F-4 Mugs McKeown "Back-Flip" dogfight, '72 before a MIG kill

[HSMPBR]

?That’s pretty cool.

In most places in the helicopter, if you bleed off too much airspeed, you start flying backwards.

 

[MachTuck]

With reference to overall question, it’s called a Lomcevak maneuver. The Phantom guys I know say it is possible, but they have never seen it done. With reference to the movie it was a Pugachev Cobra like shown here…

Lomcevak, Pugachev, Cobra, Hammerheads, Tailslides, etc., all fun airshow stuff, all low q-bar for low wing loads. Low airspeed. Works in the movies for some extra excitement. An X-31 Herbst maneuver would be a closer to what is useful in combat.

McKeown's F-4 tumble seems to be at a much higher airspeed, from what can be guessed about it from the combat accounts. It also must have had some yaw so that the wings didn't take the blunt force of the high-alpha directly as it tumbled. Whatever Mugs did, the Navy audio file I mentioned above indicated he was not happy with the move itself, or maybe just it's timing during the dogfight.

 

[Griz882]

Lomcevak, Pugachev, Cobra, Hammerheads, Tailslides, etc., all fun airshow stuff, all low q-bar for low wing loads. Low airspeed. Works in the movies for some extra excitement. An X-31 Herbst maneuver would be a closer to what is useful in combat.

McKeown's F-4 tumble seems to be at a much higher airspeed, from what can be guessed about it from the combat accounts. It also must have had some yaw so that the wings didn't take the blunt force of the high-alpha directly as it tumbled. Whatever Mugs did, the Navy audio file I mentioned above indicated he was not happy with the move itself, or maybe just it's timing during the dogfight.

Unless you are a fighter pilot you are just arguing semantics…I know two F-4 pilots who say it is perfectly possible they just haven’t done it. clearly he did it and even if it was an unexpected departure from normal flight parameters he recovered expertly and it was a fortunate one.

 

[MachTuck]

It’s a g-limiter, not an alpha limiter. You can pull unlimited alpha in the F/A-18.

G-limiters and alpha-limiters are related, implementing both on some airframes. I saw both limiters in software for other airframes doing flight control systems work. F-117 for sure, and I remember engineers discussing it at McDonnell-Douglas in the early '80's after they broke an F-18 wing in load testing. Maybe F-15 & AV-8B had both too(?).

Alpha gets multiplied with speed to compare directly against ultimate wing structural load limits, with pitch rate gyros used for anticipation. G-limits back-up wing structural limits, yet mostly deal with pilot g-loc issues, and is what pilots get trained on for simplicity.

 

[MachTuck]

Unless you are a fighter pilot you are just arguing semantics…I know two F-4 pilots who say it is perfectly possible they just haven’t done it. clearly he did it and even if it was an unexpected departure from normal flight parameters he recovered expertly and it was a fortunate one.

Not just semantics, simple obvious airspeed reality. Some things possible at low speed will overload wings at high speed.

 

[Griz882]

Not just semantics, simple obvious airspeed reality. Some things possible at low speed will overload wings at high speed.

Guess not. As noted, it was done therefore it “is.”

 

[MIDNJAC]

G-limiters and alpha-limiters are related, implementing both on some airframes. I saw both limiters in software for other airframes doing flight control systems work. F-117 for sure, and I remember engineers discussing it at McDonnell-Douglas in the early '80's after they broke an F-18 wing in load testing. Maybe F-15 & AV-8B had both too(?).

Alpha gets multiplied with speed to compare directly against ultimate wing structural load limits, with pitch rate gyros used for anticipation. G-limits back-up wing structural limits, yet mostly deal with pilot g-loc issues, and is what pilots get trained on for simplicity.

Not aware of any wing failures due to high AoA, but I know that the vertical stabs were getting battered by the LEX vortices, resulting in the "cleats" you see on legacy Hornets after lot 5 ish (and I presume retrofitted to earlier). I do know of a jet (well, well before my time) that had a wing fail in a completely opposite regime......high mach (well above supersonic) and negative G, which is not a good place for any F/A-18 A-G. Bending moment caused the wingtip LAU to spear through the wing top.

 

[sevenhelmet]

G-limiters and alpha-limiters are related, implementing both on some airframes. I saw both limiters in software for other airframes doing flight control systems work. F-117 for sure, and I remember engineers discussing it at McDonnell-Douglas in the early '80's after they broke an F-18 wing in load testing. Maybe F-15 & AV-8B had both too(?).

