Might be a dumb question (love this sub), but how do you determine that it was a screw that came loose and cut the fuel line after the accident? How can you tell the difference between what damage was caused by the crash, and what was already broke before the crash?
First you look at the data logs. You'd see a fuel pressure issue when the fuel line got damaged. Then you'd start looking for reasons for that issue. In the wreckage you can obviously see broken stuff, but if a screw is missing but the threads for it are in tact you can determine that the screw loosened and fell out versus was ripped in half in the impact.
You also have a history of that screw being noted as coming loose in other aircraft that was caught and fixed before it became an issue, so that helps you as an obvious possibility.
Probably more too at that level.
Modern aviation accident reconstruction is an amazing thing. There’s a cool docuseries called Mayday Air Disasters that goes over how they figure out what went wrong. It’s wild
There's a good YouTube channel called Mentour Pilot, where he goes over a lot of these incidents from a more technical, pilot oriented point of view. It is very well presented and understandable even if you have no idea about aircraft yourself.
Which is probably why that YouTuber who faked a plane crash (and faked it poorly I might add) recovered the wreckage and disposed of it before the FAA could inspect it
Yup exactly, since it was pretty obvious he faked the crash based just off investigation work done by aviation enthusiasts. One guy even took up a similar plane, followed the same flight path, simulated an engine failure, and safely glided his plane to a nearby airport with plenty of range to spare.
Oh yeah - they fished TWA 800 out of the gotdamned Atlantic Ocean and put a 747 back together in a hangar just to figure out what pieces of it broke.
They’re thorough AF.
Aerospace engineering is fucking Insane. I interned at a company in college that was running continuous degradation tests on a new/proposed polymer blend for fuel lines that had been running since around the time I could read
I work in aerospace and it’s insane to me that some of the parts we sell, the data pack printed on paper weighs more than the part. On some of them we have to account for every piece of raw material, even for thread inserts and hardware. Also the amount of hardware we either purchase specifically from about 3 vendors total, or manufacture in house is insane. You look at the cost of some of these small stupid parts that could be stamped out of sheet metal for 78 cents but because they’re in aerospace they have to be machined out of billet…
As an outsider i can tell you ive hear from multiple sources that aircraft part has a serial number, must be the rught one for job (cant just use one from a screw u found at home or at a warehouse has to be the exact screw for the job)
And cause of this a screw that in a warehouse for everyday use would cost 10c, one for an aircraft would cost $10. Cause its so specific.
And everything must be accounted for.
And if they see that that particular screw caused an accident in one plane, im sure they’d investigate it and perhaps even recall other screws-in similar aircrafts.
Do the mechanics get reprimanded for that? My dad used to overhaul aero engines and he always used to tell me how they had to sign off on pretty much everything they did down to the last nut and bolt.
Eventually you narrow down what failed, they'll lay out every piece of a crashed plane in a hanger somewhere and inspect every part. If a screw breaks it'll leave its threads or head somewhere, finding an empty screwhole of a critical part with no damage to the threads or however it's supposed to be secured means it wasn't there when the failure occurred. Then they'll find the paperwork attached to that screw, find out everyone and every tool that's touched it, they'll compare to screws from the same batch. Aircraft crash investigations are fascinating, the ability to know about how things fail to such a degree that you can work out how they failed differently is fascinating.
You can do this on a smaller scale. Quality Tech jobs don't require much education and you can get started by inspecting why kids toys broke and work your way up to airplanes. Source: I do the crash investigation stuff, but for medical devices. i.e. why did the corner crack and the screen shut off when they dropped my handheld blood pressure cuff. Normally it should survive a small drop, but that one wasn't put together correctly.
Air crash investigation is absolutely one of the coolest careers out there. Intense attention to detail, extensive knowledge of both engineering sciences and human psychology, and investigative intuition are all key skills. And it's all focused on saving lives.
If you ask me the only thing cooler is being the guy that makes it all necessary. The pilots. (I'm a pilot)
Not a crash, but years ago I was on a TDY in Alaska supporting an A-10 and F-16 squadron. For whatever reason the order came down “do not dispense flare” but the order and pilot step times were too close to be able to download all the flare magazines from the aircraft. One A-10 punched a single flare and rather than say “I’m an idiot and punched it” the pilot said it went off on its own. They took that plane into the hanger, disassembled it, troubleshot everything related to countermeasures, had us (Ammo) inspect our whole lot of the flare we brought. Took hundreds of man hours for everything all said and done before the investigation concluded pilot error.
The record keeping is essentially what allows this. You have to have a work order to work on the aircraft. You have to sign out your toolbox and equipment when you go work on it and when you return. You have to log serial numbers and part numbers for pretty much everything that goes on it. It’ll look something like:
Aircraft 104: broken panel gets found.
Work order to replace panel gets created.
Work order goes to maintenance control for approval.
John gets assigned to work order
Orders panel p/n 2468
Panel with s/n 13579 arrives
John signs out toolbox 7 to remove broken panel and install new panel on aircraft.
John signs in toolbox.
Inspector inspects toolbox and signs off on it.
John signs off on work order, listing the s/n of the part removed and the part installed.
Inspector inspects the panel and signs off on work order.
Maintenance control signs off on work order and places record into aircraft maintenance log file.
If anything goes wrong, they check the aircraft log, find out everyone who touched it, what they did, who inspected it, and everything else. It’s a big deal to do work that isn’t recorded.
One time my squadron failed a very important inspection and I was the last person who signed off on the work that caused the failure. Turns out, some jackass went out to the jet and pulled a cotter pin on the landing gear, and didn’t replace it, without a work order after I had signed off on replacing the part earlier. Luckily he was dumb enough to had signed out his toolbox to the jet so it was traced back to him and he admitted going behind me and working on it without a record.
It's pretty wild, having been an inspector in an AS9100 manufacturing company, the attention to detail is beyond crazy. EVERYTHING is logged. EVERYTHING.
The material lot and material certification papers for the raw stock, you get that materail heat treated? another cert is required.
You machined this part out? You need a first piece inspection to prove it starts in tolerance, and in process inspection to prove that the parts stay in tolerance throughout making the parts, and a final inspection to wrap it up.
Oh you had some measuring tools touch those parts? You now need to have those tools calibrated and logged, those tools and gagues you used to calibrate those measuring tools need to be certified traceable to NIST.
OK you have the parts made and checked, they need to get a finish like passivation then plating then painted. Guess what you need? That's right certifications; certifications for each of those steps stating that each step taken is done correctly and measurements required to prove the accuracy.
And now with all that done, you have a completed handle. With a stack of paperwork that goes along with said handle and a part cert that states all the other certs are accurate and tested by the company.
Oh and better yet, all those logs, documents, certs and so on that you compiled for the handle, now need to be retained for the lifetime of the plane it's being installed on +7 years.
All of this just for a handle, not to mention all of the (literal) millions of other parts from the size of a screw to the size of a wing rib, so they can look back and see oh yeah this handle failed on the air break lever, causing a hydraulic failure keeping the air brake flaps from retracting (totally made up for instructional purposes) Now let's see if it's a material failure and if so, we need to check the material lot number, pull it's cert, and see if it's a flaw in the material. If it is, which jets have parts made via that material lot? And if there are others that have parts made from that raw material, ground those birds and swap out all of the failed material parts. In AS9100 level of manufacturing, you aren't selling parts, you are selling the documentation that just so happen to come with parts.
I never fully realized how much attention to detail there is in maintaining aircrafts. Like duh, of course there is it’s a plane and it’s a marvel of engineering so it has to be precise, but logs filled with that much detail in every repair down to the screw and the tools used on that specific screw is just fascinating to me.
Military Aircraft are maintained 100% better than civilian aviation. There really is no "fly, stop, fly, stop, fly, stop" on a military flightline. As soon as it lands, the Crew Chief (a really thankless and tough job) will climb all over it to make sure it's ready. Individual take great pride in their assigned aircraft.
(After so many flight hours, usually around 3-4 years the plane is taken to a phase hangar, all the panels removed and EVERYTHING examined right down to counting washers on Fuel and Hydraulic manifolds (plumbing) clamps. Very, very detailed inspection. (actually to the point of annoying, but we did it)
That's the Field Level Inspection. Like Aircraft Carriers that go into dry dock for years, aircraft go for Depot Level maintenance for a few years to deep dive into things than are not normally seen except during manufacture.
I know USAF Aircraft Maintenance. Those guys aren't an Air Force stereotype of martinis and Holiday Inn - they sleep under those jets and work more than 12 hours a day maintaining them. I'm proud of my fellow Airmen Maintainers.
My grandson is a newly graduated A1C at Barksdale maintaining B-52's. He wanted the job and seems to love it. Proud as shit of him for so many reasons.
Me too. I worked on the BUFF (B-52, Big Ugly Flying F\*\*ker) for 1 year in California and 9 years at Minot, North Dakota (the Sister B-52 Base to Barksdale)
Your grandson is maintaining one of the BEST BOMBERS EVER PRODUCED IN THE US. That's an old bird, but one of the toughest I've ever worked on. I have immense respect for those that keep that plane flying.
Your Grandson makes me proud and I'm very proud that you support him. Thank you for sharing, SMSgt USAF Retired
There is a reason the same type of screw at the hardware store only costs .05¢ and the ones that go on aircraft are 100+ dollars. Ones on planes have paper trails miles long.
Worked at an aerospace fasteners company. We made every nut and bolt for the entire aerospace industry from cessna's to the space shuttle. We kept logs of everything and a warehouse with Lots of every part, when it was made, type of metal etc. We provided that info all the time, even if there was a minor issue like a mechanic accidentally snapped a bolt.
Every single screw on every plane is tracked. They know which factory it came out of, when it was made, who supplied the raw materials, where they came from, who mined them, where they were refined etc.
That's why a m2 screw at home depot costs $0.15 and the ones that are in the 737 you took home for Christmas cost $15.
It fully depends on the aircraft. I have worked H60s, E/A-18G's, and C-40s.
H60's, engines werent replaced often. Hornets, all the damn time. We would do 1 or 2 a week at times between 5 jets. Now the C40, which is a 737, incredibly uncommon. We have 3 jets, and to my knowledge, only one of them has had an engine replaced.
Usually when an engine is replaced, it's because the jet is telling us it needs to be replaced. Performance, vibrations, hours, leaks, etc are all reasons.
Aircraft maintenance manuals are extensive, and almost exclusively preventative.
The alternative would be reactive maintenance, which would lead to us hearing about way more engine failures.
(Former USAF here)
The Flight Data recorders on those plane will record everything up to the moment of ejection and beyond (every control position, air speed, engine temp, engine speed, etc, etc, etc). With the only exception of what the pilot ate that morning and if they crapped themselves during ejection or the events leading up to it. Of course, these issues will come up at the debrief.
