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