Aircrew's quick thinking ensure KC-135's safe arrival Published Nov. 8, 2013 By Karen Abeyasekere 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs RAF MILDENHALL, England -- What started as a regular mission Aug. 29, 2013, could have turned into a tragedy if it hadn't been for the quick actions of three members from the 100th Operations Group. Flying about 150 miles off the northeast coast of England over the North Sea, Maj. Matt Ritenour, aircraft commander from Plymouth, Ind.; Capt. Paul Paskell, pilot from Seattle, Wash.; and Tech. Sgt. Augustine Marshall, 351st Air Refueling Squadron boom operator from Mont Belview, Texas, had initiated their air refueling checklist and were just leveling at cruising altitude when Paskell suddenly smelled something burning in the cockpit. "We thought it smelled like food burning, and Capt. Paskell asked if anyone was cooking anything in the oven," Ritenour said. There were just the three aircrew on board, and none of them were using the oven at that time. "It piqued our curiosity, so we sent the boom into the back (of the aircraft). There wasn't any smoke developing at that point, but the smell was definitely getting stronger," Ritenour said. While the boom operator was near the oven, Paskell noticed smoke starting to appear in the cockpit, which was made more apparent by the rays of the sun. Ritenour immediately had his crew put their oxygen masks on, in accordance with the safety checklist. The smoke was coming from behind the pilot's seat. "At first we still couldn't locate the source, but we then realized that, due to the temperature, we all had our fans operating," the aircraft commander said. "When we turned the fans off we could start to see the smoke billowing out of the rotation go-around system, which is essentially our flight director equipment, and the smoke was coming from the rack." Once the source of the smoke had been located, the aircrew determined it was nothing more serious than a small electrical fire. But the smoke it produced filled the cockpit within a few minutes. "It was similar to if you're sitting around a camp fire and the wind shifts. It would be like sitting in that seat that has all of the smoke passing over it," Paskell said. "It got our attention, and took a few minutes to go from, 'maybe we smell something' to 'maybe there's smoke in the cockpit' and went from slightly bad to bad in seconds. Something was smoldering for a while, then caught (fire) pretty quickly." Luckily, refueling hadn't begun when the smoke was noticed, so there was no danger to any other aircraft, and the mission was immediately stopped. "As soon as we realized we had an electrical fire and got on oxygen, we contacted the air traffic control agency and let them know we were having an in-flight malfunction and we wanted to hold in-place and block altitude and airspace so we could fly around and diagnose what was going on," Ritenour said. "We terminated air refueling operations for that day and immediately started to initiate all our checklist items, to stop the electrical fire as well as eliminate the smoke and fumes that had been building," he added. The aircrew put out the fire and ventilated the aircraft. Once they were able to safely and effectively see everything, they continued following more checklists to determine the cause. Once they isolated the trouble area, everything was switched off. "We pulled all of the circuit breakers associated with that equipment, and within two to three minutes after we'd successfully shut all power down, the fire went out and the smoke stopped, and we were able to continue with the rest of our electrical equipment operating normally," Ritenour said. After running through yet more checklists, the crew finally starting heading toward home. "But we were too heavy to land and knew we were going to have to dump some fuel to adjust our gross weight," the aircraft commander said. "We called back to the on-duty instructor pilot to relay what our plan would be." In the event of an emergency, the function of the instructor pilot is to act as a safety net for the aircrew, by ensuring they execute a good, safe plan. The instructor also relays any concerns between the operations group commander and the aircrew and provides impartial and sound judgement. "They gave us the green light to do what we had planned," Ritenour said. "To adjust the gross weight we had to dump the gas out of the boom. We were about 40,000 pounds above our maximum landing gross weight (about 235,000 pounds without a waiver) that the gear is designed to withstand." Landing too heavy is not an option for a KC-135 Stratotanker. "The weight the tanker can take off with is a lot greater than it can land with, for structural reasons" Paskell said. "So if we can't offload (our gas), our only other option is to dump it." Refueling this time was not critical to other aircraft, and in this particular instance, the crew's only option was to dump it. Following strict procedures, the pilots kept the aircraft at a safe altitude, staying well outside the coast, in conjunction with their established fuel-dump area agreed by the host-nation authorities. Dumping the fuel in this area is completely safe for the environment and it's not over homes, farmland or nature reserves. These specific areas are used for this purpose in the event of an emergency, and when the dumping is performed high enough, the fuel evaporates. "We were talking to London military at the time, so they were aware of our plan as well, and the rationale behind it," Ritenour said. "After that was complete, we finalized our approach checklist to ensure the aircraft was in a safe configuration to land. By that point we had no more electrical fire issues, such as smoke and fumes; there was a residual smell from the burning electrics, but not any more active fires inside the aircraft." After leaving the coastal area, the aircrew headed back to Royal Air Force Mildenhall, conducting an instrument approach before landing. Although RAF Mildenhall pilots regularly train in the simulator for such emergencies, experiencing them first-hand can still be nerve-wracking. "It was actually pretty exciting," Paskell said. "We have this training so much that it's cool to know you've got a chance to make the work we do pay off. We train for so many different kinds of emergencies that we fortunately never see; when something like this does happen, it validates a lot of the work we do in the simulator and a lot of the stuff that goes into the different emergencies that could happen." One of the biggest concerns was how much electrical equipment needed to be switched off to get the fire out. "My primary concern was that, being out over the middle of the ocean, you have a severe lack of geographical references," Ritenour said. "We do have a lot of back-up navigation equipment, but depending on the severity of the emergency, we could be down to the back-up store. My primary concern, once we'd isolated it, was that we could take care of the electrical fire without too severely degrading our ability to navigate back to either Mildenhall or into a divert airfield." The fact that the KC-135 Stratotankers are approximately 50 years old was of benefit in this emergency. "If this had been a much more modern jet, I would have been much more concerned," Paskell said. "But the KC-135 was designed and built long enough ago that it's still flown very 'hands-on' and it's a very manual task to fly it -- there's very little electronic flight augmentation. It gave me confidence that we could fly it home, whereas if it had been a newer jet it would have been much more complicated." It was discovered later that the problem lay with the co-pilot's radio altimeter, which uses radar to gauge height above the ground; so when an aircraft is coming in to land, it counts down to zero the closer it gets to the ground. "We saw signs that it was failing early on in the flight; and we dismissed it as a fault -- a malfunction is not that hard to deal with," Paskell said. "But we later found out it was in the stack of computer equipment right behind the pilot, and that's most likely what caught fire." The radio altimeter is located in the nose compartment underneath the floor, and is near the side of the equipment tower. It was wafting smoke into the cockpit from the rack of computers, which made it difficult to tell where the smoke was coming from. Ritenour, Paskell and Marshall were presented the Flight Safety Award for the Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2013 Oct. 16, 2013, for their quick-thinking and selfless actions, which got the $93-million aircraft safely back to its home station.