Mystery Of F-22 Illnesses Grows

Fink effect. Using the mask for breathing and then taking it off can cause problems in the blood oxygen levels.
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by AnIntellectualRedneck
Well, the private contractors in the Armed Forces seem to be getting a lot of their electronics from China. They're probably getting a lot of their steel and other supplies from China as well. Not saying that all Chinese stuff is bad; just saying that quality checks for safety are probably less than optimum.

Yeah blame China because America is lowering the physical quality of productivity. The boob are our American government, who makes the decision, and his master, the legendary "Booboisie." The real campaign is genocide against Black Africa and nations, also Europe, so we can say look at our cool new Toys that are making people sick." Torture our pilots and threaten their careers if they talk about the crimes against humanity policy of the Military and its insanity oriented masters. We have to keep people liave, who are valuable, who are dying on us. That is a Catch-22, seventy billion to the stealth planes that are making pilots sick. Seventy billion to the banks, seventy must be the word of magic for destroying our American society and culture.

I am not impressed by the F-22 (the Catch-22) Raptor, purge of the evil. Go the development of the mind, when are we going to stop getting everything mass crap produced from China and start building here in this country again? What happened to our technology sector, the one thing we assumed we are good at, building fast and mean jets, we can't even do that anymore. This country sucks, are chattering monkey minds are about dead and useless for doing things. And, I'm worried, for us.

defensetech.org...

Lt. Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger, one of the service’s top weapons buyers, just told Senators that it has narrowed down possible causes for Raptor pilots to be experiencing hypoxia like symptoms in-flight to those factors.

Now, it’s almost a no-brainer that hypoxia-like symptoms are being triggered by either contaminants entering pilots’ oxygen supplies or by the fact that said pilots aren’t receiving enough oxygen since hypoxia happens when the brain isn’t receiving enough oxygen. However, that it’s the Raptor’s crazy performance may be behind what’s feeding its pilots limited or contaminated oxygen is pretty damned interesting; it hints that the jet is pushing the limits of aerospace science. Remember, the F-22 flies higher for longer than other jets and performs maneuvers that almost no other fighter in the world can match.



Read more: defensetech.org...
Defense.org

I still say the fink effect or the bends,

en.wikipedia.org...

Decompression sickness (DCS; also known as divers' disease, the bends or caisson disease) describes a condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurisation. DCS most commonly refers to a specific type of underwater diving hazard but may be experienced in other depressurisation events such as caisson working, flying in unpressurised aircraft, and extra-vehicular activity from spacecraft.

Originally posted by Aloysius the Gaul

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle
reply to post by zorgon

 

Actually, the US did this to Germany in 1956. The US built a very modified Starfighter for the German Airforce. I believe the US sold 160 planes, 156 of them crashed and if I remember right almost all of the pilots were killed due to faulty ejection seat mechanisms. The Starfighter became known as the Widowmaker and the last 4 planes were grounded, permanently. There's some US techno-history ;-)

there weer a lot of reasons why the Starfighter had a really bad safety record in the LW.

they had 916 of the a/c, and 292 crashed, killing 115 pilots.

the Ejection seats weer not very good, so they replaced them.

But much of the problem came down to the LW being rebuilt with an extremely high performance a/c in the 1950's, with insufficient training for both air and ground crew, insufficient experience - or ex WW2 pilots who had not maintained experience, and utterly different conditions in Europe vs the USA - more flights, more maneuvering, more terrain, more low level "terrain following" flying, operating in harsher weather, etc.

other non-american operators of the F-104 did not have the same problems that Germany did -

During the 1960s, the "Starfighter crisis" developed into a political issue, as many Lockheed F-104 Starfighters crashed after being modified to serve for Luftwaffe purposes – specifically for terrain, weather, and ground mechanic support issues. In Luftwaffe service, 292 of 916 Starfighters crashed, claiming the lives of 115 pilots and leading to cries that the Starfighter was fundamentally unsafe from the West German public, which referred to it as the Witwenmacher (widow-maker), fliegender Sarg (flying coffin), Fallfighter (falling fighter) and Erdnagel (tent peg, literally "ground nail").

Steinhoff and his deputy Günther Rall noted that the non-German F-104s proved much safer – Spain, for example, lost none in the same period. The Americans blamed the high loss rate of the Luftwaffe F-104s on the extreme low-level and aggressive flying of German pilots rather than any faults in the aircraft.[6] Steinhoff and Rall immediately went to America to learn to fly the Starfighter under Lockheed instruction and noted some specifics in the training (a lack of mountain and foggy-weather training), combined with handling capabilities (sharp start high G turns) of the aircraft that could cause accidents.

