Author Topic: F-15 crashes in Libya  (Read 2287 times)

Offline MachFly

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #15 on: March 22, 2011, 02:47:59 PM »
@ MachFly - some blame the momentary lag on the boards, others blame the ones impatiently clicking the submit button repeatedly during that same brief moment of time.    :D

It took more than half hour for the post to appear. I did not expect it to be that slow.
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Offline MachFly

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #16 on: March 22, 2011, 02:48:45 PM »
Talk about rate of climb.. damn :O :O :O :O

according to wikipedia, the f-15 has a rate of climb of 50k per min :O :O

people complain of the k4.. wow this ride must be a whine generator lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle

Times have changed.
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flew Spitfires, Hurricanes, P-51s, P-47s, and F-4s

Offline Ardy123

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #17 on: March 22, 2011, 02:49:48 PM »
Times have changed.

dude... 50k per min... thats a rocket with large fins, not an airplane lol...

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Offline JunkyII

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #18 on: March 22, 2011, 03:02:56 PM »
Talk about rate of climb.. damn :O :O :O :O

according to wikipedia, the f-15 has a rate of climb of 50k per min :O :O

people complain of the k4.. wow this ride must be a whine generator lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle
Ill have to find the youtube clip but its the inside view of an F15....Goes from runway to 400 MPH in shallow climb then straight up to 35k without even trying

F15 is amazing, getting a bit on the old side but is still a world class fighter
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Offline MachFly

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #19 on: March 22, 2011, 03:43:54 PM »
dude... 50k per min... thats a rocket with large fins, not an airplane lol...



A controller from KPHX told me how they had an F-15 requesting to take off and since there was a lot of traffic in the area it took a really long time for him to get his clearance. The controller said that the pilot was really not happy waiting there, so they asked him if he can reach 18,000ft before the end of the runway, he said he can......"cleared for take off".
"Now, if I had to make the choice of one fighter aircraft above all the others...it would be, without any doubt, the world's greatest propeller driven flying machine - the magnificent and immortal Spitfire."
Lt. Col. William R. Dunn
flew Spitfires, Hurricanes, P-51s, P-47s, and F-4s

Offline eagl

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #20 on: March 22, 2011, 04:01:30 PM »
A controller from KPHX told me how they had an F-15 requesting to take off and since there was a lot of traffic in the area it took a really long time for him to get his clearance. The controller said that the pilot was really not happy waiting there, so they asked him if he can reach 18,000ft before the end of the runway, he said he can......"cleared for take off".

I did that in a "clean" F-15E, but I had to reduce power to keep from overspeeding the landing gear and I pulled the throttles back to min AB when I hit 500ish kts to ensure I didn't bust the mach.  I pulled 4 G's to a vertical climb at the end of the runway and rolled out at 19,000 ft still doing 350 kts with the motors still in min AB.  And that was with the "small" -220 motors.  A clean -229 powered F-15E is a freaking monster.

If I recall correctly, a "normally" configured F-15E with the -220 motors and CFTs installed will do a vertical climb (and roll-out with 250ish kts at the top) of somewhere around 25,000 ft if you start low and just barely subsonic.  The CFTs add a lot of drag and weight.
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Offline Stoney

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #21 on: March 22, 2011, 04:13:25 PM »
I don't see any pellet holes or damage to the remaining intact surfaces of the aircraft that would be consistent with damage from a HE fragmentation warhead, highly doubt it was a SA-5.

That's not always a indicator.  If you look at the wreckage photos of the F-117 (hit by an SA-5) that got shot down in Serbia, it landed relatively intact and most of the big pieces didn't show visible damage.  Pieces of frag are usually much smaller than you'd think they are, except on really large bombs.  Wiki (if correct) says the SA-5 warhead, while large, uses 2 gram and 3.5 gram pellets, so they are pretty small.  Conversely, I've seen an F-18 wreck from a pilot flying it into the ground and the aircraft disintegrated.  Literally, it was turned into very small pieces, with only the engines/cannon/landing gear remaining relatively intact.

That being said, I think its impossible to tell anything from looking at that picture.  I am curious--the two highest mishap-rate aircraft in the U.S. military are the F-16 and AV-8, which are single engine aircraft, so I'm curious when a twin-engine aircraft suffers some sort of flight-ending mechanical failure in air.  Eagle is probably in the best position to let us know what happened, since he's part of the F-15 community, if he can actually say.  Someone page him so he can give us some educated insight.

[edit] I see he's showed up... :)
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Offline Wildcat1

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #22 on: March 22, 2011, 04:21:34 PM »
there seems to be no damage to the AIM-120s they were carrying, wouldn't they have detonated if they were in fact shot down? also, the tail section of the aircraft seems to have no damage other than that from the crash....

32 years of active service and no F-15 has ever been shot down, and remember the Israelis have used them on much more equal footing than we have in our operations. taking out Sadam's elaborate SAM network in 1991 and 1994, as well as avoiding more SAMs in Serbia. not one has been shot down.

i highly doubt it was shot down, especially over the "friendly" part of the country
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Offline AAJagerX

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #23 on: March 22, 2011, 04:37:38 PM »
I did that in a "clean" F-15E, but I had to reduce power to keep from overspeeding the landing gear and I pulled the throttles back to min AB when I hit 500ish kts to ensure I didn't bust the mach.  I pulled 4 G's to a vertical climb at the end of the runway and rolled out at 19,000 ft still doing 350 kts with the motors still in min AB.  And that was with the "small" -220 motors.  A clean -229 powered F-15E is a freaking monster.

