As Horner searched the roll-in point ahead, he had to watch his airspeed. If he got too fast, he would overrun the man he thought was ahead of him; and if he got too slow he wouldn’t have the right airspeed (about 400 knots) for shooting his guns—the sight picture was based on airspeed and the angle of attack of the airplane. Still, he had no other choice; he slowed down, slowed down, slowed down . . . waiting for the other pilot to call “turn in.” Finally, Horner turned base—since the other guy had to be pretty close to his turn in by then—and hit the power, still waiting for number two to call his turn in to the target. A moment later, at last, number two called, “Turning in.” Horner scanned out toward the target, looking for him. He’s got to be shooting, he thought. He’s got to be shooting. By then, he’d reached the point where he himself had to turn in, still staring out left in the direction of the target. Out of the corner of his vision to his right, he saw something screaming toward him fast and close.

“Shit!” Horner cried out, instinctively pulling hard back on his stick; his F-100 went nose up and slowed—the way a hand does if held flat outside a car window with the wind slapping against it—and the other guy blasted through the space Horner’s aircraft was about to occupy. There was Horner, mushing ahead with his nose high, his plane acting like a water skier when the tow-boat slows down too much. But that didn’t last long, because the nose snapped through and the airplane flipped. Now he was staring at the ground, 3,500 feet below, his airplane in a stall.

Super Sabers were equipped with leading edge slats that worked by gravity; at slow airspeed they came out and gave the aircraft more lift. However, one of his slats had stuck—sand had clogged it—while the other one had deployed. As a result, one wing had a lot more lift than the other, which caused his aircraft to snap-roll and enter a fully stalled condition where there was insufficient airspeed to make the flight controls responsive. His aircraft had just become a metal anvil heading toward the earth. At normal flying speeds, the tail should have provided sufficient control to recover from the dive he had entered, but at his now-slow airspeed, the elevator surface in the tail was not effective.

He said to himself, Okay, pull up. The stick went all the way back to his lap. Nothing happened. The nose didn’t move. He glanced over to the airspeed indicator, and it read close to zero—fifty knots. For all life-supporting purposes, that was zero. He said to himself, Screw me. I’m out of here, and reached over to grab the ejection handles. But then pride took over.