That Time a Navy Fighter Jet Shot Itself Down

It’s a terrifying situation when a fighter pilot’s plane is suddenly hit. It’s even more shocking when the plane isn’t even in combat. It gets downright bizarre when the gunfire comes from the plane the pilot is in. This weekend marks 68 years since this happened to an unlucky U.S. Navy pilot. Thomas Attridge Jr. had the honor of being in the first fighter jet to shoot himself down.

But first, a little history. The F-11F Tiger, built by Grumman, was the first supersonic jet fighter to enter service with the U.S. Navy. It was designed to be faster than the F9F 6/7 Cougar, faster than Mach 1, and a lighter, swept-wing design. The wings could be folded back, making them easier to stow on Navy aircraft carriers. The aircraft manufacturer worked closely with the military and put it through a series of tests. In addition to missiles, the Tiger was equipped with four 20mm cannons. And that’s where things went wrong for Attridge in 1956.

On September 21, 1956, Navy test pilot Attridge took off from Grumman Airfield on Long Island, New York, in an F-11F Tiger, tail number 138620. His mission was simple: conduct a weapons test over the water and then land back at the airfield. He flew to an altitude of 20,000 feet. Once there, Attridge turned the Tiger to 20 degrees, reached Mach 1, and fired a short burst of all four guns at about 13,000 feet. He dove on a steeper slope, hit the afterburner, and fired another cannon burst at 7,000 feet, depleting the aircraft of ammunition.

Almost immediately after that second explosion, the Tiger rattled from the impact. The cowling windshield and the right engine were hit. At that moment, Attridge thought he had hit a bird. This was about 20 miles off the Atlantic coast, with no enemy fighters in sight. The situation was immediately bad: the engines were losing power. He turned back to land, slowing to 230 miles per hour, but it wasn’t enough. The plane made a tearing sound like “a Hoover vacuum cleaner sucking grit off a carpet,” Attridge said. He was forced to bail out when the plane lost a wing and hit the ground a mile from the runway, flying a few hundred feet. It was a total loss. Attridge was mostly lucky; he broke a vertebra and a leg, but survived (and wouldn’t fly again for months).

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Only later did Attridge learn what had happened. The wreckage of the Tiger had bullet holes in its nose, cowling, and engine. He had shot himself. The first burst of cannon fire flew faster than the jet was flying at the time, but the bullets, like any object flying through the air, were subject to air resistance. When Attridge switched on the afterburner and changed his descent angle, he was flying so fast and at just the right angle that he overtook and flew into the bullets he had fired just seconds earlier. A bullet was even found inside the plane, helping investigators confirm that the Tiger had shot itself down.

This was a new development in aerial combat. The biplanes of World War I and the fighters of World War II did not go so fast that such a feat was a risk, albeit an unlikely one. New, supersonic jet fighters now allowed fighter pilots to move faster than the ammunition they fired.

Fortunately for the Navy and pilots in general, Attridge’s experience was unique. The F-11 Tiger would remain in service until 1969, but the Navy moved on to other aircraft. There was one other case of a U.S. military jet being hit by its own ordnance. In 1973, test pilots Pete Purvis and Bill Sherman were flying an F-14 Tomcat at the Pacific Missile Test Range. Purvis fired an AIM-7 missile, but instead of it going off as usual, the missile had a problem. It fell off the jet, exploded, and hit the F-14 with shrapnel. “That’s weird!” Purvis thought, according to his own recollection of the incident. Alarms soon went off, and Purvis and Sherman had to bail out. They were unharmed, but the F-14 crashed and exploded.

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