An F-35B Lightning II crashed while landing at Texas’ Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth on Thursday. The pilot ejected after the aircraft touched down and is believed to be in good condition. The accident occurred at approximately 10:15 a.m. local time.
On my count that is three unexplained crashes of F-35s. Could be a problem. At least with this one they should be able to tear it down to see what went wrong.
Something with the thrust vectoring that seemed to toss this plane onto it’s nose after an initial touch down. Great ejection of the pilot. Hope he is OK.
Should make for an interesting logbook entry for the pilot.
It looks like the pilot would have been better off if he (or she) had not ejected but I was not the PIC. The plane looked like it was not damaged that much but the pilot might have thought that he (or she) would be trapped if it was going to tip over after the first pogo and ground loop. Looks light the front fan thrust was lost after the first bounce.
Yeah, not funny. For every serious event, there’s at least one smart @&% who can’t resist saying something stupid.
One has to wonder why the power was not shut down after a more or less successful initial landing. Why was there still so much thrust being generated. I guess that was the problem, run a way throttles.
Lighten up Francis.
And for every serious event there also seems to be an a$$hole who can’t resist saying something.
Dale, That was MY first thought - chop throttle-no fuel - no thrust. (1 throttle)
Agree. The event was all but over when he punched out but he had no way to know what would happen next. It’s possible the crash would have been much worse with some unsurvivable event ensuing.
Chopping the throttle? You think the pilot was directly connected to the engine? Bet’cha the computer was flying the airplane. The oscillations in ground effect are far too rapid for a mere human to control. PIO’s would almost always lead to a crash.
The whole evolution is computer controlled.
Looked slightly fast on the decent, with more than a slight bounce on contact.
Once the WOW switch made contact, computer cut the fan. With the bounce and the fan cut, engine nozzle pushes the nose over and nose gear is liberated.
With that, the PIC (i.e. the computer) gets confused. “Wait, what are we trying to attempt here? A landing? We just completed the landing. Why are we off the deck? Are we attempting a flyaway? Throttle up then. Wait, we’re on deck, again, move away from the LA, vector forward(with a missing nose gear) Why is the passenger attempting a engine shut down. We need POWER, not cut ….wait a sec, where’d the passenger go?
Better picture of jet here:
msn.com/en-us/news/us/moment-f-35-pilot-ejects-after-crash-landing-in-fighter-jet/ar-AA15n6OQ?
It is almost like he could not get the engine to shut down at all, and looks like the fan kicked back in again to spin it around to the right towards the end. Maybe his ejection is the only thing that shut down the entire system.
Looking at Google Earth you can see where the camera angle is from. Looks like the Jet was heading for a rather large drainage ditch before he punched out.
Maybe he said that the thing, with a mind of its own, “I’m getting the hell out of here before it flips and explodes.” But I guessing since he is a factory test pilot with those planes, he would have fixed the problem in the few seconds he had available…if he could. And if it decided to go past about the ejection attitude it was in at that moment, the ejection would have just fired him across the ground or into it. That was still a hard landing for him from the swing of the parachute. Hope no broken ankles and such.
So much speculation. Hope the pilot is OK.
Kudos to the ejection seat designers, work’s even on the ground :). The thrust vectoring dept. not as much.
The F-35B is an inherently dangerous aircraft in many respects and will always have a high accident rate. That this one happened to a factory test pilot underscores that fact. The conversation above sets forth a probable accident scenario here.