British F35B down in the Med

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CharlieOneSix
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British F35B down in the Med

#1 Post by CharlieOneSix » Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:40 pm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59323895
Depending on where you look on airframe costs thats about $115m down the plughole.
Edit: BBC now say the cost is £92m.
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#2 Post by Boac » Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:47 pm

"There are eight seven UK F-35s on the carrier and 12 from the US Marine Corps."

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#3 Post by Woody » Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:02 pm

C’ mon we obviously need a METAR, before we can start speculating wildly on the cause of this accident :ymdevil:
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#4 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:24 pm

Woody wrote:
Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:02 pm
C’ mon we obviously need a METAR, before we can start speculating wildly on the cause of this accident :ymdevil:
Will they deduct the cost of the aircraft from his salary in monthly instalments?
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#5 Post by G-CPTN » Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:26 pm

Will it be recovered (before the 'enemy' recover it)?

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#6 Post by Woody » Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:29 pm

The DM aviation experts are commenting already. ~X(

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... newcomment
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#7 Post by CharlieOneSix » Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:50 pm

Good old DM! Like all media, if it flies it's RAF. It could be a RN pilot and a RN F35B. The MoD carefully say a British F35B but the DM assumes.

DM quote:
It is not known yet whether the wreckage has been recovered as air crash investigators will want to know what caused the jet to crash.
Give them a chance - it only happened at 1000z. It's not as though it's floating on the surface! #-o
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#8 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:18 pm

There are eight UK F-35Bs on the carrier and 10 from the US Marine Corps.
Should that be 7?

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#9 Post by Boac » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:52 pm


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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#10 Post by Undried Plum » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:53 pm

G-CPTN wrote:
Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:26 pm
Will it be recovered (before the 'enemy' recover it)?
Most emphatically YES!

USN SupSalv has a civilian contractor on hand at all times to find such items and to assist or perform the recovery.

At least, an attempt will be made to get to it before the Opposition do. Nine times out of ten that race is won by the Blue team. Sometimes, as happened in the case of the cargo of Shuttle Challenger, the wreckage is found to have been disappeared under their noses. :(

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#11 Post by G-CPTN » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:55 pm

How deep is the F35 submerged?

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#12 Post by Undried Plum » Wed Nov 17, 2021 6:02 pm

That would be an LoP, so I doubt that they'll release that data just yet.

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#13 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Nov 17, 2021 10:02 pm

One assumes that given the encrypted real time telemetry/sensor downlinks from the aircraft, a lot about the cause(s) of this accident are already known to our side anyway. I assume the very sensitive/secret electronics would be the prize a foreign power would be most anxious to get their hands on. Most of the rest has probably been divined from observation and standard espionage already! The Chinese seem to have already produced a two-engine clone in the Shenyang J-31.
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#14 Post by Ex-Ascot » Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:38 am

That is one hell of a bar bill for the driver. Average depth of the Med is 5,000'. They should be able to fish it out. Rinse it down and mop it out, it will be OK.
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#15 Post by Pontius Navigator » Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:52 pm

On the money there ExA. Chances are that the QE had an SSN in DS and they like plenty of water beneath the keel.

DS - direct support

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#16 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:58 pm

Ex-Ascot wrote:
Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:38 am
That is one hell of a bar bill for the driver. Average depth of the Med is 5,000'. They should be able to fish it out. Rinse it down and mop it out, it will be OK.
The British pioneered many of the modern aircraft wreckage search and recovery techniques in the deep water off Elba after the Boac Comet went down there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_781
An extensive search for the aircraft was organised, which included the Royal Navy ships HMS Barhill and HMS Gambia as well as the Maltese civilian salvage vessel Sea Salvor. The search effort involved the pioneering use of underwater TV cameras, developed by a team at the UK Admiralty Research Laboratory led by George MacNeice, to help to locate and salvage the wreckage in deep water.

Witnesses to the crash were a group of Italian fishermen who rushed to the scene to recover the bodies and to search for possible survivors, of whom there were none. The aircraft wreckage was eventually found on the sea floor; it was subsequently raised and transported to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) for investigation.
https://www.britishpathe.com/video/unde ... y/MacNeice

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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#17 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:00 pm

Britain has called on the US to help find and salvage a fighter jet that crashed into the Mediterranean after its pilot ejected.

Royal Navy servicemen are working with the Americans to recover the F-35B Lightning II from more than a mile below the surface.

The UK is believed to have the equipment and manpower to rescue the destroyed £120million aircraft but their Nato allies were reportedly closer.


The Royal Navy were racing towards the crash site amid fears Russia will try to grab the jet which is packed with top secret technology.

The operation, shrouded in secrecy, is understood to involve divers, miniature submarines and inflatable bags which may be used to lift the plane to the surface of the Mediterranean.

The US is anxious that the jet's top secret technology is not salvaged by Russia or any of its allies as they would want to study the stealth technology closely to find a way of defeating the jet.

Former President Donald Trump blocked the transfer of four F-35A jets to Turkey after Ankara said it was going to by a Russian missile defence system.

The Pentagon did not want Russian technicians from studying the attack jet's radar profile or looking at its technology.

An RAF pilot was forced to eject from his jet as it plunged into the sea soon after taking off on 'routine exercise' from the Navy's flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, yesterday.

After he ejected, the pilot was reportedly left dangling from the edge of the HMS Queen Elizabeth because the lines of his parachute became caught on the edge of the flight deck.

By plunging into international waters, the crash triggered a scramble to find the next-generation plane before it could be reached by foreign powers. It s thought to be the first time an F35-B has crashed in such an area.

The technology aboard the US-designed aircraft, including top secret radar and sensors, is hugely sensitive as it allows the F-35 to fly 'unseen' in hostile territory at supersonic speeds.

This week's crash raises fresh questions about the F-35B, of which Britain currently has 24.

The UK is set to buy 138 of the fighter jets from US aviation giant Lockheed Martin for £9.1billion in the coming years.

In June 2014 a USAF F-35A had a catastrophic engine fire caused by a fractured rotor which saw it turn into a blaze as it took off in Florida. Two years later a USMC F-35B set alight mid-flight due to a fire in its weapons bay.

In 2018, a US F-35B pilot was forced to eject mid-air after the fighter jet crashed in South Carolina during a training exercise.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ussia.html

Almost readable and even credible until I read this tosh...
'If there are any rubbish planes in the sky, they will be military ones. Civilian planes fly over other countries which is why they are held to a higher standard.

'But military ones only usually can with permission or if they are invading, so usually stay over their own country or sea.'
:-? @-) :-o
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#18 Post by CharlieOneSix » Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:07 pm

From the DM article:
After he ejected, the pilot was reportedly left dangling from the edge of the HMS Queen Elizabeth because the lines of his parachute became caught on the edge of the flight deck.
So the poor sod can't claim membership of the Goldfish Club. =))
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#19 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Nov 19, 2021 2:58 am

CharlieOneSix wrote:
Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:07 pm
From the DM article:
After he ejected, the pilot was reportedly left dangling from the edge of the HMS Queen Elizabeth because the lines of his parachute became caught on the edge of the flight deck.
So the poor sod can't claim membership of the Goldfish Club. =))
Also the name of the pilots' club whose members tend tend to forget what they saw after one 360 scan around their bowl like canopies, sometimes known as "the swivel eyed loons!". ;)))
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Re: British F35B down in the Med

#20 Post by Boac » Fri Nov 19, 2021 9:23 am

Rumours that the pilot is to be used as ship's mascot and hung from a new bowsprit just below the ramp are denied by an RAF spokesperson (of unspecified gender, colour, race, sexual orientation etc etc)

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