One Pilot Speaks of Surveillance Flights
April 5, 2001 -- What's it like to pilot a U.S. surveillance plane, trying to capture vital information about another country, when an enemy jet tries to disturb you? Nightline spoke with Navy Capt. Ray Leonard, who flew missions near the former Soviet Union like the one that went wrong in China. Following is a transcript of the interview.
Q: When you were flying these planes, engaged with the Russians, how close did they get?
A: It really varies. Some days they got within just a few hundered feet. Other days they would get within 20 to 30 feet off the wing tip. It kind of depended on the day and the weather and where we were at the time I think.
Q: Where there clearly understood rules of the road?
A: It seemed like it. Obviously we never had any discussions with them to lay anything out but when we were flying, our standard procedure was that if we got intercepted we would fly straight and level. And if we had to turn because of where we were flying, we would always make sure we would make a very slow entry into the turn so that the interceptor had ample time to adjust to our turn and get away from us.
Q: Why did you have to be so careful when you were turning making these maneuvers?
A: When they're flying that closely, there is not a whole lot of room for error … They could rapidly gain on you and could get enough closure so that they couldn't correct in time to avoid hitting you.
Q: The Chinese are suggesting the U.S. is to blame because our plane turned in such a way to cause the accident. What is your take?
A: I can't imagine a pilot that knew there was a fighter anywhere near them would make a turn like that. We never did, we always made very sure if we could turn away from the fighter we did. If we had to turn into them we always made sure it was a nice gentle turn and often times we would start the turn and stop and then slowly enter it again as a signal to them that he needed to pull away.
Q: Isn't there a certain amount of gamesmanship going on at least in your experience with the Russian pilots?
A: There was. Most times it was a very straight-forward operation. They would come join on us, see that we were the same airplane that was out there the day before probably, and then leave. Every once in awhile they would get a little closer, stay a little longer and on two occasions they did what we call a thumping maneuver — where they'd come up underneath us and then pop up in front of our nose and put us into their wing tip vertices and their jet wash and bounce the airplane. And one time they bounced so much that the auto pilot kicked off and we started to make a turn that we hadn't planned on and we had to quickly react to that.
Q: This thumping occurs when they are flying right underneath your aircraft and then pull up in front of you?
A: Yes. What they do is they come up right underneath your aircraft and then pull up right in front so that the wing tip vertices and the turbulence from their wings and their engines go right in front of the airplane and get the fuselage and wings of the P3.
Q: And you as the pilot are trying to slow down suddenly, like a driver who has someone pull in front of it?
A: You don't really have a chance to react. They are there before you know it because they have come up from behind you and a P3 can't see behind. We had a couple of windows in the back of the airplane that you could get a little bit of a view but you couldn't see directly behind you, you couldn't see underneath, so we didn't know they were coming to do it. They're there and they're gone in that instant and you really don't have the chance to react or doing anything to avoid it.
Q: You've seen the damage inflicted on this American plane that is sitting on the runway. Form your perspective, what do you think that trip down must have been like?
A: I'm glad that I was never put in that situation. From what I understand, they lost about 8,000 feet and were probably close to losing control of the aircraft. With the nose radome being gone, the noise in the cockpit must have been horrendous and with the damage to the propellers the two engines — I know No. 1 had damage, I'm not sure whether the other props had damage from the pictures I've seen. The engine vibrations were probably substantial and it was probably a very very difficult time for them for those first few minutes until they finally got it back under control, assuming that they lost it, but it looks like they probably could have.
Q: The Pentagon says they had about 10 minutes from the time of the collision with the fighter to the time they landed. Would they have had time then to destroy some of the sensitive listening gear that is on that aircraft?
A: They would have had time to destroy. They have a priority list and they would have gone through and destroyed the most sensitive materials first. Some of the equipment would have been last. The more important things would have been the software and the paper materials, any paper they might have and things like that.
Q: What do you do? You can't throw it out or eject it or can you?
A: I'm not sure how they got rid of it. I really don't know. I'd just be speculating if I were to say how they got rid of it but they would have tried to destroy it any way they could.
Q: And 10 (minutes) is sufficient time to do that?
A: It's a good enough time to get a good start on it. And they would have gotten the most critical things destroyed I would believe.