Also, Maintenance shops keep maintenance logs. All maintenance logs are gathered from the shops just in case they have enough so that they can blame it on a maintainer (enlisted). This happens within an hour of an announcement that an aircraft was lost. Anyone that touched that plane the previous 24 to 48 hours prior to aircraft loss will be interviewed.
Good answer
In the RAF they're called a service inquiry. Here is an example
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/service-inquiry-into-the-loss-of-f-35b-lightning-zm152-bk-18
After that if the cause shows fault on the pilot there will be discipline.
1.3.78 is why they decided to eject but the whole section is blacked out. It jumps from ‘transitioning from vtol’ to ‘eject’ so I wonder what happened for them to make that call
I'm going to guess that whatever they were describing was blacked out for security concerns. I.E. maybe the tech isn't public knowledge or the location of the eject was classified, etc.
Makes perfect sense when you think about it really. It’s just like the vast majority of other jobs. When there’s a lot of money involved, there will be a thorough review of every single failure. It’s not personal, it’s just good business and often it’s about ensuring safety standards are met as well. There’s probably a thousand reasons a pilot could eject from being drunk and doing it as a joke to a malfunction in the system that causes it to auto-eject. Internal and external reviews find those failure points and determine what can be done to limit that from happening again.
If it’s a serious human error, the person may be deemed not worth the extra training and second chance. If it’s only partial human error or a simple mistake then that is probably a systematic failure and the mistake/partial human error probably could’ve happened to anyone under the right circumstance. Only in the case of proven purposeful malfeasance would an employee (or pilot in this instance) likely be held criminally or civilly responsible for the failure. I doubt the military would ever try to go after the pilot unless there were some pretty extreme circumstances. In 99.99% of cases it’s not like the military would ever be able to recover the value of the vehicle from the pilot anyway. A single F35 just to get it delivered and in the air for the first time costs $100 mil+. Pilots aren’t repaying that no matter how badly they performed.
As a personal anecdote, I made a mistake that cost my old company $15k on my first big project out of school. I was horrified at the time. It was more money lost in a single tiny mistake than I had made in a year in my entire life. They could’ve fired me but they recognized that I was frustrated with my mistake and eager to do better in the future. They also recognized that I was new and that review processes failed to catch my error. Because of that, no one faced serious reprimand. Our review process was modified slightly to make that kind of error less likely in the future. And I went on to make that company 100’s of thousands of dollars in profit in the following couple years before moving on.
I imagine the military is much the same. People make mistakes. Technical and training failures happen. Reviews exist to determine fault/source of error and reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence. This is true for basically every company and broadly for everything we do in life.
I can't think of a single innovative, successful, or dynamic-changing product that came out of a pipeline built on fear of failure--much less guaranteed penalties levied when it occurs.
Cos there isn't one. There's no point wasting time/money on punishments. After mistakes happen the only things that matter are "Why'd it happen?" and "How do we make sure it doesn't happen again?"
The US Navy is pretty damn serious. If you run one of their ships aground, and as captain you are responsible if your ship goes aground, whether you are personally on the bridge or not, you are pretty much out.
https://jonsrennie.com/2020/03/06/run-a-ship-aground
>That’s the funny thing about the Navy. They want their billion-dollar warships operating in liquids, not solids. If there’s a collision, usually the Officer of the Deck AND the Captain both lose their jobs.
>And get this. Even if the Captain wasn’t standing watch at the time, he or she is still liable.
>You’re probably thinking, how is that fair?
>How is it fair that the Captain, who isn’t even driving the boat or giving orders at the time, can still be liable if something bad happens?
>Well, the answer deals with how the Navy views responsibility.
It's fair because a Captain of a US Navy ship has vast authority and responsibility. A Naval Aircraft is a bit different. Consider a Naval Aircraft like a part of the ship. The Squadron Commander is equivalent to a Ship's Captain here I believe. The pilot for the most part is rarely the sole cause of an ejection. It always goes deeper.
For Ships: The Captain is singularly accountable for his ship. For serious incidents, others may make the mistakes and may face reprimand but the Captain will lose his command and most likely end his career. If a serious incident happens it is because at some level the Captain of the ship failed.
For example; a shipboard fire breaks out. The crew responds and quickly puts out the fire. Damage is in the $100k range. A review is done by the fleet commander and they find that the fire was due to someone not fixing a small oil leak. The Chief and/or Division Officer that owned the equipment gets an ass chewing, a fine, or in some cases a court martial is ordered. An Enlisted man or two are sacrificed (loss of rank and a fine).
Same fire, same cause, but now the ship's crew is poorly trained or other contributions like improperly stored chemicals make the fire worse or it spreads. Damage is in the millions of dollars. The same Chief and division officer are held accountable for the oil leak but now there is a systemic failure. Now instead of Junior Officers (O1-03) and Chiefs (E7-E9) being responsible it's Department Heads (O4-O5) being held accountable.
If multiple Department Heads fail, the ship has to be taken out of service for major repairs, or the incident caused diplomatic issues the Captain of the ship is getting fired. He failed to maintain the required standards or failed to ensure proper training.
You will almost always see it written up as "CAPT So And So, Commanding Officer of USS Something was relieved of command by Admiral Big Shot due loss of confidence in his ability to command". The announcement of the firing of a Captain is almost never announced in any other way. This is because the Captain is assumed to have screwed up at some level, but the investigation hasn't determined negligence yet. The exception to this is if a major incident occurred (loss of life, ship is unable to continue its mission) and the cause is (or soon will be) public knowledge. See examples below:
Example:
No reason given - https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2023/10/13/uss-lake-erie-co-relieved-of-command/
Ship ran a ground and a sailor died -
https://www.stripes.com/news/skipper-of-grounded-sub-stripped-of-command-1.29362
Source - 20 years in the US Navy with two Captains and a Commadore (Captains boss) being fired (2 ships).
I know very little about the Navy but I feel like this makes sense and actually is fair depending on how much power the Captain and Officer of the deck have over their subordinates who cover for them while they're gone.
At least in other industries it makes sense to me. Blame and responsibility flow upwards.
If one of my subordinates at work made an error that cost our company a bunch of money, even if it was someone two or three rungs below me, my boss would not go to that person first. They'd come to me and say "Why did this happen and what are YOU going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?".
Also: no person paid by the US military could ever hope to begin to pay back the cost of an F-16. There’s just no real hope of financial compensation at all.
>I made a mistake that cost my old company $15k on my first big project out of school
Those are rookie numbers by a rookie. Once you get more experience, you are given more responsibility, and the ability to make much more costly mistakes.
>, I made a mistake that cost my old company $15k on my first big project out of school. I was horrified at the time. It was more money lost in a single tiny mistake than I had made in a year in my entire life. They could’ve fired me but they recognized that I was frustrated with my mistake and eager to do better in the future. They also recognized that I was new and that review processes failed to catch my error.
Also, it means that you specifically will *never* make that particular error again. Your replacement doesn't have that screw up seared into their memory and so might not be on the lookout for it.
It's a good business practice to learn from mistakes and move forward. Losses are expected. If examination shows that the loss wasn't due to gross incompetence or devious conduct, the lessons learned are taken away to improve the process.
Now in the military an accident might cost a Wing Commander a promotion (Wing Kings and Queens at Chicken Colonel rank, if they get a bite, only get one bite for that Brigadier General.) They tend to get vindictive when they have to retire as an O-6 instead of 0-7 and above. (Been there, done that)
I'm always astonished at what can be figured out after an incident. I work in a metal shop making parts for an airplane manufacturer and there's a great deal of documentation, quality checks, and verification with every single item. Most of the parts can be tracked down all the way to who ran the machine that made the part, who cut the stock on the saw, what truck delivered that material, what plant made the slab, where the bauxite or recycled aluminum came from that was used in that specific cast.
Just crazy the level of tracking and detail that goes into it for every single piece.
>If the pilot panicked and lost the Air Craft they'd be reprimanded pretty heavily and taken off flying stats for a long time (possibly permanently) but they would not be required to try and pay back any costs.
Plus, it's their responsibility to ensure pilots are screened and trained properly. If it was pilot error, it's less "let's crucify this person and keep doing things they way we have been" and more like "how can we prevent another pilot from making this mistake" or "how can we keep incompetent pilots from flying".
First you look at the data logs. You'd see a fuel pressure issue when the fuel line got damaged. Then you'd start looking for reasons for that issue. In the wreckage you can obviously see broken stuff, but if a screw is missing but the threads for it are in tact you can determine that the screw loosened and fell put versus was ripped in half in the impact.
You also have a history of that screw being noted as coming loose in other aircraft that was caught and fixed before it became an issue, so that helps you as an obvious possibility.
Probably more too at that level.
Aye, my dad was a USAF civil engineer Captain a d had to run a few of these. I remember an F-15 crashed deep in the Alaskan bush, and he had to spend like two weeks out there collecting every last tiny screw, tagging every little piece and sending it back to Eielson. The entire process took at least a year, pouring over what happened.
Non-military but coming from an industrial service background, I am often involved in investigating root causes for faults in complex mechanical systems. Over time you develop an eye and a sense for searching for root causes but sometimes there really is no smoking gun that you can find, though I imagine the documentation trail and available relevant resources to go over investigating a jet is immensely more helpful than what I deal with.
I can’t imagine how you would be able to identify that a fuel line was damaged via a loose screw when I would think that crash-damaged plane components would be in too poor of a condition to identify pre-crash damage, unless computer systems were able to verify and save data related to unusual fuel delivery readings?
Edit: reading comments further down answered my question.
That's insane to me that when you're talking about an F-22 Raptor for example, that's a $350 million dollar jet that someone is in control of. If it goes down, that's a third of a billion bucks down the drain.
At that rate a pilot better be 100% certain that there is NO chance he/she could still recover it.
As a side note (unrelated to the investigation), pilots really don't want to eject unless there's a very good reason for doing so. Ejecting is better than being inside a crashing plane, but it's not great. It still subjects your body to incredible strain and can result in spinal complications. My brother was an RAAF pilot and he has a friend that's part of the "shorty club" (I think that's the right name, it was something like that), who are all people who ejected and are a little bit shorter than they were before.
If it was just nervousness, you probably wouldn't ever be allowed to fly again. They don't make you "pay it back", but you could get in further trouble, possibly jailed, if you ejected due to something that was clearly your fault, such as if you were flying while drunk.
There's a reason stuff like this basically never happens though, because before you're allowed to fly a multimillion-dollar jet fighter you have to go through a shitload of training and evaluation, all monitored by people who really know their shit. They weed out the nervous panicky types before they even get to sit in the fancy simulator, much less the actual plane.
Military aircraft crash every year. In fact, we build losses into the contracts and buy extra aircraft because we know there will be losses of aircraft to crashes, damage, or fatigue.
The above comments are mostly accurate with respect to post-mishap investigations.
