F-16 Crash at Shaw AFB

[ORAC]

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34537/f-16-crashes-at-shaw-air-force-base-in-south-carolina

F-16 Crashes At Shaw Air Force Base In South Carolina

Details remain very limited, but a crash involving one of the 20th Fighter Wing's F-16s occurred on the evening of June 30th, 2020 at Shaw Air Force Base. Flames and emergency vehicles could be seen on base as the incident unfolded. As it sits now, the pilot's status is unknown.

A statement from the base reads:

A U.S. Air Force F-16CM Fighting Falcon assigned to the 20th Fighter Wing, Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. crashed at approximately 2330 yesterday, June 30, 2020, here on base. At the time of the accident, the aircraft was on a routine training mission with one pilot on board.

Shaw Air Force Base emergency responders are on scene. The cause of the crash, as well as the status of the pilot, are unknown at this time.*

As soon as additional details become available, information will be provided.

Shaw AFB is home to three squadrons of Block 50 F-16CMs, which specialize in the suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses and are commonly referred to as Wild Weasels (https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/9455/usafs-deadliest-f-16-pilot-talks-f-15-retirement-syria-and-pilot-shortage) due to their unique mission set.

(*A report on the USAF NCO Facebook page says that the pilot has been taken to Prisma Tuomey for treatment.)

[Airbubba]

From the Shaw AFB Facebook page:

Update: Pilot confirmed deceased

The pilot of the F-16CM that crashed at approximately 2330 on June 30, 2020, during a routine training mission here at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., was pronounced dead.

The name of the pilot is being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification. Out of respect and consideration for the family, we ask for your patience and to avoid speculation until we release more information.

https://www.facebook.com/115065875180277/videos/726304964865633

[gums]

Salute!

TNX, Bubba.
So here's a nickel on the grass......

Gums sends...

P.S. Considering the time of the crash, I would venture that there was an ongoing fairly important exercise or ORI. Training at midnight is rare, but during ORI's we flew 24/7 to simulate first few days of a major conflict - figure WW3 in Europe or maybe Korea.

[Lonewolf_50]

hand salute
Here's another nickel on the grass.
I wonder if they still preface the narrative in the reports "during a routine training mission ..."
or if that turn of phrase has been overtaken by something else.

[F-16GUY]

www(dot)afjag.af.mil/Portals/77/AIB-Reports/2020/June/F-16%20Mishap%20AIB%2030%20June%202020%20Shaw%20AFB%20(ACC).pd f (sorry, not allowed to post urls)

Accident report is out and makes for a sobering read.

Its beyond me how this young pilot was placed in such a bad scenario without any of the more experienced squadron pilots or SOF hitting the brakes even before step.
Less then 100 hours on type, first attempt at AR, at night in a single seater? WTF! First try at a complicated SEAD mission at night. Told to land even though he questioned the decision (whether the EP CL covered his failure mode) multiple times. Total lack of suppervision at so many levels.

And last but not least, a seat DRS that could have been changed to a newer version 3 years ago, had it been properly prioritized!

So sad :-(

[MightyGem]

(sorry, not allowed to post urls)
Sorted:
https://www.afjag.af.mil/Portals/77/AIB-Reports/2020/June/F-16%20Mishap%20AIB%2030%20June%202020%20Shaw%20AFB%20(ACC).pd f

[F-16GUY]

[QUOTE=MightyGem;10925185]Sorted:
/QUOTE]

Thanks MightyGem

[Lonewolf_50]

Thanks, F-16Guy for the update.
As to the details: :eek:

[OK465]

Less then 100 hours on type, first attempt at AR, at night in a single seater?

That sounds somewhat questionable. Shaw is not a training base. I would suspect that he had both day and night dual and single-seat AAR training when he went thru a B course, Luke or Holloman. I would guess after lead-in training, B course is less than 100 hrs, C course was only 50. I don't think USAF does local checkouts for B course level dudes.

The 20th at Shaw may have local requirements to do a day before night, but I doubt he had never air refueled previously. (However, could be a COVID exigency, but they certainly loaded him up.)

edit: Well upon further review it does say this was his first ever AAR. I'm amazed.

