Eagle Strike
by
Jay Kelley

© 2004   Jay Kelley
All rights reserved

It was the end of August, 1982, and the last day for me of the Prince William Sound salmon seining season. I had leased a Piper Supercub for the commercial salmon fishing season. Salmon spotting in Prince William Sound in those days was a grueling affair. I was spotting for 3 seine boats, and they had me running around all over the sound week after week seven days a week. They fished Monday through Friday and the fishery was closed on the weekends, but not for the spotters. Spotters would survey the sound on the weekends looking for traveling salmon and build-ups of fish in legal fishing areas. These surveys were especially important on Sundays, so the spotter would know where to send his boats for the best fishing on the Monday morning opener.

With the exception of Friday and Saturday nights, I spent the summer out on the sound sometimes sleeping on one of the boats, but more often tent camping near the shores of mountain lakes which were unaffected by tides and allowed for more peaceful sleep. Bears were around and somewhat worrisome, but I was lucky on that score. By the end of the summer I was tired. I had flown over 450 hours during the previous eight weeks and was truly looking forward to finally being home and flying air taxi until herring season the following spring.

I was flying along at 1500 feet heading for Cordova on the last day of the season. It was a sunny late afternoon. The northwest shoreline of Montague Island was sliding along beneath me. As I approached the northern tip of Montague Island to cross Hinchenbrook Entrance I could see miles of low fog stretched out across Hinchenbrook Entrance apparently all the way to Cordova. I decided to take a look underneath it to see if the possibilty was there to continue on beneath this vaporous layer.



I began a 100 mph cruising descent. At 100 mph the speed of the airplane is about 146 feet per second. The time required to travel 2 feet is only a hundredth of a second. Nevertheless, when I saw the full grown bald eagle 2 feet in front the leading edge of my right wing, a clearly enunciated thought went through my mind, “This is going to be a close one.” The words were distinct in my mind, and then WHAP! It hit. The airplane started shaking and wanted to roll hard to the right. I slowed down and held a lot of left aileron to keep it from rolling. The flaps were fluttering up and down through about 20 degrees and the horizontal stabilizer was shaking and shuddering.

I looked out and up at the inboard leading edge of the right wing. There was a jagged hole about three and a half feet long. It looked as if something had exploded outward from inside the wing. There were jagged shards of aluminum sheet metal protruding 2 – 3 inches upward and downward into the slip stream long both the bottom and top edges of the hole.

The airplane was not flying well at all and I needed to land asap. Normally it would have been impossible to land at the mouth of Hinchenbrook entrance because of big waves, but today was an exception. The water was quite calm beneath me, so I landed. That part of the Montague Island shoreline is rocky with no beach or any protected coves. I had to taxi the plane for about an hour and a half along the northwest shoreline of the island and then around the corner into Stockdale Harbor.

When I arrived at Stockdale Harbor, the tide was high and there was no beach, just more rocky shoreline. I shut down the engine and drifted out in the middle of the bay, got out and inspected the damage more closely. The front side of the fuel tank was exposed and undamaged, but the hole in the leading edge of the wing was horrendous. I thought that maybe I could bend those aluminum shards back down into place, tape the hole over with duct tape and still make it back to Cordova safely. I was wrong. That 2025 T-3 aluminum sheet metal is tough stuff. I couldn't begin to bend it. So I decided to try a different solution.

I had a piece of foam rubber that I used in various configurations to relieve tired butt, a common condition among fish spotters who fly hour after hour day after day. I rolled the foam rubber into a cylindrical shape and stuffed it into the hole and then taped it all over with duct tape. It looked pretty weird. The first three and a half feet of the leading edge of the wing had a really strange profile, kind of like the top of a dented mushroom. I decided to try a takeoff. I climbed into the pilots seat, started the engine, gave it full throttle, got up on the step and then into the air. It flew worse than it had just after the eagle strike. It required even more left aileron than before to keep it from rolling to the right, and the shaking was worse. I eased around to the left just a few feet above the water and landed.

There was still no beach showing and it looked as if the tide had risen even further. I shut down the engine about a hundred and fifty feet off shore. From the baggage compartment I extracted my little Danforth anchor with its 12 feet of anchor chain and about 50 feet of line. I tied the end of the anchor line to a braided loop that I had spliced into the middle of a short line that stretched between the floats just in front of the front spreader bar and tossed the anchor overboard in front of the plane. The plane drifted back on the incoming tide and then stopped as the anchor grabbed. There was a reasonable amount of scope to the anchor line and I felt confident that it would hold if the wind didn’t come up.