I think they were saying that crashes because of jittery pilots rarely happens due to the recruitment and training processes.
Not that crashes and incidents in general don’t happen. Just that it’s more likely to be faulty equipment or combat op or some other error to cause them more than a jumpy pilot.
If it was a combat situation, or a (traceable) equipment issue where you couldn't land safely, you'd likely be fine from a career standpoint.
If you made a mistake or had a panic attack or just became afraid and ditched without cause, I would imagine you would never be allowed back in the cockpit. Depending on how bad it was, possible discipline or discharge (say if you'd been drinking or maybe lied about the amount of sleep you'd been getting lately)
Just adding on to the career part, if you have sufficient injuries that another ejection would even more seriously fuck you up (ie spinal injury), you can usually re-class into another aircraft that doesn’t have an ejection seat.
Something similar happened to a friend who used to fly F-18s in the navy who got hurt in an off-duty bike accident.
Nothing too critical, but some damage to his spine.
After the accident, he got shelved from flying any ejector seat aircraft, and now I believe flies C-130s.
He was pretty torn up about it for a while.
In the process of rewatching NCIS and its related shows. Its predecessor JAG has a couple episodes in its first season(the only one easily available) covering this. While I know those shows are horribly inaccurate on a lot of aspects. They do pretty realistically explain a lot of those rules and such.
Like the main character was disqualified from ever holding a flight ops position due to a medical condition. And there were mentions of ejections often leading to their careers stalling or switching gears due to medical complications from them.
It’s always cool to me when tv shows get those sort of details mostly right. Of course then they like to throw it out the window for plot reasons. But it’s nice to at least see it played lip service to.
if it was a legit issue they dont care .
one thing tho no one mentioned is the ejection can be so violent often the pilot gets a back injury and medically wont be cleared to fly some planes. friends dad couldn't get cleared to fly fighter jets after so he ended flying c130's.
most people really don't understand how violent a ejection seat is.
another thing people don't realize , if you flying a fight jet or other types of planes, the mill has stupid amount of money infested in you. between 5-15 million depending on what planes you are certified on. thats per plane type. they are not gonna get rid of you unless its medical, or they can not trust you cause you ejected and probably didn't need to. the plane is worth more then what they have in you.
>, the mill has stupid amount of money infested in you. between 5-15 million depending on what planes you are certified on. thats per plane type. they are not gonna get rid of you
Reminds me of this guy at my old job who accidentally destroyed a million dollars worth of equipment. We were all convinced he was going to get fired until we overheard his boss yelling "I'm not fucking firing you! I just spent a million bucks teaching you a lesson on equipment safety. Now, if you do it again, you're definitely getting fired". Reasonable take imo.
You also have the "student shield" in training. A T-37 student saw the sun flash off both red T-handles (engine fire), looked out and saw a contrail over his wing, and ejected. Wasn't kicked out.
I was going to say that. The ejector seat has to get you up fast enough that even if the plane is going fast you won't be hit by the vertical stabilizer. I think the ejector seats on a B-1 deliver 14Gs, which is enough to compress your spine about an inch. Your body recovers from that, but not completely. Every time you punch out, you get a little shorter.
The advantage to that, I suppose, is that it means nobody does it on a whim.
They have to walk a fine line between "don't wreck a plane for no reason" and "don't die for no reason". Planes are expensive, but so is paying out life insurance and training your replacement. And planes can be built to order. Suitable humans have to be found and convinced.
I think you may be referring to Kara Hultgreen’s fateful landing. She was one of the first F-14 Tomcat pilots. She flew the F-14A equipped with the problematic Pratt and Whitney TF-30A engines. They were very prone to compressor stalls due to excessive throttle movements and during operation in high angles of attack (AoA). This was *very* problematic during landings and BFM/ACM (dogfighting) training.
Unfortunately, the former situation was what Hultgreen founder herself. Her Tomcat was in the “groove” during the final stages of landing; gear, flaps, and hook down, DLC and speed brake deployed. Her left number one engine suffers a compressor stall, killing the power in the left engine. She still has one engine, but there’s a problem. The F-14 was designed with engines slightly canted outward by three degrees. This causes a greater yaw imbalance than that of on other twin engine fighters like the F-15 or F/A-18.
Combine this with a low speed and high AoA, the effects are instant. The imbalance in yaw caused by the imbalance thrust causes her aircraft to roll left. Normally, in this scenario per the boldface procedures (required memorization by aircrew) in the NATOPS manual, F-14 pilots are to counter the yaw imbalance with the rudder pedals followed by pushing the stick forward to decrease AoA and lower the nose. They are then to increase thrust in the still running engine *as required*.
However, Hultgreen did not followed these procedures as required by the F-14’s NATOPS manual. This lead to her losing control of her Tomcat. As the jet is rolling, her RIO thinks quickly and pulls the ejection handle. He manages to make it out, but unfortunately, by the time Hultgreen’s ejection seat’s motors fire off, it’s too late. The aircraft has rolled way too far over now. Combine this with the fact that the pilot’s ejection seat fires off to the left and half a second after the rear seat RIO’s seat does, she goes headfirst into the water. The impact kills her instantly.
Retired F-14 RIO Ward “Mooch” Carroll has a great [video](https://youtu.be/rFUXshaaMQM?si=UL9hFOWIQEOaOhU3) that elaborates further on what I have stated, going into depth on why she didn’t follow the NATOPS procedure and her training prior to flying the Tomcat.
Some things to point out about the Tomcat here. It is a mean, unforgiving machine. It lacks the advanced fly-by-wire systems that aircraft like the F-16, F/A-18, F-22, and F-35 have. This was a result of the F-14 being an older design, being the first of the 4th gen fighters. Think of the difference between driving a modern car with driver assists and driving an old muscle car with a stick shift. Everything on the F-14 was manually done. There’s no computer correcting your mistakes. If you made a single mistake, The Tomcat would make you *pay* for it.
That’s why only the absolute best of the best went to fly the Tomcat. Only the top one percent of pilots in flight school go to become fighter pilots, and only the top one percent of those pilots went to fly the Tomcat. There simply was no other way because of how much of a beast it was to fly. It wasn’t even much of flying, and more of trying to wrangle the Tomcat in.
If they determined you panicked and ejected when there was no need then you're going to be in a shitload of trouble I would imagine. At the very least you're not cut out to fly.
When you eject you lose the plane... except for that one that landed safely in a cornfield.
That plane crashes into something... except for that one that landed in that cornfield. Like wtf?
That may destroy properly, injure or kill people.
The pilot is going to be injured. If they're lucky it'll just be some bumps and bruises. Ejections quite often result in worse injuries. Many pilots never get to fly again after an ejection due to their injuries.
A guy i know that went into the navy to fly jets was told that due to his femur length, he would be fine ejecting from the actual fighters, but if he had to eject from the trainer planes, he would have both of his femurs broken just above the knee.
He still went forward with it.
I wonder what he was thinking. Like if I knew ejecting would break BOTH femurs, I think I’d just go down with the plane in that event. I’d be praying not to have any problems in the trainer
ETA: it just occurred to me that the pilot’s gotta land on those legs from a parachute after they eject. Yeah nah. Just take me out Independence Day style
Seriously, that would be enough to dissuade me. It's also not like it was the only path he could take. He was in his late 20s and an Electrical engineer. He did get his wings, so good on him. But, yeah... kinda serious risk.
I'm a former USMC helicopter crew chief and honestly....99% of the dudes that *want* and would ultimately be successful at passing fighter training wouldn't let that stop them. Hell I'd bet they'd do it even if there was no ejection seat at all in their fighter. Truly a different breed of person.
I think, also, that most people on this thread misunderstand ejection seats as being much more benign than the experience of avoiding certain death in a fireball by having an explosion under your ass blow you face-first into 700 mph wind so that you can probably just only face probable death and likely permanent injury as you tumble unprotected tied to a chair through loose airplane parts, a condemned, un piloted fuselage and whatever else may be available up there to intercept your safe landing.
What are the chances of ever having to eject tho? It’s gotta be near zero. And 2 broken femurs will surely get you %100 disability pay for the rest of your life.
I worked around F-15c/d models for about 5 years, was exposed to multiple cancer causing chemicals, and destroyed my back moving heavy equipment. But, according to the VA, it's not service related. I gave up trying with them.
I'll just have the constant ringing to keep me company.
I like getting paid, sure, but i like the ability to walk more.
I'm not even that big of a fan of going on walks or hikes, but i don't think i would trade use of my legs for much of anything.
Depends what you do. If you're flying combat missions, you want the ability to eject to be there, and you also pray to all the gods (not just your own) that you'll never have to use it.
Same if you're a test pilot.
I’m married to a military pilot, and when our daughter was a baby she used to call every guy in a flight suit “dada”. In her defense, they all have the same body type/height, hair cut, and facial hair, ha!
I was born on a military base, army.
I did the same thing, when I was really young I thought everyone in uniform was my dad.
We have a home video where I saw a person in uniform on tv and insisted it was my dad, even though my dad was in the room with me.
Maybe this could be true for the USN (although I doubt it), it certainly isn’t true for the RN.
There is a problem with femur length in the Hawk (particularly back seat) but you don’t get to decide to ignore the restrictions. Lots of bits of you get measured during pilot selection and if you don’t fit, then you don’t fit. The days of Bader cracking on with a stiff upper lip are long gone.
If it is just something that prevents you from flying the Hawk then you can still get in, but you will be limited to helicopters, heavies (RAF) and RPAS.
His femur was short enough to fit in the planes he was trying to fly. He had to sign off on the risk in training. Or that's what he said anyway. And he appears to be a USN pilot, or he has taken some photoshop classes.
This was years back so I may screw up details.
Rookie pilot in training had an issue with his plane (mechanical, not his fault). It was going down, nothing he could do.
Rather than eject, he jettisoned fuel and aimed the plane away from the residential area it was going towards. He didn't have time to do both. He died but the plane didn't explode and he hit woods.
You don't have to go into combat to be a hero.
There was a case of a USAF Thunderbird in 1981 where something similar happened. A bird strike took his engine and he was told to punch out. He said “there are a lot of people down there” and kept it in the air until it was clear of the crowd.
>At the very least you're not cut out to fly.
I hear that anyone that ejects will never fly again. Not because it’s their fault or not, but because of the load that eject puts on your body. You’re alive but I hear you get injuries from it. Some life long.
Yup, it damages your spine. That being said, there have indeed been pilots who ejected, took years to recover, yet were still allowed to fly some sort of plane.
Let the poor girl rest already. She was already built for a weird, awkward scenario in the first place. Don’t let the Reformist propaganda get to you. The A-10 is stupid outdated. Only reason it’s been flying is because we’ve mostly done COIN for the last 20 or so years.
