I'm not a pilot and I'm not military, but this sucks from a management and leadership point of view. "Your actions were justifiable, but you can't work here anymore." This is what happens when management cares about the optics more than actually doing the right thing. Yes, it's silly to have a plane continue flying on its own for 11 minutes after the pilot ejected, but the pilot reacted like a human being: "This bag of bolts is trying to kill me, I'm punching out." Remedial training would be indicated, maybe up the pilot's flight time to increase confidence and currency, but you don't fire somebody when the hardware was largely to blame for creating the situation.
What really pisses me off is that they selected him for a command, moved him and his family to Yuma, and then relieved him two months later! I spent 44 years with the military, so glad that I'm done!
@@Daniel-v5y1c Once a contractor, you are not "in" the military, but you work for them. All of my contractor jobs were working for military personnel in support of their mission.
As a former USAF Flight Surgeon, I totally agree with your assessment of his situation. If he stayed with aircraft and died, we’d all be asking why he didn’t eject.
He sent a pilotless, flying, wrecking ball, potentially, into an unsuspecting populated area without having checked the backup systems for more complete information. He wasn't fired for the ejection but because he failed to accurately assess the situation which led to a potential disaster. The job is dangerous but he lost the job, leading the test squadron, because of this judgement, not the ejection.
My view as a former military officer and current airline pilot. First the board got this wrong. This isn’t a pilot error crash. The crash was caused by multiple and repeated failures of both primary and secondary Instrumentation as well as multiple other cautions and warnings in the weather that disoriented the mishap pilot. While we know with the benefit of hindsight that the aircraft was controllable the sequence of events was sufficient to disorient the pilot who did not know if any of his flight instruments were reliable or if the aircraft was responding to commanded inputs. Accordingly the mishap pilot IAW published guidance properly made the decision to eject. That’s what the board should have found and the fact that he was returned to full flying status confirms this. Now what does his relief say especially given the assurances he was provided before he took command? First and foremost it says that if you lose an aircraft no matter how ugly the circumstances and how justifiable every decision you made was if we can with the benefit of hindsight sitting in nice comfortable chairs with all the time in the world determine that maybe just maybe you might have been able to save the aircraft then your career is over. Its says we would rather you burn in and die in the attempt making your wife a widow and leaving your children without a father than eject. It says that senior leadership of the Marine Corps are liars who can’t be trusted. That they will burn even a highly respected senior officer at the stake for even the smallest of errors if they think it will make the Corps look better. It says that you cannot count on your Chain of Command supporting you but rather casting you aside as soon as it becomes expedient. It says that the Corps would have been happier if Col Del Pizzo had lost his life and as a result spared the Corps the embarrassment that came from the delay in finding the downed aircraft. It says the Commandant needs to be relieved of his position immediately and reduced in rank to no higher than Colonel for poor judgement and a loss of confidence in his ability to lead the Marine Corps. This whole situation is beyond disgusting. You give the man assurances and then move him and his family across the country knowing full well what the report says only to then relieve him as it’s coming out? Col Del Pizzo deserves a lot better after the years of service and sacrifice he’s given this country and the Marine Corps.
Hi jetdriver, retired A-6 Intruder driver here. You are absolutely correct in your assessment of the whole situation and the crappy chain of command all the way up to the Commandant. Of course the Commandant is a ground pounder so what would he know about a pilot in an extremis situation??? Agree with you, think it was more of the embarrassment issue with the crash site being undetermined for so long, Marine Corps embarrassment and conveying of "we won't tolerate pilots arbitrarily jumping out of flyable airplanes." All part of our current senior military leadership in positions more because of their political correctness than their warrior ability. Agree don't think this was pilot error mishap.... you know they always try to blame on pilot.... Considering this is an aircraft associated with a program that has had a lot of issues with costs, mission capable rates and it appears, as Mover says, obviously a design deficiency where the primary and secondary attitude reference systems going Tango Uniform at same time. You would think they would be on a different or maybe limited display backup system. As he mentioned with the jet transitioning to a different flight regime, in the goo, multiple intermittent failures of not only his primary attitude displays but other system warnings, trying to sort out and and then transitioning to a scan using the "peanut gyro" ... I could see where this pilot was probably getting overloaded and that is a set up for big time vertigo. Additionally he didn't have a lot of time in the aircraft and not really current, of course in today's military that appears to be a common problem. Now throw in his low altitude... think I'd be outta there too! Now not knowing what the actual AMB investigation recommendations were it's hard to say if they mention anything about a more robust backup attitude ref system. Also there was some mention some place about a better discussion in the NATOPS Manual emergency procedures concerning uncontrolled flight and decision to eject.
The board (FNAEB) did find such saying his decision was “justified,” it was the JAGMAN that said “pilot error,” though it also said ‘in the line of duty.’ Neither FNAEB nor JAGMAN made any move to remove.
I served with the current Commandant in the late 80's during my FAC tour. It is extremely disappointing to see him make this decision and I agree with all of your comments above. Absent any additional information as to other reasons for being relieved, I have to assume the worst regarding motivations by Marine Corps Leadership.
@@jimallen8186 I didn't pick up on JAGMAN saying pilot error. Of course not knowing what the AMB listed as cause, but if it didn't list pilot error, both those reports are endorsed by the same commands up the chain. So if there is a variance as to reported cause, the endorsers should have commented on that and either agree or disagree on the cause and so note it on the forwarding endorsement.
I 100% agree with @Mover. This case is another example of horrible leadership at the top. Any scenario where a split-second decision needs to be made to save your life or the lives of others should be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person with the same training and background and would they have taken the same action(s) in hindsight. All of the findings speak in the affirmative, and everyone agreed that the pilot made a reasonable choice based on the circumstances. Firing him appears to be a complete overreaction and is probably a political ploy to save "face" in the eye of the eyes of media exposure towards the incident.
Oh but the beloved Corps (and the military as a whole) is full of these stories of trigger happy commanders who are worried about how they look and want someone to burn and make an example of someone, to look good on paper and to save their own hide. We were always warned that it rolls down hill. It just takes being a really expensive jet aircraft, landing in a citizens yard to make it on the public blotter. Another reason I'm glad to be free of that world, and hope my kids decide to steer away from it.
I’ve had a total electrical failure secondary to lightning strike in the Rhino, hard IMC. All I had were the peanut gyros for a few minutes. Not fun, but doable. Gotta really push the “I believe” button and trust the standbys. Only time I ever thought about potentially ejecting. That said, if I thought my inputs and the standby gyros weren’t jiving? I would’ve been OUT.
I think mover hit on an important point that the investigation completely failed to identify: this was all occurring during a phase transition, which would have only increased the disorientation.
@@PRC533 investigation made a nod to that as did Mover talking about head down while accelerating. But they all missed the previous history of F-35s and mode issues to which this pilot would likely have read including the F-35As at Eglin and Hill as well as the F-35C in the SCS. All varying mode issues and all in some phase of arrival and landing. Eglin and Hill very much were OCF aircraft.
@ All the more reason it seems to reason that the F-35 recovery briefing should have evolved. Perhaps given the problematic electrical problem history, a SOP adaptation would have called for a missed approach if there is an ‘electrical malfunction’ (flickering perhaps) occurring during an instrument approach. From the read, it appears this electrical flickering was happening for some time during the straight-in ILS with his wingman a mile in trail. I am unclear what altitude he ejected but heard 1900’ being read. So therefore, on this ILS he was descending on the ILS from a higher altitude. I would like to see the ILS approach plate and the flight data of the approach from 10 miles out to the ejection point. Especially that altitude of the first electrical flickering. Finally, the summary given mentioned the pilot had NOT flown the jet much recently-so my question is how often do the F-35 aviators get an emergency procedure simulator ride that SPECIFICALLY addresses this failure which forces flying ONLY with the Stand-by gyro then execute an ILS, GCA and Tacan instrument approaches? My squadron mate on Ranger lost all generators on a night CAT shot-like right before the deck end…while instinctively starting the APU, he did not over react on aircraft altitude…went by feel and natural motion for those intense seconds…had all criteria to eject right off the CAT but stayed with the jet-APU started, power to instruments came back…the rest is history. All that just 60-70’ from the sea surface! So if anyone can share information on that last 10 miles of flight data-sure would like to see. As I understand this was a daytime sortie!
@@thetdchannel your squadron mate lost all generators on an airframe that was designed to be longitudinally stable; modern fly-by-wire airframes are not. When electrics become issue, you have big question marks over your head. They cannot fly with total electrical failures. They are suspect with intermittent failures that can be perceived as electrical in nature. Intermittnet loss of primary and secondary attitude information with multiple avionics, air data, and flight control cautions is not something to lead to climb and troubleshoot, it is something to lead to get on the ground quick before it all fails. But you have to have means to get it onto the ground. I don’t know about the F-35 as to whether or not they have ILS or TCN available on the tertiary Standby Gyro, he may not have had those, while GCA are much less common, unavailable in most locations, and out of practice in the ones that do have them. Add he knew about Hill, Eglin, and the SCS crashes all of which involved mode issues and aircraft not responding as intended. You have not had to deal with computers in the loop with your flying.
@ Thanks for the explanation; but he did not have total electrical failure and that’s why the jet flew for eleven more minutes. However, I get your point about these fly-by-wire jets. Hard to imagine they don’t come with a simple RAT to auto deploy to provide electrical to power just enough essentials to get the jet on the ground or back to the carrier. That cost versus just throwing away a $150 million dollar jet just because it has some flickering electrical problems just seems like nonsense. So now my question is why did they waste time putting in a standby gyro? And even if you can’t shoot an ILS off of it, it would at least assist the pilot to fly to VFR on top…the. FOLLOW THE RECOVERY LOST COMM BRIEF!
I experienced a brief spatial disorientation early in my training 1968. In a Cessna 150 with an instructor, night, going from Oceanside CA southeast on a clear night. The stars and the lights from the very few homes blended. The instructor said "level your wings" I said "they are level" Then I looked at the Artificia Horizon....holy cow. It is a real thing.
My very first instructor the very first day looked at all of us pointed at the Artificial Horizon he was holding up in his hand and said this is your life you ever rely on anything else about this you're an idiot, go home now Never needed it from being disoriented thankfully but I always kept it in the back of my head ever since that very first day
"flyable" != "controllable" If you tell the jet to do something and it doesn't do it, then it isn't controllable, even if it's still flying. Given low altitude in IMC and no trust in the instruments, pilot did the right thing. Relieving him of command long after the fact (and the way it was done) tells me that somebody (LM) was bigtime butthurt over the whole ordeal and wanted to hang all the blame on the pilot... real chickenshit move.
Yeah flyable............if you can't trust your instruments is it really flyable? Sucks for this guy that he got caught up in someone's political blame game, be it the Corps, the DOD, the manufacturer, some politician, or a combination of all of these and some others.
@@TC2290-wh5cb wrote: "Both can be true." -- Or pilot also and most likely(at low altitude and NO visual references) - dead and guilty! Just think about it... what would you do in this situation?
@harrynamkoong3361 hmmm well to the best of the pilots' knowledge the aircraft wasn't responding, so aviate is out. Navigation systems failed to the point he couldn't trust them, so that's gone too. The radio failed and the ability to pull up the backup is very time consuming, while in a situation where he'll be out of time in seconds, so that's also out. So there's aviate, navigate, and communicate all unobtainable. So how is that even remotely a logical statement? And before you say the aircraft was operational, a highly experienced instructor pilot says the aircraft was not responding, then it was not responding, possibly due to the switch of modes it was going through, but in the weather you may have 1 minute to live or 1 second, so a split second decision is required. So due to all of the failures in a critical phase of flight, there is no way you can fault the pilot for wanting to live, unless your just an armchair warrior
@@harrynamkoong3361 wrote: "How about aviate, navigate and communicate?" -- If you got no visual reference, and you got no instruments or they got faulty readings, while you are at low altitude on a final approach - you are not going to navigate, nor aviate malfunctioning aircraft without killing yourself.
