Pilot Honored In Crash That Wasn't -- He Flew Crippled Tanker To Safe Landing

WASHINGTON - The sun was just sinking behind the mountains. Daylight was failing fast. And Air Force Capt. Bart Klein was lining up his crippled tanker for his last shot at getting safely on the ground.

It had been hours since the jet's double-wheeled, left-hand landing gear had dropped off - like a caster from a table - during landing drills at the air base in Oklahoma.

Now, Klein was steering the four-engine behemoth peg-legged over the desert floor of the isolated White Sands, N.M., proving ground. As the jet banked in, its running lights flashing and emergency crews standing by, Klein wondered if his next-of-kin papers were in order.

He needn't have worried.

Over the next breathtaking seconds, Klein stood the 120,000-pound airplane on one landing gear as it hurtled across the packed gypsum desert at more than 100 miles an hour. He kept the left wing aloft as long as possible and then let it slowly drop to the ground, dragging the jet to a gentle, dust-filled stop.

For his able flying March 16, in which Klein and eight others aboard the jet escaped without a scratch, he is being awarded the Air Force's Kolligian Trophy for excellence in handling an in-flight emergency, the Air Force announced yesterday. The trophy is named for an aviator who disappeared on a flight off California in 1955.

`We had to write the book'

In a telephone hookup piped to Pentagon reporters, Klein explained what had happened and Air Force officials showed a videotape of the landing.

An instructor pilot with the 55th Air Refueling Squadron, Klein had been aloft with a group of student pilots practicing "touch-and-go" landings at Altus Air Force Base.

During one of the landings, with a student in control, the left-hand landing gear dropped off. Klein said there was horrendous noise. "I thought I was having an anxiety dream," he said. But it was no dream. He grabbed the steering and pulled the jet off the runway.

As the Air Force rushed other tankers to the area to refuel Klein's jet, experts on the ground brainstormed. "The only problem was that this situation had never occurred in a KC-135," the pilot said. "So we had to write the book as we were airborne."

The best plan would have been to land in the remote California desert of Edwards Air Force Base, Klein said. But there was a tremendous rainstorm and the landing areas were submerged. White Sands was selected. But because it had no landing lights "it was becoming very crucial that we make our landing before sunset."

`This is our last shot' in daylight

Bailing out was mentioned. But Klein decided to try a landing.

He made three approaches - the final one coming just as darkness was filling the desert valley. "This is our last shot at it before night falls," Klein narrated as the videotape played.

As the jet came to a stop, the crew scurried out the hatches to safety.

Klein noted that it took about nine seconds for the crew to get the doors open.

"That's what a little bit of adrenaline and good training will do for you."