Tir
the autopilot,
The climb back to altitude cost a lot of fuel.
He was
then kept in the control area hunting the tanker aircraft too long,
The accumlation of these troubles might have caused the pilot to use
bad judgment during the rest of the flight.
Had he maintained 20,000
feet altitude on his flight to Eniwetok, there was good chance he could
have landed the aircraft, the investigators believed.“
KING Shot,
Shot changed.
As a result of the accident refueling plans for KING
The primary refueling operation was to be in the cloud
area, while the secondary refueling area was within sight of Eniwetok,
There was added an emergency refueling area between the two,
If the pilot
could not take on fuel in the primary area, near the cloud, he would
immediately fly to Eniwetok and make a second attempt.
would Iand his aircraft at Eniwetok,
This failing, he
The new plan directed that no
aircraft land at Eniwetok with less than S00 pounds of fuel aboard.->
Control, tanker, and sampler aircraft did not take part in the
rehearsal for KING Shot, held on 9 November 1952,
The second shot was
scheduled for November 13, but bad weather pushed the date to 16 November
1952,
The sampling missions came off without incident except that two
of the samplers aborted,
The White 3 aircraft took off from Kwajalein
bat could not retract landing gears and was forced to land again when
back-up F-8 took off as a replacement,
Then White
aircraft had a fuel
pressure malfunction and was forced to retum to Kwajalein,
Because two
F-8) aircraft were required to complete one sample collection, the spare
“
2
aircraft also returned to base, 1.
75
AFWL/HO
SWEH-2-003);
aa
oN