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F-16 Crash at Shaw AFB

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F-16 Crash at Shaw AFB

Old 1st Jul 2020, 06:58
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F-16 Crash at Shaw AFB

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...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 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.)




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Old 1st Jul 2020, 12:50
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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.
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Old 1st Jul 2020, 14:52
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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.

Last edited by gums; 1st Jul 2020 at 15:22. Reason: added notion
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Old 1st Jul 2020, 17:50
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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.
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 19:59
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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 :-(

Last edited by F-16GUY; 12th Nov 2020 at 20:25.
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 20:04
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(sorry, not allowed to post urls)
Sorted:
https://www.afjag.af.mil/Portals/77/...FB%20(ACC).pdf
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 20:16
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Thumbs up

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

Thanks MightyGem
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 20:24
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Thanks, F-16Guy for the update.
As to the details:
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 22:52
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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.

Last edited by OK465; 12th Nov 2020 at 23:12.
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Old 12th Nov 2020, 23:48
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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.

Last edited by Easy Street; 13th Nov 2020 at 00:19.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 01:50
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Originally Posted by OK465
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.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 02:05
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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,

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Old 13th Nov 2020, 04:07
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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.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 04:46
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Originally Posted by 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...
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!
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 09:45
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Originally Posted by pba_target
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.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 13:12
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This would make an excellent example of inadequate supervision for the Flying Supervisors' Course - if the RAF still runs that.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 14:51
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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.

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Old 13th Nov 2020, 15:14
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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.

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Old 13th Nov 2020, 15:30
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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.

Last edited by Easy Street; 13th Nov 2020 at 16:18.
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Old 13th Nov 2020, 15:33
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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.
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