An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Home : News : News
JBSA News
NEWS | May 5, 2011

Saved by parachute: former Randolph Airman tells story

By Brian McGloin 502nd Air Base Wing OL-B Public Affairs

Thirty four years ago he and a student bailed out of a T-38 Talon but floated safely to the ground with their parachutes, surviving a potentially fatal crash.

During a routine training flight about 30 miles south southeast of Randolph May 2, 1977, something went wrong with the aircraft forcing Capt. Patrick Rooney and Capt. Roger Brady to eject.

"We were in a single-ship training run and we had a failure of a servo-actuator of the left aileron," Mr. Rooney said about the flight with Captain Brady. "I was instructing and he was coming through as a pilot."

The crash was the fifth T-38 crash in a two year period, but "we were the first to survive." He said he owes his survival to the people who packed his parachute and ejection seat at Randolph.

"We landed in a farm field in what used to be Governor John Connally's ranch," he said.
"It was my 13th jump, but my first ejection," he said.

"Almost as soon as I left the airplane it felt like someone had a chokehold on me, but it went away when the chute opened. It was from the chinstrap of my helmet."

"The chinstrap cut me across my neck," he said explaining the tremendous force the air can have. "I put my hand on my neck and looked down at it to see if I was bleeding and that's when I saw my right femur sticking out through my flight suit. "

He said his larynx was broken in 8 places, he had a compression fracture in his C4, T7 and T11 vertebrae, tore several tendons in his knees and had fractures in both heels.

He said even with his injuries, he is happy to make it out alive and to have recovered and be medically cleared to fly again seven months later. Captain Brady suffered internal injuries but no fractures and recently retired as a general and commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe in Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

"The seats are better now, but in 1977, out of all military ejections, only about 60 percent were survivable. The survival rate dropped below 15 percent at more than 350 knots," he said. "I was outside of the envelope of what the seat was designed to do."

"In our case, everything worked as it should," he said of the ejection seat, parachute and the process for emergency egress of an aircraft.

He said the sequence from pulling the lever egress lever, launching out of the aircraft strapped to the seat, to floating to the ground under the parachute happened quickly.
"Next thing I knew, I was hanging in a good parachute," he said recalling the events of the egress.

"I have no complaints, I have angels on my shoulders," he said. "I'm lucky I'm not in a wheelchair."

He said there is an old tradition - possibly from World War II - where is a member of an aircrew has to bail out of an aircraft using a parachute, he or she has to find whoever packed the gear and buy that person a case of beer or a similar show of gratitude.

Mr. Rooney said about a year after his crash he found the man who packed his parachute and brought him a case of beer. Every year since, he's continued a similar tradition to show his appreciation for the work done at the 12th Operations Support Squadron survival and egress shop.

"It's the least I can do," he said. "None of them were directly responsible for me, but they do the same work. I know I would not be here if every person didn't do their job professionally."