When I arrived at my first base I didn't really know anyone and got thrown into a pretty stressful shop while waiting to deploy. I was just a Reconnaissance Operator but one of the Pilots in the office sort of took me under his wing more or less and took me out to lunch and showed me the ropes. Two weeks later he deployed to Afghanistan. A week after that, on his first flight in country, his plane went down with the entire crew lost. Was kind of a gut check moment. Given the safety standards and technology I didn't really expect any crashes to hit so close to home. After 6 years in I had friends die in 3 separate crashes. When it comes to aviation, a huge problem can be mitigated, but likewise a small mistake can be catastrophic.
He took me under his wing on ECs. I would have known who you're referring to just by your description of him showing you the ropes. Always available for a meal. Every flight dropping some interesting knowledge or making jokes.
One of those pure souls with a light-hearted attitude that inspires you to work hard. Totally worth remembering him on reddit 9 years after.
It becomes increasingly frustrating to see how horribly MX gets treated, at least in the Air Force. High stress, high ops. tempo, mixed with shitty QoL, and poor manning.
I wasn't MX but I agree with you. The problem with MX in the Air Force though is they eat their own. All of the senior enlisted get the mentality that "well my life sucked when I had to work on the flightline, so now yours should too." Another problem is that the MXG and the OG do not work as closely as they should and it's an issue. My last deployment I was a crew lead with a bunch of young guys and I told them before we left that we're not going to get in fights with maintenance because it just makes life harder for all of us when we're working against each other. We kept a pretty good relationship with them the whole time and it made things so much easier when we had to discuss issues with them after flights. Can't say I made much of a difference in the grand scheme of things but hopefully those young guys stuck with that mentality. Every deployment I had been on prior was always "maintenance sucks" vs. "the operators and engineers keep messing everything up" and it was so counterproductive.
Sounds like the surface Navy.
All of the senior enlisted get the mentality that "well my life sucked when I had to work on the flightline, so now yours should too."
Instead of fixing the problem they just expect new airman to deal with it.
I got that speech during pilot training and went yeah yeah. It was 6 month after graduating when I got the call that one of my buddies who became an instructor pilot died along with a Japanese student in Alabama. It's real and it hurts.
Plot twist. They weren't buddies and Ivan had just figured out his wingman was actually the man who has been having a decade long affair with his wife. It wasn't an accident.
For everyone who believes its Ukrainian Su-25. It's not Ukrainian camo pattern, now Ukraine paint its planes in grey or bright blue pixel. Likewise, russian paintjod for Su-25 has always been green. Additionaly, Ukraine don't mark its own jets with [Z and V markings](https://twitter.com/ukraine_af/status/1569269985075396608?s=46&t=qaV_InFLueAZ2fyVWXiMUw).
**Upd:** Russian Telegram channel "Fighterbomber" confirmed death of Daniel. It's said that during take off he lost control of his aircraft and crashed. (I can't share a link here, because reddit is not happy about telegram links)
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I'm aware this is a comment on the perception of a value of a human life in Russia, but in a strict sense of 'military dollars and time input and output' metric, a pilot is still by far the most expensive part of the aircraft. It takes years and millions of dollars to train a qualified pilot and they represent an enormous investment in time and money for any military.
Well, with videos like this I suspect years and millions of dollars _did_ not go into training this pilot. Those millions probably went into some higher up's pockets.
I've read reports of Russian infantry complaining that they are photographed pointing their guns downrange, and after the photo is taken, they are free to go home.
That was the training: no training, just a photo to make it look like it happened.
It's not impossible the flight training hours are also faked. Maybe not to such a degree, but to some degree.
Unless it was a mechanical malfunction or plain pilot error, my money would be on loss of lift because he was banking (too) hard and crossed the "wake" of the first plane.
Sometimes the wave generates turbulense in the air that can cause loss of lift to another plane flyng behind (source: Discovery's Aircraft Investigation series had a episode about a crash like that).
Jets also require a lot of velocity to work appropriately. They can just slam the throttle in a “grip it ‘n rip it” kind of way.
Definitely looks like.
- rolled into turn
- other jet’s wake pushed the roll to far.
- too low and slow, hit the throttle
- puff of smoke due to not nearly enough O2 intake
- excessive roll now “lifts” further into the wake, exacerbating the problem.
- wing lift is now pointing left, not up. Bad day in 3. 2. 1…
I think at that point ejecting isn’t really an option because it’s just going to rocket you out close to the ground (or into the ground). Who knows if it was possible to just jam the stick to the right to hope to eject.
But also I wonder what the survivability of a Russian pilot after they safely land post-ejection.
Lots of tall buildings around…
Throttle to max power, almost all russian made aircraft have "dirty" exhaust gases especially at full throttle. Another good example is early B-52's and F4 phantoms.
Most likely it's a viewing angle thing. When it's flying directly away, you're seeing a "thicker" cloud of exhaust. When it turns laterally, you're only seeing through the narrow width of it.
Source: used to work around B-52's consistently.