Although, my first ever night AAR was in a single-seat F-100D during a local checkout, no B course. Of course that was the ragtag Guard, but even they made me do a day AAR first, and there were no other complex mission requirements added on.

[Easy Street]

The stated primary cause of “landing short” seems to me only a contributory factor in this sorry affair. And it stretches credulity that “supervision” is only listed as a factor in relation to the SOF’s handling of the emergency checklist. A first look at SEAD, in a four-ship at night, in challenging weather, via a first-ever AAR, while still building recency after a lean period of flying, having only just graduated from training? To my mind, the investigation would have been justified in finding such extraordinarily poor supervision to be the primary cause of the accident.

[flighthappens]

That sounds somewhat questionable. Shaw is not a training base. I would suspect that he had both day and night dual and single-seat AAR training when he went thru a B course, Luke or Holloman. I would guess after lead-in training, B course is less than 100 hrs, C course was only 50. I don't think USAF does local checkouts for B course level dudes.

The 20th at Shaw may have local requirements to do a day before night, but I doubt he had never air refueled previously. (However, could be a COVID exigency, but they certainly loaded him up.)

edit: Well upon further review it does say this was his first ever AAR. I'm amazed.

Although, my first ever night AAR was in a single-seat F-100D during a local checkout, no B course. Of course that was the ragtag Guard, but even they made me do a day AAR first, and there were no other complex mission requirements added on.

Was going to say read the report, but then I noticed you had revisited.

yeah, supervision not great in this case.

[gums]

Salute!

Going with the crowd's opinion mostly, except I have doubts the nugget had not done any AAR prior to this. Hell, even back when the Earth was still cooling we had the brown bars in a family model for their first AAR. They even made me go thru the drill in 1979 and I had done hundred or more AAR in the Sluf during my SEA tours. Maybe this was just first AAR in the Block xxx

I also have problems with other aspects of this debacle,

Gums sends...

[OK465]

Yeah, I had over 5000 hours in fighters when I did my first AAR in the F-16.....and it was dual with an IP in the B model, daylight. First F-16 night AAR was also dual with an IP in the B.

This is bizarre, not to mention the rest of it.

[PPRuNeUser0211]

Salute!

Going with the crowd's opinion mostly, except I have doubts the nugget had not done any AAR prior to this. Hell, even back when the Earth was still cooling we had the brown bars in a family model for their first AAR. They even made me go thru the drill in 1979 and I had done hundred or more AAR in the Sluf during my SEA tours. Maybe this was just first AAR in the Block xxx

I also have problems with other aspects of this debacle,

Gums sends...
Strikes me that this might be the classic case of a unit receiving a "new-reality" student (I E different training to those that went before due to covid or a change in syllabus) and failing to adapt their expectations? Essentially a failure of supervision, but a really common mistake I've seen several times. Usually make worse by no awareness on the students' parts that they're different to those that came before!

[Easy Street]

Strikes me that this might be the classic case of a unit receiving a "new-reality" student (I E different training to those that went before due to covid or a change in syllabus) and failing to adapt their expectations? Essentially a failure of supervision, but a really common mistake I've seen several times. Usually make worse by no awareness on the students' parts that they're different to those that came before!

I agree with this, and note also that the report makes no mention of the amount of recent sim time that the mishap pilot had logged. With generals and air marshals everywhere espousing greater use of synthetics, I wonder whether this accident may be an unwelcome validation of the counter-arguments.

[BEagle]

This would make an excellent example of inadequate supervision for the Flying Supervisors' Course - if the RAF still runs that.

[Two's in]

This is a textbook example of ass-covering by the brass or even cognitive dissonance to the Nth degree. The report clearly states that initial AAR and SEAD sorties must be demonstrated to students/trainees in daylight conditions before attempting them at night, and yet this unit authorized both of those details within this single sortie, having compounded their error by mis-rating the risk assessment prior to the authorization.

OK, so far the unit has only flagrantly disregarded the safety rules for flight authorization. But now the holes really start to line up...

