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At 10:30:07 AM PST on 15 Nov. 1967, Adams commanded launch release from the B-52 mothership. Falling away from the pylon, Mike immediately moved the XLR-99 rocket engine throttle out of the idle detent position, smoothly and quickly pushing the X-15 to 100 percent thrust. Four seconds later NASA 1 (X-15 Mission Control) radioed "Rog, we got a good light here Mike." Adams did not respond o further radio calls for nearly two minutes.
Adams angled upward through the stratosphere, heading to the top of his ballistic arc in the mesosphere. When Mike passed through 140,000 feet, with eighty-two seconds on the mission clock, he delayed the XLR-99 shutdown four seconds longer than planned. The extra seconds imparted an additional velocity of 136 feet per second, causing an overshoot in altitude of 16,000 feet.
This configuration of X-15 no. 3 had two six-foot-long pods mounted to the tip of each wing. On the left were experiments which opened at high altitude. One was a micrometeorite collection box, while the other was a solar spectrum measurement device. The right tip pod held an extendable probe known as the bow shock standoff measurement experiment. It was later found that the drive motor on this probe had not been properly checked in an altitude chamber, and electrical arcing occurred above 80,000 feet. By the time the are craft was climbing through 100,000 feet, the arcing extended to one inch across the exposed experiment terminals, producing a hot blue coronal discharge. The disturbance caused noise in the wiring of the X-15, affecting operation of several critical systems.
Another casualty of the interference was the computer, which started to continually dump and reset - a total of sixty-one times before the end of the mission. It did not go out, as the light was refreshed each time a new dump occurred.
Mike activated the two experiments on the left pod. The nose cap popped down and the micrometeorite collection box extended, while a hatch on the upper side of the pod opened to reveal the solar spectrum instrumentation in a white rectangular box with numerous lenses and mirrors. Telemetry was received on the ground showed Adams was on the planned heading and flight profile, although they could tell his trajectory was slightly higher than planned due to the extra burn time of the XLR-99.
Below is the timeline of the events which followed. All times are Pacific Standard Time:
10:32:24 NASA 1: "Have you coming over the top. you're looking real good. Right on the heading, Mike."
10:32:51 NASA 1: "Over the top at about 261 [thousand feet], Mike."
10:32:54 NASA 1: "Check your attitudes."
10:33:00 [Maximum altitude of 266,000 feet.]
10:33:02 NASA 1: "You're a little but hot [with higher than expected velocity], but your heading in going in the right direction, Mike."
10:33:10 [The nose of the X-15 is now yawing 18 degrees off course to the right. There is no telemetry channel to pass heading data to the control room. X-15 pilot Pete Knight, who was NASA 1 on this mission, and the rest of the team on the ground, have no indication the X-15 is deviating from its intended direction.]
10:33:14 NASA 1: "Okay, let's check your dampers, Mike." [Mike fires the ballistic control jets in the nose and increases his yaw rate to the right.]
10:33:17 Adams: "They're still on."
10:33:20 [X-15 yaw is now 28 degrees to the right of the flight path.]
10:33:24 NASA 1: "A little bit high, Mike, but in real good shape. And, we got you coming downhill now. Are your dampers still on?"
10:33:38 [Yaw is at 90 degrees.]
10:33:39 Adams: "Yeah, and it seems squirrely."
10:33:44 NASA 1: "Okay, have you coming back through 230 [thousand feet].
10:33:49 [Yaw is at 180 degrees, Adams is flying tail first along his flight path.]
10:33:53 [The X-15 enters a high-altitude, hypersonic spin, which lasts for the next forty-three seconds, and three full rotations of the aircraft. Adams tries to correct the soon using the ballistic control system. During this time the aircraft drops 100,000 feet.]
10:33:58 NASA 1: "Let's not keep it as high as normal with this damper problem. Have you at 210 [thousand feet].
10:34:02 Adams: "I'm in a spin, Pete."
