Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection
- Reference: 1638284108
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/11/30/f35b_ejection_hms_queen_elizabeth_video/
- Source link:
The leaked clip, seemingly from a CCTV camera on the carrier's bridge, shows the Lockheed Martin-made stealth aircraft slowly trundling down the deck before tipping over the ski-jump ramp on her bows.
As the £100m RAF jet nosed over, the pilot ejected – only for his parachute to snag on the carrier's bows as he descended back towards the ship.
[1]
Had he gone underneath the 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth or been caught in one of her two 33-tonne, 6.7m-diameter [2]propellers [PDF], he may not have survived.
Well thank God he is still with us! That’s all I can say. [3]pic.twitter.com/YtL6f0BFAm — Seb H (@sebh1981) [4]November 29, 2021
A Ministry of Defence spokesbeing said in a prepared statement: "We are aware of a video circulating online. It is too soon to comment on the potential causes of this incident."
[5]'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries
[6]China compromised F-35 subcontractor and forced expensive software system rewrite, academic tells MPs
[7]Uncle Sam tells F-35B allies they'll have to fly the things a lot more if they want to help out around South China Sea
[8]Autonomous Logistics Information System gets shoved off the F-35 gravy train in favour of ODIN
The F-35 crash took place a couple of weeks ago as the carrier taskforce sailed through the eastern Mediterranean, heading back towards Britain after touring the Pacific [9]and the South China Sea – making her the first British capital ship to enter the disputed ocean since HMS Albion in 2018.
The carrier was hosting 10 US Marine Corps F-35Bs as well as eight British jets from 617 Squadron RAF, though the crashed aircraft was British. The US squadron has since left the carrier.
[10]
Speculation abounded that the F-35B crashed because a protective cover had mistakenly been left in place. Flying operations continued despite the accident, though the BBC [11]reported that a high priority operation was under way to recover the crashed jet before a hostile nation such as Russia could fish it out of the deep.
"The recovery efforts are ongoing and the Defence Accident Investigation Branch will report back their preliminary findings in due course," said the MoD. Such investigations normally take 18 months before their findings are made public. ®
Bootnote
The (un)lucky pilot of the F-35 qualifies for membership of ejection seat maker Martin Baker's Ejection Tie Club, an exclusive organisation reserved for those who've used its products to escape from a crashing aeroplane. The British company's seats have saved around 7,500 lives worldwide at the time of writing.
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YaZYuhn@Yly8qoLza2hxrQAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.rolls-royce.com/~/media/Files/R/Rolls-Royce/documents/news/6-page-qe-booklet-tcm92-58802.pdf
[3] https://t.co/YtL6f0BFAm
[4] https://twitter.com/sebh1981/status/1465351592018956295?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/25/f35_gao_report_fy2020_software_woes/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/12/china_compromised_f35_software_claim/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/07/f35_dote_fy2019_report/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/17/f35_alis_software_system_replaced_odin/
[9] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-arcraft-carrier-ignores-chinese-warnings-for-second-time/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YaZYuhn@Yly8qoLza2hxrQAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59323895
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Milspec is marketing wank for civilian grade overpriced tat sold to rambo wannabes.
MOD approved (or DOD approved if you're a yank) is the marketing wank for overpriced sub-civilian grade tat foisted upon actual military personnel at great taxpayer expense.
Our brief experience of selling kit to the gentlemen in green was that there was a huge amount of mil-specs to jump through, none of which were to do with how well it worked in the field.
We ended up selling it to special forces - that was much more interesting. Their requirements was that it was not mil-spec, for example everything had to use AA batteries. The explanation from one user with very short hair and no surname was "we can get AA batteries anywhere, if we run out, there are shops and we have guns"
Many years ago, my friend found a piece of very broken MOD kit on Dartmoor. It appeared to be a battery pack for something (Radio?). It had about 30 special MOD AA batteries inside. They were green and had "MOD Property" printed on the side and then in tiny writing underneath it said "Duracell". As far as we could tell they were just ordinary alkaline batteries.
Well...
... that's rather embarrassing...
Re: Well...
Certain is. Unlike a cat take off where any malfunction rapidly results in the aircraft going for a swim, a ramp assisted short take off is more leisurely affair, and if speed isn't building sufficiently during the roll, there is usually time to stick the breaks on before getting to the top of the ski jump.
Re: Well...
Brakes. If you don't is when the breaks will be happening, or maybe even despite braking.