The Mishap Pilot (MP) (unsurprisingly) fails to refuel, so his SEAD detail can't be completed so he and his Flight Lead have to RTB. Approaching Shaw AFB the Flight Lead makes a remark to the MP “that was not the way to start your tanking experience,”. So what? This guy thinks he's screwed up, the sortie is a bust, and now his Flight Lead is confirming his suspicions even before they are safely on the ground. Nobody will ever know what went through this guy's head on that approach, but he was not able to employ the correct techniques for a relatively simple ILS recovery and hit the undershoot, trashed the gear and got it back into the air.

This is where the system really failed him. The Flight Lead and the ground team tried every way they could to make the emergency fit the checklist for "Landing Gear Unsafe". It wasn't unsafe, it was hanging off the aircraft and they knew that, but they either consciously or subconsciously avoided the "Ejection" option. There was an opportunity to get engineering advice from Lockheed Martin, but that was missed. Subsequently, the approach end cable landing went almost exactly as you could have predicted, and the MP realized he was in trouble and initiated the ejection.

The next event was just a tragic reminder of when your day goes bad, it goes really bad. The failure of the ejection sequence is what ultimately killed this guy, but to find there was an outstanding seat modification that had not been completed and multiple extensions to a seat component that was past its planned life were just more indications of holes in the maintenance policy for a critical life-saving component (not unlike the Red Arrow seat incident).

There were multiple opportunities to break this chain of events and gain a more favorable outcome for the Pilot, but they were all missed. So when an Air Force 2-Star says;

"I find by a preponderance of evidence the cause of the mishap was the MP’s failure to correctly interpret the ALS and identify the runway threshold during his first landing attempt"

You know that Careers are still more important than lives.

[alf5071h]

The investigation and report of this accident is an example of the worst form of blame.
'Preponderance' assigns some quality to a supposition - opinion, or by assigning a HF category an error is an explanation - place in box xx and file under crew error.
The 'opinion' that the pilot did not follow the approach lights is with hindsight; landing short implies being low, but not necessarily constantly low, nor any reasoning for this

The PAPI / approach path diagram is misleading; deviation from PAPI should be shown as angular paths. A constant low approach should have indicated W/R and then R/R; there is no justifiable explanation as to what the pilot saw.
The PAPI appears not to be harmonized with the ILS; 2.5 deg vs 2.82 deg, and the implied 'aim point' just after the threshold suggest that a duck under manoeuvre is recommended from both ILS and PAPI.
The understanding and application of HF is awful.

Two's in :ok:

[Easy Street]

Two’s in: +1 from me, well said, although I find the SOF and MEL to be less deserving of censure than the other supervisors. I am inclined to think that the wording ‘gear unsafe’ was very unhelpful to them; plain English is usually best in stressful situations, and by the dictionary definition the gear was clearly in an ‘unsafe’ condition in this case. ‘Gear unlocked’ would be a more accurate title for the drill as underwritten by L-M and would have made it more likely that the SOF would seek technical advice. I read the MEL’s comments during the recovery as a supportive gesture intended to reassure the MP - a ‘that was asking too much of you, don’t beat yourself up’ type of comment - but judging by the way sh*t seems to roll downhill in this report I wouldn’t be surprised if they get the harshest treatment when the worst supervisory failings lie elsewhere.

alf,

The ‘duck under’ which you describe is commonly taught in fast jet ops (it was SOP in RAF flying training and on my front line types, can’t comment on others) and is intended to bring the touchdown point back towards the threshold after achieving visual references. Fast jets (and the F-16 is a case in point) often have relatively poor stopping performance compared to heavies, particularly if failure conditions emerge during the landing run, making touchdowns at or beyond the instrument approach aiming point somewhat undesirable. ‘Nothing more useless than runway behind you’, etc. The result is that a PAPI transition from 2W/2R at decision, through 1W/3R into 4R is totally normal and expected. A rule of thumb when assessing pilots on my type was 4R no earlier than 100ft above touchdown (with 2.5 degree PAPIs ~1200 feet in). I don’t see the diagram as at all misleading; what appears to have happened is the MP mistook the approach lighting crossbar for the threshold (with excessive clutter in the HUD - ie lots of green to distract from the true threshold lights) and hence ‘ducked under’ by too much. An error rooted in the stress experienced by an inexperienced pilot under exceptionally poor supervision: the root cause in my opinion.

