On Friday, April 6th, a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet jet crashed into a Virginia Beach apartment complex after taking off from US Naval Air station Oceana. Amazingly, there were no casualties from the incident, with all residents and both pilots accounted for.
The Navy is proclaiming the
cause of the accident to be a “catastrophic mechanical malfunction” that occurred
during takeoff that Friday morning. The
flight pattern and ejection seats indicate that the pilots remained with the
plane for as long as possible, in the hopes of minimizing damage. Before crashing, the jet released most of its
fuel, spilling out over Virgina’s streets and houses. Whether this was the intention of the pilots,
or merely part of the catastrophic failure, the act minimized what could have
become a massive fireball in one of Virginia’s most populous cities.
Although destruction was
minimal, this is the third F-18 Hornet crash this year; in February, an F-18
crashed in Bahrain, only two days after another F-18 went down during a
training flight in Nevada. The Navy suffered two more incidents in August
2011, with various mechanical malfunctions occurring through 2006 to 2008. The F-18 is used primarily for training, and new
pilots are almost always accompanied by an experienced instructor.
What do you guys think of this
spree of crashes? Is this the fault of
an inattentive military, or is it unrealistic to not expect such crashes, what
with such young pilots being put in the cockpit of such incredibly complex
machines?
The link to the CNN article is in the title, some pretty
amazing photos were captured of the crash.
2 comments:
Our navy has been training fighter pilots for many decades and have done a fairly good job too. Sure there have been some accidents, but nothing ever works exactly as it was intended. Take for example the electoral college. it was not designed to determine to president in most elections the way it does now. The planes are designed to fly perfectly, but will without a doubt encounter trouble eventually like everything else in life.
I agree with greg our navy has done really well training fighter pilots. Theres no such thing as the perfect plane or pilot out their. At some point a plane will become unusable and experience some type problem and thats what happen here, the plane experienced a problem and it was unfortunate but at least no one got hurt.
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