Originally Posted by
PrivtPilotRadarTech
No fuel on board = no fuel leak. Yet according to Staff Sgt. Alexander Rodriguez, first man on the scene, "there was a single fuel leak on the right side." Are you calling SSgt Alexander a liar?
There are also published reports stating that fuel had to be pumped out before the aircraft could be moved, and that the cause was engine failure.
The truth will come out soon enough, and I will remember this thread. I will post the truth, along with some choice quotes from this thread, along with the names of the posters. I'm an Air Force veteran, and I don't take kindly to insulting BS claims that Maj. Alex Turner flew to fuel exhaustion.
Back in 1987, Blue Angel 5 had a flame out during a maneuver (El Centro, winter practice for the Blues) while inverted. As I came to understand this (over a beer some years later with a former Blues engine mechanic) had to do with F-18A fuel pumps and fuel transfer. (A fix was eventually arrived at). As with the helicopter that crashed onto a Glasgow pub a couple of years ago, you can have fuel starvation to the engines without running out of fuel in the bird. A given fuel system may have a malfunction or a feature that can set that up. All that said, the F-16 is a mature aircraft and I'd be very surprised if it fuel system, at this point in its life, has such oddities.