[Trumpet trousers]

Two's in:

That post deserves to be nominated as the post of the year on Pprune - well said, I wholeheartedly agree. Quite how the supervisory failings, both individually and collectively, avoided any form of censure is jaw-dropping.

[ASRAAMTOO]

I had been attempting to compose a reply to this thread.

Two's In has put it way more eloquently than I could have!

[Fortissimo]

This is where the system really failed him.

I think the system really failed him when it put him into an environment for which his training had hopelessly ill-equipped him. The RAF was often accused in the past of pushing people too far and too fast during training, but this takes the biscuit. And I can't believe the poor man had no reservations about his upcoming first experience of AAR being at night, especially as it was to be followed by his first stab at the SEAD job; I know I would have been apprehensive in that position. When I did my first AAR trip it was in daylight with an instructor in the back seat and with AAR as the primary aim, nothing else counted. I was absolutely knackered by the end of it. I got nowhere near a night sortie until I was properly day qualified.

Mindful that people would have been doing their best to get him through to a mission qual rather than knowingly setting him up to fail, he would still have been under enormous self-imposed pressure once he was unable to get fuel. I wonder how his mindset would have been had the flight lead briefed him that he probably wouldn't crack the AAR and that it was not a problem, just RTB and shoot some approaches with the remaining gas.

Whatever, a tragic outcome with widely applicable lessons about supervision, managing training, and deferred maintenance activity on something as critical as an ejection seat.

[gums]

Salute!

Agree with many so far, but still have trouble with this guy having first ever AAR at night when solo, and not in family model as Okie has related. OTOH, my first night AAR in the Sluf was after I got to my final fighter squad and we did not have family models in that jet for another 8 or 9 years or....


I have never appreciated the duck under idea or the two step final approach angle. Not a nasal radiator, but I liked the fairly constant approach angle and angle of attack. So I have problems unnerstanning the initial collision with lights. The poor advice to attempt an arrestment is another whole issue.

Gums sends....

[charliegolf]

Blimey, were any of these people on the Mull enquiry?

CG

[wiggy]

Blimey, were any of these people on the Mull enquiry?


I know what you mean, and yes, also an excellent post by Two's in.

I'm a long time out of the military game, and not at all cognisant of how the USAF handles reports that will find their way at least in part into public domain - any chance some conclusions/findings/criticisms have been redacted?


FWIW I agree with Easy Street's thoughts that the MELs comments were probably aimed as being supportive but by that stage in proceedings I suspect the MP was quite possibly very distracted from his primary task by worries/niggles about the debrief..whatever, it does appear he should never have been put in that situation in the first place and was very very badly let down by the supervisory system.

[sycamore]

Would it have been possible to retract the other wheels,and then land on the wing tanks/belly...?
If Plan `C` would have been instigated(Ejection),where would it have been done?,..are there any available night rescue helos available on base,nearby....no mention ,and time was running out...? Weather in `ejection area...?
Any possibility that the MP `dipped` under the ILS due to his `lead` having just done a `go-around`, and possible wake-turbulence near the threshold...?

[Easy Street]

Would it have been possible to retract the other wheels,and then land on the wing tanks/belly...?
If Plan `C` would have been instigated(Ejection),where would it have been done?,..are there any available night rescue helos available on base,nearby....no mention ,and time was running out...? Weather in `ejection area...?
Any possibility that the MP `dipped` under the ILS due to his `lead` having just done a `go-around`, and possible wake-turbulence near the threshold...?

I’d suggest that trying to retract the gear with components out of place (such as the drag brace and rotated main wheel) would be a very bad idea as it would risk damage to the mass of pipes and cables that tend to run through undercarriage bays. But more to the point, the answer is in the report: if it isn’t in the checklist and time is available, don’t freestyle, call the helpline. Also in the report it says that all flight parameters were stable during the final approach and that the change of flight path was ‘normal’ except for the incorrect selection of aiming point. While I disagree with the attribution of causes, I think the fact-finding sections of the report (probably not written by the 2*!) are admirably clear on what happened.