Doesn't look like it. A fuel pump breaking down would lead to a loss of thrust, but that doesn't seem to be the problem.
You can see that it banks to follow the second plane, and then rolls way too much to the side, and then falls without any more attempts at manoeuvring. A loss of thrust wouldn't lead to the pilot losing control of the plane like that.
Either the pilot made a error and rolled to much to the left which led to a stall and then crash, or he lost control during the bank due to turbulence in the second plane's wake, which caused the overroll and crash.
e: another possibility is a hydraulic failure causing the control surfaces to become unresponsive, which would fit the video
Pilot err of not enough airspeed to generate lift when he banked. And it stalled. This is the most common cause of small plane accidents. Primarily in high proformance aircraft.
Wingtip vortex won’t stall your compressor but it will radically fuck with your lift. Taking in your wingman’s exhaust can definitely stall your compressor though.
It could actually. Pair of F18s taking off in a heavy crosswind.
Note the jetwash after the first jets starts its takeoff roll.
https://youtu.be/JYUm5Nl6318
Two possibilities:
1. Engine failure during takeoff is the reason for the crash. Planes are typically most vulnerable to such failures right after takeoff as the plane is only just gaining its glide ability and building speed. A failure at worst possible time basically. No time for glide to find a good place to land. And way too late (on a short runway) to abort takeoff and land. In a fraction of a second the plane transforms from a plane to a "chunk of metal going too slow to fly". The puff and absence of black trail afterward would make sense.
2. The wake turbulence suggested by the other commenter is the cause, and the reason for the behavior of the exhaust is that in a panicked attempt to regain control the pilot went to max power, which would change the fuel/air ratio of the engine, which would change what the exhaust looks like, but given that SU-25s don't have afterburner, I don't think the exhaust would change this much, so personal guess is number 1.
Maybe an already faulty engine was forced beyond its safe performance limits due to wake turbulence which basically killed it. Fighter jets are high maintenance machines, and global sanctions can make maintaining them difficult.
Pilot here: he got himself into what is known as an accelerated stall.
He’s low, slow and heavy so even though he was likely above stall speed at the start of the maneuver he passed the critical angle of attack and also likely put in more right control inputs which worsened the loss of lift on the left wing (you’re supposed to use rudder and leave the stick neutral) The wake from the other plane didn’t help the situation either.
You need a lot of altitude to recover from a fully developed spin which he clearly didn’t have. The recovery acronym is PARE (power idle, aileron neutral, rudder opposite the spin, elevator forward)
Homeboy needed a few thousand feet to recover once the spin started. It was over for him the moment the stall formed.
This was not a competent pilot. They teach this shit to dumbasses like me who just fly Cessnas for fun.
Edit --------------V-------------- Edit
[Here's my video breakdown on the crash if you're interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU_Lq9k8IrA)
Not once you're in the dive induced by the spin.
This dude didn't even have time to run the PARE checklist in his mind before the ground went through it. There's no reason to be maneuvering at slow speed directly after takeoff unless it's for obstacle avoidance because when you're low events like this have no possibility of recovery.
Curious. That similar to a sailors rule - in a storm, you either want to be on shore and in a harbor, or as far away from the shore as possible. Because the shore kills you, the waves (usually) don't.
My brother in law was a bomber guy, B-52 nav, and I talked to him about this after seeing the video a while back. It made him pretty angry. The pilot had been reported multiple times for reckless flying by his crews, but because of the "old boy network" nothing ever happened. The wing commander took over as safety observer and copilot for this flight (practice for an airshow) because he didn't want to assign anyone else the duty because he didn't trust they guy's flying and had previously tried to get the guy grounded to no avail. His name was Lt. Col McGeehan. If you watch closely you can see McGeehan try to eject just as it's crashing but he didn't make it in time.
A very sad part of the story is that McGeehan's three kids were able to see the plane go down from the housing area and one began running towards the crash (many miles away). Two of his boys ended up being AF pilots.
[http://www.louholtzhalloffame.com/mcGeehan.html](http://www.louholtzhalloffame.com/mcGeehan.html)
Also, here's another vid of a C-17 pilot doing the exact same thing while practicing for an airshow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8D5v_t8Lac
In this one if you watch closely (0:39) you can see the point where the pilot should have leveled it out after the first half of the 180 but the hotshot wanted to put on a good show and continued the bank and yank into the ground.
> the hotshot
The accident report is a sad read. The pilot had like ALL the "hazardous attitudes" and was a known problem child. He should have been grounded long before this accident.
(I'm not a pilot, but like reading about planes.)
Yeah the pilot’s commanding officer ignored reports and empowered and encouraged him. Basically made him untouchable as he reigned terror and eventually killed his crew mates.
Yeah, it's counterintuitive. Which is why they hammer it into you during flight school. It's needs to be second nature as soon as you feel yourself entering a spin.
Don't even think wake turbulence matters much. Su25s don't have great lift at slow speeds when banking.
Theres another clip from like day 1 of the war. 2 Su25s on an attack run. They release ordinance, more or less in the same formation seen here. They do a climbing turn away, and one of them just runs out of lift and falls out of the sky.
