Right now I have no further information. Crews are searching for the pilot.

Damn.... Sorry to hear that. Hope the pilot was able to eject and they'll find him safe.

The Q thread has a bunch of stuff on this event.

https://www.uppermichiganssource.co...g-the-delta-and-schoolcraft-county-line/

In a remote area in the Hiawatha National Forest about 10 miles west of us. Fortunately, no snow yet, last year at this time we had 36 inches of snow on the ground. As of 8:15 am EDT, per scanner, still searching for the pilot.

Thick forest - I've fished the lakes in there quite often.

Hope they find the pilot alive and well.

ASSUME he landed in a tree..if unhurt, and he made it to the ground...should have not had a problem making a fire. Taught about tree landings , but I never had the experience, thankfully!
BTB, day or nite ejection?

What does Q have to say about it?

I don't know.

FAA has a temporary flight restriction setup there now.

Why would they do that? Or is this normal?

Proly to get people out of the way of search aircraft?

Makes sense.

Not a pilot but that makes sense to me. Want people looking out the window on the ground, not for other traffic in the sky?

It's big timber and a crash isn't going to be easy to find. Heck, they're still looking for some rally cars that went off course back in the 70's (?) that no one's found yet.

What’s the Q thread?

Sessions will rescue him.

Here is the ongoing twitter activity.

https://twitter.com/search?q=115th%20fighter%20wing&src=typed_query

Strange they have not found the pilot. Don't they carry personal locator beacons? The must!

You would think so!!

I used to live up there, I have relatives all over that area. There's lots of cabins and such in the woods that a person could find/seek shelter in. There's also a few hundred lakes in the area. If this happened at night and he came down in a lake he would be in big trouble. If they haven't found him yet, that may be what happened. Prayers for the pilot...

They've found the ejection seat five miles from the crash site, still looking for the pilot.

Would almost mean that the pilot lived? Could he be separated from the seat without walking away?

Don't they separate from the chair after clear of the plane.

The AN/URT-33 beacon we had in our seat pan was not the most reliable. If the clip that attached to the cockpit floor become detached it wouldn't go off automatically and we had a lot of batteries "test" good but in rework they found that their life in use was much shorter than advertised and I'll bet it's a lot worse in the cold.

He will have a survival radio, if it didn't rip off in the ejection (no idea what the USAF vest is like or if it was a high-speed ejection and he's conscious)

I have high hopes he's wrapped up in his chute waiting to hear someone overhead to shoot off a flare.

The pilot, his chute and the seat pan separate. The rest of the seat is discarded and I assume that's what they found. In the Martin Baker seat I flew that happened @ 13,000' +/- 1500'. You were actually blown clear of the seat by an airbag. Ejection seat are incredibly complicated. Ours had 23 different functions that happened in sequence and incredibly (for a British product!)) we never had a failure used in the approved envelope.

The seat separates from the pilot after ejection, that's what initiates the chute opening. The pilot most likely drifted away from the area where the seat landed. Winds were 10mph out of the wsw last night. Praying he didn't land in the water. MSP helicopter is now onsite, KC-135 is in orbit overhead. Lack of radio contact isn't good.

Rumor has it he had hot guns onboard. Aircraft didn't burn.

This is actually the second time an Air Force jet has crashed in the U.P. I remember in the late 50's or early 60's that
a F86 sabre Jet crashed in the Ensign area of the Stonington Peninsula. That jet crashed on the edge of my uncles property, he was the first one on site before the authorities arrived.

Our seat had a "butt kicker" which was actually a web strap that went from behind your head to the front of the seat pan. When it activated, it simultaneously opened your seat belt and wound up the web strap, thus propelling you from the seat. At low altitude, a tether pulled your parachute. At high altitude, you disconnected the tether so the parachute wouldn't open until you fell down to 10,000 feet.

All operations in our seat were powered pyrotechnically i.e. by explosives. We were boosted out by a cannon shell (the seat was the "bullet") driving a piston out of a tube. Before that, the canopy was blown off. And the butt kicker activated after a short delay to allow the seat to clear the tail of the plane. Rocket-boosted seat like the Martin Baker gave you a less violent ride, but in a tandem aircraft, the front seat rocket could roast the back seat guy. That's why the system was programmed to eject the rear-seater first - and also allowed the front-seater an extra second to fly the plane.

If they found the seat five miles from the impact site, we might assume that the pilot ejected at some reasonable altitude and stands a good chance of making it down okay. Assuming everything after seat separation worked.

Crashed at 8pm EST near Stueben in the Hiawatha NF. Big woods there with many small lakes. Not a lot of roads.

Prayers for the pilot.