Steinhoff and Rall changed the training regimen for the F-104 pilots, and the accident rates quickly fell to those comparable or better than other air forces. They also brought about the high level of training and professionalism seen today throughout the Luftwaffe, and the start of a strategic direction for Luftwaffe pilots to engage in tactical and combat training outside of Germany. However, the F-104 never lived down its reputation as a widow-maker and was replaced much earlier by the Luftwaffe than other national air forces.

- en.wikipedia.org...

edit on 15-5-2012 by Aloysius the Gaul because: (no reason given)

Great to see all that info out there! I was going from memory and obviously an album "story" is going to embellished somewhat. I forgot the album was put together by Robert Calvert, but I just grabbed the cover image which is below;



Thanks again for posting all the info!

Cheers - Dave

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle
reply to post by zorgon

 

Actually, the US did this to Germany in 1956. The US built a very modified Starfighter for the German Airforce. I believe the US sold 160 planes, 156 of them crashed and if I remember right almost all of the pilots were killed due to faulty ejection seat mechanisms. The Starfighter became known as the Widowmaker and the last 4 planes were grounded, permanently. There's some US techno-history ;-)

There is actually a rare album called "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters" that features Eric Wolfson, Hawkwind, Alan Parsons and Arthur Brown. The album is the rather brief and general story of the German Airforce purchase of the US made Starfighters. I wouldn't know this if we didn't buy the album in around 1977. The jacket is quite impressive actually, embossed and all that.

Cheers - Dave

edit on 5/15.2012 by bobs_uruncle because: (no reason given)

You might want to fact-check some of that. After its initial teething the F-104 accident rate was no more or less than other high performance supersonic aircraft of its generation.

The F-104 was an amazing aircraft with an undeserving bad reputation (when measured against its peers)

The Luftwaffe and RCAF certainly had some operational challenges with the type however look at the Mig-21 or F-8, statistically nearly every F-8 built was involved in a major accident during its career.

Germany received 916 F-104s, comprising 749 F/RF-104Gs, 137 TF-104Gs and 30 F-104Fs,[3] forming the major combat equipment of both the Luftwaffe and Marineflieger.

At its peak in the mid-1970s, the Luftwaffe operated five F-104 -equipped fighter bomber wings, two interceptor wings and two tactical reconnaissance wings. The Marineflieger operated a further two wings of F-104s in the maritime strike and reconnaissance roles.

The Starfighter entered service with the Luftwaffe in July 1960, with deliveries continuing until March 1973,remaining in operational service until 16 October 1987,and continuing in use for test purposes until 22 May 1991.

The two squadrons operating the RF-104G were re-equipped with RF-4E Phantoms in the early 1970s.

The Marineflieger initially used AS.30 command guidance missiles as anti-ship weapons, but these were replaced with the more sophisticated and longer-ranged radar-guided AS.34 Kormoran missile, allowing stand-off attacks to be carried out against enemy ships.

German Starfighters proved to have an alarming accident rate. In German service, 292 of 916 Starfighters crashed, claiming the lives of 115 pilots.

List of Lockheed F-104 Starfighter operators

The Class A mishap rate (write off) of the F-104 in USAF service was 26.7 accidents per 100,000 flight hours as of June 1977,[38] (30.63 through the end of 2007[39]), the highest accident rate of any USAF Century Series fighter. By comparison, the rate of the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger was 14.2/100,000[38] (13.69 through 2007[39]), and the mishap rate for the North American F-100 Super Sabre was 16.25 accidents per 100,000 flight hours

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

"Safety" Record - a point of perverse pride. Overall accident rate of 46.70 per 100,000 hrs. (For comparison: A-4: 23.36; F-4: 20.17; F-14: 9.32). Many reasons probable, none of which include pilot inadequacy.

The VIW wing (or something) made it a strange beast on final; 140 kts+/- approach speeds to a 27C; gremlins; "tiger" attitude, to close for the kill on anything, anyplace, any time, with any weapon available, apparently including the airplane.

In an article in the August 2000 issue of Flight Journal, Paul Gilcrist points out that "the accident statistics of the Crusader in the Fleet was atrocious . . .the Navy bought 1266 Crusaders during those years and at the same time, experienced 1106 major Crusader accidents. In other words, some intrepid aviator or other crashed virtually every Crusader ever built!"

F-8 Crusader losses

Regardless, it is a beautiful aircraft...

reply to post by zorgon

The Air Force said Tuesday that no disciplinary action will be taken against the pilots for taking their concerns to "60 Minutes."