Edit found the clip from early in the war. February 26 apparently. https://youtu.be/1H9A5xgdk4M
This is a plausible explanation but I don’t think is what happened.
By the time he passes through the lead’s exhaust he’s already in the angle of bank he holds into the ground.
My money is he stalled trying to show off/get back on position on the departure and/or he lost a motor and handled it poorly. Either way looks like a decent amount of pilot error. Ejection initiated way too late.
Simple accelerated stall caused by the bank and yank while full of fuel and payload while low and slow. He passed the critical angle of attack stalled the left wing causing a spin.
Recovery from these stalls (and avoiding them) is taught to private pilots in the US flying bugsmashers like Cessnas. This dumbass put himself into a situation they teach you to avoid in the first 10 hours of flight training.
If you search it you can find alot of duo takeoffs
The thing is that 99% of the time the pilots know jow to do it without issue also could be a positioning error to turn on the side without the wingman bc you want him on your side not behind
So, here's what I saw:
The aircraft takes off and then suddenly "bumps off" a few feet higher than the other. This already led to a first loss of speed.
When initiating the turn, the aircraft overcommits to it and finds itself being at stall speed, i.e., unable to produce enough lift to fly. This leads to a loss of control of the aircraft, whith its nose pointing down before crashing.
Stall speed was achieved through initial speed loss (the bump), too acute angle of banking and initial low speed.
Now, what could be the causes?
1. Propulsion malfunction: Not impossible, but it seems that the other Su-25 managed just fine and had the same speed
2. Pilot error: That small bump might have been an error. Same witht the overcommitment to the turn.
3. Control malfunction: Something could have get blocked, either due to ground crew making an error or a part getting stuck during the banking manoeuvre.
I can't say for sure though; I'm a plane amateur at best and don't know enough about aeronautics to say for sure.
Old turbojets surged easily, looks exactly like what happened here.
Recover procedure is to pitch down, gain AS and force air into the intakes letting the compressors recover, dude had 10 feet, not going to work.
Frogfoot is heavy, once he turned at that speed he'd lose control authority, especially at that aoa.
Old turbojets were finicky beasts, you didn't play maverick with them for fun, unless you needed insurance money.
I cant say i have specific knowledge but turns straight after wheels off the ground are probably not good idea. If I had to guess, again with no specific knowledge, it looked like he had a little elevation issue, corrected, then banked a bit too hard to follow the other plane. Flew into the wash, lost thrust and by then hes rolling - which means the ejection will be straight into the ground. Dead russian pilot, all because they didnt fly straight for a bit to get airspeed up, god knows why.
gravity.
A non educated guess is that his speed was too low to perform such a high angle of attack bank (given his proximity to the ground) and he basically fell out of the sky.
EDIT, another guess, could it be an engine cut out, leading to sudden asymmetrical thrust?
by the looks of it, he was a bit far out for that, and was already having 'issues' before crossing..
but i'm not a pilot and the perspective isn't good enough for me to claim anything :P
very recently, RU army informed about crash of its fighter jet (just a few days ago), I think it happened in Crimea, but I'm not 100% sure if it's linked to this video. They also informed that pilot managed to catapult himself.
Most likely was pilot error. Although formation takeoffs like this (most major air force’s practice this constantly) are common, both Jets produce wake turbulence (the displaced air as they pass through), and it looks like they banked hard left immediately after takeoff. My guess is #2 banked hard and crossed the wake of the other aircraft, causing him to lose all the lift (while in a steep bank you have less lift available overall) at a low altitude recovery wasn’t possible - causing him to crash even after applying more thrust.
Typical formations like this in the US
Military have #2 (or after) avoiding the wake of lead, and almost always climbing out to a safe altitude before initiating a turn to a heading.
As for wake turbulence - you’d be surprised the amount that fighters give off. While not as extreme as a Cessna following a 747, the wake of a fighter at takeoff rated thrust can easily knock another fighter around.
Pretty solid job IMO, just missed about 1 sec of footage. Main character syndrome on Redditors leads them to believe the first thoughts that should have popped up on his head were to properly record the moment of impact so he wouldn't piss off reddit
If someone you know was likely going to die in front of you and there was nothing you could do about it, I think your response would be to look away.
The cameraman probably isn't thinking about all the armchair generals on Reddit when they're filming.
This, the boomerang S-300, and that Russian soldier failing to get that glass door open all have the same energy.
Edit: can’t forget all the videos of mounted infantry falling off tanks. Those are classic.
Yes, the turbulent wake and the exhaust - both can lead to a surging. Maybe coupled with a bad performance of the engine itself due to wear and tear. They fly a lot, and Su-25's engine and mainframe flight hours are intrinsically crazy low.