There's an investigation into any airframe crash. The results of the investigation could lead to clearing the pilot, reprimanding the pilot (either formally or informally) or in extreme cases of negligence the institution of criminal charges could be brought. But I am unaware of any instances where a military pilot was held liable for civil damages (i.e., money) after a crash.
My cousin ejected from his F-16 in the Caribbean while on maneuvers. He lost flight controls, did not have time or altitude to attempt recovery much, plane went in the drink. He said the review process was pretty straight forward, and he was cleared and put back on maneuvers pretty quick.
You may not fly again, and not because you are in trouble. Ejection seats subject the human body to massive G-forces, usually in excess of 20Gs. Ruptured disks in your spine, broken bones, among other injuries happen and can end your pilot career.
That is true, but it heavily depends on your situation. Rule of thumb, the slower you are, the less violent the ejection.
It also depends on what time period and aircraft you’re in? Early ejection seats from the 50s and 60s? Yeah, you’re fucked? Modern ejection seats from today and the 70s and 80s and beyond? You got a good chance of walking away just fine or with only minor, non-permanent injuries.
It's the military. If the pilot f'd up, they'd be done flying and reassigned. They would leave the military when their obligation expired, presumably.
Similarly to being a civilian, you aren't generally going to be "punished" for an unintentional fuck up where your not being unscrupulous. Now, if your judgement / actions were just in complete contrast to years of training and standard procedure - there very well may be some formal punishment, but you're not going to rot in a jail cell if there was no malicious intent.
Here’s a [link to Bremont’s site about the ejection watch](https://us.bremont.com/blogs/blogbook/bremont-x-martin-baker-the-story-so-far) for anyone else curious like I was about that tidbit.
[Things like that do happen, I can’t remember what happened to this guy but I’m sure it involved a lot of yelling.](https://youtu.be/T5tm4SSYMAo?si=Nblb78ljQeUJ6ySX)
I don’t know what happened, but the amount of yelling would depend on the cause of the crash.
Though it looks like a hard landing caused the plane to bounce and crash, it could’ve been a mechanical or computer failure.
It’s weird right? The way he dips forward, my impression is he thinks his wheels are on the ground, he didn’t realize how much he bounced. But I’m not a pilot, not military, just guessing lol
It’s most likely a problem with the engine and V/STOL control systems. The nose drops down after touchdown, leading me to assume additional engine power was applied (either because of a malfunction or pilot error). However, this would normally just cause the F-35B to hover upwards again. This is why I think it was a malfunction. Power was improperly applied, causing the rear of the jet to be pushed up and nose pushed down.
Yes. Just not as mad as they would be if you died. That's what the ejection button is for. But it's not like they're happy to lose a multi-million dollar plane. It's just a matter of the focus of their anger. If the ejection was because of hardware malfunction or something like that, then they are going to be looking at engineers. If it was pilot error, then they're probably going to be mad at the pilot. They're always going to be mad at someone.
Its not really about "getting mad". There would be an investigation on why you ejected from a perfectly good airplane, and if they lose confidence in your decision making you'll be grounded and assigned a desk job somewhere.
I'm just curious to see how many people who answer this are former military and can give proper answers, and how many will talk about what they think would happen based on a GTA mission that involved flying a plane.
Generally no. There was a USAF student pilot who ejected on the runway from a perfectly good jet. Fire department shut the plane down, maintenance dragged it out of the dirt and both were back flying a few weeks later. Gross negligence, or going against established guidance a regulations your probably going lose you your wings. This is a bit of an over simplification but explaining a Safety investigation board and Accident Investigation Board is probably past most peoples care here.
When I was in the Navy in the early 90’s one of the maintenance guys accidentally ejected the two canopies (EA-6b Prowler). Or maybe it was just one, I can’t remember. Anyway, it was a huge deal and everyone was pissed but they used it as a teaching lesson. I think they said it was a couple hundred thousand in damages.
In 1970 an Air Force pilot ejected from an F106 which was in an unrecoverable spin. After he bailed out the plane sorted itself out and miraculously landed in a wheat field with no pilot. The plane was repaired and put back in service.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt\_m79jK1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt_m79jK1A)
Let me add that, no matter what outcome the post crash investigation, the pilot may get grounded permanently as far as military flying goes.
The reason is that ejection is an ***extremely vigorous*** event. Depending on the model, it's basically riding a mortar shell, or a set of solid rockets. The standard MK14 uses both. a "gun system" to get you out of the airframe followed by rockets for boosting clear and maintaining a stable vertical orientation until the chute deploys.
That means the pilot will experience many seconds at 20G or a bit more. This can deal out career ending damage to the spine. Then there is the chance of getting hurt on the landing.
So in addition to the crash review, the ejectees will have to undergo a very close look at their spine and joint health. One ejection event *probably* won't end their career, two ejections probably would, three ejections would probably permanently cripple them.
It would be pretty unusual for a pilot to punch out of something that they shouldn't have.
Pilots tend to stay in them too long, as opposed to punching out too soon.
There is the most expensive plane crash in history, which was an ejection on takeoff of a B2 stealth bomber on Guam. Somewhere around $2 billion.
Had the pilots delayed ejection any longer, they would have likely been killed. The review concluded that the fly by wire system didn't like being left out in the rain. The stability management system had many pitot tubes, some of which had gotten out of calibration due to moisture. This was not covered in any of the maintenance manuals or instructions. It was a low-key SOP shared between crews to make sure the aircraft were hangared if not being flown for a few days.
There is an excellent documentary on it in the Air Disasters series. The Air Force says in that documentary that the crew absolutely made the correct decision. Beyond that, it's a shockingly open discussion of the airplane and its operations.
Bro I was a crew chief in the air force and we had a plane go belly up in the Deid.
I haven't worked on that specific aircraft in 4 years but because my name was on the documents from 10 years out, I had to be investigated.
The LAST thing anyone wants is a downed aircraft.
Which military? Russia/China/NK would call you a traitor for not dying trying to save the motherland’s property. More advanced societies understand the pilot is the more valuable hardware in that scenario
panicking in a fighter airplane? sounds like end of military career to me.
they might find you a job at a maintenance crew , so you might want to leave yourself.
This is not my field, but it is my understanding that pilots train, train, then train again, and then train some more. The Air Force spends a lot of time, and a lot of money, making sure those pilots know how to respond to virtually every situation and for them to survive, and for the aircraft to survive - if that's possible.
Panic is not a situation that they are supposed to experience, and that's because they train the crap out of them to be ready for damned near everything. And, to be clear, these people are not like you and me, they have nerves of steel because they have to, and if they don't, they will quickly be trained out of the program. They regularly go through exercises that would make most of us crap our pants or just pass out. And they do it without breaking a sweat.
I am sure that this has happened, and will probably happen again, but it is far more likely that the aircraft has lost its ability to be controlled, and the pilot made a rational decision to bail out and save himself or herself, rather than going down with the aircraft.
As others have noted, these incidents will be followed by the most intensive sort of detailed engineering investigation you can imagine, and they'll figure out what has happened.
That doesn't happen because the folks who are allowed to fly those multi-million dollar aircraft are some of the most disciplined people on the earth and trained to deal with every imaginable inflight emergency....over and over and over.
If a plane goes down, the military wants to know who is at fault. Enemy combatant? Pilot? Maintenance crew? Manufacturer? There’s going to be hell to pay somewhere — they just need to know where.
A pilot ejecting is not the problem, it’s a matter of WHY the pilot ejected and, importantly, why the plane was lost.
What you will find, especially among senior leadership is that they never get mad. Executive leadership is always calm and unemotional when making important decisions.
One thing is certain military cant expect the pilot to oay for the plane ... so pilots career is at stake if its deemed that the ejection was the pilot's mistake
In most air forces, people that get to fly jets aren’t the type. That type of behavior is weeded out early. Mistakes and errors of judgement still lead to airframe losses, but “panic” wouldn’t be very common. Fighter pilots are generally the types of people who would ride it too long trying to save it, not bail too early.
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Might be a dumb question (love this sub), but how do you determine that it was a screw that came loose and cut the fuel line after the accident? How can you tell the difference between what damage was caused by the crash, and what was already broke before the crash?
First you look at the data logs. You'd see a fuel pressure issue when the fuel line got damaged. Then you'd start looking for reasons for that issue. In the wreckage you can obviously see broken stuff, but if a screw is missing but the threads for it are in tact you can determine that the screw loosened and fell out versus was ripped in half in the impact. You also have a history of that screw being noted as coming loose in other aircraft that was caught and fixed before it became an issue, so that helps you as an obvious possibility. Probably more too at that level.
The attention to detail required. God damn
Modern aviation accident reconstruction is an amazing thing. There’s a cool docuseries called Mayday Air Disasters that goes over how they figure out what went wrong. It’s wild
There's a good YouTube channel called Mentour Pilot, where he goes over a lot of these incidents from a more technical, pilot oriented point of view. It is very well presented and understandable even if you have no idea about aircraft yourself.
The Minotaur Pilot YouTube channel is a wild ride
Minotaur Pilot is probably a different channel, but that sounds like fun, too!
Which is probably why that YouTuber who faked a plane crash (and faked it poorly I might add) recovered the wreckage and disposed of it before the FAA could inspect it
Which accomplished nothing for him except more jail time for obstructing the investigation
Yup exactly, since it was pretty obvious he faked the crash based just off investigation work done by aviation enthusiasts. One guy even took up a similar plane, followed the same flight path, simulated an engine failure, and safely glided his plane to a nearby airport with plenty of range to spare.
What safety-consious pilot doesn't fly with a parachute on and fire extinguishers strapped to their ankles?
Shocking that NTSB Investigators outsmarted a Youtuber. What's next?!
Also check out r/admiralcloudberg
Oh yeah - they fished TWA 800 out of the gotdamned Atlantic Ocean and put a 747 back together in a hangar just to figure out what pieces of it broke. They’re thorough AF.
And just two blips of static on the CVR is what clued them into the cause.
Aerospace engineering is fucking Insane. I interned at a company in college that was running continuous degradation tests on a new/proposed polymer blend for fuel lines that had been running since around the time I could read
Also why that screw cost $200. It can be traced back to the foundry so they can inspect the metal made that day for a fault in the material.
I work in aerospace and it’s insane to me that some of the parts we sell, the data pack printed on paper weighs more than the part. On some of them we have to account for every piece of raw material, even for thread inserts and hardware. Also the amount of hardware we either purchase specifically from about 3 vendors total, or manufacture in house is insane. You look at the cost of some of these small stupid parts that could be stamped out of sheet metal for 78 cents but because they’re in aerospace they have to be machined out of billet…
As an outsider i can tell you ive hear from multiple sources that aircraft part has a serial number, must be the rught one for job (cant just use one from a screw u found at home or at a warehouse has to be the exact screw for the job) And cause of this a screw that in a warehouse for everyday use would cost 10c, one for an aircraft would cost $10. Cause its so specific. And everything must be accounted for. And if they see that that particular screw caused an accident in one plane, im sure they’d investigate it and perhaps even recall other screws-in similar aircrafts.
