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On Sept. 21, 1956, young U.S. Navy test pilot Tom Attridge took off in an F11F Tiger (BuNo 138620) from Long Island, New York, for a weapons test over the Atlantic. He climbed to 20,000 feet, started a Mach 1 dive, and fired two bursts of rounds from his 20mm cannons until the ammunition was expended at 13,000 feet. He continued his dive, and around 7,000 feet something powerful struck his windshield. Thinking it must have been a bird, he quickly realized he had a big problem on his hands—his plane was losing power.
Pulling up, he throttled back to 230 mph and began a return to base. Unable to maintain altitude, he attempted to apply more power, but the power would not exceed 78%. The plane went down into a sea of trees approximately a mile shy of the runway, traveling 300 feet and catching fire. It was a total loss. Attridge suffered a broken leg and several broken vertebrae but thankfully survived. As he later learned, it was not a bird that took him down. As it turned out, the crash was caused by a far more surprising source: his own rounds