility and movement Al White had. To continue with the story:

Then White's left hand worked one right finger free, then another, then all of them and he pulled the now unlocked hand away from the yellow handle. In agony, he finally dragged the wounded arm and elbow inside with him. White said that it seemed as if minutes passed while he wrestled with the arm, but actually just about 86 seconds elapsed between the time the XB- 70 began toppling out of control and his chute blossomed.

"Once that arm was in I didn't waste any time, I didn't know where we were or how close to going in.  I pulled the trigger, the rocket fired and I went out with the capsule doors still open. The shot gave my head a hell of a jerk on top of the snap in the neck I'd got when the seat went back."

The capsule doors were still open when he ejected. Since he was now well below 15,000 feet, his chute opened almost immediately.  A new peril was immediate - the spinning XB-70A swung past what seemed like only inches from his capsule.

‘That long nose went by and I thought God, the next time that big bastard comes around it's going to get me. At that point the airplane and I must have been falling at the same speed. It scared me."

The capsule doors were still wide open and White wanted them closed. Although the charge which should have closed them was gone they could be closed manually by pulling a handle on the upper door.

White wanted them closed for two reasons. He felt exposed with only the nylon straps of his harness between him and the void. The second reason was more imperative: his trapped arm had interrupted one more vital event in the escape sequence. At that altitude an XB-70A capsule, weighing with pilot approximately 800 pounds, falls fast even with its parachute open - 32 feet per second compared to the approximate 22 fps of a man with an ordinary  parachute. To absorb the shock of landing, a pneumatic cushion  - called the ‘attenuator bag’ - should have inflated automatically as the main chute deployed. But it had not done so because the bag could not inflate with the lower door open and swung down against it. Al wanted the door closed so he could inflate the bag with a manual backup system.

'I didn't want to hit without that bladder blown up. The engineers had calculated that to land without the bag might cost a man a broken back. But it didn't work. Even after I got the doors closed I couldn't find it. I was still disoriented and concerned about a lot of things: Carl, whether he was out: the junk falling around me: and a terrible coldness. Shock, I guess - that on top of the sweat from working to free my arm.

Then I heard the XB-70A hit. It made a terrible explosion and an enormous plume of smoke came up.

Cotton watched the descending parachute and thought for a time that White would fall into the XB-70's pyre. But then he saw that an easterly wind would carry the capsule clear.

At five minutes and 22 seconds after the accident and  four minutes and 11 seconds behind his dead aircraft. White's capsule was about to hit.

The wreck site was a few miles north of Barstow, California.  Major Cross's body was found in the XB-70A with his seat still forward in the ejection capsule. He may never have been able to begin the escape sequence, perhaps because of the same violent forces which had nearly killed Al White.

Conclusion

So, that is the new evidence married to what was already known. In my opinion Mr Burton has added new information into the background, especially to the revelations relating to the seat ejection simulator.

Mr Burton’s comments ‘According to the log book, Major Cross had initialed the required practice time. However, the simulation crew told us that he never got in the seat   he just came, initialed the log book, and left’ is, from all accounts available to me unsubstantiated and unproven.  I will leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Graham M Simons

May be used without charge, as long as due credit is given.

gmsimons@btconnect.com

4^th April 2015