2 killed in California F/A-18 crash

2 killed in California F/A-18 crash

www.cnn.com

Two crew members on a routine training flight were killed Wednesday when an F/A-18F aircraft crashed near Naval Air Station Lemoore in central California, the U.S. Navy said.
Capt. James Knapp, commanding officer of the station, told reporters the plane, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 122, crashed at 12:08 p.m. PT (3:08 p.m. ET) in a private farm field about one half mile west of the property line.
The crash of the two-seat strike fighter, which occurred southwest of Fresno, is under invest

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is kind of strange, why didn't the pilots eject from the cockpit?

The military witness claims he watched the jet crash and just before it attempted to bank left, the engine noise stopped, and it crashed in a field. Something tells me we will be lied to when the military finishes its' investigation of this crash.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by raiders247


Hmmm that is pretty strange I guess. It could be that the ejector was pulled but malfunctioned I guess. It would also depend how low to the ground they were when it happened too, if it was low, there might not have even been time to think about pulling the ejector lever, or pushing the button, or whatever one does to eject.

reply to post by TKDRL


You would think that no matter how low to the ground they were, they'd be pulling that eject latch with the force of God, I know I'd be. Jets fly at pretty high altitudes they had to have had a second or 2 to eject before impact.

"Malfunction" will probably be what the official military explanation is, but I guess we'll never truly know.

reply to post by raiders247


I don't know because I was not there. I am a pilot myself but not at all a military pilot. But I can tell you all pilots have one thing in common. They if they are any good at all before they reach "cruising altitude", look for a place to "Crash, gently" It's called self preservation. But I do know many military and commercial pilots. What they think about, when the world f***** you? I once as a private pilot was in a plane and 800 feet off the runway when the engine died, thats the worst of all possible worlds. At that altitude? You don't have the luxury of "self sacrifice". It makes no difference, you cant stop your plane plowing into a row of trees or a house, or a road. But NO! This was much worse, I had two passengers one the son of my co-pilot who if I had hesitated we would all have been killed. She was a C-130 CAF pilot. And perhaps it was just skill or training she said "GIVE IT UP"! And I let go of the controls. And I swear as God as my witness she dropped that plane right smack in the middle of a perfect triangle, on one side was a grove of thick trees, hit that? No way would I be here. I swear she dropped that plane in a size of an area that looked a postage stamp. An open field. She looked at me, dripping wet with sweat, and said "Don't bother thanking me. If my son was not with me"? I never would have taken the controls" To this day this kid has no idea why I send him a birthday card each year.

reply to post by arbiture


That is an amazing story my friend...

You just made me think of another thing though, they were flying near Fresno, that area of central California is WIDE open for hundreds of square miles. Seems they could have easily tried to bring it down in a field or one of the long straight highways that run through there. Strange....

reply to post by raiders247


I'm not positive, but I think trying to land modern fighter jets on anything less than a runway still has a good chance of resulting in death, due to the high stall speed. This is why I'm a lot more comfortable in small prop planes.

This reminds me of another incident where a fully armed US military aircraft crashed in the mountains of Wyoming(i think?) a couple years back. They said it was pilot error, but the whole thing was just really suspicious.

I was going to look it up, but it is surprisingly elusive on google and the list of us military aircraft crashes is a lot longer than I thought, wow.

Here's a case of a (an old) suspicious crash related to a 'radar ghost'.
www.ufobc.ca...

Lemoore is a training area. These pilots were probably noobs who got over aggressive in ACM.

Scratch that: If they crashed in a field then it might be a mechanical malfunction. The runway at Lemoore is an alternate landing strip for the space shuttle. Lots and lots of fields on approach.

Originally posted by raiders247


This is kind of strange, why didn't the pilots eject from the cockpit?

The military witness claims he watched the jet crash and just before it attempted to bank left, the engine noise stopped, and it crashed in a field. Something tells me we will be lied to when the military finishes its' investigation of this crash.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

They may have passed out...you can't pull anything when your unconscious.

F/A-18s are fly by wire and anything that takes out the electrical system could kill the engine.

