Building up the Lightning Force – when will the UK get its F-35 jets? 14 Sep 2022 Navy Lookout
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“First casualty
The MoD has published its interim report into the first F-35 loss suffered by the UK. ZM152 crashed into the sea on take-off from HMS Queen Elizabeth in November 2021. It confirms the cause was an engine blank (a cover used to prevent ingress of water and debris) that engineers failed to remove before flight. For the passage through Suez Canal the previous day, all F-35Bs on the flight deck had protective Red Gear fitted which included engine intake blanks. A local accounting procedure was in place, but this was not used for the mass fitting and removal of Red Gear during the Suez transit. Unable to take in enough air, the engine could not attain enough power for take off but it was too late to abort. The pilot ejected safely, landing on the flight deck without even getting wet. The aircraft was recovered from the sea bed in good time and has subsequently been returned to the UK. The airframe has been written off, but
some parts can probably be salvaged for re-use. [sure]
The loss of a jet costing around £90M due to such basic human error is hard to comprehend and many keyboard warriors are blaming the pilot for failure to conduct a thorough enough visual inspection himself before taking off. It has been suggested that the blank had possibly been dislodged and pushed deeper into the intake where it would have been hard to see. More about the precise circumstances and how procedures will be revised will doubtless be available when the full report is published in future. Although a mistake by RAF 617 Squadron, it should be remembered that an RN pilot commanded the unit at the time which numbers RN personnel among its engineers. Accidents are an inherent part of fast jet aviation and carrier operations carry additional risk. The USN also lost an F-35 to a landing mishap on USS Carl Vinson in January and an F/A-18 blown off the deck of USS Harry S Truman in July 2022....”
https://www.navylookout.com/building...its-f-35-jets/