Seney NWR is due west ( western winds last night). Not much access and it’s mostly wetland/boggy area.

No or very little cell service there either.

The big swamps of Seney are east of Stueben.

Yep, sorry. Meant to say a west wind may carry the chute westerly to Seney if the altitude was high enough.

Sonuvabitch!

Lolol.

A good sign, I hope you're right!

Search area is south of Shingleton.

Isn't that froze up enough to walk on now?
We're ice fishing in northern Minnesota.

MSP is searching small lakes ☹

Getting access to those lakes is hard much less searching them.

Damn - hope this guy is alive and okay. Could VERY easily be but it's a remote/wild area. I've fished a few of those lakes - rough country to get access to.

Need to get the Michigan SxS fleet out there, get searchers into the areas.

I pray the pilot is OK

TFR: NOTAM 0/1981

Start - December 09, 2020 at 1500 UTC
End- December 16, 2020 at 2359 UTC

AA/AD
Center: On the SAWYER VOR/DME (SAW)
118 degree radial at 37.8 nautical miles.
(Latitude: 46º06'00"N, Longitude: 86º34'14"W)
Radius: 10 nautical miles
Altitude: From the surface up to and including
26000 feet MSL.

Ever heard of helicopters?

I'm sure that area is heavily logged. There are no doubt a matrix of forest service roads.

UP muzzleloader season is on; had it been during daylight there is a decent chance someone would have seen the chute coming down.
I’ve grouse hunted quite a bit in that area - there is some dense and remote [bleep] in that region.
Hope he is found alive and well.

Lotta isolated country up there. The red circle is the temporary flight restriction.

It's a huge chunk of area Pugs.

I drove the length of FFH 13 this summer - takes a couple hours and that's cranking along above the posted...

It really is very dense, old woods that has areas of logging but not a lot. Roads are seasonal - only mildly maintained if at all.

If he paid attention during SERE School, and doesn't die from exposure, he'll be OK.

Assuming he wasn’t injured in the ejection process. My understanding is it can be a fairly violent affair.

It’s curious to me that they don’t have a PLB on their person under their flight suit. One of the first things you learn in level one avalanche classes is that your avalanche beacon needs to be under your external clothing as things get ripped off in a big hurry during an avalanche. I would assume the same could be true for the ejection process, and I would want to have one inside my flight suit I would think - but maybe there is a good reason not to. Perhaps Pugs can weigh in.

The weather isn't as bad as it could be. 45 now night low of 30 tonight. It could easily be 20-30 degrees colder most years.

An ejection, especially at speed, is a highly violent affair. I had a friend who ejected somewhere above 450 kts in an out of control jet, he has no recollection of the event. Two dislocated and broken legs, broken hip, ruptured spleen, broken arm and shoulder and compressed spine. Only because a coast guard helo was on a training mission nearby did he get out of the Pacific before he died. He eventually flew again but it was sometime. The rest of the crew died.

I'm sure he had a survival radio (we had the PRC-112) with a beacon on his body in his vest but I don't know how secure it is in the USAF vest. Ours was in the compartment under the yellow tab on my vest (which was attached to the shroud line cutter). There are incidences of it being ripped off in high speed ejections.

Thanks Pugs.

Cool, Pugs!

BTW, what do those missiles painted on the side of your aircraft represent?

TFR reduced from 0/1981
Dec.09, 1500 UTC (10nm/26000)

NOTAM 0/2416 (Dec.09, 2020 at 2050 UTC)
Location : MUNISING, Michigan
Beginning Date and Time :
December 09, 2020 at 2050 UTC
Ending Date and Time :
December 16, 2020 at 2359 UTC

AA/AD
Center: NAVAID() (Latitude: 46º06'00"N, Longitude: 86º34'14"W)
Radius: 3 nautical miles
Altitude: From the surface up to and including 5000 feet MSL

I was happy to hear they found the seat, but not happy to hear the ejection was over marshlands. Fingers crossed.

AGM-88 HARM missiles we shot in Kosovo hunting SAM sites during Allied Force.

After almost 24 hours and no beeper, no voice, it is beginning to sound not good.

Do you know by damage assessment if you were successful in destroying those SAM sites? Hopefully your kill percentage is 100% but in reality I know it can be variable.

On another note, nice job helping Hatari and Mr. Ernie! 👍

Unsubstantiated word on one of the pilot sites was there was no ejection. No idea about the report of the seat.

SA6? 2K12 Kub?

hey man. I worked Intel at Aviano during the Kosovo bombing. I'm Air Force but we briefed the Navy and Marine crews there.