If I recall correctly, a "normally" configured F-15E with the -220 motors and CFTs installed will do a vertical climb (and roll-out with 250ish kts at the top) of somewhere around 25,000 ft if you start low and just barely subsonic.  The CFTs add a lot of drag and weight.


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Offline eagl

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #24 on: March 22, 2011, 04:39:12 PM »
It's hard to tell from the photos, but it looks like it either hit at a very low angle and pretty darn slow and skipped/slid to a halt, or it hit the ground flat as if it was in a spin.  Both the vertical tails are bent off the same direction but the wings are largely intact, so if it flipped over on the ground it must have been a pretty weird impact.  The cockpit forward of the intakes appears to be missing, but that's where those things seem to break so that doesn't say much.

Offhand and totally from 2 really bad photographs off of CNN, it looks like a vertical impact with the aircraft in a flat spin.  It burned so it had fuel onboard.  I know of a few malfunctions that could lead to that condition (unrecoverable flat spin) and I also know that the plane can be spun by mis-handling the controls.  One F-15E flying from Seymour Johnson entered an unrecoverable spin due to a horizontal stabilizer malfunction and crashed, and they almost roasted the pilot for mishandling the controls until they found the real cause.  So there has been one documented case of an F-15E crashing from an unrecoverable flat spin due to a malfunction, and the fairly crummy pictures of the wreckage show what looks like either a low speed flat impact or a nearly vertical flat impact, based on the condition of the burned out wreckage.  That's all guesswork and I find it hard to believe that we'll get a chance to inspect the wreckage before it's carted off by locals and third-party intelligence agents.

Oh yea, CNN video showed a nearly intact aim-120 still attached to a missile rail.  I bet the Chinese and Russians are currently in a bidding war with whoever possesses that missile, unless we managed to tell the locals that we'd like all of the bits and pieces back and got a chance to recover some of the more intact sensitive parts.  I hope that the avionics bays burned or were otherwise thoroughly destroyed...
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Offline Wolfala

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #25 on: March 22, 2011, 04:59:12 PM »
It's hard to tell from the photos, but it looks like it either hit at a very low angle and pretty darn slow and skipped/slid to a halt, or it hit the ground flat as if it was in a spin.  Both the vertical tails are bent off the same direction but the wings are largely intact, so if it flipped over on the ground it must have been a pretty weird impact.  The cockpit forward of the intakes appears to be missing, but that's where those things seem to break so that doesn't say much.

Offhand and totally from 2 really bad photographs off of CNN, it looks like a vertical impact with the aircraft in a flat spin.  It burned so it had fuel onboard.  I know of a few malfunctions that could lead to that condition (unrecoverable flat spin) and I also know that the plane can be spun by mis-handling the controls.  One F-15E flying from Seymour Johnson entered an unrecoverable spin due to a horizontal stabilizer malfunction and crashed, and they almost roasted the pilot for mishandling the controls until they found the real cause.  So there has been one documented case of an F-15E crashing from an unrecoverable flat spin due to a malfunction, and the fairly crummy pictures of the wreckage show what looks like either a low speed flat impact or a nearly vertical flat impact, based on the condition of the burned out wreckage.  That's all guesswork and I find it hard to believe that we'll get a chance to inspect the wreckage before it's carted off by locals and third-party intelligence agents.

Oh yea, CNN video showed a nearly intact aim-120 still attached to a missile rail.  I bet the Chinese and Russians are currently in a bidding war with whoever possesses that missile, unless we managed to tell the locals that we'd like all of the bits and pieces back and got a chance to recover some of the more intact sensitive parts.  I hope that the avionics bays burned or were otherwise thoroughly destroyed...




I hope to Christ they blow the wreck before that occurs.


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Offline Ack-Ack

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #26 on: March 22, 2011, 05:37:04 PM »
.

Oh yea, CNN video showed a nearly intact aim-120 still attached to a missile rail.  I bet the Chinese and Russians are currently in a bidding war with whoever possesses that missile, unless we managed to tell the locals that we'd like all of the bits and pieces back and got a chance to recover some of the more intact sensitive parts.  I hope that the avionics bays burned or were otherwise thoroughly destroyed...

A couple of jets strafed the wreckage afterwards but it seems the jets only did damage to a local resident's leg and didn't really do any additional damage to the wreckage.

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Offline Fender16

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #27 on: March 22, 2011, 07:05:54 PM »
Here's the latest that I found. Says US forces shot some civilians...? Who knows.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12816226

Offline Wildcat1

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #28 on: March 22, 2011, 07:10:53 PM »
Here's the latest that I found. Says US forces shot some civilians...? Who knows.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12816226

the pilot apparently saw some villagers and called out his position to the Marines, thinking the locals were comming to capture or kill him. a Harrier droped a JDAM "between the pilot and the villagers" to "scare them". shrapnel from the bombs injured some of the villagers.

that's what CNN is telling us, anyways. sounds like fog of war to me
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Offline Babalonian

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Re: F-15 crashes in Libya
« Reply #29 on: March 22, 2011, 07:57:02 PM »
Talk about rate of climb.. damn :O :O :O :O

according to wikipedia, the f-15 has a rate of climb of 50k per min :O :O

people complain of the k4.. wow this ride must be a whine generator lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle

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