Flying up a blind canyon in a T-28 in Hawaii without enough room to turn around and not enough airspeed to do a loop. Cleared the far end by maybe 50’. Never did that again.
Almost jumping out of an F-4s with jammed flight controls due to a nose tire blowing up in the wheel well at 30k’.
Almost buying it in a T-2 when a flight student got low and slow and I instinctively added power in the back cockpit. He thought I was taking the controls and let go of everything. After the touch down, by coincidence he climbed out and leveled off at the right altitude, etc. and I started taking down my notes. A few seconds later he came up on the ICS and goes, “where are you going sir?”.
“$HIT!!!”, I pulled up at full power and just missed the ground, less than a 100 feet. After I turned to the downwind leg, I can barely breathe and he comes up and says, “ I thought you had it Sir!” That’s when I realized what happened. When I added power, he LET GO of the controls 😳 Soooo, we touched down with NO ONE on the controls, lifted off with no one on the controls and by coincidence the jet leveled off at the right altitude. Fortunately he spoke up just in time. After that I was extremely careful talking about it in a lecture about crew coordination and exchange of controls, and even as a simulator instructor, I was really careful about taking control of the simulator, etc.
