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

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

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.

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....

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

CG

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.

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.

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...

At 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/

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.

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

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.

(Sorry, still not allowed to post URL's)

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...

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...

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

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.

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...).