In Plane video of recent Tbird crash

[chperplt]

http://www.avweb.com/newspics/tbirdcrash.mpg

 

[Kingairrick]

THAT is fu@*!ng cool...
I hope He's OK

 

[Northern Lights]

from AvWeb

January 26, 2004

Thunderbirds Crash Report And Video

By Mary Grady
Newswriter, Editor

Pilot error caused a U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds F-16 to crash at an air show on Sept. 14 at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, the Air Force said on Wednesday. (See below for in-cockpit video of the crash.) The pilot incorrectly climbed to 1,670 feet AGL instead of 2,500 feet before initiating the pull-down to the Split-S maneuver, according to the Air Force news release. The pilot, Chris Stricklin, 31, apparently flew by mistake to the MSL altitude used when practicing the maneuver at his home base, Nellis AFB in Nevada, which is 1,000 feet lower than the Idaho field elevation. The pilot ejected just eight-tenths of a second before impact, after reportedly making an effort to steer the aircraft away from the crowd of about 85,000 ... and now works at the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C. Stricklin suffered minor injuries. The F-16, valued at $20.4 million, was destroyed.

When Stricklin realized something was wrong, he exerted maximum back stick pressure and rolled slightly left to ensure the aircraft would impact away from the crowd should he have to eject, the Air Force said. He ejected when the aircraft was 140 feet above the ground. There was no other damage to military or civilian property. Also, the board determined other factors substantially contributed to creating the opportunity for the error to occur, including the requirement for demonstration pilots to convert AGL elevations to MSL altitudes, and performing a maneuver with a limited margin of error. Instead of just zeroing the altimeter to deck level as a result of the crash, procedures have been changed to require that Thunderbird pilots climb an extra 1,000 feet before starting the Split-S maneuver. Pilots must also call out their altitude to the ground safety operator in MSL rather than AGL numbers.

Click through for in-cockpit video of the crash. (Note: The 4.1Mb .mpg file is not recommended for slow connections). Originally obtained via email, AVweb is seeking more information about the genesis of this video, please contact AVweb with details.


http://www.avweb.com/newswire/10_05a/briefs/186582-1.html

 

[Wankel7]

If somebody wants to host it, I have an amazing picture a split second after the ejection.

Sure wish we could host small pictures on the forum...

Wankel

 

[ShawnC]

Have had the videos on my site for a while. Even have one that most don't have, the outside with radio chatter here:
http://movies.lazyeights.net/usaf

You can get the split second after ejection pic here:
http://lazyeights.net/Avion/t-bird_6_eject.jpg

And frame captures from the inside ejection video here:
http://www.fsnordic.net/discussion/...play;threadid=19765;start=msg182583#msg182583

Edit: Link didn't quite work correctly for the last one, fixed it.

Edit2: Still not quite working correctly, just copy and paste this:

http://www.fsnordic.net/discussion/index.php?board=17;action=display;threadid=19765;start=msg182583#msg182583

 

[gnx99]

They said he rolled it to keep it away from people. But by looking at the photo of the ejection and the cockpit video, he looks about as wings level as possible.

 

[ShawnC]

They said he rolled it to keep it away from people. But by looking at the photo of the ejection and the cockpit video, he looks about as wings level as possible.

Remember who said that, the media. Note that the media are idiots.

 

[ShawnC]

Re: where is the inside video???

I keep seeing links for the inside video but nothing is working!!!!


UUUUGGGGHHHHHH!

Here:
http://movies.lazyeights.net/usaf/T-Bird_Inside.mpg

And if all else fails:
http://lazyeights.net/movies/usaf/T-Bird_Inside.mpg

 

[ShawnC]

Well avweb is claiming that the ejection photo is doctored, frankly I don't believe it, unless they show me the parts from where they took it to doctor it.

Everything matches the video.

 

[flyifrvfr]

Airshow Crash

I was at the Martin State Airport airshow in Baltimore, Maryland when the F117 Stealth Fighter crashed. It was September, 1997 and I was at airshow center when the stealth made 2 low level passes left to right than right to left. On the third pass left to right at airshow center,and maybe 100 feet off the ground the left aileron began to flutter and a small piece of the wing came off. The pilot waited until he was at the end of the 7,000 foot runway and pulled gently to around 1,000 feet to sort out the problem when all hell broke loose. The left wing folded and the airplane flipped on its back and entered a slow inverted spin. The landing gear extended, I don't know if the gear came out because the pilot put it down or the G-force from the sudden stop put it down but it was the only thing that saved his life. The plane was going around 300 KTs and when the wing failed it slowed down to nothing and was falling inverted and spinning. As stated above, the gear came out and the plane turned right side up and gave the pilot just enough time to eject at 200 feet above the water. After the pilot ejected the plane was now falling like a falling leaf and finally came to rest in a house and 50 feet away from a large group of people eating crabs. The family whos house was hit were not at home at the time of the accident. If the wing would have failed altogether at airshow center, I would not be here right now because of the way it failed and flipped, it surely would have landed on hundreds of people like Raimstein..

