Posted on 02/07/2022 10:55:27 AM PST by BenLurkin
When Lt. Kara Hultgreen died while trying to land on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the event touched off a national debate about women in combat roles and the military pushing women who weren’t ready into active service. Except Hultgreen was more than qualified to be a naval aviator – she was just a victim of a well-known deficiency in the F-14’s Pratt & Whitney engine.
On Oct. 25, 1994, she was attempting to land her F-14 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. She overshot the landing area’s centerline and attempted to correct the mistake. Her correction disrupted the airflow into her Tomcat’s left engine, which caused it to fail. This was a known deficiency in that particular engine.
By the time she died, Lt. Hultgreen had more than 1,240 hours of flying time in the F-14 Tomcat and had landed on a carrier some 58 times, 17 times at night. She was ranked first in defending the fleet from simulated attacks by enemy aircraft and in air refueling, and second in tactics to evade enemy aircraft and in combined familiarization with tactics and aircraft.
Her colleagues and fellow pilots praised her performance as a naval aviator and reminded people that 10 F-14 pilots were killed in accidents between the years of 1992 and 1994.
(Excerpt) Read more at wearethemighty.com ...
“This doesn’t tell the whole story.”
Well...okay.
That lends it some credibility, but does not necessarily make it convincing. The modern military is very "woke", and some people, like General Milley, pretty much show they've been brainwashed and are irrational.
Vindman also comes to mind. We've got a lot of kooks in the service now.
Source, please.
That was 28 years ago, and you expect me to find that source again? It might have been the American Spectator, but I was reading a lot of other resources at that time too. I had a subscription to National Review, so it might be in there, but i'm thinking it was the American Spectator because it always was a little edgier.
Might have been other publications. I don't remember for sure, but I certainly remember those details.
Watch the video on post 40.
A couple of facts.
She was on a watch list due to poor grading of her carrier landings. ALL carrier landings are graded. Her’s were considered poor enough to get her on the watch list.
There was an established procedure for engine stalls all F-14 pilots were required to memorize. She did not follow that procedure.
It was demonstrated multiple times in simulator recreations of the event that if the procedure had been followed, she would have recovered to a stable flight.
Bottom line is she was on the low end of acceptable piloting skills for an F-14 pilot, or bellow acceptable and was allowed to stay for political consideration, and she didn’t follow procedure.
It was entirely her fault that she crached. But those who pusher her into a role she shouldn’t have been in bear a big part of the responsibility as well.
Was the accident rate among Navy pilots better in the years before 1996 or after 1996?
That is relevant how to what I wrote? If you have a persuasive point related to what I said, make it.
Here you go, and you aren't going to like it.
https://www.unz.com/print/AmSpectator-1995jun-00040/
What I said was on the third page of the article, but I advise you to read the entire thing.
You should give me an "Attaboy!" for finding this.
Perhaps you would like to read this to get more, and likely more accurate, information.
The Navy said Hultgreen had logged 217 hours in the front, or pilot, seat of the F-14 Tomcat.
“she should have gone full power with the remaining engine in an effort to recover.”
That’s actually not the case. That is likely what she did, but that only makes the situation worse.
I encourage you to watch the video at the link in post 40.
This was part of the cover-up by the Navy. She panicked and violated the procedure during landing. The Navy forced the pilots to replicate her mistakes in the Sim, forcing them to fail.
As the controversy continued, Adm. Jeremy Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations, and several other officials continued to focus on engine failure as the primary cause of the accident, asserting that 8 of 9 F-14 pilots were unable to safely fly the plane out of a replicated situation in a simulator. But on April 9, 1995 Robert Caldwell of the San Diego Union-Tribune challenged that assertion, and suggested that the tests had been manipulated to bolster a false conclusion.
Citing three independent and confidential sources, Caldwell reported that the Navy had rigged the simulations by forbidding the use of crucial BOLDFACE emergency instructions, which aviators must memorize and use instantly in order to fly-away safely on one engine. Forbidding use of the BOLDFACE instructions in the simulator virtually guaranteed that "crashes" would occur.
https://www.cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/CMRRPT09-0695.pdf
That is my recollection regarding what "experts" said at the time. I think the real answer is to not shadow the airstream into your engine inlet.
As for watching videos, i'm on an old computer and youtube has made it nearly impossible to watch videos on this machine. It used to work fine, but youtube "upgraded" their service so that it doesn't work anymore on this old machine and old browser.
Instead of ‘negging’ this Naval Aviator, read this part of the article:
Her correction disrupted the airflow into her Tomcat’s left engine, which caused it to fail. This was a known deficiency in that particular engine.
The engine had a KNOWN PROBLEM.
Skill and luck are no match for known failures.
Unless that man was John McStain...
That is a lie. There was nothing wrong with the engine. She simply flamed it out by disrupting it's airflow into the engine inlet because she moved the control surfaces in such a way as to cause the front fuselage to block the airstream going into the engine air intake.
This is a known problem on all navy jets and has nothing to do with any specific engine. The aircraft has to fly straight into the air stream. If you get it cocked slightly sideways, the nose of the aircraft blocks the air flow into the engine causing a "compressor stall" and a flameout.
You can recover from this at higher speeds and higher altitudes, but you often cannot recover from this at low speeds and low altitudes.
Not at all. It's not a matter of liking or disliking. Facts are facts.
Thanks and will read!
Very mature attitude. Much respect.
“The engine had a KNOWN PROBLEM.”
First, it was not the engine with the problem. It’s an issue inherent to twin engine aircraft where the intakes are on the side. The F-14 was more susceptible to this problem than most other aircraft at the time.
So, yes, it was a known problem. Which is exactly why there was an established procedure for recovery that all F-14 pilots were required to memorize. That procedure did result in recovery of the aircraft when this event was recreated in simulators multiple times.
She did not follow that procedure.
She screwed up.
Watch the video linked in post 40.
“You can recover from this at higher speeds and higher altitudes, but you often cannot recover from this at low speeds and low altitudes.”
Correct, but in this case it was recoverable if the procedure was followed.
This was demonstrated in multiple simulation recreations of this incident.
Please watch the video linked in post 40.
As long as she crashes every 59th time she is “good enough”. Right.
I don’t mock this woman’s death, but the sad fact is our military has become a social engineering group and in that sense worthy of ridicule.
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