What do you think happened?

The bounce and then immediate pitch down instead of reducing throttles screams diversity hire. I loved that they decided to eject instead of cut the throttles even after breaking the nose gear off.

We'll know in a few months, so if they withhold the name of the pilot like they did when that woman smacked the ramp and sank one in the south china sea, or release the name and indicate mechanical issues. Generally though, mechanical issues happen surprisingly, and this seemed to be training/drills, and someone was enjoying recording the exercises.

"screams diversity hire"

Ouch! How much does an F 35 cost?

Less than a Super Hornet or Strike Eagle with sensor pods.

Safest fighter ever flown.

You flew one of those too?

Sssshhh, don't tell anyone... but he was the Ghost of KIYV.

It’s clear he’s logged many hours in the preeminent fighters. Probably an instructor or test pilot.

LOL. I get the fan fair.

I do LR hunting and cutting edge suppressors.

Only so much time. But I am pretty much SME on current fighters.

It's all good! A little speed tape, a dab of super glue & baking soda and she'll be FMC by this afternoon... 👌

😁😅😅🤣🤣🤣

'
"At the Pentagon, a spokesman said that the aircraft was being flown at the time of the crash by a U.S. government pilot, although it had not been transferred to the military yet by manufacturer Lockheed Martin."

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/pilot-ejects-from-f-35-at-fort-worth-joint-reserve-base/3149776/

who do you think they based the movie Top Gun Maverick from ( on here he is incognito)

I would have to defer to the actual pilots opinions that have flown combat aircraft here on the forum but it would seem there are too many mishaps with that platform. It could be pilots or malfunctions but whatever the case those things cost a lot of money to be wrecking.

Less than a week of financing Zelensky.

Except for Putin and Zelensky.

I took a good look at the video and had to ask myself why eject as it appeared the jet had come to a full stop. The only thing I could possibly figure is the throttle was somehow jammed. Obviously don't have all the facts but just looking at the video, it does give me pause as to why he decided to punch.

That's resume builder material......crashed a jet, ejected from a jet.....flew pre release jet.

Probably going to omit the fact that it all occurred in the same half minute.

One line of bad code in a flight computer and kiss $115 million goodby.

The Marine version of the F-35 (like this one) is the most complex, and most difficult to fly. If this was an acceptance flight by a company guy, I am going to assume that he intended to do a "bounce and go" type landing. Touchdown went normally. However, when the power was advanced to take off, the lift fan did not appear to advance or lagged the main engine. That produced the tail lift and nosedown.

After that, it gets hard to analyze. Questions are: why did the power stay up? why did he choose to eject?

I won't second-guess his ejection decision. The power anomaly and possible fan anomaly however are very curious.

The F-35 is one of the safest jets ever flown, based on accidents per flight hour. The bugs that some people keep quoting were rectified years ago. The F-35s based here in Utah have been flying combat missions in the Middle East for several years now, with good results. I speak with F-35 pilots often, and they are unanimous in their praise of it.

BTW, I'd bet that one is repairable. Better yet, they have all of it intact to do the investigation.

They charge extra for that zero altitude ejection test don't you know....

I was thinking the same thing, kind of odd timing to eject. He definitely wanted out of that bird!

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.

Here's one of my worst fears, lost brakes whilst taxiing. All for got out.

The B model has an auto-eject function in the event of lift-fan failure.

Source: an active duty Marine F-35B pilot.

That makes perfect sense. If the fan failed while in hover, you'd have no time to decide.

There's the answer then. Time marches on. None of the airplanes I flew (or knew of) had an "auto eject" and speaking for myself, I don't think I'd like that.

They waited longer than I would have. If the nose wheel hit the scupper I was pulling the handle and we all briefed it that way. Upside down in the water with 56,000lbs of jet on top of you on the way down to 1000 fathoms is no way to go through life.

In most planes and in most circumstances, I'd agree with you, Jorge. But in this beast, if you lost the fan in hover, you'd pitch nose down so fast you'd be inverted in a heartbeat - if you were high enough.

In this crash, the fan may have failed just due to sucking up dirt, but it DID pitch tail up at the very beginning, so if the fan failed then, why didn't the seat fire much earlier? And if it didn't fail right at touchdown, why the pitch? Curiouser and curiouser, eh?

Agree. Technically they were out of the envelope, in fact, one of the front seaters played frisbee with the water. The plane floated for close to 30 minutes. Lots of HOT AIR inside those Vikings

Threads like this prove that almost no topic won't have at least a few folks here who know their stuff.

Yep, if that auto eject gizmo works upon fan failure, it should have popped him out earlier. Now I'm really curious.

Not to worry, we still need approval from the subject matter expert to validate....

Allegedly, the auto-eject function is inhibited by a weight on wheels switch… for whatever that’s worth.

What happens when you only have two wheels left? A WoW disable feature makes sense. Our own NATOPS didn't direct but clearly warned that ejection was recommended departing the prepared surface as it took very little angle of bank or nose down to out you out of the approved ejection envelope. I can see given the wild ride this guy had just been through that he thought stepping outside was the best answer especially if he couldn't tell if the ride had stopped.

I have several friends who survived ejecting, some with serious injury and disfigurement but alive, and unfortunately many more that didn't pull when they should have. I'll not second guess anyone pulling.

Maybe at the beginning was a failure mode they haven't accounted for or some sort of filtering to prevent 'premature ejection'? Did notice that it didn't eject him sideways into the fence. So either he waited until it was upright or the automatic system waited.

