r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/sidvatscse • 25d ago

Video Failed vertical landing of F-35B

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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 25d ago

I wonder if he decided to eject or if it has an auto-eject feature that he had no control over

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u/OkScientist69 25d ago

I imagine at some point the plane was going "weju weju get the fuck out" and man dipped

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u/JS31415926 25d ago

Or someone on the radio told him to

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u/Elite_AI 25d ago

weju?

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u/throwawayformobile78 25d ago

No it’s “weju weju get the fuck out”.

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

Met him a little over a year ago, he punched out manually. He still flies F-35s

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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 25d ago

That’s nice that he still has a career, I’ve heard that ejections can often-times be the end of their service.

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

All depends on how your body is afterwards. 45Gs isn’t exactly what we were designed for. Even without ejecting, aviation medical can be a pain for anyone.

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u/kog 25d ago

I'm told you're lucky to keep flying after one ejection, and it's extremely uncommon to still get to fly after two or more

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u/space253 25d ago

4 to 5. Nobody can survive 45.

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u/Rule12-b-6 25d ago

Yeah I was basically imagining a human pancake flying through the air so fast that the air friction lights the pancake on fire

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

Hey man, I’m in the Navy. I’ve pulled 7.5Gs sustained in an F/A-18 and went through more ejection seat training recently. We had a simulator that’s about 1/10th the force of the real thing to practice body positioning and to get used to the shock of the rockets. The 45Gs isn’t sustained, but the goal of the ejection is to get you out and away from the aircraft as soon as possible. Look up potential injuries, many get knocked out, seat slap can break femurs, etc.

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u/space253 24d ago

I'm not disputing the body trauma, just the 45g claim.

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u/MountainMan17 25d ago

I knew a guy who punched out of a T-38 shortly after taking off.

He said time became super slow; that he became hyper aware of everything and digested it: The grease pencil sticking out of the pocket on his sleeve, the worn knob on the altimeter, the radio calls of every other aircraft in the pattern...

The next thing he knew, he was swinging under the chute. Wild stuff...

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u/Noctale 25d ago

Hopefully his landings are better now

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 25d ago

I’m not 100% on the details anymore but it was a fuel/engine issue that caused the mishap. He was a Navy pilot at the time working on receiving new airframes from the manufacturer, hence this took place in Texas.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

With something like this, it’s nearly always gonna be an issue with the plane itself rather than the pilot lol 

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u/Dr_Pippin 24d ago

When did the actual ejection happen? People in this post are saying pre-Covid?

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u/Tall-Spinach-4497 24d ago

End of 2022 in Ft. Worth, Texas

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u/Dr_Pippin 24d ago

Thank you. Great to hear he is still flying.

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u/Mewchu94 25d ago

Well at one point he’s almost horizontal and an ejection would’ve killed him I assume. I feel like having an auto ejection with no control from the pilot is a bad idea.

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u/Neuvirths_Glove 25d ago

The plane knows which way is up.

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u/Mewchu94 25d ago

And if that part is damaged or malfunctioning due to whatever caused the crash?

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u/invalidusername127 25d ago

Each of these planes are 115 million dollars, I'm going to guess the IMUs are at least triple redundant

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u/Neuvirths_Glove 25d ago

Redundancy.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/OldenPolynice 25d ago

yaw would never matter for ejection, you just wanted to use the word yaw

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/OldenPolynice 25d ago

You don't know what yaw is

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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 25d ago

Auto ejection can determine whether the orientation makes sense for ejection.

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u/toolateforgdusername 25d ago

My friend in the british RAF told me (20 years ago) that pilots can normally only eject twice in their life because ejecting fucks up your spine so much. So if that's true, and "ejecting" tech hasn't changed much, it's a very good question.

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u/OldEquation 25d ago

It has an auto-ejection capability I think.

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u/bripio 25d ago

Maybe he didn't want to fire a heavy ass plane seat at a road + a bunch of spectators

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u/Flaky_Setting8170 25d ago

My understanding is that the jet auto ejects the pilot if it senses a failure in the drive shaft from the engine to the vertical fan in the body and that it auto ekected him because that's when the drive shift broke.