If the pilot tried to use the controls to fly it to ground he may have stayed with it to long.

reply to post by ANNED


True, maybe he was about to go in front of the officers board and saving an expensive government F18 would be a nice fat line on his resume.

On the other hand maybe he didn't want to receive the 50 lashes they would have given to his career for crashing it.

I hope that doesn't sound offensive considering he just died and all.

Could have been cockiness too. I have seen some bikers get hurt because they got to cocky, thinking they could stop from dumping the bike. Had they just let it go and kicked off, they would probably only has some scrapes and bruises instead of broken legs from the bike crushing it. Of course I could be totally wrong as well.

Hey guys. Planes crash. People die. It happens. No conspiracy. The plane wasn't intentionally run in to the ground, nor was it shot down like some of you are implying. What kind of 90's anti-aircraft systems are they testing if they are shooting down F/A-18s? It's terrible but these sorts of things happen without any ulterior motives or intents.

Planes, especially military fighter craft are very complicated and sophisticated aircraft. Alot of things could go wrong and cause a crash. Not sure we will know until an official report is released.

Guys, I have a bad feeling about this. This may be a conspiracy buildup. every time there is a plane event, it usually means something is gonna happen and big time. Why do I say this? because take a look at 9-11, they staged the event to invade afghanistan.

I remember reading an article about the Gov fearing that hackers may take control of the planes and crash them not long ago. (which is bs in itself cause I highly doubt hackers could do that to a plane in the air.)

This may end up being an excuse to pull the plug off the internet. They Know people are waking up in large numbers, and they will do what every they can to not lose power. Even going this low to do it.

reply to post by RSF77


I think you are refering to an A-10 that went missing on a training mission. The military claimed to have located it crashed in the side of a mountain in Co. or Wy. There was a lot of speculation at the time that the pilot had read one too many Ayn Rand novels and gone rogue looking for the Rocky Mountain Shangri-La....

Doesn't seem to be much more to this crash than a tragic low altitude malfunction resulting in an unrecoverable situation for the pilot. I heard there was an instructor pilot aboard. Those guys are pretty good. If they could have ejected, I think they would have. The ground comes up really fast when a jet like that stops flying at such low altitude.

Originally posted by Icarus Rising
reply to post by RSF77

 

Doesn't seem to be much more to this crash than a tragic low altitude malfunction resulting in an unrecoverable situation for the pilot. I heard there was an instructor pilot aboard. Those guys are pretty good. If they could have ejected, I think they would have. The ground comes up really fast when a jet like that stops flying at such low altitude.

you have summed it up, no conspiracy here

From the witness's statement, it seems they were at a very low altitude, and the aircraft came down within the boundries of the base, so they couldnt have been more than a few hundred yards from the end of the runway and just a couple hundred feet from the ground.

And there are situations where punching out is not an option, a longtime friend of mine who was an airforce pilot, gave his life when his aircraft had a mechanical failure. Instead of ejecting and letting the aircraft come down in a neighborhood, he stayed with the aircraft and put it down into an empty parking lot, where he was the only casualty and there was no property damage other than the asphalt.

I've heard pilots are trained to go with their jets if other lives are at stake, particularly if they can keep it away from housing or stuff like that. But if you've lost it over an open unpopulated area and can't recover, punch out!

Most modern military jets will even allow ejection when parked on the ground in order to escape a fire, so it shouldn't be an issue of minimum altitude.

There may be a chance that the airplane captain or whoever else was in charge forgot to arm the ejector during the pre-flight inspection. There's a pin or some other safety that's supposed to be removed prior to flight, otherwise the ejection seats wont work. (It's there because people have been killed when working on aircraft in hangars and such.) Whether or not that's the case is something the crash investigators will have to find out. There could be some other reason for the ejection system to fail, but that would seem the most likely.

reply to post by pauljs75


The area around Lemoore Naval Air Station is hardly unpopulated. And its not possible to "forget to arm the ejection seat".
Even with modern ejection seats there are scenarios, especially on take off, that could preclude the use of an ejection seat.

Yea, I didn't really think it was a conspiracy, just getting it out there.

Thanks for the information on it and the story though.