Alpha gets multiplied with speed to compare directly against ultimate wing structural load limits, with pitch rate gyros used for anticipation. G-limits back-up wing structural limits, yet mostly deal with pilot g-loc issues, and is what pilots get trained on for simplicity.

They are indeed related, but you're digging into the control laws, which wasn't the point of my post. I was referring more to the end result of those control laws, which is "only" a g-limit command in the Hornet & Rhino. This is distinct from other aircraft, such as the F-16, which has an AOA limit built into the FCS to help pilots avoid deep stall, along with a traditional g-limiter for structure and pilot survivability considerations. In contrast, the F/A-18 does not require a "hard" AOA limit, e.g. the airplane is recoverable from any AOA, given sufficient altitude, so within prescribed g-limits, the FCS will try to give you more alpha if you ask for it.

Lots of considerations with aircraft limits and software limiters... if I recall my USNTPS academics correctly, the Hornet uses something like a 75th order equation for its FCS control laws... I'd classify that as "complex".

 

[Redleg007]

I met Mugs.... He never told me he was a mig killer... Talked airplanes at the Palm in Washington DC... His move is factual... I've found it in 2 books... After burner... By Sherwood and scream of eagles ny pedersen.... Both say about this... "I'd push the stick forward... I'd pull the stick back... That would get you through about 1-1.5 negative gs... Then I pull the stick back as hard as I could and reverse the rudder... At that point the airplane would depart..... Did it in nevada.. Lost control and ejected... And did it in Vietnam... Mig Killers of the midway... Air combat

 

[Mug's Daughter]

I am Mug's daughter. He passed away several years ago but you could ask Capt Jack "Finger" Ensch about this. He was in the backseat.

 

[MachTuck]

I am Mug's daughter. He passed away several years ago but you could ask Capt Jack "Finger" Ensch about this. He was in the backseat.

Thanks, I'll try that. I did notice a new (late 2022 or early this year) Ensch interview on youtube the other day, so he is still doing fine.
At the 11 minutes 16 seconds point in the video is where Ensch describes the incredible maneuver your Dad did:

I have a recording of Mugs being interviewed back in the 1970's by the Navy about the dogfight.

Laura Waayers, Lead Reference Archivist, of the Archives Branch, Histories and Archives Division, Naval History and Heritage Command office sent it to me.

In it, Mugs says it was "The old last-ditch maneuver, ha-ha, so the airplane tumbled."

After that remark, it seems like he felt he didn't do it quite right when he said "G-damn it Mugs (speaking to himself in the 3rd person) you don't learn a f***kin' thing, do ya?". Yet, it seemed to get the the MIG-17 to overshoot, the desired effect !

Mugs said he was about 2,000 feet above the ground. He didn't say what his airspeed might have been (estimated), probably too busy trying to sort the MIGs out to note it.

I appreciate you reaching out to me on this history investigation. I'm picking this research up again, and I'm lately listening to some Hoot Gibson F-4 Phantom stories (Top Gun grad, USS Coral Sea, USS Enterprise). Hoot has a fantastic memory and doesn't seem to mind aging that much, apparently. He is a trained Aero Engineer, and may have something to say about "pitch-flipping Phantoms" if I could get a hold of him.

 

[MachTuck]

I met Mugs.... He never told me he was a mig killer... Talked airplanes at the Palm in Washington DC... His move is factual... I've found it in 2 books... After burner... By Sherwood and scream of eagles ny pedersen.... Both say about this... "I'd push the stick forward... I'd pull the stick back... That would get you through about 1-1.5 negative gs... Then I pull the stick back as hard as I could and reverse the rudder... At that point the airplane would depart..... Did it in nevada.. Lost control and ejected... And did it in Vietnam... Mig Killers of the midway... Air combat

I'll check those books out:
"Scream of Eagles: The Creation of Top Gun and the U.S. Air Victory in Vietnam" - Wilcox
"Afterburner: Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War" - Sherwood
"TOPGUN: The Legacy: The Complete History of TOPGUN and Its Impact on Tactical Aviation" - Elward
"Topgun: An American Story" - Pedersen
"US Navy F-4 Phantom II Units of the Vietnam War 1969-73" - Davies

About Mugs having to eject over Nevada, I hadn't heard that one. Certainly dangerous to try that maneuver, and the F-4, like most other fighters, could get into a flat spin that is hopeless. (Or a pitch tumble "spin" as in Cardenas's and Edward's famous Northrop Flying Wing test flights. Probably only possible in a tailless airframe.)

According to the accounts of stick movement, the nearest thing might be the "aft stick, plus yaw moment" departure this F-16 got, although asymmetric stores substitutes for Mug's reverse rudder: