F18 crashes into homes.

Amazed no one was hurt, it could have been far worse.

Balls of steel for the pilot - wonder if it was aircraft failure or pilot error.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Ermm so he sat dumping fuel but didn't steer to avoid the civilian population?
Isn't there a big fat lake beside where they hit he could have dumped it fuel or not?

Amazing no one was hurt, guess they were all out at the time.
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The area around NAS Oceana is very built up. Options to safely crash a jet are almost none.

As a side note, the air base was there before most of the development went on and the Air Force has voiced concern over the amount of development in the surrounding area.

Skillmister said:
After the canopy opens there is a trigger to drop the seat. So he hit the ground before the trigger went off.
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From reddit so don't shoot the messenger
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Ejection seats have a barometric pressure sensor backup that is used to separate the pilot from the seat as they descend (or the pilot can pull a lever to do it manually) if the electronic sequencer fails. The seats in the Hornet will be zero-zero seats so they are capable of getting a pilot high enough in the air for the shoot to open correctly even is the jet is on the ground and stationary so you shouldn’t really have a pilot come down in the seat regardless of how low he or she was when they pulled the black and yellow cord. If the story is correct that the pilot was in the seat it will be interesting to see what Martin Baker (the UK company that makes the seat) reports on what happened.

buchtis said:
Wow, Americans again. Didn't a Cobra or Apache crash about 2 or so weeks ago with the pilot messing about as well? remember someone posting a video of it on here.
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The Cobra crash was a civilian helicopter in the US. The other video doing the rounds is an Army Apache in Afghanistan from some time ago (I forget the actual date but the video just surfaced rather than the event happening recently). But when you have such a large number of planes and helicopters you will always have more accidents / crashes than anyone else.

Werewolf said:
*yawns*

yes it evaporated so much the engines, landing gear, bits of skin etc were left lying around the place (and note that a fighter is much more densly built than a jumbo, something to keeping the size down for manoeuvrability, whilst a passenger get has a few dense bits* but is mainly a hollow tube with some fleshy bits)

*Oddly enough the most recognisable bit of that fighter is the tail end, like the engines and landing gear at the Pentagon...
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Well said, also worth noting that the 'jumbo' (it wasn't a 747 it was a much smaller 757) was crashed under power into a structure that was designed to withstand explosions. The Hornet came down in a stall and it looks like struck a glancing blow to some flats build to a budget. The difference in kinetic energy alone explains the difference before you even factor in the other items.
 
Seeing as these jets are inherently unstable and require computer assistance to stay in the air, that was probably the best he could do if he had a systems failure - landing one of these without properly functioning systems is nothing like landing a Cessna without engine power. :p
 
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This may be a stupid question, but what happened to the dumped fuel? I mean, I assume there's some sort of mechanism in place to make sure they aren't just coating a large area with jet fuel, as I can see that being pretty disastrous.
 
iviv said:
This may be a stupid question, but what happened to the dumped fuel? I mean, I assume there's some sort of mechanism in place to make sure they aren't just coating a large area with jet fuel, as I can see that being pretty disastrous.
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well the plane would be moving so i'd presume that there'd be a line of fuel on the ground.

I have no knowledge of how it works though, just guessing
 
^^Gord^^ said:
Well said, also worth noting that the 'jumbo' (it wasn't a 747 it was a much smaller 757) was crashed under power into a structure that was designed to withstand explosions.
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Actually to get picky, it was designed to withstand fire, not explosions. It was the explosion that ripped away all the fire proof coating on the main structural supports, which resulted in the buildings collapsing from the heat.

iviv said:
This may be a stupid question, but what happened to the dumped fuel? I mean, I assume there's some sort of mechanism in place to make sure they aren't just coating a large area with jet fuel, as I can see that being pretty disastrous.
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The fuel dump does just that, dumps it from the tanks onto whatever is below. Whilst dumping the fuel isn't ideal, it's usually better than leaving it on-board, as a lighter aircraft is easier to fly and it reduces the fireball on the ground.
 
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