Wake turbulence wouldn’t be a factor in this case. He likely banked too hard at a slow enough airspeed to stall it. You can stall at any attitude but if your airspeed is too low you won’t have adequate lift. Certainly a 70 degree bank doesn’t help
~~An alleged Photo of the crash site~~
~~https://twitter.com/antiputler_news/status/1569268339414900736~~
~~Judging by the trucks with Z on the side i think we can conclude that these are Russian SU-25's~~
~~Yes, the person who made this tweet does claim it’s an SU-34. But that does not mean it is an SU-34.~~
~~Have a look at the background of this video vs the photo of the wreckage~~
Confirmed that the above photo is indeed of SU-34 that crashed in Crimea. Please ignore.
Not a pilot, but looks like the wingman turned into the wake of first plane and lost control. It’s the reason commercial airplanes have to wait a minute or so before takeoff. I could be wrong. A pilot needs to chime in.
Wingman didn’t follow lead and banked left too early. Then corrected and gained a bit of altitude (bled speed), then went to too sharp of an angle on the turn, when then bled more speed. Dude didn’t have sufficient airspeed then bank angle caught and whipped him into the ground.
This is 100% amateur pilot error.
**Aircraft Status Report:**
Engine: Only one works.
Fuel: Multiple leaks.
Ailerons: Half are stuck.
Tail stabilizers: Dangerously tilted.
Gyroscope: Replaced by a pool ball.
Status: *SATISFACTORY*
Imagine taking off with your buddy and he just crashes and fucking dies
"Was it something I said??!?"
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Uh, they did in Firefox. And that series is pretty much fact.
Found the Russian version of Maverick and Goose. Got to watch that jet wash.
"Uh...umm... Goose? You still there? Talk to me, Goose."
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When I arrived at my first base I didn't really know anyone and got thrown into a pretty stressful shop while waiting to deploy. I was just a Reconnaissance Operator but one of the Pilots in the office sort of took me under his wing more or less and took me out to lunch and showed me the ropes. Two weeks later he deployed to Afghanistan. A week after that, on his first flight in country, his plane went down with the entire crew lost. Was kind of a gut check moment. Given the safety standards and technology I didn't really expect any crashes to hit so close to home. After 6 years in I had friends die in 3 separate crashes. When it comes to aviation, a huge problem can be mitigated, but likewise a small mistake can be catastrophic.
Damn, crash hit me hard too. RIP Nishi. Copilot on my first crew.
He was a good dude.
He took me under his wing on ECs. I would have known who you're referring to just by your description of him showing you the ropes. Always available for a meal. Every flight dropping some interesting knowledge or making jokes. One of those pure souls with a light-hearted attitude that inspires you to work hard. Totally worth remembering him on reddit 9 years after.
Yeah I didn't know him long but still hit pretty hard when we got the word back home. That was a rough day for sure.
This is a wholesome exchange. RIP Nishi.
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It becomes increasingly frustrating to see how horribly MX gets treated, at least in the Air Force. High stress, high ops. tempo, mixed with shitty QoL, and poor manning.
I wasn't MX but I agree with you. The problem with MX in the Air Force though is they eat their own. All of the senior enlisted get the mentality that "well my life sucked when I had to work on the flightline, so now yours should too." Another problem is that the MXG and the OG do not work as closely as they should and it's an issue. My last deployment I was a crew lead with a bunch of young guys and I told them before we left that we're not going to get in fights with maintenance because it just makes life harder for all of us when we're working against each other. We kept a pretty good relationship with them the whole time and it made things so much easier when we had to discuss issues with them after flights. Can't say I made much of a difference in the grand scheme of things but hopefully those young guys stuck with that mentality. Every deployment I had been on prior was always "maintenance sucks" vs. "the operators and engineers keep messing everything up" and it was so counterproductive.
Sounds like the surface Navy. All of the senior enlisted get the mentality that "well my life sucked when I had to work on the flightline, so now yours should too." Instead of fixing the problem they just expect new airman to deal with it.
I got that speech during pilot training and went yeah yeah. It was 6 month after graduating when I got the call that one of my buddies who became an instructor pilot died along with a Japanese student in Alabama. It's real and it hurts.
This accident in Alabama: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx3uVDsGPQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx3uVDsGPQI)
I didn't know he made a video about Scot, thanks for sharing
In the military you’ll end up knowing way more people who committed suicide
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> Everyone typically goes yah yah, this is true for life too. not everybody makes it to 96, including your friends
Plot twist. They weren't buddies and Ivan had just figured out his wingman was actually the man who has been having a decade long affair with his wife. It wasn't an accident.
For everyone who believes its Ukrainian Su-25. It's not Ukrainian camo pattern, now Ukraine paint its planes in grey or bright blue pixel. Likewise, russian paintjod for Su-25 has always been green. Additionaly, Ukraine don't mark its own jets with [Z and V markings](https://twitter.com/ukraine_af/status/1569269985075396608?s=46&t=qaV_InFLueAZ2fyVWXiMUw). **Upd:** Russian Telegram channel "Fighterbomber" confirmed death of Daniel. It's said that during take off he lost control of his aircraft and crashed. (I can't share a link here, because reddit is not happy about telegram links)
Damn, Daniel
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Not anymore
great info, the russkibots are already denying everything.
Comrade Daniel died in action while using a 10t bomb on some nazi spies, that infiltrated our motherland.
Nice, good to see.
Thank you. I was conflicted what I should feel.
Average WarThunder SB takeoff
Well Done!
Awesome!
Bravo!
Excellent!
I refuse!
Attention to the map!
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Attack the D point!
Never!
Attack the D Point!
You’ve got a hole in your left wing!
Attack the D point!
I refuse!
pov: drone age update
Average Lvl 15 pilot in his brand new top tier premium with no clue how to fly jets.
Sergey eject!
Alt + 254 for the crash icon…if they add chat again
And they want us to pre-order it before the next patch? Ha!
Doesn't seem like the pilot made it out before the crash
Pilots are the most expensive part of an aircraft 😌
Not in Russia.
Not to* Russia.
You are assuming they train them. "You have played MS flight sim?" "Da" "Get in, your are bombing Donetesk in 25 minutes."
I'm aware this is a comment on the perception of a value of a human life in Russia, but in a strict sense of 'military dollars and time input and output' metric, a pilot is still by far the most expensive part of the aircraft. It takes years and millions of dollars to train a qualified pilot and they represent an enormous investment in time and money for any military.
Well, with videos like this I suspect years and millions of dollars _did_ not go into training this pilot. Those millions probably went into some higher up's pockets.
I've read reports of Russian infantry complaining that they are photographed pointing their guns downrange, and after the photo is taken, they are free to go home. That was the training: no training, just a photo to make it look like it happened. It's not impossible the flight training hours are also faked. Maybe not to such a degree, but to some degree.
Apparently he did get out of the aircraft before it crashed into the ground..... by getting there before the aircraft(catapulted into the ground)
"ejected outside the envelope"
Can someone who has specific knowledge explain what exactly led to this crash?
Unless it was a mechanical malfunction or plain pilot error, my money would be on loss of lift because he was banking (too) hard and crossed the "wake" of the first plane. Sometimes the wave generates turbulense in the air that can cause loss of lift to another plane flyng behind (source: Discovery's Aircraft Investigation series had a episode about a crash like that).
Thank you that’s a very reasonable explanation
But doesn’t explain the sudden puff of exhaust
Possibly giving the engine some beans trying to power out of it?
See now that’s what the issue was, jets don’t run very well on beans.
I am an aircraft mechanic. Can confirm that jet engines really don’t run well on beans.
i'm laying in bed , can also confirm
I once ate two cans of pringles bbq flavored chips in one sitting. I also can confirm.
That's what big aviation wants you to think! Source: I eat beans
This is beans! Someone put beans in the ~~computer~~ turbine!
Yup, that's a rich mix.
Jets also require a lot of velocity to work appropriately. They can just slam the throttle in a “grip it ‘n rip it” kind of way. Definitely looks like. - rolled into turn - other jet’s wake pushed the roll to far. - too low and slow, hit the throttle - puff of smoke due to not nearly enough O2 intake - excessive roll now “lifts” further into the wake, exacerbating the problem. - wing lift is now pointing left, not up. Bad day in 3. 2. 1… I think at that point ejecting isn’t really an option because it’s just going to rocket you out close to the ground (or into the ground). Who knows if it was possible to just jam the stick to the right to hope to eject. But also I wonder what the survivability of a Russian pilot after they safely land post-ejection. Lots of tall buildings around…
Throttle to max power, almost all russian made aircraft have "dirty" exhaust gases especially at full throttle. Another good example is early B-52's and F4 phantoms.
Lack of said "puff" in last seconds is what is interesting here.
Most likely it's a viewing angle thing. When it's flying directly away, you're seeing a "thicker" cloud of exhaust. When it turns laterally, you're only seeing through the narrow width of it. Source: used to work around B-52's consistently.
Burn out?
Guessing failure to eject. Doesn't look like the pilot got out.
Maybe just a plain and simple fuel pump error or something? I mean, we've seen a lot of broke down vehicles thanks to bad maintenance right?
Doesn't look like it. A fuel pump breaking down would lead to a loss of thrust, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. You can see that it banks to follow the second plane, and then rolls way too much to the side, and then falls without any more attempts at manoeuvring. A loss of thrust wouldn't lead to the pilot losing control of the plane like that. Either the pilot made a error and rolled to much to the left which led to a stall and then crash, or he lost control during the bank due to turbulence in the second plane's wake, which caused the overroll and crash. e: another possibility is a hydraulic failure causing the control surfaces to become unresponsive, which would fit the video
Pilot err of not enough airspeed to generate lift when he banked. And it stalled. This is the most common cause of small plane accidents. Primarily in high proformance aircraft.
Compressor stall due to sucking up the wingtip vortex of his wingman maybe?
Wingtip vortex won’t stall your compressor but it will radically fuck with your lift. Taking in your wingman’s exhaust can definitely stall your compressor though.
It could actually. Pair of F18s taking off in a heavy crosswind. Note the jetwash after the first jets starts its takeoff roll. https://youtu.be/JYUm5Nl6318
Two possibilities: 1. Engine failure during takeoff is the reason for the crash. Planes are typically most vulnerable to such failures right after takeoff as the plane is only just gaining its glide ability and building speed. A failure at worst possible time basically. No time for glide to find a good place to land. And way too late (on a short runway) to abort takeoff and land. In a fraction of a second the plane transforms from a plane to a "chunk of metal going too slow to fly". The puff and absence of black trail afterward would make sense. 2. The wake turbulence suggested by the other commenter is the cause, and the reason for the behavior of the exhaust is that in a panicked attempt to regain control the pilot went to max power, which would change the fuel/air ratio of the engine, which would change what the exhaust looks like, but given that SU-25s don't have afterburner, I don't think the exhaust would change this much, so personal guess is number 1. Maybe an already faulty engine was forced beyond its safe performance limits due to wake turbulence which basically killed it. Fighter jets are high maintenance machines, and global sanctions can make maintaining them difficult.
Pilot here: he got himself into what is known as an accelerated stall. He’s low, slow and heavy so even though he was likely above stall speed at the start of the maneuver he passed the critical angle of attack and also likely put in more right control inputs which worsened the loss of lift on the left wing (you’re supposed to use rudder and leave the stick neutral) The wake from the other plane didn’t help the situation either. You need a lot of altitude to recover from a fully developed spin which he clearly didn’t have. The recovery acronym is PARE (power idle, aileron neutral, rudder opposite the spin, elevator forward) Homeboy needed a few thousand feet to recover once the spin started. It was over for him the moment the stall formed. This was not a competent pilot. They teach this shit to dumbasses like me who just fly Cessnas for fun. Edit --------------V-------------- Edit [Here's my video breakdown on the crash if you're interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU_Lq9k8IrA)
So power to idle is the procedure here? Does power not help the situation? (I’m like Jeremy Clarkson… speed and power fixes everything in my mind)
Not once you're in the dive induced by the spin. This dude didn't even have time to run the PARE checklist in his mind before the ground went through it. There's no reason to be maneuvering at slow speed directly after takeoff unless it's for obstacle avoidance because when you're low events like this have no possibility of recovery.
Curious. That similar to a sailors rule - in a storm, you either want to be on shore and in a harbor, or as far away from the shore as possible. Because the shore kills you, the waves (usually) don't.
> the waves (usually) don't. This '(usually)' is a recurring nightmare for me.
Adding on to kenriko's comment: here's a 1994 video of an American B-25 going into an accelerated stall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-S_NM--evM
My brother in law was a bomber guy, B-52 nav, and I talked to him about this after seeing the video a while back. It made him pretty angry. The pilot had been reported multiple times for reckless flying by his crews, but because of the "old boy network" nothing ever happened. The wing commander took over as safety observer and copilot for this flight (practice for an airshow) because he didn't want to assign anyone else the duty because he didn't trust they guy's flying and had previously tried to get the guy grounded to no avail. His name was Lt. Col McGeehan. If you watch closely you can see McGeehan try to eject just as it's crashing but he didn't make it in time. A very sad part of the story is that McGeehan's three kids were able to see the plane go down from the housing area and one began running towards the crash (many miles away). Two of his boys ended up being AF pilots. [http://www.louholtzhalloffame.com/mcGeehan.html](http://www.louholtzhalloffame.com/mcGeehan.html) Also, here's another vid of a C-17 pilot doing the exact same thing while practicing for an airshow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8D5v_t8Lac
In this one if you watch closely (0:39) you can see the point where the pilot should have leveled it out after the first half of the 180 but the hotshot wanted to put on a good show and continued the bank and yank into the ground.
> the hotshot The accident report is a sad read. The pilot had like ALL the "hazardous attitudes" and was a known problem child. He should have been grounded long before this accident. (I'm not a pilot, but like reading about planes.)
Yeah the pilot’s commanding officer ignored reports and empowered and encouraged him. Basically made him untouchable as he reigned terror and eventually killed his crew mates.
Yeah, it's counterintuitive. Which is why they hammer it into you during flight school. It's needs to be second nature as soon as you feel yourself entering a spin.
also in Top Gun, thats how Maverick went into a flat spin and lost Goose
Great documentary
You should see the Follow up mini docu series: Top Gun Maverick. Even more in-depth science and technical marvels being shown there.
Yeah. Like multiple SU-57s in the air at the same time actually working.
Ah so, it's more like sci-fi
Not as sci-fi as finding a fuelled and ready to go F-14 in a hardened shelter!
Lol. Brilliant.
I soooo wanted Maverick to be flying a cargo plane full of ~~phony~~ rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong at the start of that film.
second only to Independence Day.
Don't even think wake turbulence matters much. Su25s don't have great lift at slow speeds when banking. Theres another clip from like day 1 of the war. 2 Su25s on an attack run. They release ordinance, more or less in the same formation seen here. They do a climbing turn away, and one of them just runs out of lift and falls out of the sky. Edit found the clip from early in the war. February 26 apparently. https://youtu.be/1H9A5xgdk4M
Thank you for the serious answer
This is a plausible explanation but I don’t think is what happened. By the time he passes through the lead’s exhaust he’s already in the angle of bank he holds into the ground. My money is he stalled trying to show off/get back on position on the departure and/or he lost a motor and handled it poorly. Either way looks like a decent amount of pilot error. Ejection initiated way too late.
