An F model.
Posted on 04/12/2014 5:47:40 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower was finally in sight.
The pilot of the F/A-18 Super Hornet hurriedly flipped switches and pushed levers. The aviator in the backseat leaned forward, straining to see the flight deck floating in the distance. The jet’s right engine had locked up, its landing gear jammed, the main fuel tank almost empty.
(snip)
The pilot made some quick calculations. He had 15,500 pounds of fuel in his tanks, enough to return to the Eisenhower and make six passes at the ship.
Landing in nearby Kandahar was a more prudent option, but that would likely have meant several days or more awaiting repairs. The Eisenhower’s air wing commander had decided earlier not to put a maintenance detachment in Afghanistan — a cost-saving measure pilots perceived as a signal they should attempt to divert back to the ship whenever possible.
(snip)
About the story: This report was based on an investigation into the April 8, 2013, crash of an F/A-18 Super Hornet. Names and other identifying details were redacted from the report, which was obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through a Freedom of Information Act request. The report cited questionable decision making by the pilot but did not recommend disciplinary action.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
I was in KAF in 2009 and we had a Hornet divert there with a malfunction. The USN didn’t have a maintenance detachment there at the time but a team was flown from the ship to fix the jet two days later. Not ideal but then again it was the smart play.
The aircraft was from VFA-103, a USN E-model.
Really reading that story..its pilot screw up on top of pilot screw up on top of pilot screw up...he really didnt seem to know his aircraft systems and procedures at all
NO! Morton Thiokol’s Allan McDonald had refused to sign the launch recommendation over safety concerns. Prior to that launch, visual evidence had raised questions about the segment seals functioning in lowered temps. His professional judgement was overridden by a Thiokol corporate VP vote influenced by NASA bureaucratic pressure.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_Colloquium1012.html
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-02-26/news/mn-390_1_nasa-officials
I would agree they seem to jerk him around on the late divert. .but rule of thumb if you got a problem land at your closest airfield and land on land not the carrier. The pilot made multiple bad calls with putting him that the coffin corner
Command decisions were awful. You could argue that the fear of diverting to Kandahar that had been instilled in the pilots caused the loss of the aircraft.
Poor training and poor command decisions. Kind of scary, don't you think?
Really if you think about is it was a really bad call
He’s near Kandahar when he had the refueling basket stuck on his refueling probe...
..so land...
...pull the dam basket off...
.... retract the probe....
....inspect the aircraft for damage....
...and if none....
....top up and fly home..
And if the aircraft is damaged landing at Kandahar still the better bet as its closer and it’s not the carrier...
Landing a damaged aircraft on a carrier, besides being harder, and puts the carrier and the people on the carrier at risk.
Landing a damaged aircraft on an airfield is easier ...and just put the freaking dirt at risk.
I suspect that part of what led to this was a Navy mindset about the reach of carrier aviation. A war in a landlocked country hundreds of miles from the sea where we already controlled a number of airbases would not seem a logical choice for carrier operations, absent an agenda.
Sequence of Shuttle Challenger Disaster
Extremely wet, cold Winter.
Technical problems kept Shuttle on pad longer than usual.
Very unusual freezing weather.
Burnthru on SRB ignition as had happened before.
After a few seconds, gasket flowed and resealed as it had numerous times before.
No more problems until throttle-up.
Highest Upper Air Wind Shear ever recorded buffeted Shuttle and rocked the entire stack just as they went to throttle-up.
SSME gimbaled over to correct.
Rocking the stack opened up the previous burnthru.
First Bad Luck:
Extreme high winds at throttle-Up. Without this, burnthru would probably have not reopened.
Second Bad Luck and Primary Cause:
Burnthru was located on the minority portion of the arc opposite the ET (External Tank). If the burnthru had occurred on the ~ 300 degree arc not opposite the ET, the shuttle would have achieved orbit with no problem. The slight loss of thrust from the SRB burnthru would not have been a problem.
It was only sheer bad luck that the burnthru occurred where it did, no other reason.
Actually, yes. The whole space shuttle design that was implemented was a kludge forced on NASA by budget cuts.
The original shuttle concept had both stages recoverable and reusable. No disposable "solid rocket boosters" in that original design at all. All well-behaved, well-known liquid fuel rocket engines.
The Challenger astronauts went to their deaths PRECISELY because of budget cuts.
And actually NO.
No one was talking about the ‘Flyback Booster’ concept.
Otherwise we could talk about the design change that led to the tiles. Or we could talk about the ET insulation change that brought Columbia down.
But we’re talking about accident as it happened.
And that was Sheer Bad Luck.
And I was there.
Running out of gas is always a pilot error.
*********************************
Negative ... I have had engine problems where my fuel burn was quite excessive and gave me no indication of a problem ... ran out taxiing to the FBO.. fuel guages are notoriously inaccurate.
LOL. Sure they were. I lived through that period and was as big a space buff as ever lived. I know what the original design was intended to be.
"But we’re talking about accident as it happened."
No, we're talking about the ultimate cause of the accident.
"And that was Sheer Bad Luck."
No, it was politics.
"And I was there."
And so was I.
Sorry, I meant that nobody was talking about the Flyback Booster on this thread. I was always for the concept.
You ‘lived’ through that period. I ‘worked’ through that period.
And we were not talking about What If’s.
As in what if Congress had allowed the boosters to be built in Fla? They would not have been segmented, thus no joints, no gaskets.
What if the fact that NASA needed more funding, meant that the military got to dictate the size of the cargo bay, thus making design changes all the way down the line?
What if the EPA hadn’t mandated a change to the foam insulation?
And yes, all that was politics.
But the proximate cause was bad luck. Higher winds than ever recorded before at exactly the wrong time, and sheer bad luck on the location of the burnthru.
Take away one of these and accident probably would not have happened. Take away both and it certainly wouldn’t have happened, politics, or no politics.
...I agree...They would have reported the inoperative fuel probe, so why did command not tell him about the fuel problem? If he didn't remember they should have.
\ Bullshit. Even the "as built" shuttle disaster was caused by politics. As in, launching anyway in spite of record cold at the launch site. You "do" recall that the reason the "o" ring failed was thermal embrittlement due to those same low temperatures. You might also call to mind the fact that the non-political engineers were telling anyone who would listen DO NOT LAUNCH.
So stop trying to defend the indefensible and saying it was all "just bad luck". It wasn't.
So you’re saying that if the burnthru had happened opposite the ET, the Challenger would have still have blown up?
Is that what you’re going with?
OK, go from the other direction. What did the cold really have to do with it, besides Feynman dunking a gasket in ice water?
Do you accept NASA’s admission that burnthru’s had happened before, even during summertime launches? Look it up.
Do you also accept the fact that these burnthrus had self-sealed in the past, just as it did this time.
Or did these burnthru’s cause Shuttle disasters that NASA didn’t tell us about?
Again, if the high winds had not happened right at throttle up, the burnthru probably would not have reopened.
Again, if the burnthru had opened opposite the ET, the Shuttle would not have exploded.
You can talk politics and political decisions all the way back to the Redstone if you want.
But the fact that this Shuttle exploded during this launch on this day, was BAD LUCK. Period
An F model.
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