Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Trainer Jet Crash

AF trainer jet crashed near runway at Montgomery AL airport tonight. Both pilots killed. Was enroute to Pensacola FL from Columbus MS. So sad for the families of service members.

Sad to hear. What type aircraft are they using for training now? When I was at Columbus they were flying T37s andT38s.

T - 38 Talon

Really? Long of tooth. I've been gone from there for 50 years.

No details yet, but Maxwell AFB in Montgomery is a popular stop for cross-country training flights out of Columbus. The T-38 certainly is long in the tooth, having been the AF's advanced trainer for 50 years now. As I discussed in the thread about dream jets, it is a difficult jet to land (it has flight characteristics similar to the F-104) and this accident happened at close to dusk, a difficult time to fly.

I would not be surprised to learn that the student - making his first landing at a strange airfield - misjudged things in the failing light and simply flew it into the ground, too late for the IP to make a correction. That assumes the accident happened on landing, which has not yet been stated anywhere. We'll see.

good insight rock. i think they had those at barksdale in the 80's when i was there. looked like a fighter with a different paint job.

F-5 Freedom fighter when the arm them up

Hey Rocky. As a Navy vet, do you remember your squadrons competing for the LTJG Bruce Carrier Memorial Maintenance Award. Bruce was my best friend in HS. We went to different colleges but stayed in touch and got together as life allowed. I knew his parents well and visited them numerous times after he died. As I remember, everything that could go wrong did go wrong during his last flight.

I'm an Air Force vet, good sir, so I would not recall that. Or the fine aviator. There are three or four Navy guys on the board who might.

My mistake. Forgive me please.

None needed. I take it as a kind of misplaced compliment, Naval aviators being the apex of aviation. Or at least claiming it, LOL!

If I remember correctly, flying an A-4 Skyhawk off the boat, he had a hydraulic failure which led to a failure to extend of some kind with the landing gear and/or flaps. I think I remember that when he tried to tank the refueling probe broke off so he had no way to take more fuel. The decision was finally made for him to eject. When he tried to eject the ejection seat failed. Then he radioed that he was was going to try to bail out. The procedure called for jettisoning the canopy, releasing the seat and then rolling inverted with full nose down trim which would let the pilot fall out of the cockpit.

I think it was either the ship was watching or another aircraft that was watching and they saw the aircraft roll inverted for a few seconds, roll back upright and then do it a couple more times but he was unsuccessful in getting out.

Eventually the aircraft ran out of fuel, flamed out and he was killed when he tried to ditch. Never recovered his body. I think it was in the mid-70’s in WestPac. Sad, sad story with multiple failures all the way around.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/...led-in-training-flight-crash-in-alabama/


Bruce

naviav8r, that's right along the lines of what his dad told me. Thanks for posting.