F/A-18 Hornet Out of Control

F-18 "Falling Leaf" basically a brick!

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• F/A-18
• Hornet
• Falling
• Leaf
• Ballistic
• Figher
• Pilot

[FlatSpinsAreEasy]

Intentional. Early F18 video, one of the world's best test pilots (former astronaut) Canadian Chris Hadfield. USN & CAF F18's were being lost to unescapeable spins. This is Hadfield (on loan to US) inventing the procedure for escaping the F18 spin. Balls of steel. Watch the altimeter dropping. mere seconds from pancaking into the desert floor. Video ends, calls 5000, but he descends a lot more as the F-18 fights inertia. His technique was adopted for the F-18 and saved a lot of pilots.

[Adrian351]

@steve Hi Steve, The rules are black and white WRT when to pull the handle (<6K & out of control), but it means you're about to throw $50M bucks away, so some times, if guys think they have made a mistake to get into that situation, they may try and "stick with it" a little longer to try and redeem themselves.....not that this is the correct thing to do, but occasionally human nature can make guys do dumb things and sometimes they pay with their life. A close friend died due to ejecting late.

[watchnrate]

Gawd, look at his airspeed!

[stevemartajordan]

@Adrian351 How do guys crash in that situation(besides it being very difficult, i am just curious) wouldnt if you got to 6000ft once you got to atleast 2000ft you would eject? or is there no time, or does the pilot just not want to eject and thinks he can pull out? just curious about it.

[MrB090]

Wow, he's lucky to not be a smoking crater right now! I imagine his debrief (or FNAEB) went something along the lines of "Nice recovery, next time pull the ****ing handle!!" He definitely busted the hard deck for OCF and was nowhere near a recovery when he went through it either. Glad he made it though!!! :)

[Adrian351]

Look at the video at 0:10. He's upside down, 50-55" NU and pulling 40* Alpha.....even though he's pointing at 50* NU, the aircraft (flight vector) is actually travelling 90* straight up still. The aircraft just "hangs" up there with zero speed and he's just going along for the ride :)

[Adrian351]

By the time it settles at 55", he is just a passenger. Look at the left airpseed box......it says 48. Funny thing is that the lowest reading the Hornet shows in that box......he's actually more like ZERO knots. With no airspeed over the control surfaces, doesn't matter what you do with them....they don't work.

[Adrian351]

You'll also hear the other guys telling him to check his altitude just incase he needs to give it away and eject. IMO, this is just a simple case of "ham fisted" flying. Expecting the jet to do something it can't and persisting with it. The speed can bleed off very quick and he got the nose very high for the amoun't of airspeed he "didn't" have.

[Adrian351]

No, this happened during a training flight over in the US.....although there are intentional falling leaf vids out there from test pilot flights. You can hear the "knock it off" call over the radio......telling everyone in the formation to stop the fight as something has gone wrong.

[boresightlock]

Is this a flight test for the falling leaf modes? It seemed like he was intentionally trying to hold 50-55 degrees pitch to induce sideslip and intentionally push the jef into a falling leaf....