Nice to hear that he survived ...
The video reminds me of the old days at an American airfield in the UK when the pilots from various forces (UK and US) would all party ... the fun party in the evening involved a number of tables arranged in a line and covered with ice cubes and a candle on the table corners ... the pilots would drink a beer and run at the table with a tray, jump onto the table and slide from beginning to end - the winners (normally the navy pilots) would manage to stop before they reached the end of the table!
This was about 50 years ago, a friend of mine worked there, his job was to drive down beside the runway when a U2's landed to catch their wings on one side so that they didn't tip onto the ground.
Ooops!
> The (un)lucky pilot of the F-35 qualifies for membership of ejection seat maker Martin Baker's Ejection Tie Club, an exclusive organisation reserved for those who've used its products to escape from a crashing aeroplane.
There's good news and bad news sir. The good news is that the pilot's ejector seat works...
Re: Ooops!
The bad news is that they are taking it out of your wages.
Fake.
There are no British F-35s.
Just mock-ups and the USMC flying any actual sorties.
Re: Fake.
Have you seen the quality of the 'footage' it's obviously faked.
Still probably much cheaper to do it all in CGI rather than build a practical ship and aircraft set.
Re: Fake.
The only think actually "fake" when people make that accusation are their claims to have had an original thought. "Fake" is the retort of "I dunno what's going on, but I don't like it" types.
Can't see Lockheed's excuses about this flying with the RAF.
617 Squadron are the "Dambusters" if memory serves, well.... damn they've busted this one.
So if they had thrown it faster it might have skipped across the water ?
They would also have needed to apply a reverse spin, but one would presume so.
Security camera footage
Captured on a phone and then exfiltrated, by the looks?
That's a demerit
Ouch! add this one to the aeronautical blooper reel! Glad the pilot came out of it alive!
Re: That's a demerit
"that's a paddlin"
feel the quality
So, either the UK's latest, greatest warship uses CCTV cameras that were originally bought from Tandy... or the person filming the screen was using their Motorola Razr...
I guess they spent all their money on the software licenses for the F35. (or not, in this case)
Re: feel the quality
The carriers are quite large, and that's quite a wide-angled lens to get the whole deck in view.
At a guesstimate, the camera (on one of the islands) was probably 80-100metres from the start of the ramp. Even a modern 4K camera isn't going to give great amounts of detail when wide-angled over such a huge area.
Combine that with the quality of the monitor (probably not as good as the actual camera) and then filming on a phone and it's not going to look great.
The purpose is to see what's happening on deck. Provided it's "good enough" to distinguish people (and possibly arm signals) then you don't need to be able to lip-read conversations.
Somebody mught find themselves answering questions on the subject of the Official Secrets Act.
I can't believe that any images taken on board a carrier don't need to be cleared from on high before being published.
Would suspect the
engine went AWOL after the plane reached the point of no return...(otherwise known as V1)
Why it went AWOL is another matter...
Smilely .. for the pilot making it
Re: Would suspect the
Kinda looks like the pilot pulled the throttle back as he wasn't getting sufficient power. I don't really see any big flame or smoke from the exhaust or lift fan so it probably wasn't a FOD ingestion.
Re: Would suspect the
The pilot lived, but I was told such survivors have back problems for the rest of their lives. The ejector seat really is a bomb in the bum.
Re: Would suspect the
engine went AWOL after the plane reached the point of no return...(otherwise known as V1)
... but given what looks like a constant speed taxi to, up, and over the top of the ramp, with no apparent acceleration nor any sign that brakes were applied?
Maybe the avionics crashed which, in such a tightly integrated control and surveillance system as this aircraft seems to use, might disable all avionics including both engine management and brakes. After all it IS an F-35B.
Windows for warships
Well at least it isn’t XP. Wonder if that Windows 7 install is on extended, extended support, fully air gapped offline or just a vulnerability? https://www.theregister.com/2015/12/18/windows_for_warships_not_on_queen_elizabeth_class_aircraft_carriers/
This was reported on the same day it happened in some of the non Western press 17 November.
Looking at the Tweet video, it appears the pilot had opened the throttle but only a small acceleration occurred, either an oopsy in pre-flight prep or an oopsy in the plane.
Either way, that's nearly 90 million squids in the drink.
And in some of the Western Press
The event was reported by the BBC on the 17th:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59323895
The new element is the video. That has only surfaced today.
Milspec technology. The most overpriced lemons money can buy...