F-35 Landed, _Then_ Crashed, Pilot Ejected

[Puma44]

No just clueless.

Agree.

Please tell me this is sarcasm. 
He made corrective inputs as best he could, and besides, the 35 has a side fly by wire stick like the F-16. It would have gone forward harder if he had "slumped forward on the controls."
That looks very much like a lift fan failure, the nose just dropped, it didn't accelerate forward.

Some recent articles have mentioned lift fan malfunction, which makes sense.  There was definitely a flight control malfunction.  I still wonder if the descent to the runway was higher than desired, and the start of a bad day. 

[icepac]

I wonder if the lift fan disconnected.   
It would cause the horsepower the fan was using to now be freed up likely causing a slight increase in jet thrust. 
Or maybe throttle never decreased when lift fan was shut down.

Software, sensor, or user error.

[DmonSlyr]

Agree.

Some recent articles have mentioned lift fan malfunction, which makes sense.  There was definitely a flight control malfunction.  I still wonder if the descent to the runway was higher than desired, and the start of a bad day.

Did seem to me as well when watching at first glance that he was coming down a little hastily.

[-gg-]

Did the pilot and everyone on the ground all survive this?

[Toad]

IIRC, the exhaust nozzle on the B rotates down. Only watched the video once but kinda seems like touchdown in a pretty much normal VTOL attitude but then the tail rises and the nose dips.

Exhaust nozzle malfunction in the transition from VTOL to level flight? IE: VTOL/nozzle down and touchdown. Transition to level flight for taxi in (nozzle rotates to level) but nozzle remains down. Pilot adds power, tail rises kind of deal?

Who knows at this point. Who knows if they will ever release what really happened.

[CAP1]

IIRC, the exhaust nozzle on the B rotates down. Only watched the video once but kinda seems like touchdown in a pretty much normal VTOL attitude but then the tail rises and the nose dips.

Exhaust nozzle malfunction in the transition from VTOL to level flight? IE: VTOL/nozzle down and touchdown. Transition to level flight for taxi in (nozzle rotates to level) but nozzle remains down. Pilot adds power, tail rises kind of deal?

Who knows at this point. Who knows if they will ever release what really happened.

looked to me like the entire aircraft bounced. almost like touchdown was too hard. then as it started coming down again, nose dropped, nosewheel collapsed and ejection happened......

[Shuffler]

IIRC, the exhaust nozzle on the B rotates down. Only watched the video once but kinda seems like touchdown in a pretty much normal VTOL attitude but then the tail rises and the nose dips.

Exhaust nozzle malfunction in the transition from VTOL to level flight? IE: VTOL/nozzle down and touchdown. Transition to level flight for taxi in (nozzle rotates to level) but nozzle remains down. Pilot adds power, tail rises kind of deal?

Who knows at this point. Who knows if they will ever release what really happened.

This is how I saw it too.

[-gg-]

The bottom line is that we won't really know what happened until the FBI gets done investigating it. There's only speculation at this point.

In all honestly, to me it looks like he had stuck the landing and then it seems like he did a little hot dogging  at the end, for which he paid dearly .

There's a lot of forces that we might not understand that are involved with this type of an aircraft

[nrshida]

There's a lot of forces that we might not understand that are involved with this type of an aircraft

Not really.

[icepac]

It takes huge amount of power to do any hovering.   
I don’t see the power being reduced at all much like the guy who thought the green arrow means to accelerate from his red light.   
I heard his engine right before he hit. 
No braking.

[Puma44]

Interesting article on the auto eject function:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-f-35b-can-eject-its-pilot-automatically?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0PabnNzYLwZrynC33km2eC__4b7Vbdp9Cgb4ZgRUhcZMK9Jf9Iv63QFks

[Rocco]

Just came across this article. It has unofficial info so take it with a grain of salt. but the article says they found a problem with a fuel hose in some builds. Would explain why the pilot descended so fast, if the engine's fuel flow was restricted.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/12/27/pentagon-grounds-small-group-of-f-35s-after-ejection-on-texas-runway/

[fuzeman]

Ward Carroll has a new YT video out with new pictures.