T-bird crash blamed on pilot error

Mountain Home news ^ | January 28, 2004

[demlosers]

See the pilot punch out: Thunderbird_crash.mpeg

[demlosers]

See video Bump.

[Old Professer]

Math is hard...

[ArcLight]

Dag! That is serious! You see how fast the seat accelerates out of view? And if you look past the pilot's shoulder you can see the ground rushing up. Those guys must have reflexes like lasers to react that fast. I'da been mixed in with the rest of the wreckage. Wow!

[cpdiii]

Rokke if you read this thread I have a question.

Whey do they not set their altimeter to zero at ground level for an acrobatic display and thus their readout would be AGL instead of MSL?

[cpdiii]

Spell check is your friend!
Whey = why

[hattend]

Hmmm. Didn't they get an airfield altimeter setting from the tower before engine start?

Or do the T Birds use 29.92 all the time and have to do the mental math to convert MSL to AGL? Just curious.

Since he's sitting at a Pentagon desk and not likely to be a T-Bird again, it's a good thing my fiance' got his autograph 2 days before the accident at the Air Races in Reno

[Grut]

Not sure why they can't just set the altimeter to show zero on the ground and avoid all the MSL-AGL hooraw. As I recall, the altimeter has to be set to 29.92" above 18,000(?) feet and to the actual air pressure below that, but for the specific purpose of an airshow, setting it to show AGL seems worth a minor rewrite of the regs.

[hattend]

If you want Rokke to read the thread, ping him over. :-)

[Luke]

The Air Force has another supply officer. His career in T-Birds is over.

[Centurion2000]

Stricklin has been reassigned to a desk job in the Pentagon, although Air Force officials insisted he was not being punished for the incident.

He's not being punished ... he screwed up royally.

[PokeyJoe]

Stricklin has been reassigned to a desk job in the Pentagon, although Air Force officials insisted he was not being punished for the incident.

One lucky sum bit - but it's not the first time. I remember same thing happening to an F-18 at an air show at MCAS El Toro, and an F-22 Raptor cushioned on the runway not too long ago as well. Frankly, I would make him to TAD with the Navy landing ont he deck of an aircraft carrier. ALl he needed was a tailhook and he would have caught #3.

[kaiser80]

just incredible. I've seen many crashes and that one is one of the most spectacular (luckily nobody is hurt that's why I can say spectacular). Remember the crashes of the 2 MiGs-29? That one was owesome, they crashed in air and though the pilots managed to eject. After a couple of minuter they were standing
smoking cigarettes...I remember also a crash of a Su-27 Flanker, when the pilot forgot to extract gear ;)) and there were sparks on the runway...haha. After a day or two the plane
took off heading it's home base.

[Alissa]

Do you remember when about 2-4 T-Birds pilots all crashed into the ground at Indian Springs during a practice session in the early 80's? I was there quite awhile after the crash and you could still see the black scar marks on the ground. Very sobering.

[stylin_geek]

A friend of mine was an air force mechanic, and he had an aircraft he had worked on fly (he was a crew chief) into the side of a hill the day he signed off on it. He was sweating that one, even though the initial investigation showed both engines were turning when it impacted. It turns out the pilot had grabbed the wrong altimeter deviation card. I believe he worked on F-111's.

[LasVegasMac]

Dag! That is serious! You see how fast the seat accelerates out of view? And if you look past the pilot's shoulder you can see the ground rushing up. Those guys must have reflexes like lasers to react that fast. I'da been mixed in with the rest of the wreckage. Wow!

Sweet, huh?

ACES-II, (Advanced Concept Escape System - 2nd generation), and as those of us that used to be in the business say, "ACES-II, Thrust you can Trust!" Great video. The pilot made a career ending mistake, unfortunately, but at least the boy is alive to talk about it. And that is all that counts.

I've been retired since 1995. On my key chain is the firing pin for a JAU/8 ejection initiator. Just for a small memory of what I used to do. That particular initiator starts the entire sequence - canopy first, then seat. It was not a real glamorous job, but I got to shake hands with 4 very happy (but a bit shorter) pilots that were forced to "un-ass" the jet. My name was all over the maintenance records - seat maintenance, seat install, canopy install, etc.

Makes one feel warm all over.

ACES-II is used in the A-10 / F-15 / F-16 / F-117A / B-1 / B-2 / F-22 / and who knows what else. It is the escape system of choice.

LVM

[LasVegasMac]

4 of them. T-38's.

Lead's altimeter malfunctioned - and the other three had their eye balls glued on his jet. Sad.

I was here for that one.

LVM

[demlosers]

Do you remember when about 2-4 T-Birds pilots all crashed into the ground at Indian Springs during a practice session in the early 80's?

Yes, they were flying their T-38s wing tip to wing tip and followed the leader into the ground. The three Talons smacked the ground doing a similar maneuver as this T-bird did doing the split-S. The planes were too close to the ground when they executed their inverted flight turn.

[XHogPilot]

Striklin is exceptionally lucky to be alive. It's amazing that he almost completed his Split-S from less than 3000'. The F-16 can "turn a corner" better than any fighter I've seen. That and the ACES-II seat he rode are why he is above ground today. During the 1977 Paris Airshow, the fatal crash of the A-10 ThunderboltII doing an identical maneuver iced any opportunities for international sales of the Hog.

[Rokke]

Good question. Setting your altimeter to read zero only gives you an AGL reading over terrain with the same elevation you set your altimeter. A Thunderbird performance takes place over many square miles of terrain with usually a wide variance of elevation. Some maneuvers begin and end several miles away from show center. There may be a couple thousand feet of elevation difference within that distance. So you are still faced with converting your "MSL" altitude to AGL altitude during the course of the performance. In other words, it wouldn't necessarily solve the problem encountered in this mishap. This guy was an extremely talanted, well practiced human who made a mistake in an environment with very tight tolerences. It's a crappy way to end a flying career, but at least he survived. Glad it wasn't me.