Ooops! where has it gone.......!

Well apparently yesterday in America a Marine F-35 II E (I think) was lost.
The pilot ejected and left the plane on auto pilot and it calmly flew away the govt is now asking the public to help look for the jet apparently they said the planes transponder is not working or was not working that's pretty strange for such a piece of kit.
Apparently it is the latest of its type and the secrets it holds are causing a bit of a panic they have 2 locations both are lakes.
Brings to mind the F-15 they lost overboard and scrambled to retrieve it from the bottom of the ocean due to its secrets and hardware it was carrying.

Apparently the F-35 series has a known oxygen problem which can cause accelerated fatigue in the pilots either way there is a secretive $70 million USD aircraft missing.
Wonder if you'd get a % of its worth if you found it, not likely you'd find a muzzle of a rifle under your beak to move on!

Apparently it is splattered from hell to breakfast a couple of hours from the base. Probably cordoned off by SPs at this point.

Bob

Yeah we saw the find on our news, thing is Bob if they have a known crew habitat fault why have them up there as they enlightened us by the U.S Air Force saying there was a mishap!

Thats a pretty broad statement and a cool $70M USD stuff up in fact the whole program they said with the F 35's is something like $1.7 trillion USD per year a funny thing also with the transponder not working, the USAF could not track their bird apparently the radar signature of an F 35 is about golf ball size!

For that price the American public deserves to have a weapons system that is faultless.......

3rd and 4th generation combat aircraft are incredibly capable and complex systems that only a small handful of nations can field. And half of them only with help. But yeah, that's a black eye that's going to need some ice.

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Originally Posted by CINDERS

For that price the American public deserves to have a weapons system that is faultless.......

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I think industries have gotten used to the lazy, "Publish 'em v1 and we'll sort out the bugs in v1.3" mindset But we are looking at a bunch of bugs here. A known oxygen delivery problem, rumors that the driver was unhorsed without giving the command, and then an expensive vehicle that lets the cat out of the bag and doesn't call home to momma or fire off a beacon?

The latest rumor is of the aircraft avionics possibly being hacked by a foreign government. That was addressed in 1984 when Scotty said, "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

Oops. Better get some info in hand and call a press conference to kill some of these rumors if you want this program to continue.

Bob

The US Marines do seem to be getting a bit of stick over the lack of information as to why the pilot ejected at 1000ft......

• If he had a problem, did he declare an emergency before he ejected, likely therefore they must have had an indication why he was thus forced to eject from the bird, but nothing so far.
• Therefore seems this may have been an not required ejection (originally they said mishap, which has now been retracted) and given the aircraft happily flew on for quite some time might indicate the pilot vacating it wasn't intended. Maybe the automatic command ejection system the F-35B has malfunctioned and ejected the pilot by mistake. However, if they thought that, I'd be expecting them all to be grounded for checks if that was the case.
• The fact that it wasn't flying with transponder on is not unusual for any USMC, USN & USAF fast jets as they never seem to fly around the USA or UK/EU with transponder switcher on. You pretty much never see them on any of the flight trackers over the USA, or UK. You occasionally see the USAFE F-15E'showing up over UK, but you don't see their F-35A's and very, very rarely see any of the RAF F-35B's showing up on flight trackers.

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Originally Posted by GeeRam

The fact that it wasn't flying with transponder on is not unusual for any USMC, USN & USAF fast jets as they never seem to fly around the USA or UK/EU with transponder switcher on. You pretty much never see them on any of the flight trackers over the USA, or UK. You occasionally see the USAFE F-15E'showing up over UK, but you don't see their F-35A's and very, very rarely see any of the RAF F-35B's showing up on flight trackers.

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There was a collision between a Hughes Airwest DC-9 and an F-4 that was out doing low-level VFR near L.A. on June 6th, 1971, that was supposed to have caused action to require the military to use transponders and file flight plans. I was just watching a tracker and saw a T-38 motoring about between the local Air Force Base, a Naval Air station, a Naval Master Jet Base, and the international airport. Yeah, it gets a tad congested here.

If the pilot was anoxic, all bets are off. :madsmile:

Bob

I believe they also "lost" a nuke back in 50s or 60s in the same general area.

Interesting update from my driveway this morning (Washington Times). Pilot ejected - or was ejectcted - at ~1000ft just a few miles north for Charleston international airport, and the plane continued on stable flight for another 60 miles. What made it interesting was that I learned the USMC version of the F35 is the only variant with an auto-eject. It has not been stated whether the pilot was forcibly ejected against his will.

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Originally Posted by ssgross

Interesting update from my driveway this morning (Washington Times). Pilot ejected - or was ejectcted - at ~1000ft just a few miles north for Charleston international airport, and the plane continued on stable flight for another 60 miles. What made it interesting was that I learned the USMC version of the F35 is the only variant with an auto-eject. It has not been stated whether the pilot was forcibly ejected against his will.

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I mentioned this back in my post #6.
The F-35B which the USMC and the Royal Air Force also operate has an automatic command eject system, as if the lift fan fails during vertical thrust operation, the aircraft becomes instantly unstable, so fast it was not deemed that a pilot could react and manually eject in time......so, there is an auto command eject system that will react in millisecs of a lift fan failure.
That's why there is speculation from pretty much as soon as this happened when it became clear the aircraft carried on on, that it might be a system failure of the auto-command ejection, and Bloggs the pilot was happily flying along at 1000ft and the next thing he knows, whooosh-bang and he's hanging in the air under silk....hence the USMA grounding their F-35B fleet for safety checks straight away.

Just a speculation GeeRam ~ If he was banged out at 1000 ' had they been on a TFR flight or preparing for one it seems the plane flew on for quite a distance so it was trimmed for level flight so yeah a forcible ejection may be the cause.

Talking of fly away's,

In WWII from one of my books on the BoB a Spitfire was hit by 1 20mm shell which came through the port side of the cockpit and neatly removed the top of the pilots head as a hard boiled egg is done, he was listed as missing in action no one saw him go down.
The plane was perfectly trimmed for level flight and that's what it did until it settled nicely into some tree tops with little damage where it was discovered a month later with the pilot still in there and baked by the sun for that month with a fairly intact cockpit canopy.
They knew he was still in there as they could smell him climbing the ladder what they found and described is best left out but you can imagine the poor pilots body extremely decomposed.

I wonder how much the government pays to compensate you when they drop an F-35 in your backyard?