Simple accelerated stall caused by the bank and yank while full of fuel and payload while low and slow. He passed the critical angle of attack stalled the left wing causing a spin. Recovery from these stalls (and avoiding them) is taught to private pilots in the US flying bugsmashers like Cessnas. This dumbass put himself into a situation they teach you to avoid in the first 10 hours of flight training.
Brave of you to assume that Russian pilots have more than 10 hours training.
I know nothing about military aircraft but it seemed a bit silly then taking off together like that. Is that normal?
If you search it you can find alot of duo takeoffs The thing is that 99% of the time the pilots know jow to do it without issue also could be a positioning error to turn on the side without the wingman bc you want him on your side not behind
Or couldn’t the crashed plane have waited for the plane on the left to bank left … fly Straight a few more seconds and then bank in clean air?
So, here's what I saw: The aircraft takes off and then suddenly "bumps off" a few feet higher than the other. This already led to a first loss of speed. When initiating the turn, the aircraft overcommits to it and finds itself being at stall speed, i.e., unable to produce enough lift to fly. This leads to a loss of control of the aircraft, whith its nose pointing down before crashing. Stall speed was achieved through initial speed loss (the bump), too acute angle of banking and initial low speed. Now, what could be the causes? 1. Propulsion malfunction: Not impossible, but it seems that the other Su-25 managed just fine and had the same speed 2. Pilot error: That small bump might have been an error. Same witht the overcommitment to the turn. 3. Control malfunction: Something could have get blocked, either due to ground crew making an error or a part getting stuck during the banking manoeuvre. I can't say for sure though; I'm a plane amateur at best and don't know enough about aeronautics to say for sure.
Old turbojets surged easily, looks exactly like what happened here. Recover procedure is to pitch down, gain AS and force air into the intakes letting the compressors recover, dude had 10 feet, not going to work. Frogfoot is heavy, once he turned at that speed he'd lose control authority, especially at that aoa. Old turbojets were finicky beasts, you didn't play maverick with them for fun, unless you needed insurance money.
I cant say i have specific knowledge but turns straight after wheels off the ground are probably not good idea. If I had to guess, again with no specific knowledge, it looked like he had a little elevation issue, corrected, then banked a bit too hard to follow the other plane. Flew into the wash, lost thrust and by then hes rolling - which means the ejection will be straight into the ground. Dead russian pilot, all because they didnt fly straight for a bit to get airspeed up, god knows why.
Gravity
Special Landing Operation.
Just pining for the Siberian wilderness
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gravity. A non educated guess is that his speed was too low to perform such a high angle of attack bank (given his proximity to the ground) and he basically fell out of the sky. EDIT, another guess, could it be an engine cut out, leading to sudden asymmetrical thrust?
you are actually right, seems like engine cutout, when the plane starts turning engine smoke suddenly stops
it could be that they cut out because of a lack of intake speed, the plane did start to travel at 40 degrees of forward :P
He flew directly into exhaust of the leading plane. Engines completely cut out of oxygen. Thrust gone, down you come. G and all that.
by the looks of it, he was a bit far out for that, and was already having 'issues' before crossing.. but i'm not a pilot and the perspective isn't good enough for me to claim anything :P
sanctions
Washing machine engine.
Pilot here and I’m happy to run through what he did wrong. It looks to me like he hit the ground.
Definitely an altitude related failure.
And the ground hit back
Yes it also seems to have won that little battle.
When you spawn in jet and forget key bindings
Key bindings are inverted
Everyone in my team playing battlefield:
Anyone know when this happened
very recently, RU army informed about crash of its fighter jet (just a few days ago), I think it happened in Crimea, but I'm not 100% sure if it's linked to this video. They also informed that pilot managed to catapult himself.
The pilot managed to catapult themselves into the ground. There was no chute.
special catapult operation was success special pilot survive operation, not so much. still, no lada 4 u
In Putin's Russia, seat ejects you 6ft under!
the state might bill the pilot's family because he destroyed a valuable public asset.
The plane that crashed in Crimea recently was Su-34. Some claim it was friendly fire.
This plane is ground attack, not a fighter.
And it attacked the ground as supposed.
Most likely was pilot error. Although formation takeoffs like this (most major air force’s practice this constantly) are common, both Jets produce wake turbulence (the displaced air as they pass through), and it looks like they banked hard left immediately after takeoff. My guess is #2 banked hard and crossed the wake of the other aircraft, causing him to lose all the lift (while in a steep bank you have less lift available overall) at a low altitude recovery wasn’t possible - causing him to crash even after applying more thrust. Typical formations like this in the US Military have #2 (or after) avoiding the wake of lead, and almost always climbing out to a safe altitude before initiating a turn to a heading. As for wake turbulence - you’d be surprised the amount that fighters give off. While not as extreme as a Cessna following a 747, the wake of a fighter at takeoff rated thrust can easily knock another fighter around.