I got back into the pilot’s seat and turned on the aircraft communications radio, dialed up Anchorage Center and began transmitting, “Any aircraft, do you read Piper 2278 charlie? There was an immediate response from a pilot flying a Lockheed 1011 freighter on a polar route to Europe. “Read you loud and clear 78 charlie. What can I do for you?” I said, “let’s switch to 122.9.” We switched. I asked him if he would contact the Cordova Flight Service Station on 123.6 and ask them if they would call Chisum Flying Service in Cordova and tell them Jay Kelley’s Supercub is disabled in Stockdale Harbor due to a bird strike. “Ask them if at their earliest convenience they can bring some tin snips, a two by four foot piece of 2025 T-3 aluminum sheet metal, a large pair of pliers, a package of cigarettes, a roll of duct tape and something to eat.” The 1011 pilot said “Standby, I’ll call you back in a minute or so.” I switched to 123.6 to listen to my message being flawlessly relayed to the Cordova Flight Service Station. I couldn’t hear the flight service reply, but switched back to 22.9 and waited. Pretty soon the 1011 pilot came back and said, “Chisum Flying will be out tomorrow morning to drop off the items you’ve requested.” I thanked him and began to plan my evening.

The airplane had an extended baggage compartment that would accommodate my sleeping bag fully stretched out. I removed everything from the baggage compartment and piled it up onto the pilot’s seat and unrolled my sleeping bag. I had some shelled walnuts, a few pieces of hard-smoked salmon, a bottle of water and two cigarettes. I ate half of my stash, drank some water, smoked one cigarette and crawled into my sleeping bag for what I hoped would be a decent night of sleep.

Sleep was somewhat fitful at first, but I finally dropped off soundly only to be awakened in the dark of the night by the airplane pitching up and down in the driving rain on three foot waves that had come up due to a small weather system that had blown in from the southeast.

I sat up and looked around and could feel the plane dragging anchor because of the waves and the 25 knot wind from the southeast. There was no beach behind me, only the rocky shore. I hurriedly threw all of the stuff piled on the pilot’s seat back into the baggage compartment, crawled into the seat, fired up the engine and proceeded to ride the anchor line under power. Occasionally the wind would gust from the opposite direction and the airplane would swing around the anchor line in a complete circle. At the 90 degree point to the waves on both sides of these occasional 360 degree swings, the wing tips would be almost touching the water as the airplane got sideways to the waves. This went on for almost two hours.

The tide was going out which finally exposed a fine gravel beach directly behind the plane. At that point I shut off the engine and let the airplane drag anchor until it ran aground on the gravel. It was soon high and dry. I put everything back on the pilot’s seat, crawled back into my sleeping bag and slept soundly until a Chisum Flying Service Cessna 185 buzzed me at about 9:00 A.M. I got on the radio to talk with the pilot. He made a couple of passes at the water to land, but it was too rough for the 185. He informed that there would be a Beaver coming by in a couple of hours and that it could probably handle the rough water. I ate a few more walnuts, finished off my last piece of smoked salmon, drank some more water and went back to sleep for a little while.

At 11:30, the beaver arrived over head made an approach and landed. The pilot beached the airplane a short distance from mine and we unloaded the goodies which included everything I had asked for including a pack of cigarettes and two cold cheese burgers from the Club Restaurant in Cordova. I was grateful. He had several stops to make and took off.

With the tin snips I removed all of the ragged aluminum shards from the edges of that huge hole, placed the aluminum sheet metal over the wing and trimmed it to the correct length. I was able to insert the piece beneath the now trimmed aluminum forming the upper edge of the hole. It was relatively easy to bend the lower edge around and insert it with about an inch of overlap beneath the aluminum at the lower edge of the hole. Now held in place both top and bottom, the only remaining task was to trim off excess from the bottom edge and fit it so that the new aluminum piece properly matched the contour of the rest of the leading edge of the wing. After that, duct tape finished off the temporary repair.

I packed up everything and flew back to Cordova. The airplane flew fine. Thank goodness for decent radios.

© 2004  Jay Kelley
All rights reserved