It's hard to challenge a mishap review, but this one really feels like Monday-morning quarterbacking. "Well, sure, his main display kept dying on him, and when it was working, it was throwing all kinds of alarms at him. But, look! The plane was still flying, so it was obviously fine!" That's some really severe hindsight stuff right there. If it had said something like "in retrospect, the aircraft was apparently still flyable, but the pilot made a choice in the moment based on factors immediately impacting the flight." This is the same as (dramatized or not) the NTSB folks in the "Sully" film showing that the plane was landable....when they knew ahead of time what was going to happen. Calling him out for ejecting from an aircraft that was still flying is.....bizarre, and that's coming from someone that knows how the military operates, to a degree!
They also downplayed the weather and how that affected the situation and decision. If he had good visibiity he would have been able to see he still had control, but he didn't.
Completely agree. Structurally, how often does the commandant interfere with investigations, sacking the ruling (relief of command is one thing that can be justified by other factors, but claiming 'inappropriate' conduct at the accident when procedure in the aircraft manual was strictly followed creates distrust) ?
Not to mention that his wingman flying close by in poor visibility, and his communication with the wingman was unreliable. Potential for a midair collision.
Blaming the MP for this so long after the fact and around time of the report release shows that the military was prioritizing the plane's and Lockheed;s reputation over the pilot's life even though they conceded he was in an extremely difficult position. In the spur of the moment when seconds count, how many highly experienced pilots in similar situations would arrive at the same decision as this poor guy? Probably a large percentage. I guess poop flows downhill. 🙄
JAGMAN conceded he was in a difficult position, FNAEB went further saying his decision was justified. FNAEB is the more potent board. Its report is also not public.
Man, USMC really did him dirty. I bet he won’t be screened for flag now. Terrible way to end a great career. EDIT: Even the radios are on that damn touchscreen, this is a terrible idea.
@@thomgizziz Loss of instrumentation so you can't see which way you're pointing. IMC so you can't see anything but clouds outside the cockpit. Plus a bunch of alerts blaring in your ears. Plus the aircraft's transitioning so it 'feels' like the aircraft is making significant changes in direction. Plus you knew you were only a couple of thousand feet above the ground when this started. I think most pilots would do what he did in this situation. You stick with it and there's just as much chance you break out of the clouds as there is you slam into the ground.
@@thomgizziz Yes, I'm sure the guy with a history like his and a record like his "panicked". He wasn't a rookie pilot. He's probably seen his share of problems. I love people like you who Monday-morning quarterback.
Had the aircraft went missing over the ocean and not been blasted with embarrassing headlines, would this report have been worded differently towards the pilot?
I'm sure that "embarrassment" was much more the issue than pilot error, or, indeed, pilot overall performance capability. Egregious to wait months, with the guy actually in the new position, to drop a bomb on his career.
@@charliejones6138search Medium for a write-up regarding F-35C Crash into the South China Sea. You’ll like it. Consider also the F-35A crashes at Hill and Eglin. Put all four together and you have all four with mode issues, avionics issues, and all during arrival and landing activities.
Back in the mid 90's the pilots of a Greek air force F-4 E II stayed in their crippled jet until they where absolutely sure that the aircraft would not crash into an urban area. Both perished. This is the correct mindset and it comes with the job. You can't handle it? Do something else.
Kinda sucks. We tell our pilots that is more important that they live than the loss of an airplane. But when they possibly over-react we punish them big time.
Yeah, kinda contrasts to the two Airmen (women) who crashed into the side of Mount Rainier, no eject. We're probably gonna see more dead pilots from here on out.
Huh? He was commander and didn't check the backup systems before sending a pilotless, flying, wrecking ball into the public. They lost confidence in this guy's leadership potential of a TEST SQUADRON.
@@academicdeaneducation6671 You speak as if you know anything about flying a STOVL aircraft and didn't know about how a different F35B basically failed to takeoff, necessitating ejection.
> Pilot ejects b/c instruments are repeatedly failing while trying to land in IMC > DoD: "ya, that's a skill issue, you're fired!" ngl, that seems a bit harsh
Dude did the right thing. Got blacklisted because it involved an F35. The brand new super plane they're selling around the globe.... The F16 had a lot more mishaps but times are different I guess...
Seems like the report has thrown the pilot under the bus for the express purpose of protecting the training syllabus specifically and the F35 program as a whole. A single line item, buried in the entire report barely mentioning the training process, only reinforces that. Perhaps the Air Force should investigate this. The USAF performed a brilliant evaluation concerning a tailstrike of an F22 and reached a justified conclusion (training issue). But the F22 program is over and done with so the truth wouldn’t be a threat to it.
There is no “threatl to the F-35 program. Thousands already produced, thousands of flying hours, multiple operators, it is cranking out airplanes now and well into the future. It is long past “needing protection. USMC Commandant made a highly questionable decision, but conjuring up sinister reasons out of the blue is silly.
I completely agree with Mover on this SITREP! He was given the trust and responsibility to make the decision he did and he made it to the best of his abilities in the moment. We can sit here are reenact the entire situation in the comfort of our chairs but BZ to the pilot to make the best decision under the circumstances! I will never fault anyone that’s empowered to make those decisions and make them!
That seems like a very odd thing to do, relieve him of a command that he was assigned to after the incident. Totally agree with Mover there: What kind of message were they trying to send? Unless there was something happening with his current command that they didn't want to bring to light, but that would seem very unlikely to me.
I have seen it before where a person had committed numerous small errors. Each one, just small enough or insignificant enough not to warrant the person being relieved of command, when each error was judged individually on their own. But collectively it was the persons fourth or fifth warning, so eventually the CoC had enough and lost confidence in them. Basically the persons name was always in complaint emails, same old person f**king up and was becoming an administrative burden and not performing as expected of their rank. Maybe this ejection alone wasnt enough to prosecute him, but it might have been one of many failings. In this case, technically he might have been just within the small print of the SOP’s, so couldn’t be prosecuted for breaking procedure. But the board of enquiry might have thought he could have made better decisions that day? A case of we know you did wrong but we can’t prosecute you for it.
When your $400K helmet dosen't reflect what your $GodKnowsHowManyDollars plane isn't responding, what else options are there. His removal is a disgrace. It takes a year to build a plane, a decade to create a pilot.
My buddy recommended I check you out..wow! Loved your explanation. Now I plan on going back and watching every one of your videos and buying your book.
"now we know what happened" Except for two pages of Lockheed redactions! As discussed, a multiple layer failure mode, with intermittent faults seeming to cascade... that's a real problem! How ya gonna fight anyone, or even *survive* if this kind of failure can happen... And, it reflects badly on the Commandant to take that action, an action that was counter to an intense investigation... It seems most likely that the big media storm over the "disappearing jet" caused embarrassment to the "system", and "revenge mode 1" was engaged. My condolences to the aviators who now have an additional stressor of unknown responses from "senior management" to situations that require more-than-human capabilities.
But we know what the Lockheed redacted lines said. "Top secret piece of equipment was known to cause these types of electrical and/or software problems in the aircraft and have not been remedied. This directly resulted in the loss of the aircraft, except it was clearly the pilot's fault, definitely not ours, no way is it our fault, nope."
@@michaelmcneil4168 The advantage that LM had was that they could actually demonstrate conventional and S/VTOL transitions, while Boeing's X-32 needed to have equipment swapped on the ground, with the promise that they would fix that later. I think the X-32 delta wing was also interim while the X-35 looked pretty similar to what would be the F-35.
@@ypw510LM had a huge lead on the project and basically wrote the RFP while Boeing had to build theirs from scratch. The 35, in my non professional opinion, is the result of an out of control MIC that allows military contractors to get away with selling incomplete equipment.
Doing my instrument in glass cockpit right now, and going partial panel is really tough, I can only imagine what happens when it's intermittent failure in IMC. Col. was handed a raw deal.
9:50 sums up the problem you mentioned in the short about retention the other day. Wouldn't be very motivated to do my job after something like that happening.
I'm not a pilot, but it seems that the critical moment in his account that was glossed over in the report was that when he gave the command input to switch from mode 4 to mode 1, he believed the command failed, when in fact it was in progress when he ejected, and completed while the aircraft was unmanned. My question is, what mode indicators are available to the pilot? Are they redundant? How obvious is the physical act of mode change from inside the cockpit? In short, is this a plausible mistake, given his instrument failures, or should he have known that the mode change was happening as commanded, and he only missed it due to task saturation and incident stress?
Mover went over this. The main display is the HMD - it went out. The secondary display is the PCD - it went out. The only thing left was the tiny backup screen. Its possible that it shows mode status, but on a small screen it might be easy to miss, especially in a stressful situation with a lot going on. And you dont know whether you can trust the backup if everything else is telling you the plane is on fire.
I’ll get flamed for this but in a F35B in mode-4 there is a bloody great raised ‘toilet seat’ behind your cockpit blocking your view and in mode-1 there isn’t. Trust your Mark-1 eyeballs
@@simongeorge2505 The door closing is one of the last things to happen in the transition to Mode 1. The B model has poor rearward visibility due to the lift fan. I doubt it would be visible and even it is the pilot will be trying to fly off the standby display which is only a few inches square. Why don't you try putting on a big helmet and try to look behind you while strapped in a seat. There's a lot going on during that mode transition and he would have been fairly slow and low. Cannot go above 250 kts until fully in mode 1. So he was low and slow in weather with nothing but small attitude display and bad spatial cues. Can't believe the Marine leaders felt it necessary to end his career. Hope he gets a good job with the airlines and moves on.
Yep I was in AirWing 2 when that happened. We were doing workups up in Fallon getting ready for cruise! He was flying wing on an A-6 during a simulated mission.
Was the F-35 hit by lightning or did it just fail (not maintenance - good to go)? Failed. Return to working. Fail again. Retur to working. Fail again. He did not bail out the first fault, retried several times, screens coming back several times is disturbing.
And we're REALLY discounting the active alarms the aircraft was throwing at him. How many were actual and how many were completely false? How can you know? How can you trust anything this aircraft is telling you? It's absurd. They openly admit this was a known and repeated problem in the report, but still blame the pilot? Oh, ok.......
As a private pilot I'm stunned at command punishing this pilot and calling it pilot error. The determination that the plane was flyable is easy to make in hindsight ( it flew 64 miles ) but such hindsight was not available to the pilot. They also fault him for not using the standby system which was ( later proven to be ) reliable ( in hindsight ), but again, at that moment the pilot did not have that information either. In fact, in order to determine it was reliable he would have had to go to some safe location and perform some maneuvers and confirm that the picture made sense -- a luxury he did not have. To judge "pilot error" I submit you have to ignore anything armchair pilots learned later that was not available to the pilot AT THE TIME. For all he could know with certainty he could have been 100 meters from an apartment building and possibly inverted. He followed the manual to the letter. Again the fact that the manual was, in retrospect, poorly written doesn't bring blame on the pilot AT THAT TIME. He couldn't see, he couldn't ask for assistance or advice, and he was at very low altitude in IMC. He did exactly what he should have done and what the manual he had been given said to do.
yep, totally agree. put other F35 pilots in a simulated situation like that and see what they would do. NTSB I believe would not have issued pilot error. They would have brought attention to the flaws of the aircraft systems/software as the major contributing factor
He's not royalty, why should he be afforded special treatment? Fedex, UPS, or DHL pilots don't have the option to "call it quits" when they get a little stressed, and eject from a perfectly good (and extremely expensive) airplane. Thankfully he was shown the door, but it didn't go far enough -- he should be invoiced the $110 million cost of the mint condition F-35B he allowed to leisurely sail away. If he can't foot the bill, then the debt should be passed onto his descendants. It's ironic the plane flew better on autopilot, than he could manage himself.
@@txtworld The plane wasn’t perfectly good and those airline pilots don’t have anywhere near as difficult as a single seat fighter while they do have more redundancies. For one thing, theirs is a stable platform while the F-35 cannot fly without working flight control computers. Flight control computers that were in question given intermittent failures of displays combined with avionics and flight control related warnings and cautions.
I not a pilot, but I'm an engineer with interest for accident investigation in various fields, not just aircraft, for a long time. I'm only commenting on whether the fact that the F-35 B continued flight on its own proved that it could be trusted to be controllable. I think that this only proves it turned out to be airworthy, not that it being controllable could be trusted. Trust means you KNOW the plane to be controllable and airworthy. At the point the pilot ejected, judging by the report, he had no reason to trust the instruments so much he could go below the decision altitude in bad visibility.
Retired USMC A-6 BN here. 4,000 hours in Navy and Marine Corps aircraft and civilian pilot. Ejecting was the right best choice at that time and place. The mishap pilot’s family gets to see him come home everyday. My father was killed in a B-47 that blew up on takeoff. No chance to eject. This mishap pilot was totally hosed by what passes for Marine Corps leadership these days. Retired in 2000.
I saw a training film, I think was made in the early 80's (The funky, dramatic music sounds like it was lifted out if 1976) talking about pilots waiting too long to eject. This report is going to get pilot's killed. Of course back in the day even an F-14, F-15, F-16 was way cheaper than the trained pilot used to fly it, so it made sense to save the pilot. Not sure which costs more, the F-35 or the F-35 pilot. It seems like the Air Force went from "If in doubt, punch out" to, "You better be damn sure you can't save it before you bail."
-- Damn, it reminds me movie "a Miracle on the Hudson"(I know it was based on real life event)... When Airbus crew were able to return to base on 16th attempt on the simulator... questioning Captain's Sully "landing" choice.
You do know that the movie was mostly “HOLLYWOOD” and purposely has major factual flaws to enhance the “drama” of the movie. Watch the movie then check the NTSB hearings and findings and see how far Hollywood deviated from reality. Major parts of the movie are pure fabrication that are totally opposite from reality.
At least we know the ejection seat worked. He tested that at high risk to himself for them. We all know this jet has problems that need to be sorted. He knew that and it may have been in the back of his mind that he cant trust the jet, If you cant trust it, trust the seat. IDK ? Even the F-16 when it first came out was called the "Lawn Dart" for a reason. They got it sorted and now its one of the best tactical jets on the planet.
Has the pilot been made a scapegoat? I’m not sure the DoD, USMC, have acted fairly here, the instrument situation sounds like a well known failure and hasn’t been remedied by Lockheed or the DOD.
As an old Marine F-4B pilot I can attest to how terrifying being IMC in a maneuver and having the loss of your primary attitude instrument is. In the F-4, the primary is about 8 inches wide, well-lit, easy to use and is in the top half of the panel. The secondary is about 2 inches wide and is at the bottom of the panel to one side. That transition during a maneuver is tough but nothing like a flight mode transition would be. "Seat of your pants" is a real feeling that every pilot feels and this event made that feeling much worse than in a normal aircraft. Also, to have this occur at a low altitude makes the terror even greater. I believe this was military politics at its worst.
I have to agree. What bothers me, too, is that the report talks about losing instruments but "standby flight display and backup communications remained BASICALLY functional". The pilot is supposed to know that? If you're in IMC conditions and flight instruments are showing different indications, how can they expect the pilot to assess which indications were good and which weren't? And it's not like he's at 25,000 feet where he has a little time to sort this out, he's at low altitude. I agree, I think this was an opportunity to cashier the pilot out and they took it. I've seen this kind of thing before. Back when I worked in an aircraft program office, a pilot caught all kinds of grief in a report finding for failing to reposition a switch, which resulted in more damage to the jet during his emergency landing. (The mishap was only Class A because an expensive pod was damaged during landing.) The required switch change was to happen AFTER his jet had hit a turkey vulture at 450 knots (which is over 500 MPH). He was cruising along, everything is great, then his canopy literally exploded in his face and the wind rush was like a hurricane. Gee, do you think that's going to understandably rattle a guy a bit? In the Safety brief, my boss remarked, "Wow, somebody didn't like this guy."
"albeit under extremely challenging cognitive and flight conditions. Furthermore....the mishap was not due to dereliction of duty..." That part of the report right there should've exonerated him. I don't believe in just chucking airplanes but it's assinine to kill yourself trying to save a piece of badly malfunctioning equipment, especially low and in instrument flying conditions. If I were king, nothing would've happened to this guy.
A fellow F4 pilot I served with ejected one night on a weather penetration when severe turbulence caused him to develop spatial orientation and eject. He remained on flying status. I understand, in this case, the pilot likewise remains on status. Unless I'm mistaken, the Commandant of the Marine Corps is not rated. Normally, on removal from command, the reason is loss of confidence. In this case, where a flying safety matter is clearly involved, that's not enough. I can't help being reminded of the court martial of Billy Mitchell, where not one aviator was on the board.
I am remembering the F-16 that twas in a flat spin in Alaska. The pilot bailed out and the aircraft landed itself. Helicoptered out. New canopy and minor repairs had the plane in the air again.
Well covered Mover. What was really the reason behind being relieved of command ? Did he piss off the commandant !? DEI ? My advise...don't work here !
@@skyepilotte11 sounds to me like the commandant is just securing himself a nice consulting contract with Lockheed once he retires. This report barely mentions the cascading series of failures that led to the ejection decision.
So, he embarrassed the service and they scape goated him out of his command. I thought usually the pilot had to die before they automatically blamed the pilot
That's pretty fast actually. That is not an airspeed that would feel nice and comfy to eject in. Probably exactly why it ripped his helmet off. He's lucky the ejection did nt kill him.
@@bobsbillets he wasn’t that fast ejecting as the plane was still in STOVL. The plane would have had to go even faster to make the average as time to covert to COTL was still in that period.
@@bobsbillets more appropriate to ask is why he did not have flailing injuries. Proves the lack of speed. Then you can get to helmet design and risk induced from such in ejection.
He wasn’t fired for performance reasons, or issues related to conduct. Somebody was covering their own ass. It happens too often in our military, when it shouldn’t happen at all.
I’m thinking about hi, coming from the AV-8 community. Remember, that aircraft was much more difficult to operate in “mode 4” as they are calling it. Much higher pilot workload, and if things go wrong, need to get out… could be experience bias.
Or experience saving his butt; just because the plane flew after does not mean it would have flown with him in it given he would have continued trying to fly yet had little and suspect data.
It’s so easy for Command to second guess his decision to eject. How many flight accident briefings in the past has stated “ejected too late…”. And just like the military, punishment is the order of the day. I flew 40 years, half in the military, and all the finding proved is the pilot is screwed, no matter what happens
@PrestonGladd, solid analysis. Hey Mover - respectfully taking good-natured issue with you on the 'Probably a Foul' assessment of USMC leadership. This isn't a probable foul - and I don't think you really think otherwise. With the information we have here, this is an absolute foul, clear as day and I am so looking forward to WOMBAT's uninhibited analysis on this one. Let's have a serious look at what's on the Plexboard and sanitize it: 1) An aviator following documented procedures is forced to choose between a highly speculative and questionable save of the aircraft versus a definite save of himself. 2) Then leadership responds one year after the incident and months after the JAGMAN/AMB findings with a Relief for Cause - Loss of Confidence in Command (one of the most serious administrative actions that can be taken against a military commander) that will follow him in his service record for the rest of his life, and is career-ending - full stop - all for following SOP for in-flight emergency? SO...question on your read of the public findings - did we miss something? Are you privy to some of the redacted data or the privileged safety investigation report? The MIB stated aircrew making decisions per SOP. And then let's be clear about the flight conditions - a theoretically "flyable" aircraft doesn't, in this case, necessarily equal a landable one in IMC with ceilings below 1000 AGL. Our aviators deserve better than getting hit with a career-ending power move for making the calls they're trained to make.
That's true -- and a good point. I don't think it was a valid assessment that the ejection and crash was pilot error. If the pilot's actions caused the initial sequence of events, then yes -- but that's not the case here. As a (civil aviation) pilot who has had both primary and secondary systems fail in hard IMC, I find myself very sympathetic to the circumstances. Unlike this pilot, I was not without a backup system I could trust, although the location of the backup instruments I had to use was horrendous. I vividly remember thinking that if anything else went wrong, I'd pay anything for an ejection seat. And if we're being fully transparent, we don't know if there's not something else completely unrelated that led to his removal from command. It could have been horrible coincidental timing. We'll likely never know.
appears to be. Some people fail to understand the training and the decision making processes before deciding to punch out. I firmly believe this is the case of not trying to fault the jet.
so ultimately judged by a non-pilot, despite the fact that the trained personnel that conducted the investigation deemed him not a fault? I don't miss serving under leaders like that
As a fellow pilot I totally agree with your after thoughts and comments on the situation. It was unbelievable and unacceptable that they removed him of command. Probably (like you mentioned) politically made especially since he was first absolved from error. So many cascading failures of avionics, etc... it's insane to think it was pilot-error. Better to live another day and not take a chance, than to fight a problem that may kill you in seconds. I'd punch out in the same situation. The only thing I would possibly do different is to throttle to idle prior to punching out. But that might not even turn out ok, depending on where it digs into the ground. Thanks for the excellent debrief mover. Hopefully he can move on to airlines and get paid way more.
We had a couple of F-35C and B squadrons stand up in September here at MCAS Cherry Point. It's good to hear something loud in the air again around here. It's a shame they relieved him. The aircraft Swiss Cheesed on him. Not the other way around.
Like the B-1 that crashed on landing in hard IMC, this 35 was lost in similar conditions. It's not only GA pilots who come to grief in such conditions. The recent crash (F-18?) in Washington state was another. Many commercial pilots have also lost their jobs due to a fear of flying in IMC. Even at the small outfit I flew for, it happened fairly often.
Yep so the varoius displays, intermittent and from different sources, were providing incompatible data, he decides to not believe any of them and get out. What is wrong with that?
Over on Ward Carol's channel, he said the pilot should not have ejected from the plane. But thank you for reading the whole report. There was a whole batch of things going wrong with that plane and zero visibility conditions. Of course the military doesn't want to admit another one of their f-35s quit working. It's telling that three out of the four ship flight was down for maintenance issues at one point
If you look at the safety record of the F-35 at this point of its service life vs. F-16, that's really a testament to how good the F-35's safety record is. I think politics were at work here. It was an opportunity to cashier somebody that somebody up high didn't like.
@@CWLemoine I don't know if he said that the MP shouldn't have ejected but iirc he made the point that a pilot with more time in F35's might have been able to trust and rely on the tertiary 'peanut' display to continue flying the jet
It seems to me, with all of the Lockheed redactions, the general gist is that the aircraft is too "smart" to be at fault. At a 100 million dollars per aircraft, it or course couldn't be the problem. It obviously was pilot error.
It's impressive how insightful the investigators are with the benefit of hindsight!! How exactly was the pilot to know the plane was 'fly able' given the information available to him at the time?
I think the public nature of the inability to find the plane afterward was a factor in “losing confidence” in his ability to command. Nothing to do with him but he was the pilot of the plane they couldn’t find.
I wonder if the Commandant remembers that he serves at the discretion of the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States. I sincerely hope that there is some recourse on this removal from command. Even if he can't "get back the squadron", there definitely needs to be some sort of recourse because just using "at the pleasure" can still be an insufficient reason for removal.
All good stuff CW......but I have to ask this simple question: Do the F-35 pilots receive any simulator training that duplicates the accident scenario or similar equipment failures; i.e., loss of primary and secondary flight displays/instruments w/ transition to tertiary backup instruments? In other words, do pilots get the civilian equivalent of "partial panel" IMC upset recovery, basic IMC maneuvering, radar assistance w/ timed turns to a heading, radar approaches, etc. by reference to the tertiary flight displays. If not, why?
Are you kidding me? Military pilots get far more robust partial panel, degrade, and emergency training than civilian training. Not only do they get it in simulators, they get it in training aircraft too. No foggles, a full tent hood.
I asked the same question after listening to the report read covering his ‘recency’ flight time seemed low…AND THEY DID NOT MENTION THE LAST TIME HE WAS IN THE SIMULATOR DOING AN EMERGENCY PROCEDURES SIM RIDE THAT FOCUSED ON STANDBY GYRO FLYING AND FLYING ILS, GCA AND TACAN APPROACHES. I am sensing a training issue. I am not weighing in on the decision to remove him from command…as a former Navy jet instructor, I am just feeling something is missing.
@@thetdchannel the FNAEB said his decision to eject was justified. You should understand the difference between FNAEB and JAGMAN and which we get to see. You don’t understand the lack of information available to you when everything gets combined into singular displays and these displays fail. You also don’t appreciate the unique aspects of fly-by-wire aircraft and the increased complexity with increased failure paths. Look up both Dave Snowden with Cynefin, see also his Sense-Making and “Estuaries.” Remember your John Boyd as you do. Then look up Sidney Dekker. These fighters with computers in the loop can easily put you into no-win scenarios. They also cannot fly with total electrical failures. They are naturally unstable platforms. And the previous Hill, Eglin, and SCS crashes all involved mode issues with planes not acting as intended. This pilot knew about those.
@ Thanks! Then this jet is really a joke! Seems to be built on the [hope] that nothing will go wrong-especially operating off the carrier. By the way, what does the F-35 EP simulator syllabus consist of? What failures? As a B777 Captain, I appreciated the electrical backup systems and its approach to fly-by-wire!
This all happened during one of the most critical phases of flight too... that needs to be recognized. (not saying people here aren't, I mean the powers that be who are being punitive)
Tactical aircrew don’t view approach and landing as critical phase of flight; the BFM earlier was much more-so. Approach and landing is administrative.
As described, they are firing him a long long time after the incident for not potentially riding an unrecoverable jet into the ground. Which does seem like a terrible decision that is going to cost pilots their lives & mental health, & damage recruitment & retention. But I'd wonder whether rolling a plane that... basically... doesn't work properly yet at the _hardware_ level out to the entire US Navy, Marine Corps & air force was a smart idea...
A friend of mine was an Air Force Pilot in transition from a Cessna to the T33. One of his classmates was doing solo work and, for some unknown reason encountered a departure. No one actually knows what the pilot did to attempt recovery, but at a point the pilot elected to eject. Remember ... as pilots of all aircraft types we are trained that if we encounter a departure, specifically a spin that we can't "control" out of, then just let go of the stick. The wisdom of that logic was manifest in that after the pilot punched out, the plane self-recovered and flew another 120 miles before running out of fuel and crashing.
People see which way the wind is blowing and decide accordingly. If they see personnel being jerked around by leadership, there will be a cost in who volunteers for that service.
The great thing about blaming the pilot is it doesn't cost the Military nearly as much money as fixing the aircraft. Doesn't make the aircraft any safer either, but losing another 109 million dollar plane plus possible pilot and ground casualties is someone else's problem. A+ leadership.
So translations, the guy became understandably overloaded, in part because they won't let them fly enough to become more comfortable, and the most critical part is they had to make an example of him because he's wrecked the military industrial machine's poster child airplane. As a 4000+ hr commercial rotor craft pilot, I would have punched out too!
There's lots of levers they can pull. Leave the service Lose your wings Lose your command No more promotions The brass make the decision On ward Carolls channel it seems he took command of another unit while the investigation was ongoing. And was then removed when the investigation concluded
There's so many people here playing Monday-night quarterback armchair pilot, so let's clear some stuff up. This happened while the pilot was coming in for a landing and was low to the ground. The helmet failed and also the main cockpit display. The only instrument left was a small display between the pilot's legs, which they used while the helmet was intermittently turning on and off, and when it did turn on, it spat out tons of warnings. They were flying in bad weather with zero visibility, and was likely spatially disoriented. The radio wasn't working, and the backup radio's frequency could only be changed using the main display, which was off. The aircraft was not responding properly to a command to go from STOVL to regular flight, and the pilot could not trust the single working display. Their choice was to either stay in an aircraft with critical instrument failures that's not responding to commands while low to the ground in zero visibility conditions, or punch out.
So pretty much exactly what was laid out in the video, what exactly are you clearing up? and why is your opinion not just another "Monday-night quarterback armchair pilot" comment? What makes you the ultimate authority?
@@expertnewbie arrogant /ˈarəɡ(ə)nt/ adjective adjective: arrogant having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities. "he's arrogant and opinionated"
@@ricbarker4829 I sure ruffled your feathers. Seems like you're one of those Monday-night quarterback armchair pilots I directed my message to. Glad the message hit the mark!
There seems to be more of a priority to punish the pilot than preventing what amounts to be a catastrophic avionics failure. This was just a simple cross country flight, not a strike mission in a nonpermssive combat environment. The pilot made a critical error, but I believe the military’s solution was too clinical and resolute, representing less than stellar leadership decisions. Punishing the pilot will not prevent this from inevitability happening again.
Is there an equivalent of an autopilot wings level mode in the aircraft as a last resort during upset? During high workload in the Skyhawk it was useful. However, I recognize the low altitude and out of time factor as well.
@@jimallen8186 can confirm what you are saying. There is a video of a SU27 repeatedly departing controlled flight after some sort of serious issue after take off. In the video, the pilot finally managed to land safely.
Hmm, I'm no pilot but I would argue that feedback is part of 'control'. They don't give driving licenses to blind people even though they can use the steering wheel and pedals just fine.
in the report i think it said, to change channel you have to access drop down menus, since it was a backup radio i doubt it was keyed in to ATC at the time
I live in the area close to Joint Base Charleston and I remember on that afternoon there was a strong thunderstorm in the area around the airfield. What are the effects of nearby lightning strikes on the HMD’s performance? Could that have had anything to do with the flickering he experienced?
I think it was either Mover or another pilot that talked about his jet getting lightning struck, its enough to knock out you and your electronics. His wingman, I think, didn't return back to flying for a while because the current went through his headset.
Having the full details from the pilot, and having ZERO reason to doubt his truthfullness, I am badly disappointed by the decision to relieve him of command. Lemoine does an excelent job of describing the technical difficulty of makinging an accurate assesment of the control ablity of the aircraft, and the environmenal challanges imposed upon him. Bad call from the Military leadership.
I'm not a pilot and I'm not military, but this sucks from a management and leadership point of view. "Your actions were justifiable, but you can't work here anymore." This is what happens when management cares about the optics more than actually doing the right thing. Yes, it's silly to have a plane continue flying on its own for 11 minutes after the pilot ejected, but the pilot reacted like a human being: "This bag of bolts is trying to kill me, I'm punching out." Remedial training would be indicated, maybe up the pilot's flight time to increase confidence and currency, but you don't fire somebody when the hardware was largely to blame for creating the situation.
And then replace by a worse fighter pilot?
Management would like him to fly for ukraine
And they lose the experience of that pilot. He could teach a lot of pilots with what he experienced. Stupid decision to fire him
@@kdaltex Boeing
They can't admit the f35 is a failure and a joke.
What really pisses me off is that they selected him for a command, moved him and his family to Yuma, and then relieved him two months later! I spent 44 years with the military, so glad that I'm done!
44 years, really???
@@Daniel-v5y1c Yes, 21.5yrs active-duty Marines & Army, 22.5yrs defense contractor for INSCOM/C4ISR/JSOC.
@@owen33333 I've known a lot of people who are employed by companies that work on military projects they didn't think they were in the military.
@@Daniel-v5y1c Once a contractor, you are not "in" the military, but you work for them. All of my contractor jobs were working for military personnel in support of their mission.
@@thomgizziz how so?
As a former USAF Flight Surgeon, I totally agree with your assessment of his situation. If he stayed with aircraft and died, we’d all be asking why he didn’t eject.
He sent a pilotless, flying, wrecking ball, potentially, into an unsuspecting populated area without having checked the backup systems for more complete information. He wasn't fired for the ejection but because he failed to accurately assess the situation which led to a potential disaster. The job is dangerous but he lost the job, leading the test squadron, because of this judgement, not the ejection.
My view as a former military officer and current airline pilot.
First the board got this wrong. This isn’t a pilot error crash. The crash was caused by multiple and repeated failures of both primary and secondary Instrumentation as well as multiple other cautions and warnings in the weather that disoriented the mishap pilot. While we know with the benefit of hindsight that the aircraft was controllable the sequence of events was sufficient to disorient the pilot who did not know if any of his flight instruments were reliable or if the aircraft was responding to commanded inputs. Accordingly the mishap pilot IAW published guidance properly made the decision to eject.
That’s what the board should have found and the fact that he was returned to full flying status confirms this.
Now what does his relief say especially given the assurances he was provided before he took command?
First and foremost it says that if you lose an aircraft no matter how ugly the circumstances and how justifiable every decision you made was if we can with the benefit of hindsight sitting in nice comfortable chairs with all the time in the world determine that maybe just maybe you might have been able to save the aircraft then your career is over. Its says we would rather you burn in and die in the attempt making your wife a widow and leaving your children without a father than eject.
It says that senior leadership of the Marine Corps are liars who can’t be trusted. That they will burn even a highly respected senior officer at the stake for even the smallest of errors if they think it will make the Corps look better. It says that you cannot count on your Chain of Command supporting you but rather casting you aside as soon as it becomes expedient. It says that the Corps would have been happier if Col Del Pizzo had lost his life and as a result spared the Corps the embarrassment that came from the delay in finding the downed aircraft.
It says the Commandant needs to be relieved of his position immediately and reduced in rank to no higher than Colonel for poor judgement and a loss of confidence in his ability to lead the Marine Corps.
This whole situation is beyond disgusting. You give the man assurances and then move him and his family across the country knowing full well what the report says only to then relieve him as it’s coming out? Col Del Pizzo deserves a lot better after the years of service and sacrifice he’s given this country and the Marine Corps.
