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F-18 crashes into apartment complex

Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

one thing I would like to know is how much control they had of the plane before they ejected because if they ejected whilst it was still possible to try and get it out of harms way then they failed to do their job.

I heard they did everything possible til the last second but had no control...
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

I heard they did everything possible til the last second but had no control...

yeh just read that myself, fair play to them! One of them was hanging out of a balcony!
 
I am torn on something here. If you are a pilot and your plane is heading toward anything residential is it ok to bailout and say screw it to save your own ass? Also I am curious if there is anything he could have done even if he hadn't bailed to avoid hitting an apartment building? I've never flown so I am not sure. But I tend to beleive that if the pilot could have missed an apartment building, even at the expense of his own life, he should have done it.

If the flight crew bailed out, it means that they had lost complete control and the aircraft was going to do what it wanted, no matter what the crew did to prevent it.
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

one thing I would like to know is how much control they had of the plane before they ejected because if they ejected whilst it was still possible to try and get it out of harms way then they failed to do their job.

If they had that much control, they wouldn't have bailed out.

Gotta love armchair quarterbacks.
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

If they had that much control, they wouldn't have bailed out.

Gotta love armchair quarterbacks.

be fair I posted after that saying I had read the whole story and gave them props.

ps. I served just like you so keep the armchair **** to yourself please
 
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Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

If they had that much control, they wouldn't have bailed out.

Gotta love armchair quarterbacks.

Coach class pilots.

They'll spend months analyzing a decision these guys had about four seconds to make.
 
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Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

Dear lord, I never dared to believe that possible after I saw the carnage. I don't normally believe in miracles, but if I did this would most certainly be an example of one.


Here's today's report, Diana:

IRGINIA BEACH

How?

That’s the question everyone is asking.

How does a 30,000-pound fighter jet fall from the sky, slam into a crowded neighborhood, burst into a fireball, incinerate dozens of apartments – and kill no one?

On Saturday, one day after a Navy F/A-18D crashed into the Mayfair Mews apartments on Birdneck Road, everyone on the ground was declared safe and accounted for, and both pilots had been released from the hospital.

As teams of white-suited hazmat workers combed through charred rubble, and the stench of jet fuel still hung in the air, one word was on the lips of grateful neighbors, wide-eyed onlookers, tired firemen, seen-it-all rescuers, cynical police officers, and hardened military types: Miracle.

“I can’t speak for everyone’s religious beliefs,” said Adm. John Harvey, head of the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, “but if you want to define a miracle, what happened here yesterday meets that definition for me.”

Dread turns to amazement as casualties hold to zero | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

This is truly an Easter miracle.
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

Coach class pilots.

They'll spend months analyzing a decision these guys had about four seconds to make.

Remember the gentleman who landed a 737 in the Hudson after hitting some geese? 4 months after the incident, reports started surfacing that if he did xyz, he could have made safely back to the airport landing strip. Those guys were jerks in the simulator, knowing what was about to happen, and saying he should have made it back to the airstrip.

As you said, they had only seconds to make the decision. Well done by the pilots.
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

be fair I posted after that saying I had read the whole story and gave them props.

ps. I served just like you so keep the armchair **** to yourself please

My understanding is that eyewitnesses heard nothing from the aircraft, meaning both engines were out. Also heard this from a Navy buddy. So they were piloting a stone. They could have done nothing at all at that point. Had they only lost a single engine they would have flown back to base.
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

This may sound weird, but at least these two pilots can go to sleep easily (or more easily) because they didn't kill anyone. I couldn't imagine how hard it would be for them to get back in the cockpit if that accident had killed anyone.
 
Re: U.S. Navy jet crashes in Virginia; 2 pilots believed to have ejected

My understanding is that eyewitnesses heard nothing from the aircraft, meaning both engines were out. Also heard this from a Navy buddy. So they were piloting a stone. They could have done nothing at all at that point. Had they only lost a single engine they would have flown back to base.

Yeah, had to be a dual flameout. The article mentions "catastrophic mechanical malfunction," my wild-ass-guess is an uncontained engine failure in which the shrapnel damaged the other engine. A typical jet engine is designed to try and contain turbine blades that detach (and they tend to do it violently), but it's not always successful and I'm not sure if fighter engines have the same setup. An F/A-18's engines are very close together, one engine coming apart could easily damage the other. The flight controls are hydraulic, and the hydraulic pressure comes from the engines as well. A dual engine failure would cause a loss of hydraulic pressure, making aircraft control extremely difficult. There's probably a backup system, but at low speed and altitude with no engines, there may not be time to activate it.

The above, as mentioned, is completely speculative.
 
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