Damaged Engine & Missing Flaperon recovery report

[Lion]

After being struck by anti-aircraft artillery fire from the mission HERE: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=186, my aircraft experienced immediate degradation of controls and the loss of approximately 3500-4000 lbs of fuel, with an additional loss of another 1000 lbs in an extremely short amount of time (less than 10 seconds). Before I detail the steps I took to guide the aircraft back to a neutral landing strip, some quick observations on the initial groundfire impact:

• Getting hit immediately lost me several thousand pounds of fuel. I guess it holed one of my fuel tanks.
• Even after losing that much, I continued to consume fuel at an alarming rate, well above that even when in afterburner - estimated 100 pounds per second

Steps I took after initial observations:

1. Identified which engine was giving multiple warnings and failures. This is CRITICAL. You must shut down this engine immediately, as it is the one consuming fuel fast enough to run out in less than two minutes. If you shut down the wrong one by mistake, you will not have enough time to restart it and have a chance at landing safely. Shutting down both engines in the Hornet means you are sitting in a brick.
   The engine with the problems will have the prefix "L" or "R" before each subcategory warning (L HYD, R AMAD, R ENG, etc) on the LEFT DDI
   Depending on how much fuel you had at time of impact, you will have 10-30 seconds to do this before it fuel levels reach below 1000 lbs.
2. After correctly identifying which engine to shut down (in my case, the right engine), I had to hold almost full left stick input to correct an insistent roll to the right.
3. I also had to reduce engine power to make sure I didn't run out of the fuel I had left (approx 3000 lbs) while simultaneously providing enough thrust just to stay in the air.
4. I applied approximately 5 seconds of full left roll trim to compensate for the degraded controls. This stabilized the aircraft enough that I was able to look out my cockpit and determined I was missing my starboard flaperon.
5. I flew far enough and decided I did not have enough fuel and possibly aircraft control to make a safe landing back on the deck of the Stennis, as I wasn't sure if my landing gear would even deploy, and our sim carrier does not have crash barricade functionality implemented. Instead I decided to make an emergency landing at Tunb Island AFB, which had a runway length of about 7600 feet.
6. After navigating my way to visual sight of the airfield, I lowered the gear handle. Unfortunately, the gear alarm continued to sound well past normal, and even though I clearly heard my gear deployed, the E-bracket did not appear on my HUD, nor did the AOA indicator light up. So, raised the gear lever back, rotated the handle to activate the emergency gear deployment function, and lowered it - that successfully dropped all the gear (later I watched the track and only my nose gear had dropped the first time!)
7. Deployed half flaps, and that seemed mostly okay for the aircraft, though applying enough power to keep the aircraft stable and aloft was starting to make itself known at that point, especially with the winds and turbulence at ground level. I decided not to land with full flaps incase the aircraft became destabilized and unrecoverable.
8. Unfortunately the crosswind was brutal at the airfield I chose, but fortunately I managed to safely land after crabbing it onto the runway.

It was at that point that I discovered several things:

• I had no wheel brakes.
• I had no nosewheel steering.
• Emergency parking brake provided very little braking.
• I had no speed brake functionality.
• I was doing 100 knots and approaching the end of the runway, the sand, and the gulf.

Using very limited rudder controls and my asymmetric thrust, the aircraft managed to turn left and drive around the island, until it was ultimately stopped by a tree.

Conclusions:

I probably could have made back to the carrier. I was only about 20 miles away. I also could have safely orbited at an endurance speed until everyone else had landed so I wouldn't foul the deck if something happened, though it would have been one pass only - any bolter would consume all remaining fuel.
Based on past experiences, I thought I had a better chance of crash landing on a land strip than fouling the carrier deck. The last time I tried to lower my landing gear on a damaged bird, it flipped the aircraft upside down and flat spun into the sea. :(

I also don't know the actual emergency procedures for this situation - it was all done on the fly.

For what its worth, early on in the beta, and most of the way through summer and autumn, the damage modeling wasn't nearly as detailed as this - usually one hit resulted in you dying instantly, with no chance at recovery. I figure these days it might be a good idea to start training in situations like these, as muscle memory and habit will be a heckuva lot faster than spending that few critical seconds trying to figure out what the hell just happened to your bird!

[Mad Dog]

Lion

Your knowledge and actions are a credit to you. I know I would not had made it. Your account of your actions are well noted thanks for posting .

[Shadow]

Great post Comrade! Thanks for sharing. I was spectating as you landed and fully expected an aircraft explosion at any moment. I was wondering at the time, why doesn't he brake? This is going to be ugly. But you delicately turned to port and circled the island until that friendly tree stopped you. It is great now to know we can really control some of the damage situations.

[Hedgehog]

Outstanding write-up, Lion. And outstanding job getting your plane safely (more-or-less) down following substantial battle damage. Your knowledge of aircraft systems as well as keeping a cool head in a critical situation was key to walking (not swimming) away from this one.

I'm pretty sure I'd have not remembered the emergency landing gear release, nor remembered how to do it.