Hi jetdriver, retired A-6 Intruder driver here. You are absolutely correct in your assessment of the whole situation and the crappy chain of command all the way up to the Commandant. Of course the Commandant is a ground pounder so what would he know about a pilot in an extremis situation??? Agree with you, think it was more of the embarrassment issue with the crash site being undetermined for so long, Marine Corps embarrassment and conveying of "we won't tolerate pilots arbitrarily jumping out of flyable airplanes." All part of our current senior military leadership in positions more because of their political correctness than their warrior ability. Agree don't think this was pilot error mishap.... you know they always try to blame on pilot.... Considering this is an aircraft associated with a program that has had a lot of issues with costs, mission capable rates and it appears, as Mover says, obviously a design deficiency where the primary and secondary attitude reference systems going Tango Uniform at same time. You would think they would be on a different or maybe limited display backup system. As he mentioned with the jet transitioning to a different flight regime, in the goo, multiple intermittent failures of not only his primary attitude displays but other system warnings, trying to sort out and and then transitioning to a scan using the "peanut gyro" ... I could see where this pilot was probably getting overloaded and that is a set up for big time vertigo. Additionally he didn't have a lot of time in the aircraft and not really current, of course in today's military that appears to be a common problem. Now throw in his low altitude... think I'd be outta there too! Now not knowing what the actual AMB investigation recommendations were it's hard to say if they mention anything about a more robust backup attitude ref system. Also there was some mention some place about a better discussion in the NATOPS Manual emergency procedures concerning uncontrolled flight and decision to eject.
The board (FNAEB) did find such saying his decision was “justified,” it was the JAGMAN that said “pilot error,” though it also said ‘in the line of duty.’ Neither FNAEB nor JAGMAN made any move to remove.
I served with the current Commandant in the late 80's during my FAC tour. It is extremely disappointing to see him make this decision and I agree with all of your comments above. Absent any additional information as to other reasons for being relieved, I have to assume the worst regarding motivations by Marine Corps Leadership.
@@jimallen8186 I didn't pick up on JAGMAN saying pilot error. Of course not knowing what the AMB listed as cause, but if it didn't list pilot error, both those reports are endorsed by the same commands up the chain. So if there is a variance as to reported cause, the endorsers should have commented on that and either agree or disagree on the cause and so note it on the forwarding endorsement.
@@rayF4rio See @Skyhawks 1979 info down below. Additional info on personnel background.
I 100% agree with @Mover. This case is another example of horrible leadership at the top. Any scenario where a split-second decision needs to be made to save your life or the lives of others should be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person with the same training and background and would they have taken the same action(s) in hindsight. All of the findings speak in the affirmative, and everyone agreed that the pilot made a reasonable choice based on the circumstances. Firing him appears to be a complete overreaction and is probably a political ploy to save "face" in the eye of the eyes of media exposure towards the incident.
The easiest reach would have just said the ejection "bumped" everything back to normal. Don't try this at home.
@@t5ruxlee210 there was a Tomcat to which that happened
@@jimallen8186 back in the 90's? I bet I know which one you're referring to :^)
Oh but the beloved Corps (and the military as a whole) is full of these stories of trigger happy commanders who are worried about how they look and want someone to burn and make an example of someone, to look good on paper and to save their own hide. We were always warned that it rolls down hill.
It just takes being a really expensive jet aircraft, landing in a citizens yard to make it on the public blotter.
Another reason I'm glad to be free of that world, and hope my kids decide to steer away from it.
I’ve had a total electrical failure secondary to lightning strike in the Rhino, hard IMC. All I had were the peanut gyros for a few minutes. Not fun, but doable. Gotta really push the “I believe” button and trust the standbys.
Only time I ever thought about potentially ejecting.
That said, if I thought my inputs and the standby gyros weren’t jiving? I would’ve been OUT.
I think mover hit on an important point that the investigation completely failed to identify: this was all occurring during a phase transition, which would have only increased the disorientation.
@@PRC533 investigation made a nod to that as did Mover talking about head down while accelerating. But they all missed the previous history of F-35s and mode issues to which this pilot would likely have read including the F-35As at Eglin and Hill as well as the F-35C in the SCS. All varying mode issues and all in some phase of arrival and landing. Eglin and Hill very much were OCF aircraft.
@
All the more reason it seems to reason that the F-35 recovery briefing should have evolved.
Perhaps given the problematic electrical problem history, a SOP adaptation would have called for a missed approach if there is an ‘electrical malfunction’ (flickering perhaps) occurring during an instrument approach.
From the read, it appears this electrical flickering was happening for some time during the straight-in ILS with his wingman a mile in trail. I am unclear what altitude he ejected but heard 1900’ being read. So therefore, on this ILS he was descending on the ILS from a higher altitude.
I would like to see the ILS approach plate and the flight data of the approach from 10 miles out to the ejection point. Especially that altitude of the first electrical flickering.
Finally, the summary given mentioned the pilot had NOT flown the jet much recently-so my question is how often do the F-35 aviators get an emergency procedure simulator ride that SPECIFICALLY addresses this failure which forces flying ONLY with the Stand-by gyro then execute an ILS, GCA and Tacan instrument approaches?
My squadron mate on Ranger lost all generators on a night CAT shot-like right before the deck end…while instinctively starting the APU, he did not over react on aircraft altitude…went by feel and natural motion for those intense seconds…had all criteria to eject right off the CAT but stayed with the jet-APU started, power to instruments came back…the rest is history. All that just 60-70’ from the sea surface!
So if anyone can share information on that last 10 miles of flight data-sure would like to see. As I understand this was a daytime sortie!
@@thetdchannel your squadron mate lost all generators on an airframe that was designed to be longitudinally stable; modern fly-by-wire airframes are not. When electrics become issue, you have big question marks over your head. They cannot fly with total electrical failures. They are suspect with intermittent failures that can be perceived as electrical in nature. Intermittnet loss of primary and secondary attitude information with multiple avionics, air data, and flight control cautions is not something to lead to climb and troubleshoot, it is something to lead to get on the ground quick before it all fails. But you have to have means to get it onto the ground. I don’t know about the F-35 as to whether or not they have ILS or TCN available on the tertiary Standby Gyro, he may not have had those, while GCA are much less common, unavailable in most locations, and out of practice in the ones that do have them. Add he knew about Hill, Eglin, and the SCS crashes all of which involved mode issues and aircraft not responding as intended. You have not had to deal with computers in the loop with your flying.
@
Thanks for the explanation; but he did not have total electrical failure and that’s why the jet flew for eleven more minutes.
However, I get your point about these fly-by-wire jets. Hard to imagine they don’t come with a simple RAT to auto deploy to provide electrical to power just enough essentials to get the jet on the ground or back to the carrier.
That cost versus just throwing away a $150 million dollar jet just because it has some flickering electrical problems just seems like nonsense.
So now my question is why did they waste time putting in a standby gyro? And even if you can’t shoot an ILS off of it, it would at least assist the pilot to fly to VFR on top…the. FOLLOW THE RECOVERY LOST COMM BRIEF!
I experienced a brief spatial disorientation early in my training 1968. In a Cessna 150 with an instructor, night, going from Oceanside CA southeast on a clear night. The stars and the lights from the very few homes blended. The instructor said "level your wings" I said "they are level" Then I looked at the Artificia Horizon....holy cow. It is a real thing.
My very first instructor the very first day looked at all of us pointed at the Artificial Horizon he was holding up in his hand and said this is your life you ever rely on anything else about this you're an idiot, go home now
Never needed it from being disoriented thankfully but I always kept it in the back of my head ever since that very first day
"flyable" != "controllable" If you tell the jet to do something and it doesn't do it, then it isn't controllable, even if it's still flying. Given low altitude in IMC and no trust in the instruments, pilot did the right thing. Relieving him of command long after the fact (and the way it was done) tells me that somebody (LM) was bigtime butthurt over the whole ordeal and wanted to hang all the blame on the pilot... real chickenshit move.
yea this is clearly an LM issue - but how typical of the MIC to blame the real users out there
Seriously, it's absolutely unacceptable that he'd have both primary and secondary displays go out.
Such a failure in normal, peaceful flight means that the aircraft has major design flaws!
Yeah flyable............if you can't trust your instruments is it really flyable? Sucks for this guy that he got caught up in someone's political blame game, be it the Corps, the DOD, the manufacturer, some politician, or a combination of all of these and some others.
absolutely agree!! a political axe
Let me see, they admited that the F-35 have gremlins, but the pilot is guilty 🤔
Both can be true.
@@TC2290-wh5cb wrote: "Both can be true."
-- Or pilot also and most likely(at low altitude and NO visual references) - dead and guilty! Just think about it... what would you do in this situation?
@@RussianThunderrr what would you do in this situation? Hmmm I don't know. How about aviate, navigate and communicate?
@harrynamkoong3361 hmmm well to the best of the pilots' knowledge the aircraft wasn't responding, so aviate is out. Navigation systems failed to the point he couldn't trust them, so that's gone too. The radio failed and the ability to pull up the backup is very time consuming, while in a situation where he'll be out of time in seconds, so that's also out. So there's aviate, navigate, and communicate all unobtainable. So how is that even remotely a logical statement?
And before you say the aircraft was operational, a highly experienced instructor pilot says the aircraft was not responding, then it was not responding, possibly due to the switch of modes it was going through, but in the weather you may have 1 minute to live or 1 second, so a split second decision is required. So due to all of the failures in a critical phase of flight, there is no way you can fault the pilot for wanting to live, unless your just an armchair warrior
@@harrynamkoong3361 wrote: "How about aviate, navigate and communicate?"
-- If you got no visual reference, and you got no instruments or they got faulty readings, while you are at low altitude on a final approach - you are not going to navigate, nor aviate malfunctioning aircraft without killing yourself.
US Military: "Do NOT delay the decision to eject!"
Also US Military: ...
It's hard to challenge a mishap review, but this one really feels like Monday-morning quarterbacking. "Well, sure, his main display kept dying on him, and when it was working, it was throwing all kinds of alarms at him. But, look! The plane was still flying, so it was obviously fine!"
That's some really severe hindsight stuff right there. If it had said something like "in retrospect, the aircraft was apparently still flyable, but the pilot made a choice in the moment based on factors immediately impacting the flight."
This is the same as (dramatized or not) the NTSB folks in the "Sully" film showing that the plane was landable....when they knew ahead of time what was going to happen. Calling him out for ejecting from an aircraft that was still flying is.....bizarre, and that's coming from someone that knows how the military operates, to a degree!
They also downplayed the weather and how that affected the situation and decision. If he had good visibiity he would have been able to see he still had control, but he didn't.
@@EliteF221700 ft is nothing if you think you have flight control problems he had no altitude for troubleshooting.
Completely agree.
Structurally, how often does the commandant interfere with investigations, sacking the ruling (relief of command is one thing that can be justified by other factors, but claiming 'inappropriate' conduct at the accident when procedure in the aircraft manual was strictly followed creates distrust) ?
And he was in IMC conditions, unsure of altitude and what obstacles were around him.
Not to mention that his wingman flying close by in poor visibility, and his communication with the wingman was unreliable. Potential for a midair collision.
I would rather live and got fired than dead and still got blamed.
Yeah, someone who is capable enough to fly fast jets has the skillset required to build a successful career.
Blaming the MP for this so long after the fact and around time of the report release shows that the military was prioritizing the plane's and Lockheed;s reputation over the pilot's life even though they conceded he was in an extremely difficult position. In the spur of the moment when seconds count, how many highly experienced pilots in similar situations would arrive at the same decision as this poor guy? Probably a large percentage. I guess poop flows downhill. 🙄
JAGMAN conceded he was in a difficult position, FNAEB went further saying his decision was justified. FNAEB is the more potent board. Its report is also not public.