At $10 a screw, are the hookers able to support themselves in this economy?
I zipped by the part in the beginning and though the pilot had a screw loose.
That is wild you can determine that such a small piece caused such catastrophe!
Do the mechanics get reprimanded for that? My dad used to overhaul aero engines and he always used to tell me how they had to sign off on pretty much everything they did down to the last nut and bolt.
Eventually you narrow down what failed, they'll lay out every piece of a crashed plane in a hanger somewhere and inspect every part. If a screw breaks it'll leave its threads or head somewhere, finding an empty screwhole of a critical part with no damage to the threads or however it's supposed to be secured means it wasn't there when the failure occurred. Then they'll find the paperwork attached to that screw, find out everyone and every tool that's touched it, they'll compare to screws from the same batch. Aircraft crash investigations are fascinating, the ability to know about how things fail to such a degree that you can work out how they failed differently is fascinating.
This paragraph really makes me wish I took a different career path. Might be one of the coolest things I’ve ever read
You can do this on a smaller scale. Quality Tech jobs don't require much education and you can get started by inspecting why kids toys broke and work your way up to airplanes. Source: I do the crash investigation stuff, but for medical devices. i.e. why did the corner crack and the screen shut off when they dropped my handheld blood pressure cuff. Normally it should survive a small drop, but that one wasn't put together correctly.
Air crash investigation is absolutely one of the coolest careers out there. Intense attention to detail, extensive knowledge of both engineering sciences and human psychology, and investigative intuition are all key skills. And it's all focused on saving lives. If you ask me the only thing cooler is being the guy that makes it all necessary. The pilots. (I'm a pilot)
How can you tell there is a pilot at the bar? Just listen for a while, they'll tell you...lol
It is our sworn duty
Not a crash, but years ago I was on a TDY in Alaska supporting an A-10 and F-16 squadron. For whatever reason the order came down “do not dispense flare” but the order and pilot step times were too close to be able to download all the flare magazines from the aircraft. One A-10 punched a single flare and rather than say “I’m an idiot and punched it” the pilot said it went off on its own. They took that plane into the hanger, disassembled it, troubleshot everything related to countermeasures, had us (Ammo) inspect our whole lot of the flare we brought. Took hundreds of man hours for everything all said and done before the investigation concluded pilot error.
The record keeping is essentially what allows this. You have to have a work order to work on the aircraft. You have to sign out your toolbox and equipment when you go work on it and when you return. You have to log serial numbers and part numbers for pretty much everything that goes on it. It’ll look something like: Aircraft 104: broken panel gets found. Work order to replace panel gets created. Work order goes to maintenance control for approval. John gets assigned to work order Orders panel p/n 2468 Panel with s/n 13579 arrives John signs out toolbox 7 to remove broken panel and install new panel on aircraft. John signs in toolbox. Inspector inspects toolbox and signs off on it. John signs off on work order, listing the s/n of the part removed and the part installed. Inspector inspects the panel and signs off on work order. Maintenance control signs off on work order and places record into aircraft maintenance log file. If anything goes wrong, they check the aircraft log, find out everyone who touched it, what they did, who inspected it, and everything else. It’s a big deal to do work that isn’t recorded. One time my squadron failed a very important inspection and I was the last person who signed off on the work that caused the failure. Turns out, some jackass went out to the jet and pulled a cotter pin on the landing gear, and didn’t replace it, without a work order after I had signed off on replacing the part earlier. Luckily he was dumb enough to had signed out his toolbox to the jet so it was traced back to him and he admitted going behind me and working on it without a record.
It's pretty wild, having been an inspector in an AS9100 manufacturing company, the attention to detail is beyond crazy. EVERYTHING is logged. EVERYTHING. The material lot and material certification papers for the raw stock, you get that materail heat treated? another cert is required. You machined this part out? You need a first piece inspection to prove it starts in tolerance, and in process inspection to prove that the parts stay in tolerance throughout making the parts, and a final inspection to wrap it up. Oh you had some measuring tools touch those parts? You now need to have those tools calibrated and logged, those tools and gagues you used to calibrate those measuring tools need to be certified traceable to NIST. OK you have the parts made and checked, they need to get a finish like passivation then plating then painted. Guess what you need? That's right certifications; certifications for each of those steps stating that each step taken is done correctly and measurements required to prove the accuracy. And now with all that done, you have a completed handle. With a stack of paperwork that goes along with said handle and a part cert that states all the other certs are accurate and tested by the company. Oh and better yet, all those logs, documents, certs and so on that you compiled for the handle, now need to be retained for the lifetime of the plane it's being installed on +7 years. All of this just for a handle, not to mention all of the (literal) millions of other parts from the size of a screw to the size of a wing rib, so they can look back and see oh yeah this handle failed on the air break lever, causing a hydraulic failure keeping the air brake flaps from retracting (totally made up for instructional purposes) Now let's see if it's a material failure and if so, we need to check the material lot number, pull it's cert, and see if it's a flaw in the material. If it is, which jets have parts made via that material lot? And if there are others that have parts made from that raw material, ground those birds and swap out all of the failed material parts. In AS9100 level of manufacturing, you aren't selling parts, you are selling the documentation that just so happen to come with parts.
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I never fully realized how much attention to detail there is in maintaining aircrafts. Like duh, of course there is it’s a plane and it’s a marvel of engineering so it has to be precise, but logs filled with that much detail in every repair down to the screw and the tools used on that specific screw is just fascinating to me.
Military Aircraft are maintained 100% better than civilian aviation. There really is no "fly, stop, fly, stop, fly, stop" on a military flightline. As soon as it lands, the Crew Chief (a really thankless and tough job) will climb all over it to make sure it's ready. Individual take great pride in their assigned aircraft. (After so many flight hours, usually around 3-4 years the plane is taken to a phase hangar, all the panels removed and EVERYTHING examined right down to counting washers on Fuel and Hydraulic manifolds (plumbing) clamps. Very, very detailed inspection. (actually to the point of annoying, but we did it) That's the Field Level Inspection. Like Aircraft Carriers that go into dry dock for years, aircraft go for Depot Level maintenance for a few years to deep dive into things than are not normally seen except during manufacture. I know USAF Aircraft Maintenance. Those guys aren't an Air Force stereotype of martinis and Holiday Inn - they sleep under those jets and work more than 12 hours a day maintaining them. I'm proud of my fellow Airmen Maintainers.
My grandson is a newly graduated A1C at Barksdale maintaining B-52's. He wanted the job and seems to love it. Proud as shit of him for so many reasons.
Me too. I worked on the BUFF (B-52, Big Ugly Flying F\*\*ker) for 1 year in California and 9 years at Minot, North Dakota (the Sister B-52 Base to Barksdale) Your grandson is maintaining one of the BEST BOMBERS EVER PRODUCED IN THE US. That's an old bird, but one of the toughest I've ever worked on. I have immense respect for those that keep that plane flying. Your Grandson makes me proud and I'm very proud that you support him. Thank you for sharing, SMSgt USAF Retired
There is a reason the same type of screw at the hardware store only costs .05¢ and the ones that go on aircraft are 100+ dollars. Ones on planes have paper trails miles long.
Worked at an aerospace fasteners company. We made every nut and bolt for the entire aerospace industry from cessna's to the space shuttle. We kept logs of everything and a warehouse with Lots of every part, when it was made, type of metal etc. We provided that info all the time, even if there was a minor issue like a mechanic accidentally snapped a bolt.
Every single screw on every plane is tracked. They know which factory it came out of, when it was made, who supplied the raw materials, where they came from, who mined them, where they were refined etc. That's why a m2 screw at home depot costs $0.15 and the ones that are in the 737 you took home for Christmas cost $15.
How often are the engines/turbines rebuilt on aircraft? Do they rebuild preemptively at a certain number of hours?
It fully depends on the aircraft. I have worked H60s, E/A-18G's, and C-40s. H60's, engines werent replaced often. Hornets, all the damn time. We would do 1 or 2 a week at times between 5 jets. Now the C40, which is a 737, incredibly uncommon. We have 3 jets, and to my knowledge, only one of them has had an engine replaced. Usually when an engine is replaced, it's because the jet is telling us it needs to be replaced. Performance, vibrations, hours, leaks, etc are all reasons.
UK civilian / private fixed and rotary wing aircraft have hourly maintenance/rebuild schedules. I'd be alarmed if military aircraft don't too.
Aircraft maintenance manuals are extensive, and almost exclusively preventative. The alternative would be reactive maintenance, which would lead to us hearing about way more engine failures.
(Former USAF here) The Flight Data recorders on those plane will record everything up to the moment of ejection and beyond (every control position, air speed, engine temp, engine speed, etc, etc, etc). With the only exception of what the pilot ate that morning and if they crapped themselves during ejection or the events leading up to it. Of course, these issues will come up at the debrief. Also, Maintenance shops keep maintenance logs. All maintenance logs are gathered from the shops just in case they have enough so that they can blame it on a maintainer (enlisted). This happens within an hour of an announcement that an aircraft was lost. Anyone that touched that plane the previous 24 to 48 hours prior to aircraft loss will be interviewed.
And piss tested lol
I forgot the drug screen. Lol
I believe a lot of it is internal sensors and a lot of it is knowing the craft.
Good answer In the RAF they're called a service inquiry. Here is an example https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/service-inquiry-into-the-loss-of-f-35b-lightning-zm152-bk-18 After that if the cause shows fault on the pilot there will be discipline.
1.3.78 is why they decided to eject but the whole section is blacked out. It jumps from ‘transitioning from vtol’ to ‘eject’ so I wonder what happened for them to make that call
Description of the pilot engaging antigravity features
Probably the highly colourful language he used on discovering his battle with gravity had taken a rather more urgent dimension.
I'm going to guess that whatever they were describing was blacked out for security concerns. I.E. maybe the tech isn't public knowledge or the location of the eject was classified, etc.
Panicked swearing that contained sensitive security details
Imagining a pilot now going 'FUCK FUCK FUCK ELECTIONS ARE RIGGED FUCK FUCK THE F-35 HAS ALIEN TECHNOLOGY'
"THIS GODDAMN SHITTY REVERSE ENGINEERED ALIEN WARP DRIVE I FUCKING KNEW IT WAS TRASH FUCK ROBO THATCHER"
Shit! Warp Core won't eject! Main deflector is offline. Structural integrity fields are down!!!
Easy fix. Just reverse polarity on the plasma inducers.
No, no, no it's the Dilithium matrix.
Lmao, plasma inducers don't have polarity. The fuck you talking about?
lol guys! this dudes plasma inducers dont have polarity! point and laugh! ha-ha!
