T 38C Crash Vance AFB Ok. Final Report

formation flying is a fundamental skill needed by any pilot that's going to go into tactical fighter or bomber flying operations there's no greater pilot training program in the world than that of the United States Air Force undergraduate pilot training program today we're going to talk about a tragic accident of a t-38 instructor and a student at Vance Air Force Base Oklahoma on a formation landing training event last November [Music] [Music] [Music] my name is Juan Brown you're watching the blanco Lirio channel I graduated from US Airforce undergraduate pilot training in 1989 class 18 I know 4 out of Williams Air Force Base Arizona and at the risk of sounding like the old guy that I'm quickly becoming in those days everybody had to graduate in the t-38 sea trainer everybody had to successfully complete that program we started out our primary training in the t37 and we completed our training in the t-38 whether you were going to fighters bombers or transport category aircraft everybody had to graduate in the t-38 and everybody had to acquire fundamental formation flying training skills in your sense the Air Force is broken down the program into a two track program where those students that were going into fighter bomber type aircraft will remain in the we'll have to graduate in the t-38 aircraft and students that were going into transport category type aircraft of c-141s that's or c---seventeens I'm sorry the 141s are long gone they would graduate in the twin beach jet the t37 primary trainer aircraft has been replaced by the t6 beech turboprop single-engine beech turboprop towards the end of pilot training instructors would determine whether you were fighter qualified or not if you were to become a first assignment instructor pilot which was my case you needed to come out of pilot training as fighter qualified regardless everybody had to fly the t-38 and the t-38 is by far my most favorite training aircraft of them all the t-38 was designed back in the 50s for students specifically getting into the century series of fighter type aircraft available at the time to teach them how to handle high performance high wing loading supersonic aircraft the t-38 is an incredibly sensitive aircraft it's and got incredible performance your first flight in the t-38 goes something like this when you come out of the t37 you jump in the t-38 you blast down the runway you're just amazed at the acceleration of the twin afterburner engines and about the time you're thinking it's time to get the gear up from your t37 training in the t-38 your rapidly climbing through 10,000 feet but the US Air Force pilot training program is about four years of civilian training crammed into one single year you've got about six months in the t37 and six months and the t-38 and you need to quickly get your mind wrapped around the high performance capability of the t-38 or you're gonna be back home selling vacuum cleaners in just three days all it takes is three mistakes one two three strikes and you're out and you're gone in our class in 1989 the washout rate was about 50% over that whole year of pilot training we lost about half of our class even though the US Air Force pilot training program is the best in the world it's a tightly controlled environment you are graded on every single move you make from the minute you show up to into the classroom in the morning 3:00 a.m. in the morning and your performance is graded throughout the day all day long and of course on every single maneuver that you perform in the aircraft and you are then ranked ordered from the number one in your class to the number to the last person in your class has successfully completed the class and then assignments are doled out based on your performance starting with the number one performer in the class down to the bottom but in such a tightly controlled environment if one person wets the bed everybody has to wear diapers forever and breaking news it's just been released that the Air Force will no longer be requiring formation landing requirements in US Air Force pilot training programs over the years the Air Force has been slowly getting away from formation landing training requirements in pilot training and now they've just shut it off altogether as a result of this accident so let's dive into this report and find out what we can learn what the immediate lesson learned in this report it applies to anybody in aviation is how far do you take your student how far do you let your student go in making a mistake before you take control of the aircraft the t-38 is a two-seat tandem seat aircraft the student pilot sits in the front seat and the instructor pilot sits in the back seat and it's a rather blind position back there in the front seat of the mishap aircraft which was number two in a formation of two aircraft in the front seat was these mishap student that was Travis Wilkie and his instructor in the back is Matt Kincaid Matt Kincaid is a very experienced fighter pilot with experience in the f-18 and f-16 he's got nearly a thousand hours in the t-38 and over 3,000 hours total time a fighter pilot flying time which doesn't sound like a lot of hours but in the fighter world that is a lot of hours and he's flying as a guard or reserve instructor pilot for the active duty training at Vance Air Force Base so you got one of the most experienced most well respected instructors in the back seat of the mishap aircraft t-38 in the front seat Lieutenant Wilkie was known as a great student he excelled through the first half of the pilot training program through the t6 part of the program but was beginning to struggle a bit with the t-38 and this is a common situation in pilot training the t-38 tends to wheat weed out a lot of really good pilots because the t-38 is a very challenging aircraft to learn to fly by design normally in a formation you come in and do an overhead approach so if you are in a to ship formation like this you'd fly directly over the runway and then do a pitch out to individual landings and land the aircraft but sometimes and you need to practice a formation landing where you land together side by side more details on that and in a minute the weather that the day of the accident was about 1,500 foot overcast with winds gusting out of the north they're landing on runway three five Center at Van which is 150 feet wide and ninety two hundred feet long 1500 foot overcast ceiling meant restricted pattern straightens only so they couldn't even do a overhead approach if they wanted to besides they needed to fill the square the training requirement to get the formation landing completed so the weather was plenty adequate for a formation straight in approach and landing the winds gusting out of the north did provide a slight crosswind component from right to left but accident investigators determined that the the the wind drift was not enough to drift the wingtip vortices of the lead aircraft into the flight path of the number two