Q: Even though they are descending rapidly 8,000 feet, worried about their life and limb?
A: The first two or three minutes they probably were worried and once the pilots got the plane under control again and they knew they were going to safely fly then while the pilot took care of the flying of the airplane, the rest of the crew was hard at work in the back end. Because only the two pilots and the flight engineer were the ones doing most of the work at that point as far as keeping the airplane aloft.
Q: You said you had an acceptance with the Russians of a kind of rules of the road. Do you know if American pilots had the same rules with Chinese pilots?
A: I really don't know. With the former Soviet Union, we had been doing that for so many years that it was just almost like a standard operating procedure at a certain point on a mission we would get intercepted, and we came to expect it as a daily occurrence that we would get intercepted and they'd stay there for two minutes and then they would leave. I have no idea what the air-to-air relationship has been like with the Chinese.
Q: Give us a sense of how the EP3 maneuvers? It's a slow turboprop aircraft. How does it do a maneuver/dance with a couple of fighters buzzing around?
A: It doesn't do a dance with a couple of fighters. They [EP-3s] have also flied at very low air speeds when they are on station to reduce fuel consumption so that they can stay out longer. So they are almost, if you will, hanging onto propellers. And at that speed they are very close to stall speed if they got into too much of a turn. Most time we were limited to a 20-degree angle bank turn at those speeds just because if we went any higher we didn't have enough power to keep the airplane from stalling in the turn.
Q: Put yourself for just a moment in the position of the American pilot after the EP-3 has collided with this Chinese fighter. What is going through you mind and what are you going to try and do in the next couple of moments?
A: The first thing is to make sure the airplane is flyable. Try to assess the damage and see what systems we've lost — they obviously lost the radome — they had at least one engine if not two vibrating and those propellers are turning so fast that the slightest bit of imbalance causes serious vibrations. They are trying to figure out whether the engines are going to keep operating. Do they still have flaps and landing gear? Did they lose any hydraulic systems? Do they have air speed? One report I read said that they had lost air speed indications. Without air speed indications trying to ditch the airplane in the sea would be very very difficult. Because in order to ditch the P3 you have to have a very precise nose attitude depending on your weight. If your nose is too low you'll end of flipping end over end, if its too high when the tail hits it can also drop the nose too rapidly and cause you to end up flipping or causing more serious damage. So there is really no way of knowing when you've got the precise attitude, even if it's beautiful weather on a clear day you are still running the risk of having the attitude off by the slightest bit which can cause serious problems when you hit the water.
Q: So to save his crew in this case, the pilot had only one option?
A: From what I know about what happened, I think if he would have ditched — and this is pure speculation on my part — I think he would have probably ended up with the whole crew not surviving.
Q: Can you give us any sense of what it might have been like for the crew making the descent with all the damage done?
A: It would have been for the first minutes very very unsettling but once everything was back under control, the professionalism of the crew would have taken over and they would have done exactly what they needed to do to get what they had to get done before they landed.
Q: Put yourself in the position of those crew members right now, who are separated from their captain and may or may not be interrogated by the Chinese military.
A: I'm glad I've never been put in that position. I'm sure that they are all nervous, scared, wondering how long this is going to go on, what's going to happen next, how their families are doing back home, and trying to figure out what really is going on because they probably don't have any clue what is going on in the rest of the world. They may not have any idea of what the Chinese are telling exactly what happened and they are probably giving the bare minimum of information that they can, if they are being questioned and doing everything they can to protect any classified information they may have so that they don't divulge anything that they shouldn't have.
Navy Capt. Ray Leonard logged more than 3,000 pilot hours in EP-3Es like the one that was forced to land in China. He had three tours in the aircraft between 1975 and 1990, based in Rota, Spain; Guam; and various bases in Europe and the Far East. In Guam, he was in VQ1 squadron, the same squadron as the 24 crewmembers stranded in China. He retired from the Navy in 1998.
Leonard flew reconnaissance missions targeting Soviet Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union. He was often "buzzed" by Soviet fighters, usually Su-15s or MiG-23s. He never flew missions targeting China.
He flew the EP-3E Aries I model. The Aries II model (like the plane in China) carries updated reconnaissance equipment, but the plane itself, and its handling, are identical to the Aries I.