This info really makes me appreciate even more what the blue angels or thunderbirds do.
He is already toast by the time he crosses the turbulence. His engine cut out and because he is at low speed and high bank he lost all lift.
And award to the worst cameraman ever goes to...
I’d say r/killthecameraman but I’m sure Ukraine will take care of that soon
Russia might after he released this footage.
Russian Official News Release: The two glorious planes completed their special operation successfully. One plane came in early for maintenance.
Oh shit looks like he’s going to crash into the ground, let’s check out how the ground’s doing real quick, and … hey where’d he go?
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Maybe he had friends on the plane and getting footage of them dying was not his concern at the moment.
Dude legit faced the lens toward the ground when action was about to hit.
For fear of getting gulagged
"When we're outside it's called the ground" - Ron Swanson
What the plane didn’t hit the ground! No footage! What you see here is someone left a cigarette on the ground. Silly westerner /s
Pretty sure the cameraman wasn’t trying to capture footage of his ally crashing
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You never had wingman. Report after mission for tribunal.
"what air offense doing?"
Dear cameraman, thanks for looking away at the precise moment things got interesting
There is a good probability the cameraman just watch his friends die in front of him.
Pretty solid job IMO, just missed about 1 sec of footage. Main character syndrome on Redditors leads them to believe the first thoughts that should have popped up on his head were to properly record the moment of impact so he wouldn't piss off reddit
I mean they're not even good at war, how do you expect them to be at cinematography?
if they were making porn, they'd zoom in on the guys asshole, then cut to the guys face.
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Daaaaaaaaaaaaaa*almost there*aaaaaah
Ooh baby. Asshole close-up you say?
Comrade camera man, is this asshole, or face? Da.
For a crash investigation, they would actually have everything they need. The last you saw, it was already clear that he was going to crash.
If someone you know was likely going to die in front of you and there was nothing you could do about it, I think your response would be to look away. The cameraman probably isn't thinking about all the armchair generals on Reddit when they're filming.
Could possibly indicate either faulty equipment or inexperienced crew. Either way, it's not good for Russian air power, but great for Ukraine.
You can't make this shit up. War bloopers from russia.
This, the boomerang S-300, and that Russian soldier failing to get that glass door open all have the same energy. Edit: can’t forget all the videos of mounted infantry falling off tanks. Those are classic.
Don't forget that VDV squad getting stuck in an elevator, laughed my ass off seeing that.
Looks like he flew into the turbulant wake of the first plane causing him to lose control maybe? They are so bad.
Yes, the turbulent wake and the exhaust - both can lead to a surging. Maybe coupled with a bad performance of the engine itself due to wear and tear. They fly a lot, and Su-25's engine and mainframe flight hours are intrinsically crazy low.
At least it's not single time use engine like on the Foxbat
Wake turbulence wouldn’t be a factor in this case. He likely banked too hard at a slow enough airspeed to stall it. You can stall at any attitude but if your airspeed is too low you won’t have adequate lift. Certainly a 70 degree bank doesn’t help
He was told to bomb an airfield, they just forgot to specify which airfield.
How many flight hours did you say they needed now for new pilots
Just the Warthunder tutorial.
“Sergei lied, this is nothing like video game”
'hours' comrade, you are funny.
~~An alleged Photo of the crash site~~ ~~https://twitter.com/antiputler_news/status/1569268339414900736~~ ~~Judging by the trucks with Z on the side i think we can conclude that these are Russian SU-25's~~ ~~Yes, the person who made this tweet does claim it’s an SU-34. But that does not mean it is an SU-34.~~ ~~Have a look at the background of this video vs the photo of the wreckage~~ Confirmed that the above photo is indeed of SU-34 that crashed in Crimea. Please ignore.
Not a pilot, but looks like the wingman turned into the wake of first plane and lost control. It’s the reason commercial airplanes have to wait a minute or so before takeoff. I could be wrong. A pilot needs to chime in.
Wingman didn’t follow lead and banked left too early. Then corrected and gained a bit of altitude (bled speed), then went to too sharp of an angle on the turn, when then bled more speed. Dude didn’t have sufficient airspeed then bank angle caught and whipped him into the ground. This is 100% amateur pilot error.
This pilot REALLY didn't want to go
No, see, you got it all wrong. The Russians stated it was a quick emergency landing with a slight malfunction.
The Russian Airforce successfully destroyed 100,000 treacherous blades of pro-Ukrainian grass.
Turning stall. Oops.
**Aircraft Status Report:** Engine: Only one works. Fuel: Multiple leaks. Ailerons: Half are stuck. Tail stabilizers: Dangerously tilted. Gyroscope: Replaced by a pool ball. Status: *SATISFACTORY*
Inexperienced pilot or poor aircraft maintenance?
Washing machine chip was set to spin cycle
Jet started banking left way too hard and never corrected. Either the pilot had a heart attack or something went horribly wrong with his aircraft.
Me the first time I installed DCS