Man, USMC really did him dirty. I bet he won’t be screened for flag now. Terrible way to end a great career. EDIT: Even the radios are on that damn touchscreen, this is a terrible idea.
And their standby radios with analog controls are known to be unreliable. What a piece of shit machine.
@@jclebedev Shades of Tesla! 😡
@@PRC533shut up
Agreed " all eggs in one basket " syndrome
everything running on a single touchscreen. hate that in vehicles
Seems pretty harsh to say the primary issue was pilot error. Thrown fully under the bus when the plane was trying to kill him...
it was flyable, yes....but could the pilot KNOW that it was flyable, based on what feedback was available? i don't think so.
this is worse than soviet russia ever was!!! FACT!!!
Flyable maybe, but was it landable with resaonable survivability odds?
@@thomgizziz Loss of instrumentation so you can't see which way you're pointing. IMC so you can't see anything but clouds outside the cockpit. Plus a bunch of alerts blaring in your ears. Plus the aircraft's transitioning so it 'feels' like the aircraft is making significant changes in direction. Plus you knew you were only a couple of thousand feet above the ground when this started.
I think most pilots would do what he did in this situation. You stick with it and there's just as much chance you break out of the clouds as there is you slam into the ground.
If the plane had flown into a hill or the ground with the pilot onboard, he would be second guessed for not ejecting sooner.
@@thomgizziz Yes, I'm sure the guy with a history like his and a record like his "panicked". He wasn't a rookie pilot. He's probably seen his share of problems. I love people like you who Monday-morning quarterback.
Had the aircraft went missing over the ocean and not been blasted with embarrassing headlines, would this report have been worded differently towards the pilot?
I'm sure that "embarrassment" was much more the issue than pilot error, or, indeed, pilot overall performance capability.
Egregious to wait months, with the guy actually in the new position, to drop a bomb on his career.
Looks at the F-35C crash off the deck of the Carl Vinson.... Yeah, that's not it either.
@@charliejones6138search Medium for a write-up regarding F-35C Crash into the South China Sea. You’ll like it. Consider also the F-35A crashes at Hill and Eglin. Put all four together and you have all four with mode issues, avionics issues, and all during arrival and landing activities.
@@jimallen8186 I remember the Eglin case. I probably need to re-read the Hill case.
Point 24: The pilot should have seen into the future, since then he would have known that the plane would "still" be in the air... WTF???
Back in the mid 90's the pilots of a Greek air force F-4 E II stayed in their crippled jet until they where absolutely sure that the aircraft would not crash into an urban area. Both perished. This is the correct mindset and it comes with the job. You can't handle it? Do something else.
@@70mavgr the pilot perceived the aircraft was not responsive; sticking with it has no value in a non-responsive airplane.
@@70mavgr it could have killed someone on ground or him either way
Kinda sucks. We tell our pilots that is more important that they live than the loss of an airplane. But when they possibly over-react we punish them big time.
Yeah, kinda contrasts to the two Airmen (women) who crashed into the side of Mount Rainier, no eject. We're probably gonna see more dead pilots from here on out.
Huh? He was commander and didn't check the backup systems before sending a pilotless, flying, wrecking ball into the public. They lost confidence in this guy's leadership potential of a TEST SQUADRON.
@@academicdeaneducation6671 You speak as if you know anything about flying a STOVL aircraft and didn't know about how a different F35B basically failed to takeoff, necessitating ejection.
> Pilot ejects b/c instruments are repeatedly failing while trying to land in IMC
> DoD: "ya, that's a skill issue, you're fired!"
ngl, that seems a bit harsh
Soviet States of America
Dude did the right thing. Got blacklisted because it involved an F35. The brand new super plane they're selling around the globe.... The F16 had a lot more mishaps but times are different I guess...
Seems like the report has thrown the pilot under the bus for the express purpose of protecting the training syllabus specifically and the F35 program as a whole. A single line item, buried in the entire report barely mentioning the training process, only reinforces that.
Perhaps the Air Force should investigate this. The USAF performed a brilliant evaluation concerning a tailstrike of an F22 and reached a justified conclusion (training issue).
But the F22 program is over and done with so the truth wouldn’t be a threat to it.
There is no “threatl to the F-35 program. Thousands already produced, thousands of flying hours, multiple operators, it is cranking out airplanes now and well into the future. It is long past “needing protection.
USMC Commandant made a highly questionable decision, but conjuring up sinister reasons out of the blue is silly.
I completely agree with Mover on this SITREP! He was given the trust and responsibility to make the decision he did and he made it to the best of his abilities in the moment. We can sit here are reenact the entire situation in the comfort of our chairs but BZ to the pilot to make the best decision under the circumstances! I will never fault anyone that’s empowered to make those decisions and make them!
Military leadership at its finest. Or should I say complete lack of.
That seems like a very odd thing to do, relieve him of a command that he was assigned to after the incident. Totally agree with Mover there: What kind of message were they trying to send? Unless there was something happening with his current command that they didn't want to bring to light, but that would seem very unlikely to me.
I have seen it before where a person had committed numerous small errors. Each one, just small enough or insignificant enough not to warrant the person being relieved of command, when each error was judged individually on their own. But collectively it was the persons fourth or fifth warning, so eventually the CoC had enough and lost confidence in them. Basically the persons name was always in complaint emails, same old person f**king up and was becoming an administrative burden and not performing as expected of their rank.
Maybe this ejection alone wasnt enough to prosecute him, but it might have been one of many failings.
In this case, technically he might have been just within the small print of the SOP’s, so couldn’t be prosecuted for breaking procedure. But the board of enquiry might have thought he could have made better decisions that day? A case of we know you did wrong but we can’t prosecute you for it.
probably
Good ol politics and CYA' s, ladder climbing.
When your $400K helmet dosen't reflect what your $GodKnowsHowManyDollars plane isn't responding, what else options are there. His removal is a disgrace. It takes a year to build a plane, a decade to create a pilot.
$109 million.
helmet $250000
My buddy recommended I check you out..wow! Loved your explanation. Now I plan on going back and watching every one of your videos and buying your book.
🤢🤮
Commandant covering for Lockheed. Expect cushy, high paid job at Lockheed after separation from Marines.
Better do it now, When trump takes office it will likely be illegal. And should be!
"now we know what happened"
Except for two pages of Lockheed redactions!
As discussed, a multiple layer failure mode, with intermittent faults seeming to cascade... that's a real problem! How ya gonna fight anyone, or even *survive* if this kind of failure can happen... And, it reflects badly on the Commandant to take that action, an action that was counter to an intense investigation...
It seems most likely that the big media storm over the "disappearing jet" caused embarrassment to the "system", and "revenge mode 1" was engaged. My condolences to the aviators who now have an additional stressor of unknown responses from "senior management" to situations that require more-than-human capabilities.
But we know what the Lockheed redacted lines said. "Top secret piece of equipment was known to cause these types of electrical and/or software problems in the aircraft and have not been remedied. This directly resulted in the loss of the aircraft, except it was clearly the pilot's fault, definitely not ours, no way is it our fault, nope."
Sounds like he got rid of a piece of shit that should have been given to Boeing they take a lot of junk for the deis.
@@michaelmcneil4168
The advantage that LM had was that they could actually demonstrate conventional and S/VTOL transitions, while Boeing's X-32 needed to have equipment swapped on the ground, with the promise that they would fix that later. I think the X-32 delta wing was also interim while the X-35 looked pretty similar to what would be the F-35.
@@ypw510LM had a huge lead on the project and basically wrote the RFP while Boeing had to build theirs from scratch. The 35, in my non professional opinion, is the result of an out of control MIC that allows military contractors to get away with selling incomplete equipment.
Thanks!
I've been waiting for this update, thanks
I have been wondering about this issue since it came out & hadn't heard anything about the results ANYWHERE else, thanks for the update!
Doing my instrument in glass cockpit right now, and going partial panel is really tough, I can only imagine what happens when it's intermittent failure in IMC. Col. was handed a raw deal.
makes you want to carry a parachute :^) with acro I always have one
9:50 sums up the problem you mentioned in the short about retention the other day.
Wouldn't be very motivated to do my job after something like that happening.
I'm not a pilot, but it seems that the critical moment in his account that was glossed over in the report was that when he gave the command input to switch from mode 4 to mode 1, he believed the command failed, when in fact it was in progress when he ejected, and completed while the aircraft was unmanned.
My question is, what mode indicators are available to the pilot? Are they redundant? How obvious is the physical act of mode change from inside the cockpit? In short, is this a plausible mistake, given his instrument failures, or should he have known that the mode change was happening as commanded, and he only missed it due to task saturation and incident stress?
Mover went over this. The main display is the HMD - it went out. The secondary display is the PCD - it went out. The only thing left was the tiny backup screen. Its possible that it shows mode status, but on a small screen it might be easy to miss, especially in a stressful situation with a lot going on. And you dont know whether you can trust the backup if everything else is telling you the plane is on fire.
@@vertigoalopolusthe backup “screen” is just a small square with an ADI and alt and speed info.
I’ll get flamed for this but in a F35B in mode-4 there is a bloody great raised ‘toilet seat’ behind your cockpit blocking your view and in mode-1 there isn’t. Trust your Mark-1 eyeballs
@@simongeorge2505 The door closing is one of the last things to happen in the transition to Mode 1. The B model has poor rearward visibility due to the lift fan. I doubt it would be visible and even it is the pilot will be trying to fly off the standby display which is only a few inches square. Why don't you try putting on a big helmet and try to look behind you while strapped in a seat. There's a lot going on during that mode transition and he would have been fairly slow and low. Cannot go above 250 kts until fully in mode 1. So he was low and slow in weather with nothing but small attitude display and bad spatial cues. Can't believe the Marine leaders felt it necessary to end his career. Hope he gets a good job with the airlines and moves on.
@@vertigoalopolus true. backup may be hosed too
We lost a VF-1 F14 at Miramar when the pilot got upside down and disoriented and pulled up(down) into the mountains.
Yep I was in AirWing 2 when that happened. We were doing workups up in Fallon getting ready for cruise! He was flying wing on an A-6 during a simulated mission.
@thetdchannel 86ish?
TD channel? Terry?
Was the F-35 hit by lightning or did it just fail (not maintenance - good to go)?
Failed. Return to working. Fail again. Retur to working. Fail again.
He did not bail out the first fault, retried several times, screens coming back several times is disturbing.
And we're REALLY discounting the active alarms the aircraft was throwing at him. How many were actual and how many were completely false? How can you know? How can you trust anything this aircraft is telling you? It's absurd.
They openly admit this was a known and repeated problem in the report, but still blame the pilot? Oh, ok.......
As a private pilot I'm stunned at command punishing this pilot and calling it pilot error. The determination that the plane was flyable is easy to make in hindsight ( it flew 64 miles ) but such hindsight was not available to the pilot. They also fault him for not using the standby system which was ( later proven to be ) reliable ( in hindsight ), but again, at that moment the pilot did not have that information either. In fact, in order to determine it was reliable he would have had to go to some safe location and perform some maneuvers and confirm that the picture made sense -- a luxury he did not have. To judge "pilot error" I submit you have to ignore anything armchair pilots learned later that was not available to the pilot AT THE TIME. For all he could know with certainty he could have been 100 meters from an apartment building and possibly inverted. He followed the manual to the letter. Again the fact that the manual was, in retrospect, poorly written doesn't bring blame on the pilot AT THAT TIME. He couldn't see, he couldn't ask for assistance or advice, and he was at very low altitude in IMC. He did exactly what he should have done and what the manual he had been given said to do.
