[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Lurking in Kansas]

Environmental impact was limited to soil contaminated by JP-8 where the fuselage came to rest.

I'm glad the soil is okay.

/sarcasm