Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Two naval aviators killed

Report of two naval aviators killed in crash off Key West:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/14/navy-fa-18-jet-crash-off-key-west-leaves-2-aviators-dead.html

Aw gee, the aircraft is almost intact upside down in the water. Stall and roll? Not a good way to go.

Earlier reports said they punched out and were ok.

That link says "someone" said they were coming back on one engine when the other one blew up.

Low speed, low altitude= bad place to be.

RIP warriors.

Waited too long to get out. Those seats are "zero/zero" (0 airspeed/0 altitude), but one MUST be aware of sink and roll rates, altitude and GTFO FAST.

Yep. When it's time to leave it's time to leave. Give it back to the taxpayer. I can count on one hand Aviators that ejected when they shouldn't have and many many more that stayed too late.

I don't think in our NATOPS checks in the simulator that I ever had one where I didn't face a situation where it was not salvageable and I was forced to pull the handle. It's surprisingly hard decide that. You're going to get hurt to some degree ejecting but the alternative is getting dead.

ow does this work in a two seater, when one goes they both go , who makes the decision?

Damn, always hate to read these. Rest in Peace.

RIP. Damn. Hate this!

It's selectable (except on the A-6). You can select "single" or "crew" eject and again depending on A/C type there is an ejection sequence, but it is very short as in tenths of seconds. In this particular airplane (and Im sure it was briefed this way), the front seater normally calls for ejection and the back seat command ejects both of them. I can't stress enough the issue of knowing your ejection envelope and taking into account roll and sink rates and of course your altitude.

None of the jets I flew were zero/zero. So we had to be even more aware of both sink/climb rates and bank angle. Our absolute minimum was 100 feet with no sink, 100 knots, wings level. If everything worked perfectly, that gave you one swing of the chute before you hit. Probably.

Every pre-flight briefing contained the ejection conditions. I always told the student, "The book says I will order 'Bail out, Bail out, Bail out.' But what you will hear will be 'Ba...' because that's when my intercom cord will disconnect as I go up the rails."

I haven't read about this accident yet, so I won't comment on what may or may not have happened.

Even the A-6 got command eject in it's very last block mod but I'd be surprised if they all got it before they were retired.

In the Prowler, with 4 guys, it was selectable for pilot or both on the front cockpit. Policy was with a NATOPS qualed NFO in the right seat it was in both. Of course, everyone could eject themselves too. Even still, with 4 seats leaving it was sequenced. Left rear (ECMO 3 Position) went instantly then in a .4 second sequence, ECMO 2, ECMO 1 and Pilot so the pilot had a 1.2 second delay regardless. Like the S-3, we went through the canopy so you were going to get cut.

What happened in this mishap no clue but low and slow certainly makes for a short decision loop. The gear was clearly down and they were already single engine. I know what my criteria was if much of anything happened to that 2nd engine in that situation but no clue what the experience level of this crew was. I will actually be surprised if there is not cell phone footage given how populated that area is and that will be very helpful to the mishap board. Also they wreckage will clearly have some engineering investigations done against it.

Wow, 1.2 secs, that's a LIFETIME in ejection life. In the Viking, at "off the cat" airspeeds ~ 120kts (and climbing) 40 deg roll was the outside edge for us in the front seats. Our plane did not have a particularly fast roll rate, but the way we figured it, given reaction time and the .5 sec delay between front and back (they went first and all four went "angled out" so which way the jet was rolling had to figure in your equation), if you were on the "down side" of the roll, you had to pull the handle before the jet reached 30 deg of roll or you were out of the envelope.

This flying stuff, particularly high-performance jets, is complicated, ain't it?

Anyone around here fly trikes (weight-shift aircraft)?

BTW, in a situation like that reported above, is it a fatal mistake to try to just hard-land the jet in the water or on land and hope it doesn't burst into flames or explode? Instead of ejecting, that is.

I think I'd wait to hear more before suggesting they were too late to pull the handle. You can be really low, even with some sink rate and they still work. The seat has vectored thrust to turn it upright and the parachute has a small rocket that shoots the parachute up.

On the other hand, I have a significant list of friends or acquaintances who are dead after pulling the handle in a timely manner and having some other malfunction.

Godspeed to the aviators and their families.

My friend bought an L-39 some years ago and flew it back from the Czech Republic. Bob Lutz, COB of Chrysler bought one at the same time and they flew them back together. Anyway, my friend bought it because his wife was fearful of him having a fatal crash in his P-51 like so many of his friends. So he sold the Mustang and bought the go-fast. He had over 15K hours.

Fast forward 7-8 years and he's down in Alabama filming some training thing for CNN. After he got done he took off to fly here. He got barely got airborne and witnesses said he hit a flock of seagulls and you could hear it in the engine. The jet rolled 90* and he punched out. Didn't survive. Turns out those seagulls were papers and whatnot from his briefcase stowed in the nose compartment. Apparently there is a hatch door that opened like an airbrake and caused the drag. It was either a faulty latch or he didn't check it in pre-flight. Left a wife and two kids.

Rest in Peace Great Warriors.

Thank you men.

Reminds me of the recollection Yeager had in his autobiography.

Iirc, it was a two seat (test?) plane, in trouble, coming in for landing.

One of the crew ejected, the other stayed pat for impact.

Both survived only because of their individual decisions based on the dynamics of that particular situation.

True - A much more advanced seat than the Martin Baker I flew in. The MB was a great seat and had a zero failure rate when used in the envelope and even outside it at times. We had a jet go down at North Island and as it cartwheeled down the runway the single crew in the back seat was ejected and his seat went horizontally across bouncing off sand dunes and still functioned, seat/man sep, ballistc spreader gun etc. He stood up basically unhurt.

Yes. Don't do that.

There's a mode selector in the cockpit that allows selection of who can initiate ejection, it was always set to both and never moved from that position in my squadron, I can't imagine it being any different throughout the Hornet community. Historically in last minute ejection situations it's more often been the WSO (backseater) that's pulled the handle and saved their lives in the two seaters.

The NACES seat used in the Hornet is an extremely good seat, I think it's got a 100% survival record for ejections that were in the martin-baker published envelope. It's a true zero-zero seat and if I remember my timeline correct the canopy goes as soon as the handle is pulled, the rear seat fires at .1 sec after that and the front seat goes at .3 sec. Everyone is clear of the aircraft by .5 sec after initiation. Unless they've changed it there's not thrust vectoring on the NACES seat, it relies upon the drogue chute to stabilize it. I'm sure there have been upgrades since I flew so my info might not be 100% accurate.

Someone asked if you'd ever land in the water instead of ejecting and the answer is no, not me anyhow. The chances of surviving that are slim. I think there have been a couple of cases of F-16's dead sticking onto the runway after an engine failure on short final but for the most part the answer to that is no too, with any altitude most guys would choose to eject and take their chances with the seat.

The mishap investigators will go through this with a fine tooth comb and figure out what happened and invariably after an accident you'll get the talking heads on CNN trotting out some "expert" that declares that it's obviously a defective spitzer valve that caused it. The truth is that nobody will really know until the investigators do their jobs and that takes time, at least a year usually before the report is released. Then the lessons learned can be taken from it and any changes implemented. It's usually pointless to speculate on what happened because 99% of the time that turns out being wrong. What other guys here are saying about not waiting too long is correct. Ejections are extensively studied and I remember it being pounded into us in training that the #1 factor in a successful ejection was the timely decision to eject. When it's time to get out, do it now.