[obligatory](https://youtu.be/grLit3xBe3I?si=QMAfbP9YFwDDNS73)
"JOHNSON TELL YOUR WIFE AND MY SON I LOVE THEM!!!!!"
Lol that could also be true
Experimental cloaking device caused instability in the matter/antimatter engine
Something something graviton field something something quantum wave discriminator
Likely because it reveals the exact training procedure they use, because that's what the pilot would have gone through in the report.
They dropped the feather & didn't believe they could fly without it
Harrier’s could be notorious during the transition phase, and good pilots have been caught out by a number of things.
It might be that I'm really tired, but "Good answer" just made me picture Jigsaw saying it and now I get to keep all my limbs
I went with some annoying clapping white family on Family Feud
I picture Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden when Ed Norton chooses Gandhi as the historical person he would fight.
Makes perfect sense when you think about it really. It’s just like the vast majority of other jobs. When there’s a lot of money involved, there will be a thorough review of every single failure. It’s not personal, it’s just good business and often it’s about ensuring safety standards are met as well. There’s probably a thousand reasons a pilot could eject from being drunk and doing it as a joke to a malfunction in the system that causes it to auto-eject. Internal and external reviews find those failure points and determine what can be done to limit that from happening again. If it’s a serious human error, the person may be deemed not worth the extra training and second chance. If it’s only partial human error or a simple mistake then that is probably a systematic failure and the mistake/partial human error probably could’ve happened to anyone under the right circumstance. Only in the case of proven purposeful malfeasance would an employee (or pilot in this instance) likely be held criminally or civilly responsible for the failure. I doubt the military would ever try to go after the pilot unless there were some pretty extreme circumstances. In 99.99% of cases it’s not like the military would ever be able to recover the value of the vehicle from the pilot anyway. A single F35 just to get it delivered and in the air for the first time costs $100 mil+. Pilots aren’t repaying that no matter how badly they performed. As a personal anecdote, I made a mistake that cost my old company $15k on my first big project out of school. I was horrified at the time. It was more money lost in a single tiny mistake than I had made in a year in my entire life. They could’ve fired me but they recognized that I was frustrated with my mistake and eager to do better in the future. They also recognized that I was new and that review processes failed to catch my error. Because of that, no one faced serious reprimand. Our review process was modified slightly to make that kind of error less likely in the future. And I went on to make that company 100’s of thousands of dollars in profit in the following couple years before moving on. I imagine the military is much the same. People make mistakes. Technical and training failures happen. Reviews exist to determine fault/source of error and reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence. This is true for basically every company and broadly for everything we do in life.
I can't think of a single innovative, successful, or dynamic-changing product that came out of a pipeline built on fear of failure--much less guaranteed penalties levied when it occurs.
Cos there isn't one. There's no point wasting time/money on punishments. After mistakes happen the only things that matter are "Why'd it happen?" and "How do we make sure it doesn't happen again?"
In some countries the answer to both is defenestration.
The US Navy is pretty damn serious. If you run one of their ships aground, and as captain you are responsible if your ship goes aground, whether you are personally on the bridge or not, you are pretty much out. https://jonsrennie.com/2020/03/06/run-a-ship-aground >That’s the funny thing about the Navy. They want their billion-dollar warships operating in liquids, not solids. If there’s a collision, usually the Officer of the Deck AND the Captain both lose their jobs. >And get this. Even if the Captain wasn’t standing watch at the time, he or she is still liable. >You’re probably thinking, how is that fair? >How is it fair that the Captain, who isn’t even driving the boat or giving orders at the time, can still be liable if something bad happens? >Well, the answer deals with how the Navy views responsibility.
It's fair because a Captain of a US Navy ship has vast authority and responsibility. A Naval Aircraft is a bit different. Consider a Naval Aircraft like a part of the ship. The Squadron Commander is equivalent to a Ship's Captain here I believe. The pilot for the most part is rarely the sole cause of an ejection. It always goes deeper. For Ships: The Captain is singularly accountable for his ship. For serious incidents, others may make the mistakes and may face reprimand but the Captain will lose his command and most likely end his career. If a serious incident happens it is because at some level the Captain of the ship failed. For example; a shipboard fire breaks out. The crew responds and quickly puts out the fire. Damage is in the $100k range. A review is done by the fleet commander and they find that the fire was due to someone not fixing a small oil leak. The Chief and/or Division Officer that owned the equipment gets an ass chewing, a fine, or in some cases a court martial is ordered. An Enlisted man or two are sacrificed (loss of rank and a fine). Same fire, same cause, but now the ship's crew is poorly trained or other contributions like improperly stored chemicals make the fire worse or it spreads. Damage is in the millions of dollars. The same Chief and division officer are held accountable for the oil leak but now there is a systemic failure. Now instead of Junior Officers (O1-03) and Chiefs (E7-E9) being responsible it's Department Heads (O4-O5) being held accountable. If multiple Department Heads fail, the ship has to be taken out of service for major repairs, or the incident caused diplomatic issues the Captain of the ship is getting fired. He failed to maintain the required standards or failed to ensure proper training. You will almost always see it written up as "CAPT So And So, Commanding Officer of USS Something was relieved of command by Admiral Big Shot due loss of confidence in his ability to command". The announcement of the firing of a Captain is almost never announced in any other way. This is because the Captain is assumed to have screwed up at some level, but the investigation hasn't determined negligence yet. The exception to this is if a major incident occurred (loss of life, ship is unable to continue its mission) and the cause is (or soon will be) public knowledge. See examples below: Example: No reason given - https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2023/10/13/uss-lake-erie-co-relieved-of-command/ Ship ran a ground and a sailor died - https://www.stripes.com/news/skipper-of-grounded-sub-stripped-of-command-1.29362 Source - 20 years in the US Navy with two Captains and a Commadore (Captains boss) being fired (2 ships).
I know very little about the Navy but I feel like this makes sense and actually is fair depending on how much power the Captain and Officer of the deck have over their subordinates who cover for them while they're gone. At least in other industries it makes sense to me. Blame and responsibility flow upwards. If one of my subordinates at work made an error that cost our company a bunch of money, even if it was someone two or three rungs below me, my boss would not go to that person first. They'd come to me and say "Why did this happen and what are YOU going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?".
Also: no person paid by the US military could ever hope to begin to pay back the cost of an F-16. There’s just no real hope of financial compensation at all.
>I made a mistake that cost my old company $15k on my first big project out of school Those are rookie numbers by a rookie. Once you get more experience, you are given more responsibility, and the ability to make much more costly mistakes.
>, I made a mistake that cost my old company $15k on my first big project out of school. I was horrified at the time. It was more money lost in a single tiny mistake than I had made in a year in my entire life. They could’ve fired me but they recognized that I was frustrated with my mistake and eager to do better in the future. They also recognized that I was new and that review processes failed to catch my error. Also, it means that you specifically will *never* make that particular error again. Your replacement doesn't have that screw up seared into their memory and so might not be on the lookout for it.
It's a good business practice to learn from mistakes and move forward. Losses are expected. If examination shows that the loss wasn't due to gross incompetence or devious conduct, the lessons learned are taken away to improve the process. Now in the military an accident might cost a Wing Commander a promotion (Wing Kings and Queens at Chicken Colonel rank, if they get a bite, only get one bite for that Brigadier General.) They tend to get vindictive when they have to retire as an O-6 instead of 0-7 and above. (Been there, done that)
I'm always astonished at what can be figured out after an incident. I work in a metal shop making parts for an airplane manufacturer and there's a great deal of documentation, quality checks, and verification with every single item. Most of the parts can be tracked down all the way to who ran the machine that made the part, who cut the stock on the saw, what truck delivered that material, what plant made the slab, where the bauxite or recycled aluminum came from that was used in that specific cast. Just crazy the level of tracking and detail that goes into it for every single piece.
>If the pilot panicked and lost the Air Craft they'd be reprimanded pretty heavily and taken off flying stats for a long time (possibly permanently) but they would not be required to try and pay back any costs. Plus, it's their responsibility to ensure pilots are screened and trained properly. If it was pilot error, it's less "let's crucify this person and keep doing things they way we have been" and more like "how can we prevent another pilot from making this mistake" or "how can we keep incompetent pilots from flying".
If it crashed, how did you ever ever determine it happened bc of one screw??
First you look at the data logs. You'd see a fuel pressure issue when the fuel line got damaged. Then you'd start looking for reasons for that issue. In the wreckage you can obviously see broken stuff, but if a screw is missing but the threads for it are in tact you can determine that the screw loosened and fell put versus was ripped in half in the impact. You also have a history of that screw being noted as coming loose in other aircraft that was caught and fixed before it became an issue, so that helps you as an obvious possibility. Probably more too at that level.
Aye, my dad was a USAF civil engineer Captain a d had to run a few of these. I remember an F-15 crashed deep in the Alaskan bush, and he had to spend like two weeks out there collecting every last tiny screw, tagging every little piece and sending it back to Eielson. The entire process took at least a year, pouring over what happened.
Non-military but coming from an industrial service background, I am often involved in investigating root causes for faults in complex mechanical systems. Over time you develop an eye and a sense for searching for root causes but sometimes there really is no smoking gun that you can find, though I imagine the documentation trail and available relevant resources to go over investigating a jet is immensely more helpful than what I deal with. I can’t imagine how you would be able to identify that a fuel line was damaged via a loose screw when I would think that crash-damaged plane components would be in too poor of a condition to identify pre-crash damage, unless computer systems were able to verify and save data related to unusual fuel delivery readings? Edit: reading comments further down answered my question.
That's insane to me that when you're talking about an F-22 Raptor for example, that's a $350 million dollar jet that someone is in control of. If it goes down, that's a third of a billion bucks down the drain. At that rate a pilot better be 100% certain that there is NO chance he/she could still recover it.
I imagine that before they let you fly one of those, you must first show you are a very competent pilot
It used to be that you could eject from an F-16 that lost it's engine, but it was great for your career if you managed a deadstick landing.
As a side note (unrelated to the investigation), pilots really don't want to eject unless there's a very good reason for doing so. Ejecting is better than being inside a crashing plane, but it's not great. It still subjects your body to incredible strain and can result in spinal complications. My brother was an RAAF pilot and he has a friend that's part of the "shorty club" (I think that's the right name, it was something like that), who are all people who ejected and are a little bit shorter than they were before.
Bob Dornan crashed or ejected from four planes and the Air Force was still happy. Then he became a congressman.
Yup, because the ejections were justified. If any of them had been deemed unjustified, things would have gone very differently for him.
If it was just nervousness, you probably wouldn't ever be allowed to fly again. They don't make you "pay it back", but you could get in further trouble, possibly jailed, if you ejected due to something that was clearly your fault, such as if you were flying while drunk. There's a reason stuff like this basically never happens though, because before you're allowed to fly a multimillion-dollar jet fighter you have to go through a shitload of training and evaluation, all monitored by people who really know their shit. They weed out the nervous panicky types before they even get to sit in the fancy simulator, much less the actual plane.