And so they shouldn't, i think if more unsolved problems went public, things would actually get fixed, sometimes it takes the little unknown home garage person to solve the problem.

love and harmony
Whateva

The ground crews are not doing anything that they have not been doing for years on this plane and all the other planes that they have ever worked on. So why this plane and why now?

F-22 Raptor

First flight 7 September 1997
Introduction 15 December 2005
Produced 1997-2011

The plane is no longer in production. No one got sick until here lately so what has changed about the plane?
Could it be something that starts to break down over time? Maybe an upgrade that has went wrong?

reply to post by fixer1967


Could it be the new skins used for stealth trapping gases from highaltitude and when the aircraft is opened and the stick there heads in the get a dose of low oxygen? Which would be possible since they are staying in high altitude longer than ever before. And that would mean they are suffering the same effects as the pilots. Fink Effect.

reply to post by JBA2848



Now you are thinking. It has to be something new that has been added or something old that goes bad after a while. Like maybe after 5 years the skin starts to rot and that is the cause of it. Maybe after some many years they need to be stripped and re-coated.


You know what would be funny? If we (or someone else on the net) solved the mystery for the government without ever knowing it. You know they read what we post

Could be something in the materials causing chemistry to work out differently. Maybe at some stage the thing is producing O3 (ozone) instead of the desired O2 (breathable oxygen). A different metal or a ceramic used somewhere in the bleed air system just might do that at temperatures coming off the compression stage. That subtle difference is also enough to cause a chain of events in chemistry downstream. Stuff that may be rated to work ok with O2 may breakdown in O3. In which case, who knows what the pilots may be breathing in. Such a problem would also give other clues like gaskets, seals, and flex-tubing not lasting their intended lifetimes. Maintenance crews might pick up on something like this rather quick if they worked on other aircraft. Something like lingering ozone in high concentrations could also make the ground crews sick.

No idea whether or not this is the case, but just a thought. When troubleshooting something tricky and elusive, one should consider all possibilities. Even ones that sound strange to begin with.

Since there's so many different things, it's why they need to put these jets aside for further evaluation until they can devise a proper fix. If they have to stand-down for as long as a year, so be it. It's why the government and their contractors have engineers, and it's one of the things U.S. tax dollars should already be paying for.

reply to post by redoubt


I would very much doubt it. I bet the issue is the operating temperature of the engines and the pre-heat checlist. I bet that the only way to meet the conditions given the timing is in an eclosed space. The Oxygen intake placement is where?

If enough information could be provided, a solution could easily be crowd-sourced. Compartmentalization is killing this design.

Not sure if this is the same stealth skin?

www.fas.org...

reply to post by JBA2848


Would this action not cause more friction, or perhaps less by offsetting the effect with the promise of better bouyancy and less resiatance? There was some research for Littoral ships recently, and I see no reasonable explanation why what pertains to water cannot pertain to air - especially in the field of fluid dynamics. Some variables may require "tuning."

Originally posted by fixer1967
The ground crews are not doing anything that they have not been doing for years on this plane and all the other planes that they have ever worked on.

We don't actually know that AFAIK.

Potentially we also do not know how long ground crews have been affected, since slight symptoms of hypoxia might not have been reported.

So why this plane and why now?

F-22 Raptor

First flight 7 September 1997
Introduction 15 December 2005
Produced 1997-2011

The plane is no longer in production. No one got sick until here lately so what has changed about the plane?
Could it be something that starts to break down over time? Maybe an upgrade that has went wrong?

I suspect ground crews are reporting now in response to the inquiry, rather than "suddenly" suffering the symptoms now when they did not before.

reply to post by JBA2848


I am sure we can do better than that people. We can grow carbon nanotubes of any length we want, or any geometry we want. I can give you the google pages if you want.

reply to post by Manalow


I think chemistry would be a good issue to discuss. One could question maintenance records, common sources or parts and those contracts or designs that changed just prior to the complaints. In this culture, complaints do not come easily, so go back 3 months farther back.

China did not get a stealthy plane by accident ahead of projections without some external assistance.

You just have no idea how persistent they are.

reply to post by JBA2848


Very sure not...

Originally posted by Manalow
It is funny that they blindly looked at the oxygen generators without actually sampling the ambient air and such. Carbon Monoxide exposure will have all of these effects.

So would a good old fashion Gypsy curse!

The B2 stealth bomber was not allowed to get wet and had to be stored in a eviromentally controlled hanger. And was made of thermoplastics and polygraphites. What does extended high altitude do to the skins considering they are supposed to be kept in a air conditioned hangar?
articles.baltimoresun.com...

reply to post by zorgon


I'll say it again, the accumulation of radiation in the upper atmosphere is now so high (quantity, not height), from Fukushima, that it is contaminating everything that fly up there.