 

[slide33]

Air Force Times: Pilot assigned to Pentagon - Ouch

Issue Date: February 02, 2004

Thunderbird crash blamed on altitude miscalculation
Pilot ejected with less than a second left

By Bruce Rolfsen
Times staff writer

A 1,000-foot mistake led to the crash of an Air Force Thunderbird F-16 in the opening minutes of an air show last September.
“This was a large error when dealing with low-level aerial flying,” said the commander of the Thunderbirds, Lt. Col. Richard McSpadden of Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

The pilot involved in the accident, Capt. Chris R. Stricklin, 31, mistakenly thought he was about 1,000 feet higher as he began a “split-S” maneuver.

The maneuver should end about 500 feet above the ground. When Stricklin realized the F-16 likely wouldn’t pull out of the dive in time, he turned the plane away from the crowd of about 85,000 people at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, and stayed with the jet until ejecting eight-tenths of a second before impact.

Stricklin is assigned to the Pentagon and hasn’t flown as a Thunderbird since the accident. He has logged about 1,480 hours in fighters.

McSpadden said he would fly with Stricklin again and praised the pilot’s performance once he realized he was in trouble.

In the wake of the Sept. 14 accident, the Thunderbird’s parent command, the Air Combat Command, convened an accident-investigation board independent of internal review by the Thunderbirds. Col. Bob Beletic, a veteran F-16 pilot and commander of the 20th Fighter Wing’s operations group at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., headed the investigation.

Beletic said Stricklin had a momentary lapse when he lost track of his altitude. Training at Nellis, the Thunderbirds’ home, had made Stricklin accustomed to starting flights at 2,000 feet above sea level.

Investigators concluded that although the Thunderbird pilots were aware that Mountain Home was 3,000 feet above sea level, as Stricklin began his flight he subconsciously assumed he was starting out at 2,000 feet.

The accident occurred on the first maneuver Stricklin performed, the report said. As the pilot of Thunderbird 6, Stricklin was the last Thunderbird to take off.

As he had done about 200 times before, Stricklin began by flying a maximum climb at 55 degrees. He rolled the plane over so he was flying upside down and began the split-S maneuver. When the maneuver is performed correctly, the jet reaches an altitude of 3,500 feet before rocketing downward. Because Stricklin miscalculated his altitude, he topped out at about 2,760 feet.

A safe descent would require 3,000 feet. As Stricklin started his descent, he was short 240 feet.

Stricklin ejected at about 140 feet above the ground and less than a second before the jet hit the midfield of Mountain Home’s runway complex at about 250 mph. The $20.4 million jet skidded several hundred feet while burning fuel billowed behind it.

When the Thunderbirds debut their 2004 season March 22 at Nellis for Air Force leaders, the opening split-S maneuver will be in the show, McSpadden said.

However, the descent won’t begin until the plane is 4,500 feet above the ground, the commander said.

That decision was made after investigators determined the maneuver’s 500-foot margin of error, accepted for the past 20 years, was too small, McSpadden said.

Beletic and McSpadden said that before September, there was never an accident during the maneuver.

Beletic’s report also found that the Thunderbirds’ high operations tempo might have led in part to Stricklin’s distraction. The Sept. 14 performance was the team’s sixth sortie in four days. A waiver was required to fly that often in such a short time, the report said.

McSpadden countered that Stricklin had 10 hours of sleep the night before the performance

 

[Jafar]

Have had the videos on my site for a while. Even have one that most don't have, the outside with radio chatter here:
http://movies.lazyeights.net/usaf

Hey man, how do I get the outside one with the radio chatter to work? It's asking me for a password to download it. Is that your site? Thanks.

 

[Typhoon1244]

Danm!

Guess I'll have to adjust my definition of "bad day."

 

[Iceman21]

They said he rolled it to keep it away from people. But by looking at the photo of the ejection and the cockpit video, he looks about as wings level as possible.

He knew the moment he looked at the ground after rolling inverted that he did not have enough altitude to complete the manuever. You can see as he comes through the vertical, pointing straight at the ground, the aircraft rolls slight to the left as viewed from the video. He was not aligned with the runway when the A/C impacted.

 

[Typhoon1244]

You can see as he comes through the vertical, pointing straight at the ground, the aircraft rolls slight to the left as viewed from the video.

It looks to me like, right as the aircraft is leveling off, the horizon is high on the starboard side, indicating a right bank. (Either that or the image is more distorted by either the camera or the canopy than I realize.)

 

[ShawnC]

Hey man, how do I get the outside one with the radio chatter to work? It's asking me for a password to download it. Is that your site? Thanks.

Forgot to set the permissions on that object. Should be able to read it now.

Looks wings level to me throughout the maneuver in the outside view.

 

[Rolling-Thunder]

I was not at the airshow, but I would venture a guess that had he NOT made a change in the heading, then he would have impacted the runway, and not slid along the grass, coming to within 100 ft. of the control tower.

Most T-Bird maneuvers are oriented along the runway centerline.