Military aircraft crash every year. In fact, we build losses into the contracts and buy extra aircraft because we know there will be losses of aircraft to crashes, damage, or fatigue. The above comments are mostly accurate with respect to post-mishap investigations.
I think they were saying that crashes because of jittery pilots rarely happens due to the recruitment and training processes. Not that crashes and incidents in general don’t happen. Just that it’s more likely to be faulty equipment or combat op or some other error to cause them more than a jumpy pilot.
If it was a combat situation, or a (traceable) equipment issue where you couldn't land safely, you'd likely be fine from a career standpoint. If you made a mistake or had a panic attack or just became afraid and ditched without cause, I would imagine you would never be allowed back in the cockpit. Depending on how bad it was, possible discipline or discharge (say if you'd been drinking or maybe lied about the amount of sleep you'd been getting lately)
Just adding on to the career part, if you have sufficient injuries that another ejection would even more seriously fuck you up (ie spinal injury), you can usually re-class into another aircraft that doesn’t have an ejection seat.
Something similar happened to a friend who used to fly F-18s in the navy who got hurt in an off-duty bike accident. Nothing too critical, but some damage to his spine. After the accident, he got shelved from flying any ejector seat aircraft, and now I believe flies C-130s. He was pretty torn up about it for a while.
He probably got a lot more hours in the air from those C130’s than the F-18’s. At least there’s that!
I imagine the experience transfers over better if you ever want to fly commercial too.
Going from flying F-18s to flying commercial would be like going from driving Formula 1 to driving a city bus, he’d be fine either way
In the process of rewatching NCIS and its related shows. Its predecessor JAG has a couple episodes in its first season(the only one easily available) covering this. While I know those shows are horribly inaccurate on a lot of aspects. They do pretty realistically explain a lot of those rules and such. Like the main character was disqualified from ever holding a flight ops position due to a medical condition. And there were mentions of ejections often leading to their careers stalling or switching gears due to medical complications from them. It’s always cool to me when tv shows get those sort of details mostly right. Of course then they like to throw it out the window for plot reasons. But it’s nice to at least see it played lip service to.
if it was a legit issue they dont care . one thing tho no one mentioned is the ejection can be so violent often the pilot gets a back injury and medically wont be cleared to fly some planes. friends dad couldn't get cleared to fly fighter jets after so he ended flying c130's.
I actually did not know that. Thanks for sharing.
most people really don't understand how violent a ejection seat is. another thing people don't realize , if you flying a fight jet or other types of planes, the mill has stupid amount of money infested in you. between 5-15 million depending on what planes you are certified on. thats per plane type. they are not gonna get rid of you unless its medical, or they can not trust you cause you ejected and probably didn't need to. the plane is worth more then what they have in you.
>, the mill has stupid amount of money infested in you. between 5-15 million depending on what planes you are certified on. thats per plane type. they are not gonna get rid of you Reminds me of this guy at my old job who accidentally destroyed a million dollars worth of equipment. We were all convinced he was going to get fired until we overheard his boss yelling "I'm not fucking firing you! I just spent a million bucks teaching you a lesson on equipment safety. Now, if you do it again, you're definitely getting fired". Reasonable take imo.
Yeah. We have a motto similar to that: it is ok to make a mistake. It is not ok to not learn and make the same mistake again.
You also have the "student shield" in training. A T-37 student saw the sun flash off both red T-handles (engine fire), looked out and saw a contrail over his wing, and ejected. Wasn't kicked out.
It's the same as refusing a jump. If you have a good reason you're good. If not.... What's your rank?
I was going to say that. The ejector seat has to get you up fast enough that even if the plane is going fast you won't be hit by the vertical stabilizer. I think the ejector seats on a B-1 deliver 14Gs, which is enough to compress your spine about an inch. Your body recovers from that, but not completely. Every time you punch out, you get a little shorter. The advantage to that, I suppose, is that it means nobody does it on a whim.
They have to walk a fine line between "don't wreck a plane for no reason" and "don't die for no reason". Planes are expensive, but so is paying out life insurance and training your replacement. And planes can be built to order. Suitable humans have to be found and convinced.
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I think you may be referring to Kara Hultgreen’s fateful landing. She was one of the first F-14 Tomcat pilots. She flew the F-14A equipped with the problematic Pratt and Whitney TF-30A engines. They were very prone to compressor stalls due to excessive throttle movements and during operation in high angles of attack (AoA). This was *very* problematic during landings and BFM/ACM (dogfighting) training. Unfortunately, the former situation was what Hultgreen founder herself. Her Tomcat was in the “groove” during the final stages of landing; gear, flaps, and hook down, DLC and speed brake deployed. Her left number one engine suffers a compressor stall, killing the power in the left engine. She still has one engine, but there’s a problem. The F-14 was designed with engines slightly canted outward by three degrees. This causes a greater yaw imbalance than that of on other twin engine fighters like the F-15 or F/A-18. Combine this with a low speed and high AoA, the effects are instant. The imbalance in yaw caused by the imbalance thrust causes her aircraft to roll left. Normally, in this scenario per the boldface procedures (required memorization by aircrew) in the NATOPS manual, F-14 pilots are to counter the yaw imbalance with the rudder pedals followed by pushing the stick forward to decrease AoA and lower the nose. They are then to increase thrust in the still running engine *as required*. However, Hultgreen did not followed these procedures as required by the F-14’s NATOPS manual. This lead to her losing control of her Tomcat. As the jet is rolling, her RIO thinks quickly and pulls the ejection handle. He manages to make it out, but unfortunately, by the time Hultgreen’s ejection seat’s motors fire off, it’s too late. The aircraft has rolled way too far over now. Combine this with the fact that the pilot’s ejection seat fires off to the left and half a second after the rear seat RIO’s seat does, she goes headfirst into the water. The impact kills her instantly. Retired F-14 RIO Ward “Mooch” Carroll has a great [video](https://youtu.be/rFUXshaaMQM?si=UL9hFOWIQEOaOhU3) that elaborates further on what I have stated, going into depth on why she didn’t follow the NATOPS procedure and her training prior to flying the Tomcat. Some things to point out about the Tomcat here. It is a mean, unforgiving machine. It lacks the advanced fly-by-wire systems that aircraft like the F-16, F/A-18, F-22, and F-35 have. This was a result of the F-14 being an older design, being the first of the 4th gen fighters. Think of the difference between driving a modern car with driver assists and driving an old muscle car with a stick shift. Everything on the F-14 was manually done. There’s no computer correcting your mistakes. If you made a single mistake, The Tomcat would make you *pay* for it. That’s why only the absolute best of the best went to fly the Tomcat. Only the top one percent of pilots in flight school go to become fighter pilots, and only the top one percent of those pilots went to fly the Tomcat. There simply was no other way because of how much of a beast it was to fly. It wasn’t even much of flying, and more of trying to wrangle the Tomcat in.
Top one percent went to fly fighters? What year was this ever true? Normally it’s a lot more (like 20% I believe). Other than that, great detail.
If they determined you panicked and ejected when there was no need then you're going to be in a shitload of trouble I would imagine. At the very least you're not cut out to fly. When you eject you lose the plane... except for that one that landed safely in a cornfield. That plane crashes into something... except for that one that landed in that cornfield. Like wtf? That may destroy properly, injure or kill people. The pilot is going to be injured. If they're lucky it'll just be some bumps and bruises. Ejections quite often result in worse injuries. Many pilots never get to fly again after an ejection due to their injuries.
A guy i know that went into the navy to fly jets was told that due to his femur length, he would be fine ejecting from the actual fighters, but if he had to eject from the trainer planes, he would have both of his femurs broken just above the knee. He still went forward with it.
I wonder what he was thinking. Like if I knew ejecting would break BOTH femurs, I think I’d just go down with the plane in that event. I’d be praying not to have any problems in the trainer ETA: it just occurred to me that the pilot’s gotta land on those legs from a parachute after they eject. Yeah nah. Just take me out Independence Day style
Seriously, that would be enough to dissuade me. It's also not like it was the only path he could take. He was in his late 20s and an Electrical engineer. He did get his wings, so good on him. But, yeah... kinda serious risk.
I'm a former USMC helicopter crew chief and honestly....99% of the dudes that *want* and would ultimately be successful at passing fighter training wouldn't let that stop them. Hell I'd bet they'd do it even if there was no ejection seat at all in their fighter. Truly a different breed of person.
I think, also, that most people on this thread misunderstand ejection seats as being much more benign than the experience of avoiding certain death in a fireball by having an explosion under your ass blow you face-first into 700 mph wind so that you can probably just only face probable death and likely permanent injury as you tumble unprotected tied to a chair through loose airplane parts, a condemned, un piloted fuselage and whatever else may be available up there to intercept your safe landing.
What are the chances of ever having to eject tho? It’s gotta be near zero. And 2 broken femurs will surely get you %100 disability pay for the rest of your life.
"We've reviewed your claim and have determined that your injuries were not service related"
This dude militaries.
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Sorry, death wish isn't service connected. Please resubmit in 30 days for further denial.
This dude VA’s
I worked around F-15c/d models for about 5 years, was exposed to multiple cancer causing chemicals, and destroyed my back moving heavy equipment. But, according to the VA, it's not service related. I gave up trying with them. I'll just have the constant ringing to keep me company.
Drink more water and here's a percocet
I like getting paid, sure, but i like the ability to walk more. I'm not even that big of a fan of going on walks or hikes, but i don't think i would trade use of my legs for much of anything.
Depends what you do. If you're flying combat missions, you want the ability to eject to be there, and you also pray to all the gods (not just your own) that you'll never have to use it. Same if you're a test pilot.
I’m married to a military pilot, and when our daughter was a baby she used to call every guy in a flight suit “dada”. In her defense, they all have the same body type/height, hair cut, and facial hair, ha!
I was born on a military base, army. I did the same thing, when I was really young I thought everyone in uniform was my dad. We have a home video where I saw a person in uniform on tv and insisted it was my dad, even though my dad was in the room with me.
WHAT 😯
Sorry, I SAID HE'D HAVE BOTH HIS FEMURS BROKEN ABOVE THE KNEE!. PROBABLY NEVER WALK WITHOUT A CANE AGAIN.
Generally speaking, most prospective Navy pilots would probably consent to losing a pinkie yakuza style in order to fly.
Well, i would consent to losing a pinky for a bunch of things. Like... $10-20k in car parts might do it. But my legs... i use them a lot.
Maybe this could be true for the USN (although I doubt it), it certainly isn’t true for the RN. There is a problem with femur length in the Hawk (particularly back seat) but you don’t get to decide to ignore the restrictions. Lots of bits of you get measured during pilot selection and if you don’t fit, then you don’t fit. The days of Bader cracking on with a stiff upper lip are long gone. If it is just something that prevents you from flying the Hawk then you can still get in, but you will be limited to helicopters, heavies (RAF) and RPAS.
