Belgian Air Force F-16 destroyed by fire during maintenance
aviation24.be
aviation24.be
>The account has been widely published across the internet, but we make no apology for running the story here, as it’s a fascinating tale and it’s good to hear the original account of how Taffy Holden, an RAF Engineering Officer, accidentally selected reheat, then managed to fly several circuits in the Lightning jet fighter, position it for an approach and then land it with only minor damage. The flight in Taffy’s own words is reproduced in full below.
http://www.historicracer.com/aviation/accidental-fighter-pil...
Taffy had a great commanding officer, too. At least from the account here, a truly humble leader. But you will have to read to the end to find out.
It reads like an awesome Root Cause Analysis ticket.
It makes it useful for future referencing and is searchable. Unlike writing it up in a word doc and uploading it to something like sharepoint where it is forgotten
But he wasn't a technician, he was an engineering officer and qualified pilot (though not on the Lightning) and commanding officer of the unit in question.
https://videos.metro.co.uk/video/met/2018/10/14/876690853828...
https://www.aviation24.be/website/who-remembers-this/a-brand...
https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20071115-...
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5gfidl
It's pretty interesting, though, unfortunately, only in Dutch.
I also remember that they were pushing fighter jets overboard rather than attempt to extinguish them as there was magnesium on fire that could not be put out quickly with the resources they had and they were afraid they would just melt through the ship, like thermite.
How the Forrestal fire was handled is a case study in how to do it wrong and the high number of casualties was the very sad cost of how poorly prepared the crew were.
a likely story
The Lightning was a high speed interceptor tasked to shoot down nuclear bombers, to say it was fast is an understatement.
He wasn't certified to fly that aircraft and was troubleshooting an electrical problem that couldn't be reproduced in the hanger. So he was taking short taxis down a closed portion of runway without a canopy. The equivalent of a car mechanic reving your engine in the parking lot.
The reheater (aka afterburner) on the Lightning was the last position on the throttle and there was a lock once engaged.
He wasn't having any luck reproducing the issue and so was going faster with each attempt. He accidentally engaged the reheater and went flying down the runway.
Before he could manage to disengage the reheater he had to avoid another aircraft and after that the runway ran out so he had to choose between crashing and taking off.
Once up it took him 4 approaches to bring it down without a canopy.
[0] https://reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/9nyorn/belgium_techni...
By the way they are investigating whether this was an accident or on purpose. The chances of this being an accident are quite small.
I'm not saying this has anything to do with it. But at least that's the context.
There are rumours about US intervention/approval being required when loading the F35 computer with mission details..
They are not strictly 100% European manufacture, I suppose, but could very well be.
There being several domestic European options, obtaining hardware from USA seems counter-productive. The F35 are very expensive, their quality seems supect, they are pushed through not on their technical merits but through political pressure (e.g. Norway), there are strings attached. All this is somewhat alarming. Also, any political guarantees attached to the purchase of the F35 are suspect, as this weeks promises may change next week - we all know the new administration is rather dynamic, in good and bad.
Could one buy a few for political reasons? Maybe, but maybe one or two would not be enough and with a larger block the cost becomes an issue.
IIRC the only country that can is Israel and they got a specific exemption.
Honestly I find the way our government rolls over to the US frustrating at times, As the customer we should hold a firmer line - flip side is though that arms deals are often a proxy for general diplomacy so we take it in the shorts on specific deals for long term advantages - It's all in the (great) game.
The disadvantage is as you point out, severely limited types of aircraft for operations. The advantage of the cheaper design was that two carriers could be produced - France, with a similar economy and military to the UK size-wise, has only one fixed-wing carrier.
Two carriers is a game changer, as it allows year round operational readiness. For the Charles de Gaulle it spent ~900 days at sea in its first six years[0] - less than half the time.
Always having a carrier ready with "compromised" aircraft has many advantages over a lower availability with better aircraft.
[0] https://www.copybook.com/fact-files/charles-de-gaulle-aircra...
I don't believe it was ever really included in the design. EMALS was undeveloped at the time, and where would you get the steam for a conventional catapult, with no reactor and no boilers? And where were the compartments to physically put the (huge) catapults and arrestor gear? And even if EMALS was available where would you get the electrical power to run it (no reactor remember) when the (gas turbine) engines full output would be needed to head into the wind for launches?
It was a tickybox, that's all. Because BAe could never take the risk that the UK would chose Rafales or Super Hornets, they had to make the F35-B, which coincidentally they also have a finger in the pie of, the only option.
Don't worry! F35 engines can also be maintained in Turkey.
So are the current F16 able to drop these? Or which other planes during those decades?
With Russia now becoming increasingly aggressive, I would think the time to prepare a deterrence is now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Elsenborn_Ridge [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxkk8CuejV4
eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Eben-Emael
Wars tend to expose obsolete military doctrines. Big fortresses on land and sea (battleships) that can bombard targets many miles away are great if the enemy doesn't just fly in.
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/05/09/soldier-...