[wiggy]

If Plan `C` would have been instigated(Ejection),where would it have been done?,..are there any available night rescue helos available on base,nearby....no mention ,and time was running out...? Weather in `ejection area...?


IMHO those issue shouldn't really matter that much, there might well have been a preferred area from a sparse population POV, in order to prevent dumping the aircraft onto a populated area, but in terms of "helos" etc I don't think you'd rule out a medium level controlled ejection in favour of landing with a potentially lethal gear configuration because of post ejection survival issues - I've no doubt the MP would have been trained in the arts of post ejection survival...

[megan]

Quite how the supervisory failings, both individually and collectively, avoided any form of censure is jaw-droppingAt least they made some sort of effort at an investigation, unlike our RAAF where a fatal F-111 was not subject to a Board of Inquiry or Coroner Inquest, reason assumed to be a lack of will to have the supervisory failures, the real accident cause, to see the light of day.

https://www.navalofficer.com.au/13-night/

[OK465]

Re: no B course AAR.

I've had a lot of B course students in both the F-100 and A-7, and I've never heard of a student being released from the course before satisfactorily completing all the syllabus requirements including night AAR and night ground attack in sequence as well as any task specified as requiring a dual ride. We had one that had to do 4 night formation landings in the F-100F (first 3 graded unsat with IP intervention) and had to return to finish the course after XMAS.

Actually same was true of the C and I courses, nobody left before completion of all elements.

I wonder if this is standard now, COVID related or what? AETC passing the buck to the ops units. Why did he have to return to SC before completing the syllabus? Operational unit instructors tend to have a bit different mindset regarding training than dedicated formal training unit B course instructors who see the initially 'less skilled' side of fighter aviation regularly.

[BVRAAM]

Surely the repercussions for such gross negligence must go far beyond that of simply removing those responsible from command?

[F-16GUY]

Would it have been possible to retract the other wheels,and then land on the wing tanks/belly...?
If Plan `C` would have been instigated(Ejection),where would it have been done?,..are there any available night rescue helos available on base,nearby....no mention ,and time was running out...? Weather in `ejection area...?
Any possibility that the MP `dipped` under the ILS due to his `lead` having just done a `go-around`, and possible wake-turbulence near the threshold...?

sycamore,

The structural failure the MP had, included the seperation of the left drag-brace, from the drag-brace support fitting. As the system B hydraulic line to the drag-brace mounted down-lock actuator is routed along the route where the seperation of the drag-brace and brace fitting occurred, it severed the system B line, thereby depleting system B in a matter of seconds, thereby precluding any further retraction or normal extension of the landing gear. 5 years ago we had this exact failure to occur just as the jet rotated, when a blown tire shook the drag-brace support fitting apart. In this case, the pilot was experienced, it happened during daytime, he had a full tank of gas (just after T/O) and the SOF elected to contact LM's conference hotel hotline early in the proces. The fire & rescue guys even had some of the broken parts collected and laying on the ops desk within 30 minutes of the incident. In this case LM's engineers advised agains an arrested landing attempt and it was decided to perform a controlled ejection over the water.

The linked video shows footage from the lead aircraft as he inspected the strikken aircraft and described the condition of the gear to the SOF and LM's engineers. It gives som impression to the degree of the damage, and also indicates (to me at least) that the hanging drag-brace will most likely hit the cable before the hook and by doing so, it might hinder a succesfull engagement.

The video is an hour long program with interview of the pilot, however if you slide to 7:55 you can see the footage i am talking about. The beginning also show the controlled ejection filmed by the SAR helo, as well as 42:43 into the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4vKMsUvpE&lc=UghrcPKC50v9KHgCoAEC
(Sorry, still not allowed to post URL's)

[F-16GUY]

There were multiple opportunities to break this chain of events and gain a more favorable outcome for the Pilot, but they were all missed. So when an Air Force 2-Star says;

"I find by a preponderance of evidence the cause of the mishap was the MP’s failure to correctly interpret the ALS and identify the runway threshold during his first landing attempt"

You know that Careers are still more important than lives.