aircraft and caused them any problems in that respect so during the formation landing in the t-38 the landing speed is calculated to be about a hundred and forty-three knots by the way the t-38s nowadays have a heads-up display that records all the data and they also record the engine parameter data as well so they were able to reconstruct this accident very accurately with the heads-up display data so calculated landing speed or the actual touchdown speed worked out to about a hundred and forty three knots that's I think about 164 miles per hour the t-38 is a high-performance aircraft it lands fast its high wing loading so on a straight in a formation approach and landing the lead aircraft takes the center half of his runway so he's got 150 foot wide runway with a center line down the middle the lead aircraft has 75 feet to work with he lines up with the center the center of his half of the runway in this case the right half of runway 35 Center number two is flying close fingertip formation with lead and is primarily staring at the lead aircraft when you're doing a formation landing you are complete like any formation maneuver you are completely relying on the lead aircraft to fly a smooth lead and to get you into position to where you need to be as the number two aircraft you only very briefly looked out and glanced at the runway and make sure that you are on the correct runway and correctly aligned for the runway and in position to land in the middle you're gonna rely on your formation spacing visually with the lead aircraft to place you on the correct location on the runway but you still need to keep the runway briefly in your cross-check another thing about t-38 it's a aileron only airplane you do not mess around with the rudders at high angle of attack and low air speeds in these t-38 high performance type aircraft or you'll just roll right over stay off the rudders by the first couple of flights in the t-38 students learn right away to stay off the writers in the t-38 neck and that can lead to troubles later if you transition back to small light aircraft and your lack of rudder skills but no rudder don't stay off the writer in the t-38 so at about a thousand feet from the threshold that you go from a slightly low position to a stacked level position like this in formation and you maintain a distance from each other of anywhere from ten feet to about fifty feet remember you only got a 150 foot wide runway to work with so you stack level and then you begin reducing your power in for the straight in approach and you're staring at lead for the most part you're cross-checking lead you're not completely staring at them you're cross-checking various points on the aircraft to maintain your position on that aircraft and you're cross-checking your lateral distance as well only briefly occasionally checking your alignment with the runway about 300 feet or so from the threshold you begin to the flare you begin to raise the nose and start your flair for landing and so the number two aircraft matches leads every move staying in position in this case the mishap aircraft too was beginning to drift a little bit too wide the instructor reminded him to get back into position stay in position so that you're gonna stay on the runway for this landing and so he did the student corrected once these two aircrafts touched down on the runway the t-38 normally you do what's called aerodynamic braking these high-performance aircraft to initially slow them down you raise the nose up even a little bit more after you've landed and do a basically a wheelie down the runway to allow the aerodynamic drag to help you slow the aircraft down when these aircraft shut touchdown the mishap aircraft bounced slightly and that's not uncommon you're not judging your own flair you're judging your flair based off of a formation flight staring at lead not staring but cross-checking lead so a slight bounce occurred and then a slight yaw of about three degrees to the right occurred which got the mishap aircraft the number two aircraft heading towards the lead aircraft at some point during this excursion a go-around was directed by the instructor pilot the instructor pilot did not immediately take control of the aircraft he called for a go-around the angle difference was too great and the two aircraft ended up touching each other late into the game the instructor took apparently took control of the aircraft the throttles were accelerated a full mil power the aircraft the the number two aircraft made contact with the lead aircraft ended up flipping over the top of the lead aircraft at full mill power and landing inverted off to the side of the runway and skidding to a halt here we see the number two aircraft the mishap aircraft touching down wide proceeds to bounce and/or start saying early aerodynamic braking which lifts the aircraft slightly off the ground he corrects slightly to the right to get back in position towards the center of his half of the runway that rudder input coupled with the high angle of attack initiates a roll to the right a go-around is initiated the angle of attack is further increased to avoid a collision yet the two aircraft make contact and the number two aircraft is flipped over the top of the lead aircraft there was no e there was apparently no attempt at ejecting these aircraft are equipped with ejection seats that can get you out of the aircraft safely on the ground with some forward speed if you are in an upright position an ejection once you start a any kind of a bank angle in these aircraft is you're basically exceeding the limits of the ejection envelope of the ejection seat system but it was found on subsequent investigation that once the aircraft impacted upside down that the ejection seat was moved out of its rails but the handles were not deployed both pilots were fatally injured upon impact off to the side of the runway in the inverted position so the whole thing unfolded in a matter of seconds and in the end they determined that the student pilot was a bit too wide on his approach and landing or on his landing and touchdown and the subsequent bounce and then the late call by the instructor to take control of the aircraft before it was too late where the primary causes of the accident altogether but now the Air Force is reviewing their entire formation flight training program and unfortunately they're going to eliminate the requirement for formation landings altogether so it's my opinion that I don't think we should continue to keep dumbing down these programs these programs need to be intentionally difficult these skills need to be met and kept up if you're going to continue to retain the greatest pilot training in the entire world thanks so much for your support thanks so much for your support here and on patreon see you here [Music]

Channel: blancolirio

Views: 328,124

Keywords: T-38C, USAF, AirEducationandTrainingCommand, Blancolirio

Id: WcneQRbQJto

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020