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Is that so? I'm used to that term being used pretty stringently. Very few pilots actually flying current fighters are considered SMEs.

This is going to be an interesting mishap. I won't be surprised if "computers" arise as either causal or contributing.
I was told by colleagues at LM that F-35 is normally pretty forgiving in the VSTOL regime.

Rex
Production/Training Pilot, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (retired)
30 years USAF F-16 driver (retired)

I'm no pilot (color blind) but it seems like he just had a pretty stressful couple of minutes and likely every warning possible was screaming at him. Fight or flight kicked in and he said "she's gonna blow!" and punched.

The plane nearly flipped over once in that sequence. I am pretty sure he thought "If this thing flips and burns, I'm toast."

I always told my student pilots, "If there's ever a doubt about whether to eject, just remember that Uncle Sugar can buy another plane. But not another you."

Ejecting upside down on the ground would certainly suck.

Naw...
Test pilots are issued a wheelbarrow along with their flight gear. Them brass balls get awful heavy, don't want them draggin on the ground.
They should do what we were told they did to Spaniard F-4 pilots years ago. After a rash of ejections they supposedly welded in the ejection seats so they couldn't punch out for minor reasons. Might have just been flightline bullschidt, it did sound reasonable... 😬🤭😁

Regarding the ejection, it's very standard to eject on the ground any time an uncontrolled aircraft is about to "depart a prepared surface." You do not want to roll a fighter on the ground, or at least you don't want to be in it anymore if it looks like you're about to.

Here's the words right out of the F-16 flight manual:

"If it appears that the aircraft will depart a prepared surface above normal taxi speed during an aborted takeoff or a landing and goaround is not possible, eject since breakup of cockpit structure may occur."

That rodeo looked like a pretty textbook example of the above.
Rex

Yup.

My memory may be lacking a bit, but I don't recall any aircraft I flew having a true zero-zero seat. (That means you can survive an ejection at zero altitude and zero airspeed. Probably.)

The T-37 (again from memory) had a "100/100 and positive" seat. you had to have 100 feet, 100 knots and be in a positive rate of climb. And wings level.

The T-38 (memory more foggy) had a "zero 100" seat.

And I don't recall any of the limits of the seat in the AT-33, but it must have been similar to the T-37, being one of the very earliest jets.

The O-2 had no ejection ability. To bail out, I would have had to slide my seat back, unstrap, climb over the right seat, jettison the right door, and then jump - past the rear propeller. Chances? zip.

Would he have been in a safe area after ejection if the aircraft did fireball?

That would depend on wind.

I do not intend to come it the high and mighty here, but I'm pretty sure my fellow jet pilots will agree with me on this: If you have not flown jets - and in particular single-pilot jets - you can not possibly conceive of all that happened in those 10 seconds or so.

Guess they neglected to tell that to Neil Anderson... 😁

THIS. But we'll have to wait for the resident expert to validate our neophyte opinions...

Sitting in front of that huge fan/turbine which is having an malfunction... yeah, probably best to get out of there.

That ejection looks like it would be hard on the body

My boss (for the day. My last day before retring) headed up the F35 testing program for the Air Force. We were talking about ejection the other day. I believe he said that the F35's seat had restraints that pulled your head, arms, and legs back into the seat before firing. He did say that it can be hard on the spine. He never punched out, however.

Will ask him if he saw the footage.

Rocket-powered seats are hard on the spine. The CANNON seat in the T-37, however was ruinous. There was an actual cannon behind the seat, a long rod that went down the barrel connected at the top to the seat itself. When you pulled the trigger YOU were the shell. In training, we all had to ride the seat once. It fired up a vertical rail that stopped you, but otherwise it was identical to the real thing. By actual measurements, you would be anywhere from one to two inches shorter afterwards.

Give me a while and I'll find the photo of me riding that thing. Edit: Found the photo, but having issues with IMGUR this morning. Stand by... Got it!



Note the rack of blank cannon shells to the right of my feet.

Have a cousin that had to punch out of an RF-4 back in the mid-80's. Don't remember many of the details other than it was on fire and that the navigator ejected first. I remember him saying that was the longest 3 seconds of his life. That and you get strange looks from the locals when you walk into the gas station in full flight gear. Him being part of the failed Iranian hostage rescue is a much better story in my opinion.

Ejection seat come in several flavors. In the Viking, we had the ESCAPAC, same seat as the A-4. No straps or "stirrups" like the Tomcat, Prowler, Intruder that used the Martin-Baker, which incidentally, was a much more comfortable seat. Ejections are hard on the body, somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 instantaneous "Gs", thankfully it's only for microseconds, but everyone I know that has ejected actually, albeit, temporarily shrank. But again, please wait for the Orifice at Delphi to validate ....

Here is a good photo on how the seats "go" in a Viking. The back seats go out first, then .5 secs later the front seats go. Notice the steel structure above the seats. Unlike a lot of other jets, our seats go right through the canopy breaking the glass. Pretty safe "zero zero" seat.

[Linked Image]

Incidentally, in my current throes with a bulged disc, every doctor that asked me about my history went " Ah..." when I said I flew jets and pulled Gs. The Physical Therapy guy told me he is treating several F-35 pilots now, and said, "when they're your age, they're gonna be hurting."

When building resume experience theres no time to waste.

Dayum. You guys deserve a medal just for surviving.