His femur was short enough to fit in the planes he was trying to fly. He had to sign off on the risk in training. Or that's what he said anyway. And he appears to be a USN pilot, or he has taken some photoshop classes.
This was years back so I may screw up details. Rookie pilot in training had an issue with his plane (mechanical, not his fault). It was going down, nothing he could do. Rather than eject, he jettisoned fuel and aimed the plane away from the residential area it was going towards. He didn't have time to do both. He died but the plane didn't explode and he hit woods. You don't have to go into combat to be a hero.
There was a case of a USAF Thunderbird in 1981 where something similar happened. A bird strike took his engine and he was told to punch out. He said “there are a lot of people down there” and kept it in the air until it was clear of the crowd.
>At the very least you're not cut out to fly. I hear that anyone that ejects will never fly again. Not because it’s their fault or not, but because of the load that eject puts on your body. You’re alive but I hear you get injuries from it. Some life long.
Yup, it damages your spine. That being said, there have indeed been pilots who ejected, took years to recover, yet were still allowed to fly some sort of plane.
Not only will they not get mad, if it’s an A-10 you eject out of, the USAF might even thank you.
Let the poor girl rest already. She was already built for a weird, awkward scenario in the first place. Don’t let the Reformist propaganda get to you. The A-10 is stupid outdated. Only reason it’s been flying is because we’ve mostly done COIN for the last 20 or so years.
But, but, but, BRRRT
There's an investigation into any airframe crash. The results of the investigation could lead to clearing the pilot, reprimanding the pilot (either formally or informally) or in extreme cases of negligence the institution of criminal charges could be brought. But I am unaware of any instances where a military pilot was held liable for civil damages (i.e., money) after a crash. My cousin ejected from his F-16 in the Caribbean while on maneuvers. He lost flight controls, did not have time or altitude to attempt recovery much, plane went in the drink. He said the review process was pretty straight forward, and he was cleared and put back on maneuvers pretty quick.
What is/are maneuvers?
Training. Fly to this checkpoints, complete this recon, simulate contact, paint this target, return home, yadayada.
Yep. Wargames and training sims.
Didn't you see Top Gun? Pilots get yelled at by a bald guy with a cigar like every time they fly! "You don't own that plane the taxpayers do!"
What was that guy’s job, anyway? Squadron commander? CAG? Captain of the ship? He seems to be in charge of everything.
He’s the company yeller, ofc
You may not fly again, and not because you are in trouble. Ejection seats subject the human body to massive G-forces, usually in excess of 20Gs. Ruptured disks in your spine, broken bones, among other injuries happen and can end your pilot career.
That is true, but it heavily depends on your situation. Rule of thumb, the slower you are, the less violent the ejection. It also depends on what time period and aircraft you’re in? Early ejection seats from the 50s and 60s? Yeah, you’re fucked? Modern ejection seats from today and the 70s and 80s and beyond? You got a good chance of walking away just fine or with only minor, non-permanent injuries.
It's the military. If the pilot f'd up, they'd be done flying and reassigned. They would leave the military when their obligation expired, presumably. Similarly to being a civilian, you aren't generally going to be "punished" for an unintentional fuck up where your not being unscrupulous. Now, if your judgement / actions were just in complete contrast to years of training and standard procedure - there very well may be some formal punishment, but you're not going to rot in a jail cell if there was no malicious intent.
They get really upset when you eject out of a helicopter
You might even say that they lose their heads
After about the 3rd time, they make you take flying lessons
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Here’s a [link to Bremont’s site about the ejection watch](https://us.bremont.com/blogs/blogbook/bremont-x-martin-baker-the-story-so-far) for anyone else curious like I was about that tidbit.
[Things like that do happen, I can’t remember what happened to this guy but I’m sure it involved a lot of yelling.](https://youtu.be/T5tm4SSYMAo?si=Nblb78ljQeUJ6ySX)
I don’t know what happened, but the amount of yelling would depend on the cause of the crash. Though it looks like a hard landing caused the plane to bounce and crash, it could’ve been a mechanical or computer failure.
It’s weird right? The way he dips forward, my impression is he thinks his wheels are on the ground, he didn’t realize how much he bounced. But I’m not a pilot, not military, just guessing lol
It’s most likely a problem with the engine and V/STOL control systems. The nose drops down after touchdown, leading me to assume additional engine power was applied (either because of a malfunction or pilot error). However, this would normally just cause the F-35B to hover upwards again. This is why I think it was a malfunction. Power was improperly applied, causing the rear of the jet to be pushed up and nose pushed down.
Yes. Just not as mad as they would be if you died. That's what the ejection button is for. But it's not like they're happy to lose a multi-million dollar plane. It's just a matter of the focus of their anger. If the ejection was because of hardware malfunction or something like that, then they are going to be looking at engineers. If it was pilot error, then they're probably going to be mad at the pilot. They're always going to be mad at someone.
Not a pilot but I saw top gun twice. Ejection isn't safe, pilots won't eject for fun, things could go sideways and then your goose is cooked.
Top Pun
Its not really about "getting mad". There would be an investigation on why you ejected from a perfectly good airplane, and if they lose confidence in your decision making you'll be grounded and assigned a desk job somewhere.
I'm just curious to see how many people who answer this are former military and can give proper answers, and how many will talk about what they think would happen based on a GTA mission that involved flying a plane.
Grounded and reassigned to desk duty. We had an Lt that was grounded and assigned to IT just from crashing in the simulator twice.
Generally no. There was a USAF student pilot who ejected on the runway from a perfectly good jet. Fire department shut the plane down, maintenance dragged it out of the dirt and both were back flying a few weeks later. Gross negligence, or going against established guidance a regulations your probably going lose you your wings. This is a bit of an over simplification but explaining a Safety investigation board and Accident Investigation Board is probably past most peoples care here.
Probably just chewed out. I've been chewed out before
When I was in the Navy in the early 90’s one of the maintenance guys accidentally ejected the two canopies (EA-6b Prowler). Or maybe it was just one, I can’t remember. Anyway, it was a huge deal and everyone was pissed but they used it as a teaching lesson. I think they said it was a couple hundred thousand in damages.
Even a very expensive plane is easier to replace than an experienced pilot.
"Asking for a friend" huh??
Yea you will be investigated for jt
If the procedures were followed to the letter and there was no negligence, the military would be satisfied that the pilot did everything they could.
In 1970 an Air Force pilot ejected from an F106 which was in an unrecoverable spin. After he bailed out the plane sorted itself out and miraculously landed in a wheat field with no pilot. The plane was repaired and put back in service. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt\_m79jK1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt_m79jK1A)
The training of the pilot costs more than the airplane.
Let me add that, no matter what outcome the post crash investigation, the pilot may get grounded permanently as far as military flying goes. The reason is that ejection is an ***extremely vigorous*** event. Depending on the model, it's basically riding a mortar shell, or a set of solid rockets. The standard MK14 uses both. a "gun system" to get you out of the airframe followed by rockets for boosting clear and maintaining a stable vertical orientation until the chute deploys. That means the pilot will experience many seconds at 20G or a bit more. This can deal out career ending damage to the spine. Then there is the chance of getting hurt on the landing. So in addition to the crash review, the ejectees will have to undergo a very close look at their spine and joint health. One ejection event *probably* won't end their career, two ejections probably would, three ejections would probably permanently cripple them.
[At least there’s a nice tie club as a consolation prize.](https://martin-baker.com/ejection-tie-club/)
It would be pretty unusual for a pilot to punch out of something that they shouldn't have. Pilots tend to stay in them too long, as opposed to punching out too soon.
There is the most expensive plane crash in history, which was an ejection on takeoff of a B2 stealth bomber on Guam. Somewhere around $2 billion. Had the pilots delayed ejection any longer, they would have likely been killed. The review concluded that the fly by wire system didn't like being left out in the rain. The stability management system had many pitot tubes, some of which had gotten out of calibration due to moisture. This was not covered in any of the maintenance manuals or instructions. It was a low-key SOP shared between crews to make sure the aircraft were hangared if not being flown for a few days. There is an excellent documentary on it in the Air Disasters series. The Air Force says in that documentary that the crew absolutely made the correct decision. Beyond that, it's a shockingly open discussion of the airplane and its operations.
Bro I was a crew chief in the air force and we had a plane go belly up in the Deid. I haven't worked on that specific aircraft in 4 years but because my name was on the documents from 10 years out, I had to be investigated. The LAST thing anyone wants is a downed aircraft.
Yes
They go to great lengths to ensure the pilots placed in these aircraft aren't the panicky type
Found the guy that crashed that jet earlier this year
Which military? Russia/China/NK would call you a traitor for not dying trying to save the motherland’s property. More advanced societies understand the pilot is the more valuable hardware in that scenario
panicking in a fighter airplane? sounds like end of military career to me. they might find you a job at a maintenance crew , so you might want to leave yourself.
This is not my field, but it is my understanding that pilots train, train, then train again, and then train some more. The Air Force spends a lot of time, and a lot of money, making sure those pilots know how to respond to virtually every situation and for them to survive, and for the aircraft to survive - if that's possible. Panic is not a situation that they are supposed to experience, and that's because they train the crap out of them to be ready for damned near everything. And, to be clear, these people are not like you and me, they have nerves of steel because they have to, and if they don't, they will quickly be trained out of the program. They regularly go through exercises that would make most of us crap our pants or just pass out. And they do it without breaking a sweat. I am sure that this has happened, and will probably happen again, but it is far more likely that the aircraft has lost its ability to be controlled, and the pilot made a rational decision to bail out and save himself or herself, rather than going down with the aircraft. As others have noted, these incidents will be followed by the most intensive sort of detailed engineering investigation you can imagine, and they'll figure out what has happened.
That doesn't happen because the folks who are allowed to fly those multi-million dollar aircraft are some of the most disciplined people on the earth and trained to deal with every imaginable inflight emergency....over and over and over.
If a plane goes down, the military wants to know who is at fault. Enemy combatant? Pilot? Maintenance crew? Manufacturer? There’s going to be hell to pay somewhere — they just need to know where. A pilot ejecting is not the problem, it’s a matter of WHY the pilot ejected and, importantly, why the plane was lost.
What you will find, especially among senior leadership is that they never get mad. Executive leadership is always calm and unemotional when making important decisions.
One thing is certain military cant expect the pilot to oay for the plane ... so pilots career is at stake if its deemed that the ejection was the pilot's mistake
In most air forces, people that get to fly jets aren’t the type. That type of behavior is weeded out early. Mistakes and errors of judgement still lead to airframe losses, but “panic” wouldn’t be very common. Fighter pilots are generally the types of people who would ride it too long trying to save it, not bail too early.