If you watch the video you’ll see the type of clown he is.
the UK, Italy, Germany...all have permanent military bases for the USA...they're practically garrisoned
Europe isn't an American colony. If anything it should be the other way round.
Eg. The Dutch have “ATM machines for fried food”.
"Do you know why they don't cover lunatic asylums in Belgium?"
"It would be impossible to cover the whole country."
Usually it's a series of failures that lead to such an incident, rather than one single critical failure. Failsafes aren't failproofs.
Breaking two at the same time might.
It is not one failure. It is at least two.
NRA's three rules: https://gunsafetyrules.nra.org
You'll often see the Cooper rules slightly restated: https://www.hunter-ed.com/gun-safety/
I'm not a fan of "as if".
Base on years of using and cleaning guns for hunting and target shooting and from reading several hundred reports of gun cleaning "accidents", "gun cleaning accident" is polite fiction for "I shot myself (or someone else!) playing with my gun". Although, to be fair, some of them are suicides and possibly the occasional murder.
Normally guns only need cleaning if they have been fired or have somehow gotten wet or contaminated. The procedure to clean a gun goes like this:
1) Remove ammunition 2) Partially disassemble gun (depending on model) 3) Scrub a cleaning rod and brush through the barrel and chamber 4) Reassemble
Removing the ammunition has to happen, otherwise you cannot run the brush though the barrel because the ammunition is in the way. So shooting yourself while cleaning a gun because you didn't know it was loaded is like driving off without your car keys. Not too plausible.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to have an accident playing with a gun, and apparently shooting yourself is deeply embarrassing so it's not uncommon to lie about "I was cleaning it". I don't know why the police accept this story, just a social nicety I guess.
Of course this story works best if the "accident" happens in the home. A surprisingly common variation in cases where the gun owner shoots themselves in a parked car or suchlike (often with a newly purchased gun) is that a "black man ran up/drove by" and shot them for no reason. Sometimes the assailant was "wearing black clothes" and/or "driving a "black SUV". The police tend to be more skeptical about this although not always. [0] [1]
[0] http://www.startribune.com/wounded-st-kate-s-security-office... [1] https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Police-White-Man-Bl...
The brush won't go through the barrel if ammunition is in the way, but that doesn't mean the cleaner won't keep trying.
I agree with OP: this is polite fiction. You can hurt yourself during cleaning with some guns (a spring snapping on your fingers, for example), but shoot yourself? Nah.
Actually, the F-16 has a switch to override the 'weight on wheels' (WOW) safety for the weapons. It's used for doing checks and maintenance on the ground. Switch was probably flipped and it did what it was supposed to do. You can see the procedure here:
http://aviationandaccessories.tpub.com/TM-1-1510-224-10/css/...
Kinda sucks if your multi million plane gets shot down because it couldn't fire a missile because of a 50 Euro sensor malfunction...
The correct manual for Belgian F-16s will be either a GS (general system; theory of operations) or JG (job guide; step-by-step procedural instructions) technical order of the form T.O. 1F-16AM-2-x where x = [system][GS or JG]-[subsystem]-[manual].
If memory serves correct, F-16 WOW switch override is strictly an external affair and cannot be performed from the cockpit.
Though why the Belgian Air Force fired a minor cleric for this incident goes unanswered.
Either possibility, that such a procedure is not followed, or that there is no such procedure, is worrying.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/65776main_noaa_np_mishap.pdf
Not sure if knocking over a satellite is more or less expensive than totaling one F-16 and damaging another.
And if the safety is designed in such a way without i.e. interlocks and such that you can fire off guns accidentally by poking around in the wires/connectors, that's a little sad.
Now sometimes the weight on wheels switches need to be bypassed for testing a wide range of aircraft systems. Perhaps the aircraft was on jacks (tyre replacement?) or some sort of EMI occurred... But ultimately there really is a great deal of safety layers that had to be compromised for this to happen, including human factors.
Like with software development, you can't predict every possible action of your users (air or ground crew), and sooner or later you'll encounter an edge case nobody had considered.
That's not to say that there shouldn't be safety systems that would prevent accidental firing, just that “never shoot if system thinks we're on the ground” is very likely not a good one.
Similar to the old story when Arnold Schwarzenegger stole a tank and went on a rampage, but then was protected by his protégé and got away with it.
The good news is now the guy can almost qualify as an ace. He just need 3 more planes shot.
2018: successfully targeted and destroyed a F-16 with a second F-16 also grounded. Only person in Europe to do so.
Would you be proud of that entry?
In 1982 an RAFG Phantom shot down an RAFG Jaguar. Not on the ground admittedly, but still quite an incident.
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=55364
> Shot down 35 miles NE of Bruggen, West Germany by a Sidewinder missile accidentally fired from 92 Squadron Phantom FGR2 XV422. The pilot ejected safely. The master armament switch in the Phantom had not been taped in the ‘safe’ position and the pilot inadvertently rendered ‘live’ one of the two main safely switches. The pilot and navigator of the Phantom were court martialed and found guilty of offences of neglect.
Maybe some people are exhausted.
This is going to be one hell of a rough couple of days for the technician(s) involved.