Shaw F-16 down

An F-16CM belonging to the 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw AFB crashed at approximately 1130pm. The aircraft crashed on base property. The condition of the pilot has not been released.

Breaking story, updates as they're available.

www.stripes.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Crap. I'm pulling for the pilot.
Awaiting details.
Curious if this was a mechanical or electrical issue or...?

a reply to: Gravelbone

"Status unknown" that close to ARFF and EMS is never a good sign unfortunately.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Totally agree with you that it's not a good sign. They usually say right away when the pilot has a safe ejection. But hoping for the best for the pilot. Hoping he made it.

Local media is reporting the pilot was taken to the hospital, but that hasn't been confirmed by the Air Force.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Glued..
Fingers crossed.
Thanks Zaph.

Pretty late For a flight...

Off sub..
Then again I'm watching unmarked triple 7's flying back and forth from fort Campbell to Ireland the last 3 days.

www.stripes.com...

RIP.

RIP

RIP

condolences to Pilots' Family and this Veteran salutes All the fellow flyers in all branches of US Military

Sumpter SC is in for a rough time, and activism from the radical left
i fear for the possible uncovering of saboteurs operating in the flight-lines/strategic materials, as rare but possible

originally posted by: St Udio


Sumpter SC is in for a rough time, and activism from the radical left
i fear for the possible uncovering of saboteurs operating in the flight-lines/strategic materials, as rare but possible

What are you talking about.

bekaz thy r drown black manz at LeJuene bruh or something.


Gonna poor a shot out and fire up Kenny Loggins Danger Zone

God speed fine sir.

originally posted by: St Udio
condolences to Pilots' Family and this Veteran salutes All the fellow flyers in all branches of US Military

Sumpter SC is in for a rough time, and activism from the radical left
i fear for the possible uncovering of saboteurs operating in the flight-lines/strategic materials, as rare but possible

Its actually SUMTER lol. I live 30 minutes away. No we dont have a issue with radicals round here. we tend to get rid of them in the swamps and hog farms.

1st Lt David Schmitz was killed when his F-16 crashed at Shaw AFB. He was prior enlisted, where he served as a C-17 loadmaster.

taskandpurpose.com...

The accident report on this one is particularly bad. The MP was a former C-17 loadmaster who had undergone pilot training, and had just short of 100 hours in the F-16. Despite guidance to the contrary, his first in flight refueling mission was at night, on a night when the weather was bad enough that the tanker had to delay their initial rendezvous and change their refueling altitude due to cloud cover. The two instructor pilots were able to refuel with no problem. The other student was able to take on fuel, but spent 10 minutes on the boom, and was unable to take on his planned fuel load. The MP was unable to connect to the boom and take on any fuel.

As a result of the inability to refuel, the MP and his instructor returned to Shaw early. The MP was attempting to land, and impacted the localizer antenna with his main landing gear, resulting in the gear suffering major damage, a hydraulic B system failure, and other problems. The SOF on duty ran the LANDING WITH LG UNSAFE/UP checklist, despite the MP questioning twice if it was the correct checklist, and decided to have the MP take the barrier. During the landing, the hook failed to engage the cable, and the left main, which had a broken drag brace failed. The pilot ejected as it started to ground loop. During the ejection, there was a critical failure of the Digital Recover Sequencer built into the ejection seat. Six of the seven pyrotechnic charges that should have fired during the ejection sequence failed to activate. This caused multiple seat systems to fail to activate. The seat was airborne approximately 6.27 seconds, which would have given the MP 3.475 seconds to recognize that the DRS had failed, and activate the emergency manual deployment handle in time for the chute to deploy fully. In 2014, an instructor pilot in Tulsa Air National Guard performed a daytime, fair weather ejection in which there was a similar DRS failure. It took that pilot, who had 2600 hours and far more training than the MP, four seconds to recognize the failure and pull the EMDH. If a controlled ejection had taken place in this accident, the pilot would have had between 14 and 18 seconds to recognize the failure and pull the EMDH.

Thats a bad day..