It still says this under Cause:"It is my opinion the MP mistook the approach lights for the runway threshold lights due to preoccupation with his earlier failure to accomplish AAR and SEAD training. Unfortunately, the MP should have never been scheduled to fly this mission at night."

Note the last sentence...

[gums]

Salute!

Tnx for good poop , F-16Guy.

Glad your example had a better buncha advice for the pilot than the poor sob at Shaw. and on a similar vein.....

I had a wierd gear retraction exercise back in the early days, and we didn't have a lotta help from GD before resolving the issue and didn't have a lotta tried and true procedures yet. Wingie confirmed my problems after formation takeoff, but the upshot was nose gear up and one main up. At the time, a single main gear only configuration was no arrestment, bail. After one recycle we had safe NLG, safe left main and right main stuck in the well but doors open. Obviously a hydraulic proglem be it upstream valves or the actuator itself stuck in the retract position. I didn't like the idea of another recycle as I could wind up with only one MLG down, no nose gear. and so on and so forth. Because the gear "fell out" in the Viper from gravity and airflow, and because the doors were open, I suggested leaving the handle down and going to gear limit speed and using gees. Guess what? It worked! Nice to be able to pull 4 or 5 gees and still be below gear speed limit, huh? Only down side was I busted the actuator valves and the thing was leaking like crazy in the de-arm area. Glad I stopped before losing hydraulic fluid for brakes .
Being early days, we were still learning, and the problem was ice crystals in the hydualic actuator that pulled the gear up. The Viper actuators were not like those in the Double Ugly or Even the Eagles ( aka Rodan or Battlestar Galactica). Our new stuff had tiny orifices, and that included the servo actuators for the flight controls, so clean fluid and no contamination was the cure.

New procedures were implemented and we also preheated other things when it got real cold - like the jet fuel starter bottle and more. The Norwegians appreciated this early episode due to their basic climate.

Gums sends...

[Chugalug2]

I note that some have drawn comparisons with Mull 1994 (RAF Chinook Mk2, operated under an illegal Release To Service and Grossly Unairworthy; all 29 onboard killed). This accident is still the subject of cover up protecting Very Senior Officers' reputations to the very top of the RAF. Let us hope that the USAF does rather better and acts to reform rather than to cover up.
RIP

[falcon900]

Reflecting on the report, and what has been said already, it strikes me that there were really two distinct "incidents" here. Events leading up to the MLG being damaged, and those after. The report covers the former reasonably, and it is clear that the pilot should not have been flying that sortie, and was likely distracted by his failure to complete AAR successfully, and the consequent abandonment of the entire sortie.
However, from the point of the initial impact onwards, it seems to me there was almost a separate series of events. The cause of the impact was temporarily irrelevant, as The aircraft was airborne, flyable, and in communication. The pilot was clearly still in control, and seems to have been calm and rational. Indeed he seems to have been the only one to question the use of the checklist. Twice. Yet the investigation seems content to skip over this by saying his questions werent answered "directly". It would seem in fact that they were ignored, leading to a plan which had misadventure written all over it. Whilst we now know that a controlled ejection might also have been unsuccessful (indeed uncontrolled in the circumstances), it was at the time a dramatically lower risk scenario. The report doesnt mention whether the pilot was experienced at taking the wire, but even if he was, the margin for error with an aircraft with a severely damaged MLG is vanishingly small.
It has been a while since I read an accident report where so many holes lined up so perfectly, and yet the investigation manages to sound rather complacent.

[Training Risky]

I note that some have drawn comparisons with Mull 1994 (RAF Chinook Mk2, operated under an illegal Release To Service and Grossly Unairworthy; all 29 onboard killed). This accident is still the subject of cover up protecting Very Senior Officers' reputations to the very top of the RAF. Let us hope that the USAF does rather better and acts to reform rather than to cover up.
RIP
Agreed. It was disgusting how long it took to clear Jon Tapper and Rick Cook.

I was posted to the Chinook HC2 only 8 years after they died and the FADECs malfunctioned on my first flight! Luckily we were on the ground - we couldn't shut down correctly so we had to pull the fire handles (but not twist...).