Cause of Miltary Dermo Crashes

[Bill Greenwood]

I have not seen official cause of F-16 accident after fly by at Air Force grad ceremony when the engine quit and pilot ejected safely, after doing a good job of aiming the plane to an empty field, where it ended upright and with less damage than youd expect.
Educated guesses are a bird strike of which there are some large ones in the area or some type of fuel malfunction. There was fuel, 800 lbs found in the plane on the ground.
A friend in the area is an ex F-16 ground crew, and has heard the ATC tapes of just last moments of this flight , not the time before. The pilot says he tries several times to restart the engine before getting out.
Thanks are due to Martin Baker or someone.

Sadly the Blue Angel F-18 pilot was not so fortunate. The offical cause is starting the split s "too low and too fast". Its usually started from level ,then a 180* roll to upside down, then a pull nose down and through back to level like the last half of a loop. Too fast means the size of the arc would be larger than ideal and of course too low gives less room to finish the arc. Also says he had afterburner on which would acclerate rapidly when nose down and again make the arc too big. I dony know much about jets to know if it is likely that afterburner could have stuck on.
Even an expert pilot can have a problem and this agressive down low leaves litttle room for error. Sad for a young man and his family.
I have done some split s, s and they are exhirerating. but I do them thoudsands of feet up high and try to enter slowly enough.