10:34:05 NASA 1: "Let's get your experiment in and the camera on."
10:34:10 [Mike switches the ballistic control system back to automatic. Pitch, roll, and yaw jets fire in an attempt to stabilize the X-15.]
10:34:16 Adams: "I'm in a spin."
10:34:18 NASA 1: "Say again." [The X-15 is not spinning with the nose pointed almost straight toward the ground.]
10:34:19 Adams: "I'm in a spin." [Last transmission from Mike.]
10:34:21 NASA 1: "Say again."
10:34:27 NASA 1: "Okay, Mike, you're coming through about 135 [thousand feet] now."
10:34:34 NASA 1: "Let's get it straightened out."
10:34:36 [X-15 hypersonic spin ends. Aircraft yaw is 0 degrees, heading directly into the flight path. Altitude is 120,000 feet. Speed is Mach 4.7.]
10:34:44 NASA 1: "Get some angle of attack up."
10:34:47 [The ballistic control system is turned on and off several times during the emergency. At this moment, it is turned off for the final time.]
10:34:50 NASA 1: "Coming up to 80,000 [feet], Mike."
10:34:52 [The X-15 starts to break up as the airframe is overstressed, pitching up and down at 15 gs. Speed is Mach 3.9, approximately 2,600 mph.]
10:34:55 [Final ballistic control system pulse. Possibly the last act accomplished by Adams as the aircraft is disintegrating around him.]
10:34:58 [All telemetry lost as X-15 no. 3 breaks apart at 62,000 feet.]
10:34:59 NASA 1: "Let's get some g on it."
10:35:14 NASA 1: "Keep pulling it up. Do you read, Mike?"
10:35:20 NASA 1: "Let's keep pulling it up, Mike." [Approximate time when the X-15 impacts the desert in a hilly area to miles north of Johannesburg and four miles south of Ridgecrest and the China Lake Navel Weapons Center. Wreckage is scattered over several miles of terrain.]
Investigation
NASA and the Air Force convened an accident board. Chaired by NASA's Donald R. Bellman, the board took two months to prepare its report. Ground parties scoured the countryside looking for wreckage, specifically the film from the cockpit camera. The weekend after the accident, an unofficial NASA Dryden Flight Research Center search party found the camera, but could not find the film cartridge. FRC engineer Victor W. Horton organized a search and on November 29, during the first pass over the area, Willard E. Dives found the cassette.
The accident board found that the cockpit instrumentation had been functioning properly, and concluded that Adams had lost control of the X-15 as a result of a combination of distraction, misinterpretation of his instrumentation display, and possible vertigo. The electrical disturbance early in the flight degraded the overall effectiveness of the aircraft's control system and further added to pilot workload.
The board made two major recommendations: install a telemetered heading indicator in the control room, visible to the flight controller; and medically screen X-15 pilot candidates for labyrinth (vertigo) sensitivity. As a result of the X-15's crash, the FRC added a ground-based "8 ball" attitude indicator (Horton's idea) in the control room to furnish mission controllers with real time pitch, roll, yaw, heading, angle of attack, and sideslip information.
Navigation to the X-15 Crash Site
Getting to the location can be a challenge, if your not paying attention. There is a BLM Marker on Trona Rd that identifies the X-15 Site. The trail that leads to the site is "RM28".
Turnoff from Trona Rd: 35°25'04.5"N 117°35'34.5"W
Turnoff from Trona Rd: 35°25'04.5"N 117°35'34.5"W
Crash Site: 35°25'11.4"N 117°36'06.5"W
The site is also listed on Geocaching.com
Before getting to the site, you will see this sign. Taking a closer look at the tire holding the sign revealed a 24 ply tire, rated for 210 Knots. On closer inspection, the tire was manufactured in 1968. Since the crash occurred in 1967, this could not be the actual tire from the wreckage, but it is still from the same era. This was an interesting find.