Sidney Dekker you read
Yeah it's outrageous,
yep, totally agree. put other F35 pilots in a simulated situation like that and see what they would do. NTSB I believe would not have issued pilot error. They would have brought attention to the flaws of the aircraft systems/software as the major contributing factor
He's not royalty, why should he be afforded special treatment? Fedex, UPS, or DHL pilots don't have the option to "call it quits" when they get a little stressed, and eject from a perfectly good (and extremely expensive) airplane. Thankfully he was shown the door, but it didn't go far enough -- he should be invoiced the $110 million cost of the mint condition F-35B he allowed to leisurely sail away. If he can't foot the bill, then the debt should be passed onto his descendants. It's ironic the plane flew better on autopilot, than he could manage himself.
@@txtworld The plane wasn’t perfectly good and those airline pilots don’t have anywhere near as difficult as a single seat fighter while they do have more redundancies. For one thing, theirs is a stable platform while the F-35 cannot fly without working flight control computers. Flight control computers that were in question given intermittent failures of displays combined with avionics and flight control related warnings and cautions.
I not a pilot, but I'm an engineer with interest for accident investigation in various fields, not just aircraft, for a long time. I'm only commenting on whether the fact that the F-35 B continued flight on its own proved that it could be trusted to be controllable. I think that this only proves it turned out to be airworthy, not that it being controllable could be trusted. Trust means you KNOW the plane to be controllable and airworthy. At the point the pilot ejected, judging by the report, he had no reason to trust the instruments so much he could go below the decision altitude in bad visibility.
Retired USMC A-6 BN here. 4,000 hours in Navy and Marine Corps aircraft and civilian pilot. Ejecting was the right best choice at that time and place. The mishap pilot’s family gets to see him come home everyday. My father was killed in a B-47 that blew up on takeoff. No chance to eject. This mishap pilot was totally hosed by what passes for Marine Corps leadership these days. Retired in 2000.
I saw a training film, I think was made in the early 80's (The funky, dramatic music sounds like it was lifted out if 1976) talking about pilots waiting too long to eject.
This report is going to get pilot's killed.
Of course back in the day even an F-14, F-15, F-16 was way cheaper than the trained pilot used to fly it, so it made sense to save the pilot.
Not sure which costs more, the F-35 or the F-35 pilot.
It seems like the Air Force went from "If in doubt, punch out" to, "You better be damn sure you can't save it before you bail."
in 1980-81 it was roughly $100K to train naval aviators
-- Damn, it reminds me movie "a Miracle on the Hudson"(I know it was based on real life event)... When Airbus crew were able to return to base on 16th attempt on the simulator... questioning Captain's Sully "landing" choice.
You do know that the movie was mostly “HOLLYWOOD” and purposely has major factual flaws to enhance the “drama” of the movie. Watch the movie then check the NTSB hearings and findings and see how far Hollywood deviated from reality. Major parts of the movie are pure fabrication that are totally opposite from reality.
At least we know the ejection seat worked. He tested that at high risk to himself for them. We all know this jet has problems that need to be sorted. He knew that and it may have been in the back of his mind that he cant trust the jet, If you cant trust it, trust the seat. IDK ? Even the F-16 when it first came out was called the "Lawn Dart" for a reason. They got it sorted and now its one of the best tactical jets on the planet.
lawn dart. wow, that brings back memories
“An F-35B…….. (oh shit, which incident is this!?)…….. CONTINUED FLYING..” AHHH SHIT 😂
Has the pilot been made a scapegoat?
I’m not sure the DoD, USMC, have acted fairly here, the instrument situation sounds like a well known failure and hasn’t been remedied by Lockheed or the DOD.
As an old Marine F-4B pilot I can attest to how terrifying being IMC in a maneuver and having the loss of your primary attitude instrument is. In the F-4, the primary is about 8 inches wide, well-lit, easy to use and is in the top half of the panel. The secondary is about 2 inches wide and is at the bottom of the panel to one side. That transition during a maneuver is tough but nothing like a flight mode transition would be. "Seat of your pants" is a real feeling that every pilot feels and this event made that feeling much worse than in a normal aircraft. Also, to have this occur at a low altitude makes the terror even greater. I believe this was military politics at its worst.
I have to agree. What bothers me, too, is that the report talks about losing instruments but "standby flight display and backup communications remained BASICALLY functional". The pilot is supposed to know that? If you're in IMC conditions and flight instruments are showing different indications, how can they expect the pilot to assess which indications were good and which weren't? And it's not like he's at 25,000 feet where he has a little time to sort this out, he's at low altitude. I agree, I think this was an opportunity to cashier the pilot out and they took it. I've seen this kind of thing before.
Back when I worked in an aircraft program office, a pilot caught all kinds of grief in a report finding for failing to reposition a switch, which resulted in more damage to the jet during his emergency landing. (The mishap was only Class A because an expensive pod was damaged during landing.) The required switch change was to happen AFTER his jet had hit a turkey vulture at 450 knots (which is over 500 MPH). He was cruising along, everything is great, then his canopy literally exploded in his face and the wind rush was like a hurricane. Gee, do you think that's going to understandably rattle a guy a bit? In the Safety brief, my boss remarked, "Wow, somebody didn't like this guy."
"albeit under extremely challenging cognitive and flight conditions. Furthermore....the mishap was not due to dereliction of duty..." That part of the report right there should've exonerated him. I don't believe in just chucking airplanes but it's assinine to kill yourself trying to save a piece of badly malfunctioning equipment, especially low and in instrument flying conditions. If I were king, nothing would've happened to this guy.
A fellow F4 pilot I served with ejected one night on a weather penetration when severe turbulence caused him to develop spatial orientation and eject. He remained on flying status. I understand, in this case, the pilot likewise remains on status. Unless I'm mistaken, the Commandant of the Marine Corps is not rated. Normally, on removal from command, the reason is loss of confidence. In this case, where a flying safety matter is clearly involved, that's not enough. I can't help being reminded of the court martial of Billy Mitchell, where not one aviator was on the board.
But in the end, good thing that it didn't come down in a populated area and nobody got hurt!
I am remembering the F-16 that twas in a flat spin in Alaska. The pilot bailed out and the aircraft landed itself. Helicoptered out. New canopy and minor repairs had the plane in the air again.
Well covered Mover.
What was really the reason behind being relieved of command ? Did he piss off the commandant !? DEI ?
My advise...don't work here !
When did that occur?
@@skyepilotte11 sounds to me like the commandant is just securing himself a nice consulting contract with Lockheed once he retires. This report barely mentions the cascading series of failures that led to the ejection decision.
So, he embarrassed the service and they scape goated him out of his command. I thought usually the pilot had to die before they automatically blamed the pilot
64 Miles in 11 minutes is 349 mph average speed.
That's pretty fast actually. That is not an airspeed that would feel nice and comfy to eject in. Probably exactly why it ripped his helmet off. He's lucky the ejection did nt kill him.
1:28 64 nautical miles in 11 mins is 349 knots or 401.6 mph average speed.
@@bobsbillets he wasn’t that fast ejecting as the plane was still in STOVL. The plane would have had to go even faster to make the average as time to covert to COTL was still in that period.
@@jimallen8186 I'm not saying you are wrong, however, why did it rip his helmet off then?
@@bobsbillets more appropriate to ask is why he did not have flailing injuries. Proves the lack of speed. Then you can get to helmet design and risk induced from such in ejection.
He wasn’t fired for performance reasons, or issues related to conduct. Somebody was covering their own ass. It happens too often in our military, when it shouldn’t happen at all.
I’m thinking about hi, coming from the AV-8 community. Remember, that aircraft was much more difficult to operate in “mode 4” as they are calling it. Much higher pilot workload, and if things go wrong, need to get out… could be experience bias.
Or experience saving his butt; just because the plane flew after does not mean it would have flown with him in it given he would have continued trying to fly yet had little and suspect data.
It’s so easy for Command to second guess his decision to eject. How many flight accident briefings in the past has stated “ejected too late…”. And just like the military, punishment is the order of the day. I flew 40 years, half in the military, and all the finding proved is the pilot is screwed, no matter what happens
Command didn’t second guess, FNAEB “decision justified”
@PrestonGladd, solid analysis.
Hey Mover - respectfully taking good-natured issue with you on the 'Probably a Foul' assessment of USMC leadership. This isn't a probable foul - and I don't think you really think otherwise. With the information we have here, this is an absolute foul, clear as day and I am so looking forward to WOMBAT's uninhibited analysis on this one.
Let's have a serious look at what's on the Plexboard and sanitize it: 1) An aviator following documented procedures is forced to choose between a highly speculative and questionable save of the aircraft versus a definite save of himself. 2) Then leadership responds one year after the incident and months after the JAGMAN/AMB findings with a Relief for Cause - Loss of Confidence in Command (one of the most serious administrative actions that can be taken against a military commander) that will follow him in his service record for the rest of his life, and is career-ending - full stop - all for following SOP for in-flight emergency?
SO...question on your read of the public findings - did we miss something? Are you privy to some of the redacted data or the privileged safety investigation report? The MIB stated aircrew making decisions per SOP. And then let's be clear about the flight conditions - a theoretically "flyable" aircraft doesn't, in this case, necessarily equal a landable one in IMC with ceilings below 1000 AGL. Our aviators deserve better than getting hit with a career-ending power move for making the calls they're trained to make.
Add that he likely knew circumstances of Hill, Eglin, and SCS crashes…
The pilot got hosed on that deal. Seems like they just wanted to divert attention away from Lockheed.
Blaming a pilot with this many failures in this environment is unacceptable and the board should be fired. Not the pilot.
Board said his decision was justified. Let’s not confuse FNAEB and JAGMAN.
That's true -- and a good point. I don't think it was a valid assessment that the ejection and crash was pilot error. If the pilot's actions caused the initial sequence of events, then yes -- but that's not the case here. As a (civil aviation) pilot who has had both primary and secondary systems fail in hard IMC, I find myself very sympathetic to the circumstances. Unlike this pilot, I was not without a backup system I could trust, although the location of the backup instruments I had to use was horrendous. I vividly remember thinking that if anything else went wrong, I'd pay anything for an ejection seat.
And if we're being fully transparent, we don't know if there's not something else completely unrelated that led to his removal from command. It could have been horrible coincidental timing. We'll likely never know.
The manufacture also .
Totally unfair treatment of MP!
They expected him to go down with the ship?
appears to be. Some people fail to understand the training and the decision making processes before deciding to punch out. I firmly believe this is the case of not trying to fault the jet.
@MavHunter20XX Politics ruins everything.
@@marcgatto9675 Especially in a military organization.
no green seaman can be found to pin it on
A dead pilot can be turned into sympathy for the military, but a live pilot and trashed aircraft is just bad press for them.
Thanks for hitting on the location of the standby instruments. I'd wondered if that was a great spot.
so ultimately judged by a non-pilot, despite the fact that the trained personnel that conducted the investigation deemed him not a fault? I don't miss serving under leaders like that
As a fellow pilot I totally agree with your after thoughts and comments on the situation. It was unbelievable and unacceptable that they removed him of command. Probably (like you mentioned) politically made especially since he was first absolved from error. So many cascading failures of avionics, etc... it's insane to think it was pilot-error. Better to live another day and not take a chance, than to fight a problem that may kill you in seconds. I'd punch out in the same situation. The only thing I would possibly do different is to throttle to idle prior to punching out. But that might not even turn out ok, depending on where it digs into the ground. Thanks for the excellent debrief mover. Hopefully he can move on to airlines and get paid way more.
