notasnodnoradmin
At the risk of pedantry, didn't Sully land parallel to the flow of the waterway, and this one (seemingly) landed perpendicular to it? :}

Including the overrun, that is an 11,000 foot runway, with cables. It’s a hard “mishap” to explain.

Call sign: McDonnelld Ducklas

...with an instructor at the controls...

I'm leaning to brake failure - would not be noticed until it was needed and maybe failed too late to TOGO and try any cables. Possibly an anti-lock falsely detecting a wheel has locked up and keeping the plane going straight.

Had something like that happen in a car. Hit the brakes and a 2 inch section designed as an unobservable salt trap blew out. Only place where the line could not be seen along the frame rail. Unlike the F-15 I had a manual transmission and a parking brake.

AFAIK F-15 don't have thrust reversers. I did some very slight work on the thrust reverser/vector nozzle experimental F-15 data analysis. Mainly looked at it and wondered why anyone would want to given the complexity and weight burden. Same one got canards.

Imagine trying to explain the physics of how one can stop quicker in in a couple of feet of water than you can 10,000 feet of dry concrete followed by a 1,000 feet of sod.

I would imagine the lateral flow of water would have scant effect upon the outcome.

Water is nearly 1000X as dense as air - 10,000 feet of rolling through air is close to 10 feet of travel through water, or, in this case 100 foot wide canal, so, closer to a 100,000 ft runway equivalent.

Certainly some amount of speed bled off before the belly flop. Maybe it did a little skip?

It looks from the photos that there is pavement to the water's edge, unless they painted the sod an asphalt color with chevrons.

"The Eagle has landed" (but maybe not where intended??)

Well, somebody had to say it!:rolleyes: