Newsmax – by Nich SanchezFootage of an American fighter jet making a vertical landing on a padded stool aboard an aircraft carrier was uploaded to YouTube this week, stunning viewers across the Internet.
Captain William Mahoney was piloting the Cold War-era AV-8B Harrier jump jet on June 7 when the landing gear malfunctioned, leaving him with no option but to make the special landing.
“It was a normal flight day,” Mahoney said in an interview on the video after the landing.
Shortly after he took off, the flight crew aboard the U.S. Navy’s amphibious assault ship, the USS Bataan, radioed to Mahoney at 2,000 feet, confirming that part of the landing hear had failed to deploy from the nose of the plane. They also told him they happened to have a padded stool on hand for just such an occasion.
“I did an approach at 300 feet so he could see my landing gear and give me an idea of what was going on,” the pilot explained.
“The difference with this landing was I was going to step it down: 50, 40, 30, 20 feet — to make sure I was aligned and stabilized before Major Murphy would clear me to land … so that I had the best chance to actually put the nose on the stool.”
Mahoney stuck the landing perfectly, setting the 22,000-pound jet on the stool with a small bounce.
“I’m at 20 feet stabilizing and I can’t see the stool. I don’t even know it’s there. I didn’t see it coming over the end of the ship, I remember looking for it, but I never saw the stool,” he said with a laugh. “At that point, I was just sort of along for the ride.”
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WOW!
Damn, …sakes…