By Ben Forrest | May 1, 2024
Estimated reading time 1 minute, 18 seconds.
Chris Hadfield hit the F/A-18 throttle so hard his hand split open and bled.
It was the early 1990s, and the decorated Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) fighter pilot and future astronaut was an exchange officer with the U.S. Navy at Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, pushing the Hornet beyond its known limits.
The aircraft tumbled intentionally out of control and fell 10,000 feet in 30 seconds before Hadfield pulled it out of a gyrating descent that could easily have wrecked the jet and ended his life.
Still, he believes the result justified the risk.
At the time, too many F/A-18s were crashing, and the Navy didn’t understand why. Hadfield pressured his superiors to run an intense out-of-control testing program to find a better way forward.
Continue reading this profile in the February/March 2024 issue of Skies magazine.
