Aviation Pictures: The Fourth Generation

[marauder648]

This might amuse you folks.  Its a gallery of images and comments from an article about an F-22 pilot who gets to fly an F-4 Phantom for the first time.

https://imgur.com/gallery/44swwZX

After the AHC, I decided to take her up high and do a supersonic MACH run, and by “high” I mean “where never lark nor even eagle flew”; but not much higher, a foot or two maybe. I mean, we weren’t up there high-fiving Jesus like we do in the Raptor, but it was respectable. It only took me the width of the Gulf of Mexico to get the thing turned around while above the Mach.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Got the giggles at the first mention of coal, had a smile the whole time through.  Poor F-22 driver can't make sense of all those round whatsits on the cockpit panels, kept looking for his tablet PCs...

[marauder648]

Well in terms of tech difference its like comparing a P-51D to a Sopwith Camel or an Fokker Eindeker.  Sure the principles and ideas the same, but the difference is still huge. and the F-4's a VERY different bird to the F-22, the F-22's got fly-by-wire and is far more aerodynamic.  The F-4 just had globs and globs of raw thrust.

And yeah its very amusing :D

[ANS Kamas P81]

In fairness, so does the F-22; those Pratt & Whitneys punch "somewhere over" 70,000 pounds of thrust at max compared to about half that for the F-4.  Though the Raptor also weighs half again as much as the F-4 does...says a lot about the control and finesse that it's got that it can dance like it does despite being ten thousand pounds heavier than a B-17.

[marauder648]

Blimey, I didn't realise the F-22 was heavier than the F-4, I thought the F-22 was lighter than something like the F-15 which is a bloody big plane.  And its that much heavier than a B-17..boggles the mind really.

[ANS Kamas P81]

In all fairness so did I, but going by the Wikipedia the F-22's three sizes* are 43,340-64,840-83,500 while the F-4 runs a svelte 30,328-41,500-61,795 and the B-17 a surprisingly plump 36,135-54,000-65,500.  The Raptor and Phantom are actually just about the same length as a B-17, which is an amazing factoid to me - 63 feet or so for the jets, vs 74 feet for the bomber...and yet the latter gets ten people crammed in it while there's barely room for one in the former two.  Meanwhile the Liberator was a stubby thing at only 67 feet long...

*empty-loaded-MTOW

[grimlock1]

In all fairness so did I, but going by the Wikipedia the F-22's three sizes* are 43,340-64,840-83,500 while the F-4 runs a svelte 30,328-41,500-61,795 and the B-17 a surprisingly plump 36,135-54,000-65,500.  The Raptor and Phantom are actually just about the same length as a B-17, which is an amazing factoid to me - 63 feet or so for the jets, vs 74 feet for the bomber...and yet the latter gets ten people crammed in it while there's barely room for one in the former two.  Meanwhile the Liberator was a stubby thing at only 67 feet long...

*empty-loaded-MTOW

After working a crew that restored an F-4 for static display, let me say; that is a bloody big wing to sand and prep!

Basically ProtoMech Pilot right there.  Hell this whole startup sequence could basically be a protomech's start up one. 

Protomech or Spectral Omnis did occur to me as I was watching the clip but I was more interested in the control surfaces and the preflight.

A friend shared a clip from Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai on facebook that was 2:20 of meticulous preflighting a piston driven fighter.  Sorry I can't figure out how to extract the link or find the original video.

[hoosierhick]

This was not a good day for this Tu-22M3 crew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjENAhPeUtA

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

According to the news report linked in that video, two of the crew members died in the crash.

And that's a pretty horrific crash.

[Daryk]

Looking at the weather, I have to wonder why they were even flying...

[hoosierhick]

According to the news report linked in that video, two of the crew members died in the crash.

And that's a pretty horrific crash.

I'm amazed it was only two.  I was surprised that the rest of the plane almost landed on the forward fuselage when it finally stalled and crashed.

[Sharpnel]

Looking at the weather, I have to wonder why they were even flying...

My thoughts exactly. Extremely poor visibility and it didn't look lie the strip had even been cleared. Somebody needs to get severely punished for this.

[Kidd]

Damn that is... backbreaking

I heard 1 of the crew managed to get onto a life raft but died anyway

[Ghost0402]

That thing hit hard.   :o  It's a wonder it only broke in one spot, would have thought the gear would have gone through the wings seeing as it isn't a carrier born aircraft.

[ANS Kamas P81]

That thing hit hard.   :o  It's a wonder it only broke in one spot, would have thought the gear would have gone through the wings seeing as it isn't a carrier born aircraft.

They build them with tough gear for rough field landings and unpaved operations.  And once the "neck" became a stress failure point, all the energy went into that instead as the weakest link. 

That said, it sure came in on a steep descent and flared late; I'd say visibility and weather conditions (plus a complete lack of clearing the runway) were primary causes.  Could the snow have fudged the readings of the radar altimeters onboard?

[marauder648]

They build them with tough gear for rough field landings and unpaved operations.  And once the "neck" became a stress failure point, all the energy went into that instead as the weakest link. 

That said, it sure came in on a steep descent and flared late; I'd say visibility and weather conditions (plus a complete lack of clearing the runway) were primary causes. Could the snow have fudged the readings of the radar altimeters onboard?

That's my thoughts too, they seemed to be coming down way too fast for a normal landing and maybe the snow was fuzzing it up enough that they thought they were higher than they were. With visibility like that there's no clues for them to see something like a building or tree etc to warn them off, then they seemed to have come down in a normal decent rather than a landing.  It came in quite straight too from what we could see, not nose up tail down for landing, so something tells me they thought they were higher than they really were.

[hoosierhick]

I asked that radar altimeter question in another place I saw this being discussed.  The answer I got was that the snow wouldn't have affected it.  I'm thinking they were high and fast, and both guys up front were heads up trying to make out the ground through the snow and didn't notice how low they really were.  I was really surprised they didn't drive the main gear legs up through the wings when the hit and the weak point was the forward fuselage.  I wonder if the pitch-up of the rest of the plane was solely from the front breaking off or if whoever was flying tried to pull up and the elevators helped.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Front breaking off.  That's a decent amount of weight suddenly missing from the airplane, throwing the COG way behind the wings, and control inputs were severed at that moment.  Along with, I imagine, whatever hydraulic systems the Tu-22 has; control was something that went right out the window.  Same thing happened to TWA 800 when the fuel tank blew, compromised the fuselage, and took the front off to the wing shoulders.

Looks like someone just leaked the initial report here.  The Russians seem to say she was overloaded, apparently, with piloting error being the primary cause.  Anyone read Russian?

[hoosierhick]

Good point with TWA800.  I had forgotten about that.

Has it been said anywhere how long they had been in flight?   I've been wondering if the reports of a overweight landing are a misunderstanding/mistranslation of it being a heavy (hard) landing.  I can see them being heavy if they had just taken off and had to come back for some reason.

Edit:  was looking for some more info and saw that one of the survivors has passed.

Another edit:  Found a screenshot just after it broke.  You can see the elevators are pretty much at neutral pitch.  From here: https://defence-blog.com/news/russian-tu-22m3-crash-expert-says-instrument-landing-system-to-blame-hard-landing.html

[ANS Kamas P81]

"Too heavy" could have a number of connotations to it, yeah.  I'd think either fuel load or if it was carrying ordnance of any kind might have overdone it, like how airliners can take off with more fuel than they are recommended landing with.  Either that or it meant the descent rate was too fast, which was definitely a case.   Watching the video closely, maybe an altitude of 10m or so (less than a second before impact) you can see it start to come up a little in the nose and slow its descent, which I imagine was the pilot seeing the runway position finally.

Frankly with as much snow as there is in the video, I can't tell where the runway ends and the dirt begins, and that's with the benefit of not moving and having a still image to look at.  The pilot never had a chance, in all honesty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXVmsm_pmUo

An MD-80 suffering a relatively similar fate, though in this case it was the tail section that separated instead of breaking amidships.  Same high sink rate, same hard impact, and if you look close you can see the fuselage flex pretty hard before the tail breaks off. 

[DoctorMonkey]

Nasty crash
Poor crew


I will happily make joke(s) about accidents that everyone walks away from


Spent the day at Shoreham - scene of the Hawker Hunter crash a couple of years ago

[Colt Ward]

Looking at the weather, I have to wonder why they were even flying...

Training . . . while maybe not the best conditions, my bet would be they have not been flying in inclement weather the Soviet air force used to fly in.  And thus the bright idea of getting experience for the crew . . .

[Daryk]

If the learning objective was "don't fly in this weather", they nailed it...  xp

[Colt Ward]

*shrugs*  It may have been worse than they were expecting b/c the pilot/crew and ATC were not experienced in flying during that sort of weather.  It could also be while the plane CAN fly in that weather it should not be loaded to the point it could be in better conditions.

[Daryk]

If both the air crew and the ATC were inexperienced, the one authorizing the training should be court martialed...

[Feenix74]

This is not the way to wash your Sky Crane https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-29/firefighting-water-bomber-helicopter-crashes-in-gippsland-dam/10757292

Luckily all three crewmembers made it out safely. All 6 Sky Cranes on firefighting duties here in Australia are grounded until investigation identifies the cause of the crash.

[ANS Kamas P81]

An F-4 doing F-4 things.

[DoctorMonkey]

bad photo shop - where are the huge black smoke trails?

[Colt Ward]

So . . . this is where Maverick's international communications came from?

[JadeHellbringer]

bad photo shop - where are the huge black smoke trails?

The enormous wash from those immense turboprops blew it away before it formed...?  ;D



Now, how's THAT for a unique flight line?