06/28/2004. Remarks by Howard Rundberg: "I had an unusual ride in an F3D-2M, the Sparrow-I Missile version. We went to about 40,000 ft (12,192 m) and I was taking colour pictures with a Rolleiflex. The procedure on a test hop is to shut down and restart the engines one at time. The pilot somehow shut down both engines and there was no electrical power -- it got very quiet. He was unfamiliar with the -2M model which had a DC (direct current) generator only on one engine because there was an AC (alternating current) generator on the other engine to power the missile system. We were coming down at the rate jets glide and I considered bailing out if we got down to 10,000 ft (3,048 m).

The pilot finally got one engine air-started and then the second. We went back up to altitude for the remainder of the hop. I was rewinding the camera when we started to let down. I looked out the side of the canopy and didn't see the ground, I asked what our attitude was and the pilot pointed straight ahead. I looked forward through the windshield and saw the salt works in the South Bay. By then the speed was up to critical Mach and when the dive brakes were extended the airspeed dropped quickly to about 350 kt (403 mph, 648 kmh). We went smoking into the break over the numbers for runway 29 and the prop planes we passed appeared to be going backwards."