Remember that above all, this was (we presume) an acceptance flight. Meaning it was the first time this plane ever flew.

Something, somewhere wasn't right. That's why test pilots get more than average bucks.

They'll be looking REALLY hard at the previous one built and the next one.

Here are some examples of a/c departing the runway, ejections, etc.

TA-4j with a 0/0 seat
1. ~ 1978. Landing on 19L, NAS Meridian. Dry first half of the r/w, wet on last 3000’ with left x/wind from thundershower. A/C left r/w in a drift and rolled all the way over at least once….both wingtips broken off, top of tail broken off, two gear sheared off and nose cone broken right in front of thr front seat rudder pedals. A/C came to rest inverted and crash crew had to chop both guys out with axes. Both guys had a couple of bruises but no other injuries.

2.~ 1991. Almost identical scenario. Same r/w, dry and then wet from thundershower and left X/W. A/C left the r/w pointed in the direction of travel. Just before leaving the r/w, the front seater initiated ejection. The A/C rolled down a slight embankment, remained upright and other that the burned area in and around the cockpit from the seats, the only damage was a slightly dented slat from bumping into a tree. The front seater survived and the rear seater who was just riding along on an ACM hop was killed due to a seat malfunction.

3. 1987. Student landing on r/w 26 late in the afternoon after a bombing hop out of NAF El Centro, Ca. Student missed the r/w off the right side. He rolled for about 1700’ in the Caliche befor he figured out something was wrong. No $hit Sherlock! 😳 He took it around and came back around for an arrested landing. No damage other than a couple of dents on the right flap from gravel being kicked up. His reason for landing off the r/w was, “the sun was in my eyes,” That was the student’s last hop in a Navy jet. See ya!

4. ~1978. Replacement pilot landing an F-4J at NAS Oceana on 32 right in pretty crummy weather. Broke out high and right on the approach. He made a play for the r/w, landed on the r/w but wasn’t lined up with the r/w. The a/c left the r/w on the left side, spun around a couple of times and came to rest upright, missing a couple of landing gear. No injuries to the crew but that a/c didn’t fly for a couple of years. The “nugget” got his call sign that day….His last name was Brown so after that incident, he was now “Farmer” Brown because he plowed up so much dirt. 😁

5. ~ 1980. F-14A with a similar mishap at NAS Oceana. Crummy weather, broke out lined up to the right, made a play for the r/w, landed on the r/w but wasn’t aligned with the r/w and ran off the opposite side. A/C remained upright and crew stayed with the aircraft with no damage to the airframe but it did destroy an engine which, IIRC was about 1 1/2 million bucks.

6. F-18 flown by very experienced O-5 with minimal time in the Hornet landed on wet r/w and a/c left the r/w, rolled over and came to rest inverted. Pilot suffocated because he was resting on his head and neck.

7. Date…late 1990s. T-45 departed the r/w due to not correcting properly for a crosswind. Aircraft left the runway at <70 kts and remained upright after a bit of a bumpy ride. Student pilot ejected safely after initiating ejection just after leaving the runway.

Soooo, what’s going to happen when an a/c has a problem on landing? Hard to say, but if a jet is pointed one way but actually traveling another, that’s when bad things can happen. But, if not at high speed and it’s pointed in the same direction it’s traveling they generally do ok. Just my thoughts on it

In general, the way most guys approach an excursion from the runway is if you’re going to eject, you want to do it before leaving the hard surface to ensure you have a good vertical ejection vector.

Seats have gyros and vanes installed to immediately upright the seat before drogue chute deployment/man-seat separation. As to the WoW switch, that thing controls a LOT of systems so it makes sense it disables the "auto ejection" but still, glad we didn't have it.

Very interesting reading this thread. It is great to get the inside scoop on this story.

Word on another aviation board from a LM production test pilot.

Pilot did initiate the ejection (military pilot). The jet suffered two simultaneous engine control failures. The first caused the hover test to be aborted and he choose to land and the 2nd ran the engine to mil power and caused the bounce and pitch over. Left with no way to get out of mil power other than shut down and wasn't sure it would so he punched out.

Makes sense to this ASO.

Pugs,

That's pesky software....

Looked exactly as described.

Was gonna make a comment about technology,
But on a bad day you can break a wheelbarrow or hammer.

That fellow was having a fairly bad day!

Glad he's ok. When things go bad in a landing I suppose things really go bad.

Any word on the condition of the pilot? Appeared he might have a rough landing.

I still want to know whether that "auto eject" function is accurate.

Call sign "Cadaverick".

I’ll bet that at some point in the development process some engineer claimed that, “it’s impossible to have simultaneous failures of those two systems.” 😊

A quick internet search finds other sources, including Martin Baker.

“ A unique feature of the US16E is the trio of airbags that inflate in a two-stage process to protect the head and neck of the F-35 pilot, wearing the large helmet-mounted display, upon ejection. Also of note, the F-35B version of the Lightning II has an auto-eject mode. This is designed to function in the specific instance where the STOVL aircraft is in the hover, and the shaft-driven lift fan fails.

In that case, the jet is likely to pitch down sharply, quicker than the pilot can react to fire the seat manually. It will therefore fire automatically while the possibility of escape remains.”

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2015-06-15/martin-baker-saving-lives-family-way

Exactly as I surmised somewhere up above.

Too many Chinese computer chips weighted it down!

Forgot about that huge, heavy helmet and G forces on ejection. Back to the "auto issue", it must also address overall body/limb position before ejection, especially the head snap when the seat initiates.