Collected the whole set but . 6's were our primary target - the Hornets and F-16 could handle the easier SA-2 and 3. The 6's were the experienced operators and had been modified and we had a much greater capability than the single seat guys to customize the missile targeting to defeat their countermeasures,

Then I'm sure we saw each other during strike planning. That pic was Aviano.

I know you guys put a hurting on them that FORCED them to get much quicker when they wanted to use them.

Local news media from that area stated that the search for the pilot was still ongoing at 17:30 local. A couple of choppers outfitted with FLIR were on scene.

It's a very small world in the services. re: pugs at Aviano.

They will search until they find him or her. Either way.

Yep and I had a pard that was there in the Navy at the time. He was a seabee by trade but I don't know what he was doing there exactly. Heard he was some O-7's jeep jockey - so to speak.

I worked intel on the area in question long after the bombing was over.

Seems like I remember talking about this before with you. Can you believe that's been 20 years? Since then I've been in Iraq and Afghanistan and a couple other sh#@holes.
The Serbs were were really good at playing hide and seek with those 6's.
The Marine's didn't appreciate the "cable cutter" comments either. Hope that guy is ok but time isn't on his side.

Sure wish we could hear some positive news about this pilot.

Watched the news here this morning, they have not said anything about the F-16 or the pilot. Anyone hear if they found the pilot yet?

I'm would really like to hear more as well.

Nothing new to report as of an hour ago. Still searching.

I know that country well. Pretty remote and rugged.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/wisconsin-air-national-guard-f-142033813.html

Article dated 12/6 7:20am (yesterday morning) says the pilot is still missing. I'm not familiar with ejection protocols, Cessna 172's didn't have that option when I flew them. I'm assuming the pilot ejected based on the comments he's missing, otherwise there would be a body at the crash site. I spend a lot of time in the UP as a kid, it's remote and heavily wooded, but I can't imagine the pilot can't ping a cell tower. I also assume his ejection seat and on-body flight equipment has a radio of some sort, maybe even an EPIRB. That leaves only two options, he's dead hanging in a tree somewhere, or he's alive and does not want to be found. What does the fire think?

The place is riddled with logging trails. Even an amateur outdoors man could find there way to a main road.

When there isn't a lot of snow here we've loaded up our sleds and gone to the U.P. for long weekends. As long as you have enough fuel with you you can go for days. Plenty of trails and easy to get lost if you don't have a GPS.

Just announced, the pilot died in the crash.

Damn.
RIP.

That's what many of us expected to hear. Sad, sad, sad.

An F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 115th Fighter Wing takes off from the Truax Field Air National Guard Base in Madison.
File photo/Wisconsin Air National Guard
An F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 115th Fighter Wing takes off from the Truax Field Air National Guard Base in Madison.
MADISON (WKOW) -- The Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 115th Fighter Wing has announced the death of the F-16 pilot who crashed Wednesday in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

In accordance with Department of Defense policy, the 115th Fighter Wing will not release the pilot’s identity until 24 hours after notifying the service member’s next of kin, according to a news release.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family during this difficult time,” 115th Fighter Wing commander Col. Bart Van Roo said. “Today is a day for mourning, and the 115th Fighter Wing along with the entire Wisconsin National Guard stands with the pilot’s family as we grieve the loss of a great Airman, and patriot.”

“We are an extremely close knit group at the fighter wing, and the loss of one of our own brings immeasurable sadness to every member of our organization,” he said.

The crash occurred within Michigan’s Hiawatha National Forest during a training mission Tuesday night. A multi-state, interagency search for the pilot and aircraft immediately followed the crash. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Bad news indeed.

Damn. I was hoping for the best.

Sad news, dangerous job, RIP

Sorry to hear that. Best wishes go out to comrades and pilot's family.

Thank God this Country can still produce patriotic young men with the courage to strap themselves into a fighter jet. R.I.P.

Amen

Sorry to hear that. RIP

Another hero not acknowledged by the MSM. RIP Sir.

Pilot Dies in Michigan F-16 Fighter Jet Crash

clic pic for Military.com story

Wisconsin Air National Guard, F-16 Fighting Falcon preforms practice missions using an inert, 500 pound bomb at
Fort McCoy, Wis., July 13, 2016. (U.S. Army/Spc. John Russell)

This just sucks.

RIP

"The crash happened during a routine training mission Tuesday evening. Officials with the 115th had said on Sunday that the wing was conducting night drills Monday through Thursday, and that residents should expect to see aircraft flying in the area."

There's never anything easy about maneuvering your jet at night over dark areas and trying to accomplish the mission. It's demanding and unforgiving of mistakes. RIP fellow Aviator.

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/f-1...ssions-last-year-in-afghanistan-1.655024