We had a couple of F-35C and B squadrons stand up in September here at MCAS Cherry Point. It's good to hear something loud in the air again around here. It's a shame they relieved him. The aircraft Swiss Cheesed on him. Not the other way around.
Swiss cheese model is rubbish. Cascade was a much better fit.
@@jimallen8186 It was a half-joke, man. Rethink it. Everything that could go wrong did and it wasn't his fault. It was the aircraft/helmet.
Like the B-1 that crashed on landing in hard IMC, this 35 was lost in similar conditions. It's not only GA pilots who come to grief in such conditions. The recent crash (F-18?) in Washington state was another. Many commercial pilots have also lost their jobs due to a fear of flying in IMC. Even at the small outfit I flew for, it happened fairly often.
Yep so the varoius displays, intermittent and from different sources, were providing incompatible data, he decides to not believe any of them and get out. What is wrong with that?
Over on Ward Carol's channel, he said the pilot should not have ejected from the plane. But thank you for reading the whole report. There was a whole batch of things going wrong with that plane and zero visibility conditions. Of course the military doesn't want to admit another one of their f-35s quit working. It's telling that three out of the four ship flight was down for maintenance issues at one point
He said he should not have ejected? Why?
If you look at the safety record of the F-35 at this point of its service life vs. F-16, that's really a testament to how good the F-35's safety record is. I think politics were at work here. It was an opportunity to cashier somebody that somebody up high didn't like.
@@CWLemoine I don't know if he said that the MP shouldn't have ejected but iirc he made the point that a pilot with more time in F35's might have been able to trust and rely on the tertiary 'peanut' display to continue flying the jet
Maybe RIO Ward daydreamed how woulda saved the glitchy F-35…
@chksix6 Perhaps!
It seems to me, with all of the Lockheed redactions, the general gist is that the aircraft is too "smart" to be at fault. At a 100 million dollars per aircraft, it or course couldn't be the problem. It obviously was pilot error.
I bet there was more to the story, he was relieved of command for more than just the crash. That is my take anyway.
And they wonder why they are loosing pilots
It's impressive how insightful the investigators are with the benefit of hindsight!! How exactly was the pilot to know the plane was 'fly able' given the information available to him at the time?
I think the public nature of the inability to find the plane afterward was a factor in “losing confidence” in his ability to command. Nothing to do with him but he was the pilot of the plane they couldn’t find.
I wonder if the Commandant remembers that he serves at the discretion of the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States. I sincerely hope that there is some recourse on this removal from command. Even if he can't "get back the squadron", there definitely needs to be some sort of recourse because just using "at the pleasure" can still be an insufficient reason for removal.
Scapegoat.
All good stuff CW......but I have to ask this simple question: Do the F-35 pilots receive any simulator training that duplicates the accident scenario or similar equipment failures; i.e., loss of primary and secondary flight displays/instruments w/ transition to tertiary backup instruments? In other words, do pilots get the civilian equivalent of "partial panel" IMC upset recovery, basic IMC maneuvering, radar assistance w/ timed turns to a heading, radar approaches, etc. by reference to the tertiary flight displays. If not, why?
Are you kidding me? Military pilots get far more robust partial panel, degrade, and emergency training than civilian training. Not only do they get it in simulators, they get it in training aircraft too. No foggles, a full tent hood.
I asked the same question after listening to the report read covering his ‘recency’ flight time seemed low…AND THEY DID NOT MENTION THE LAST TIME HE WAS IN THE SIMULATOR DOING AN EMERGENCY PROCEDURES SIM RIDE THAT FOCUSED ON STANDBY GYRO FLYING AND FLYING ILS, GCA AND TACAN APPROACHES.
I am sensing a training issue. I am not weighing in on the decision to remove him from command…as a former Navy jet instructor, I am just feeling something is missing.
@@thetdchannel the FNAEB said his decision to eject was justified. You should understand the difference between FNAEB and JAGMAN and which we get to see. You don’t understand the lack of information available to you when everything gets combined into singular displays and these displays fail. You also don’t appreciate the unique aspects of fly-by-wire aircraft and the increased complexity with increased failure paths. Look up both Dave Snowden with Cynefin, see also his Sense-Making and “Estuaries.” Remember your John Boyd as you do. Then look up Sidney Dekker. These fighters with computers in the loop can easily put you into no-win scenarios. They also cannot fly with total electrical failures. They are naturally unstable platforms. And the previous Hill, Eglin, and SCS crashes all involved mode issues with planes not acting as intended. This pilot knew about those.
@
Thanks! Then this jet is really a joke! Seems to be built on the [hope] that nothing will go wrong-especially operating off the carrier.
By the way, what does the F-35 EP simulator syllabus consist of? What failures?
As a B777 Captain, I appreciated the electrical backup systems and its approach to fly-by-wire!
This all happened during one of the most critical phases of flight too... that needs to be recognized. (not saying people here aren't, I mean the powers that be who are being punitive)
Tactical aircrew don’t view approach and landing as critical phase of flight; the BFM earlier was much more-so. Approach and landing is administrative.
Crash and die not your fault, eject and crash and its your fault. Guess he lucked out getting fired .
How many aircraft, their crews and passengers have been lost to pilots who believed the discrepancy between their primary and secondary instruments?
As described, they are firing him a long long time after the incident for not potentially riding an unrecoverable jet into the ground. Which does seem like a terrible decision that is going to cost pilots their lives & mental health, & damage recruitment & retention.
But I'd wonder whether rolling a plane that... basically... doesn't work properly yet at the _hardware_ level out to the entire US Navy, Marine Corps & air force was a smart idea...
The airplane is a flying glitch. I'm surprised they don't have a ELT.
A friend of mine was an Air Force Pilot in transition from a Cessna to the T33. One of his classmates was doing solo work and, for some unknown reason encountered a departure. No one actually knows what the pilot did to attempt recovery, but at a point the pilot elected to eject. Remember ... as pilots of all aircraft types we are trained that if we encounter a departure, specifically a spin that we can't "control" out of, then just let go of the stick. The wisdom of that logic was manifest in that after the pilot punched out, the plane self-recovered and flew another 120 miles before running out of fuel and crashing.
People see which way the wind is blowing and decide accordingly. If they see personnel being jerked around by leadership, there will be a cost in who volunteers for that service.
The great thing about blaming the pilot is it doesn't cost the Military nearly as much money as fixing the aircraft. Doesn't make the aircraft any safer either, but losing another 109 million dollar plane plus possible pilot and ground casualties is someone else's problem. A+ leadership.
Faced with what he was dealing with I think nothing should be held against him. There comes a point when you must put yourself first.
So translations, the guy became understandably overloaded, in part because they won't let them fly enough to become more comfortable, and the most critical part is they had to make an example of him because he's wrecked the military industrial machine's poster child airplane.
As a 4000+ hr commercial rotor craft pilot, I would have punched out too!
As a non pilot and non military guy why did he loose his job? What happens now? Is he still a military pilot or is he done?
There's lots of levers they can pull.
Leave the service
Lose your wings
Lose your command
No more promotions
The brass make the decision
On ward Carolls channel it seems he took command of another unit while the investigation was ongoing. And was then removed when the investigation concluded
Great report!
There's so many people here playing Monday-night quarterback armchair pilot, so let's clear some stuff up. This happened while the pilot was coming in for a landing and was low to the ground. The helmet failed and also the main cockpit display. The only instrument left was a small display between the pilot's legs, which they used while the helmet was intermittently turning on and off, and when it did turn on, it spat out tons of warnings. They were flying in bad weather with zero visibility, and was likely spatially disoriented. The radio wasn't working, and the backup radio's frequency could only be changed using the main display, which was off. The aircraft was not responding properly to a command to go from STOVL to regular flight, and the pilot could not trust the single working display. Their choice was to either stay in an aircraft with critical instrument failures that's not responding to commands while low to the ground in zero visibility conditions, or punch out.
So pretty much exactly what was laid out in the video, what exactly are you clearing up? and why is your opinion not just another "Monday-night quarterback armchair pilot" comment? What makes you the ultimate authority?
@@ricbarker4829 The fact that I"m right.
@@expertnewbie arrogant
/ˈarəɡ(ə)nt/
adjective
adjective: arrogant
having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.
"he's arrogant and opinionated"
@@ricbarker4829 I sure ruffled your feathers. Seems like you're one of those Monday-night quarterback armchair pilots I directed my message to. Glad the message hit the mark!
@@expertnewbie Yeah mate, I'm devastated. Google "The Dunning-Kruger effect" and then take some time for self reflection.
Penalizing the pilot is utter and plain bullshit.
There seems to be more of a priority to punish the pilot than preventing what amounts to be a catastrophic avionics failure. This was just a simple cross country flight, not a strike mission in a nonpermssive combat environment. The pilot made a critical error, but I believe the military’s solution was too clinical and resolute, representing less than stellar leadership decisions. Punishing the pilot will not prevent this from inevitability happening again.
Yeah, they definitely did this pilot dirty
This was almost like "The Cornfield Bomber" incident except this one crashed
That was my first thought as well. Of course that was an F-106 (not a bomber) and they are much sleeker looking birds.
Is there an equivalent of an autopilot wings level mode in the aircraft as a last resort during upset? During high workload in the Skyhawk it was useful. However, I recognize the low altitude and out of time factor as well.
This feature is built in to many modern Russian fighters. They press a button on their yolk and get wings level.
If such existed, it wouldn’t work with avionics and air data cautions
@@jimallen8186 can confirm what you are saying. There is a video of a SU27 repeatedly departing controlled flight after some sort of serious issue after take off. In the video, the pilot finally managed to land safely.
Pilot lost confidence in his aircraft and punched out. Commandant lost confidence in pilot and punched out. Fair enough all around.
He did not close the throttle before ejecting, thus the plane could have flown anywhere and crashed into anything/anybody, that is irresponsible.
Guess it wasn’t out of control after all. Can’t really say I blame him if he perceived his instruments to be unreliable that low and in the weather.
Hmm, I'm no pilot but I would argue that feedback is part of 'control'. They don't give driving licenses to blind people even though they can use the steering wheel and pedals just fine.
Great episode. It just shows that even the military command structure gets it wrong sometimes. He should get his command back.
“The backup radio was partially functional “. That’s ambiguous. WTF is that supposed to mean?
in the report i think it said, to change channel you have to access drop down menus, since it was a backup radio i doubt it was keyed in to ATC at the time
Hmm.
I live in the area close to Joint Base Charleston and I remember on that afternoon there was a strong thunderstorm in the area around the airfield. What are the effects of nearby lightning strikes on the HMD’s performance? Could that have had anything to do with the flickering he experienced?
I think it was either Mover or another pilot that talked about his jet getting lightning struck, its enough to knock out you and your electronics. His wingman, I think, didn't return back to flying for a while because the current went through his headset.
@@Algorerhythm was not mentioned as a cause in the report (@movers reading)
@@RogerJL but there was about few pages of redacted analysis from Lockheed Martin.
Railroad a guy because they don't want to admit we have a lemon.
Having the full details from the pilot, and having ZERO reason to doubt his truthfullness, I am badly disappointed by the decision to relieve him of command. Lemoine does an excelent job of describing the technical difficulty of makinging an accurate assesment of the control ablity of the aircraft, and the environmenal challanges imposed upon him. Bad call from the Military leadership.