F-35 accident Fort Worth 15/12/22 - pilot ejected ok
 

Interesting video... hope pilot is uninjured.

My (totally untrained) eye thought the descent was a bit quick...no idea what happened after the bounce though. And then the throttle seems to stay open?

Good seat performance! Why the delay? Trying to shut it down, or waiting a couple of precious seconds for a better seat profile?

Oh well, sh1t happens, and a good human result.

Yikes, imagine the sudden loss of the lift fan (mechanical, software glitch, perhaps associated with the bounce) would look something like that, with a significant pitch-over. Still seems to be lift being generated by the rear nozzle.

Something went a bit squirrely. That's four F-35B pilot saves for that seat, nice bit of engineering.

Salute!

Wow, I want of those seats for my truck after the initial crash on the highway.

Having seen many videos of the plane landing on the boats, something at last 2 or 3 seconds went awry and touch was not like I have seen.

Gums sends...

Going to be a heavy mess bill!

Mog

That’ll be a fail then, glad he got out.


Well, bar the nose leg, the canopy, the seat etc etc etc..

:E
https://www.fox4news.com/news/f-35-j...-in-fort-worth

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If I’m not mistaken the F35B(?) Mavy version has an automatic ejection sequence if a certain sumthing sumthing happens with the vertical thrust.
This may have been the airplane ejecting the pilot.

The pilot was probably frantically trying to press CTRL-ALT-DEL while it was squirreling around on the ground, before giving it up as a bad job!
Guess we will find out more in due course, but it certainly looked like a quick power cut would have settled things down quickly, if that were possible at the time.

Isn’t the F-35 supposed to be rated for very high vertical rates upon landing? The gear in this event doesn’t seem to “give” very much.
If he was testing high vertical rates on touchdown the results appear to have been suboptimal.
Mind you the video quality is not great on my Ipad.
Glad the pilot ejected safely.
His friends will probably be sending gag gifts of underwear for Christmas.

Salute!

We have seen at least two nose gear collapses with the 35, and maybe there's a design flaw that can be fixed.

I was surprised the test pilot waited until the plane stopped rotating and then punched. And with the Eglin nose gear collapse in mind, he might have just decided to ride it out. Then the Japanese nose gear thing a few weeks ago.

Another attaboy for Martin Baker, and I don't think their system acted on its own...rather, the pilot pulled the handle.

Gums sends...

Holy freaking schmoley.
Have just given Mrs T a heads up - she'll get that on the TV News tonight down here in Oz!

Five seconds between ejecting and landing! That’s faster than climbing out after a normal shutdown. Well done MB.

Looks like he waited until it was upright, I wouldn’t think ejecting sideways on the ground would end well ?

I think the Japanese nose gear failure is completely unrelated. There are long drag marks from the main gear indicating the brakes were locked to stop the wheels turning. I would not expect most nose gear to handle being pulled opposite to the braking direction while the main gear is skidding.

Edit: Excluding catapult launched aircraft, which this does not appear to be.

F35 Crash
 

It seems to me that this is not a gear related incident. After a relatively gentle bounce the aircraft is initially level, when it suddenly becomes unbalanced and pitches strongly nose down until it contacts the ground. At this point the nose gear fails but clearly there is still full thrust from the aft nozzle causing the aircraft to rotate on the ground. I would suggest that the forward LiftFan has failed in some way. Pleased to see the ejection working as advertised.

The Martin-Baker Mk16-US16E ejection seat as fitted to the F-35B does indeed have an active automatic ejection system which fires the seat when certain criteria are sensed. These are low speed, low altitude and adverse pitch rate.

The same seat fitted to the F-35A and F-35C does not have this system.

Test Flying The Joint Strike Fighter by Graham Tomlinson 17 Jun 2011
"...In the unlikely event of the lift fan failing catastrophically the aircraft would pitch inverted in 0.6 seconds, and the pilot is protected by auto-ejection signalled by pitch rate and attitude...." http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/hawkerass...kefighter.html

I think the point being made isn't that the nosewheel failures are linked, but that the nosewheel may have an inherent weakness that needs to be addressed.

Indeed, though I don't think the automatic ejection system is what sent the pilot skywards on this occasion, as whatever parameters would have caused the seat to fire automatically were present some seconds before it actually fired. Suspect the pilot made the choice and ejected himself.