Everything about the incident is surreal. Neither student nor instructor could tell the wing was missing until they landed because a fuel leak obscured their view. The instructor told the student, who outranked him, to eject. The student refused. They had to fly almost twice as fast as usual to remain stable when landing. The plane manufacturer didn’t believe the incident until in-flight photos were produced.
And the plane was so sturdy they just stuck another wing on it and put it back in service.
Update: /u/rmason did a better summary while I was writing mine but I refuse to delete due to sunk cost fallacy—thumb pain incurred while typing
Not a pilot, although I've flown propeller planes and landed a couple of times. I've driven cars just shy of 280 km/h (on a mostly clear autobahn). Those spec'ed 130 knots seem approachable (with training). But doing approach + touchdown at 480 km/h with controllable aircraft is already stretching my imagination, doing it while keeping attitude of an unbalanced brick under control is absolutely bonkers.
I'm a little disappointed that we know hardly anything about this incident except the surreal parts. What specific events lead to the collision? What happened to the Skyhawk and its pilot?[1] Was there an investigation, and if so, what were its findings? I guess I've been spoiled by publicized NTSB investigations.
+1 to this. The aerodynamic lift from the F-15 wings/body also increases its maneuverability as well since the pilot will roll the plane into the turn.
It may have been German mad-scientists who pioneered sending rockets to space, but I think you actually have to be more crazy to think you can bring them back down again and land them in one piece! (Not that it has stopped Musk from doing just that...)
> You may well be forgiven for thinking that rockets which take off vertically and then land again vertically were a recent development by the likes of Blue Origin and SpaceX but a quick look back the history of rocketry and you’ll see that this technique is far from new and was first used nearly 60 years ago ...
> The image of rockets landing vertically on their tail fins has been popularised in Science fiction since buck Rodgers in the early 1930’s, though it took nearly 30 years to bring the technology to a point where it could be used practically ...
> The first instance of a rocket-powered vertical take off and vertical landing was shown in 1961 with the Bell Rocket belt. ...
> But within a few years there would be a rocket-powered vertical take off and vertical landing vehicle that would be a total success and be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
> That vehicle was the Apollo lunar lander, a design that was used in the most inhospitable place man had even been to and worked without fail on six separate missions. ...
> It wasn’t until the mid 1990’s that the first true vertical take-off and vertical landing rocket was seen in the form of the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper Experimental or DC-X.
I feel that moniker is more appropriate for the previous generation of supersonic fighters that generally had fairly small stubby wings. This was exemplified by jets like F-104 or MiG-21 which according to wikipedia had wing areas of 18 and 23 m² respectively. In comparison F-15 has fairly generous 56m² wing area
The pilot and crew were ordered to eject. Instead he tells his commander he thinks he can land the plane. He then gave the crew the option to eject but they elected to stay with him. But he made this decision without really knowing the extent of the damage until he landed. He said upon seeing the damage that maybe we should have ejected!
When I was a senior at CMU in '88, a group of us went on a plant trip to the McDonnell Douglas factory in St. Louis where they built the F-15. I've previously posted on HN about how cool are plant trips and that engineers should take every advantage. Well, this factory visit was as cool as they get. Some highlights that I remember that related to the article about the Israeli incident.
1. This plane was machined out of blocks of titanium. 80% of the material is machined away. I asked the guide if it's collected and reused. He said "no". Their optimization for performance didn't really have to consider cost.
2. Seeing the "testing" was a mind-blow that I can still see in my mind 35 years later. They had an aircraft in a test harness and grabbed the tips of both wings in massive hydraulic presses, and bent that wing up and down by a couple meters. My brain was like “that’s impossible – they should snap off”.
3. “Avoid FOD” signs everywhere - "Foreign Object Damage". I learned many new acronyms that day.
"In a testament to just how incredibly tough these aircraft really are, the damaged F-15 was transported to a maintenance facility in Tel Nof, where it was given a new wing and returned to service."
Am I reading this correctly? Events were something like: So you rip a wing off a plane in a mid-air collision but you can safely assume that it did not suffer fundamental structural damage, so you can just stick a wing back on it and it is good to go?
I hope that the techs give an extra tug on the wrench "just to be sure" when they are tightening those two bolts back on like I do when putting the lug nuts back on my car wheel...
This is a common misconception. Once you hit the rated torque you NEVER do an "extra click" or anything else. That increases the applied torque beyond rated, and can (has) had disastrous consequences by weakening the bolts and/or the material the bolts are seated against.
Source: career Naval Aviation Maintainer, QA on F/A-18's and H-60's, etc.
We do 600+ foot-pounds by hand on H-60's. It's not fun but it doesn't require a hydraulic jig. It requires a specific (long) wrench and a guy who can brace. If you can deadlift 200lbs you could do it.
The jig is likely to speed up the process and prevent fatigue; doing that torque 16 times per wing would get exhausting.
"Easily" by the way does not mean clip one in in 5 minutes :)
These things need like 15 hours of maintenance for every flight hour (and this is regular flying with no parts coming off)
I have no experience with military planes but I think in this case "easily" means more like "possible in a few months of work". I suppose when an airframe costs hundreds of millions it takes a lot to make it a write-off.
Ejecting is very risky for the pilot. Many pilots are seriously injured in the process (1 in 3 chance of spinal injury https://www.smh.com.au/education/how-dangerous-is-it-to-ejec...). Ejection is the option of last resort; I'm guessing the pilot felt that he wasn't quite that desperate yet.
Operators of vehicles like boats or airplanes are much more likely to try and save the vehicle with all means necessary. This is probably due to a number of reasons but there is a somewhat increased attachment.
Car people love their cars yes, but boat people and pilots treat their vehicle like a child. No idea why.
Id put that front and center on the brochure ! Pic of.plane landing with one wing ! Sure its not the norm ! But dammit which other fighter jet has an event like this :)
In English, the title is perfectly fine. It just says the plane landed, not how it was landed.
The title is correct, and while the pilot does deserve recognition for the impressive feat, the article is primarily about the plane, not the pilot, so changing the focus of the title from the plane to the pilot is not appropriate in this instance.
The subtitle is terrible though: it mentions "he" (the pilot), but doesn't say who "he" is. So for the subtitle to make sense, the pilot's name should be in the title. Perhaps it was originally written with the pilot's name, but was changed by an editor for the reason listed above.
And the plane was so sturdy they just stuck another wing on it and put it back in service.
Update: /u/rmason did a better summary while I was writing mine but I refuse to delete due to sunk cost fallacy—thumb pain incurred while typing