FA/18 crash

[Conure]

Looks to me like it got caught in the jet wash of an F15 in front causing a spin stall, then the pilot ejected but afaik the guy in the back seat broke his neck on the canopy :/

 

Then the aircraft crashed into the sea.

[aaron886]

Looks to me like it got caught in the jet wash of an F15 in front causing a spin stall, then the pilot ejected but afaik the guy in the back seat broke his neck on the canopy :/

 

Then the aircraft crashed into the sea.

 

Most likely, yes. I believe they were in a flat spin heading out to sea. Great balls of fire. :(

[Daze]

RIP Goose

[Vekkinho]

Any official reports so far?

[aaron886]

Any official reports so far?

 

Nah, takes longer than that.

[Phantom88]

Nah, takes longer than that.

 

Yeah,Just to give an example,Do you remember that F-16C ANG Viper That overshot the runway at Oshkosh in July last yr? The Air Force investigation Report was made public at the end of Feb this yr.

 

I'm pretty sure because of the mangled wreckage the F/A-18D crash will take even longer to decipher.

[Yurgon]

Appears the Navy released info about the crash: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=90675

 

So far, news sites apparently just copy and paste. Does anyone have a link to the actual Navy report?

 

Conclusions

 

We'll have to see what will be revealed about the crash in the days and months to come.

 

From a preliminary look at some of the available sources, I would theorize that:

• The aircraft took off from NAS Oceana, runway 5R
  
• After becoming airborne, the aircraft continued on heading 050 (+/- a few degress)
  
• At an unknown time (but within a 0 to 55 seconds window after takeoff), the left engine failed
  
• The crew started to drop fuel in response to the engine failure
  
• The crew ejected only moments before the aircraft crashed into a highly populated area
  
• The aircraft had not altered its heading one bit throughout the whole flight
  
• IMHO, that leaves two possible reasons for crashing into a populated area:
  • Complete failure of flight controls
    
  • The crew underestimated the emergency situation or did not react in time to stear clear of a populated area
    

 

Obviously quite a few assumptions turned out to be wrong. :-)

 

But dual engine failure would indeed explain a lot of what happened that day. On the other hand, I'd still like to get a look at the report to clarify the timetable of events. If 70 seconds passed from takeoff to impact and the right engine failed within 5 seconds after takeoff, it still implies the aircraft flew for approximately one minute without altering its course. So when did the second engine fail? Screw those news portals and their inability to link to their sources...

[Dejjvid]

You see, Croatia (the country I'm from) is looking for a modernization of it's airforce fighter fleet.

 

Among many options there's SAAB JAS-39C/D tender and I was in possesion of some Volvo Aero GE F404 RM12 flyers. It's a same engine as the one on F/A-18 but there's only one with Gripen.

 

So the thing they write in capital letters, and quite often is greater resistance to bird strikes.

 

Volvo Aero made ALOT of changes to the engine prior to mounting it on the Gripen. They added a lot of redundancy, and later on FADEC. They specifically mention bird strikes, flame outs and compressor stalls and how they did to improve the reliability.

 

Here's a really in depth article about the process, it's in Swedish. But try to google translate it and see if it is understandable.

 

http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.174315/reaktionsmotor-12---bade-vacker-och-stark

 

 

Pretty decent translation to English: http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.idg.se%2F2.1085%2F1.174315%2Freaktionsmotor-12---bade-vacker-och-stark

Edited July 3, 2012 by Dejjvid