Pilot error, leadership failures and faulty ejection seat led to fatal June F-16 crash at Shaw
1st LT David Schmitz
The report is out about the Shaw AFB, South Carolina F-16 crash back in June. We talked about it here.
There is, unfortunately, ample blame to go around. The young pilot 1st LT David Schmitz had never aerial refueled before, but he was making his first attempt at night. When that went poorly, he landed well short of the runway, destroying his landing gear. Then, the supervisor of flying (the man in charge on the ground) directed Schmitz to make a cable arrested landing (a bad call it seems). When he didn’t catch the wire, the plan veered off the runway, and Schmitz punched out. The cataclysm of horrible events continued when his ejection seat malfunctioned, killing him.
Air Force Times has the full scoop. It’s not pretty. I know nothing of the training pipeline for fighter jocks. With how critical aerial refueling is to current operations, I was surprised it’s not a required skill prior to being sent to an operational unit.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Air Force
Heads should roll for this accident and fatality… but, will they?
PMCS, paperwork & budget cuts.
IMO the F16 has become the stepchild (not as bad as the A10) of the AF now that the F35 is getting front row parking.
Thats one way to get out of pulling SOF duty. I’m a bit surprised that AR is not included in the F-16 Initial Qualification Training (IQT) sylabus and doesn’t occur until MQT (Mission Qualification Training) I’ve been away from ACC since I retired, but wonder if the ORM (Operational Risk Management) program is still in place. A night MQT sortie, with first time AR and low time aviators, strikes me as being somewhat elevated risk and require at least Top 3 or higher sign off.
If the 4-ship flight lead IP gamed the system so he could sign off at his level he will probably get his pee-pee whacked. If it was elevated to a higher authority signature level, that person will be scrutinized.
I also expect there was a one time inspection done of ejection seats to see if there was an isolated issue or widespread problem.
Thanks for the insight USAFRetired. Us dirt digging doggy ground pounders appreciate it. Even we would know and think that the FIRST Aerial Refueling would NOT be in the dark. And yeah, maybe they can pin a lot of blame on an inexperienced pilot error in the damaging of the landing gear, but I blame it on higher for making bad decisions. Sometimes you can’t save the damaged aircraft AND the pilot. In those cases, save that life, the aircraft can be replaced. And at the end of the day, IMO, the defective ejection seat is what actually caused his death. Now THAT is what is criminal about this tragedy. Absolutely NO excuse for not having parts on hand to keep these seats in good repair.
God’s Peace bring His Comfort to the Family.
Back 40 or so years ago during my to brief attendance at UPT. The Bold Face for the T-37 for ejection was two steps
1. Arming Handles – Raise
2. Right Trigger – Squeeze
During the hollow force days of the Carter Administration they had uncovered/discovered a problem with wear on cables that actually initiated the ejection sequence. The solution at the time was to make sure there were good cables for each seat on the same side until the supply chain and maintenance could catch up.
There are typically two reports, the Safety Investigation Board Report, that is privileged and folks testify under immunity. And an Accident Investigation Board Report that has some releasibility and things uncovered here can be used against folks.
Tanks Zoomie. My training on that was AW1Ed telling me to not touch the yellow and black handle…PERIOD! Inquiring about the Black and yellow handle earned me a stone cold stare, and extra ration of fetching mid rats and an invitation to join him and Mick for a motion picture viewing…
Know all about the Safety and Accident reviews, sat on and assisted on several. Even worse when there is a perfect storm of screwups, we lose a Warrior, and a family/unit loses a loved one.
Two of the more memorable reports that I encounterd were in the 80s. One dealt with a young 1LT and had one of the more memrable quotes I’d ever seen.
“Name was a shit magnet”
I knew exactly what was meant he was the walking incarnationof Joe Btfsplk from Lil Abner.
The other occurred while I was in Korea in 85-86 and concerned a fatal crash that had occurred elsewhere. It had a cover letter on it by our General. What made it so memorable was the cover up that had occurred after the fact where leadership and supervisory failures tried to be coverd up to inlcude trying to suppress evidence. The cover up was worse than any earlier supervisory lapses.
The General really came down hard on the lapses in integrity,judegement etc, the errors of ommision/comission were recoverable human events. The coverup on the other hand was unforgiveable.
Reminds me of this story.
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=98280
I believe I read somewhere that there was a TCTO on the set that hadn’t been completed. That said, the seat should have still worked.
Also, I spent a lot of time at Luke and one of the boxes that needed to be checked to become a Viper driver was aerial refueling. i don’t see why they would cut corners on that. It’s a pretty important skill.
SEAT, not set.
“The report said investigators concluded a lack of available parts delayed the installation of a fix in the F-16′s Advanced Concept Ejection Seat, or ACES II, that was designed to prevent the kind of problem that caused the parachute to fail to deploy in time.”
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/11/09/pilot-error-leadership-failures-and-faulty-ejection-seat-led-to-fatal-june-f-16-crash-at-shaw/
Talk about having a bad day (night).
Gotta give the guy credit for seeing it through albeit fatal.
At least he brought attention to serious problem(s) and may well
be responible for saving others. RIP sir.
Clear skies and fair winds, David. RIP.
Not a military pilot, or familiar with the Air Force F-16 training pipeline, but the first real look at AR shouldn’t be at night. Or so it seems to me. It certainly was the first link in this accident chain. I would highly value Mick’s opinion on this one.
AW1Ed:
There’s no way that this kid’s first look at aerial refueling should have been at night. No way. Even with the USAF’s use of boom AR vice Naval Aviation’s use of the probe/drogue method, AR is difficult enough to master during the daytime, let alone trying to do it for the first time ever at night. Insanely stupid and unforgivably dangerous to make this kid attempt this evolution at night at this point in his training syllabus.
Everyone in his squadron chain of command, and perhaps also higher up the chain, should be relieved for cause for putting this young man in this impossible situation. This mishap event should never have even been penciled in on the draft flight schedule for that night. Never should have made it to the CO for approval/signature, and he certainly never should have signed off on the flight schedule with this insanely stupid event on it.
This whole evolution was criminally stupid. Hopefully USAF SJAs/JAGs are looking to see if UCMJ charges can be brought against those who thought that this evolution was a good idea.
This kind of blatantly stupid shit that too often leads to pilots and aircrew getting killed during training makes my blood boil. No reason for professional aviators to ever be this willfully stupid.
I can definitely see not doing aerial refueling in the school house(just not that many units that they can spare one dedicated to the school house), but agree with AW1Ed that you do CRAWL, WALK, RUN…then combat!
First AR should be virtual, then in a daylight, clear skies condition over friendly territory, followed by night time (same conditions). And last would be during combat.
We don’t have nay F35s here at Shaw, AFB (yes the Army has a HQ here as well), so I doubt the issue was all the money going to F35 units (or F22 for that matter). With the way the runway is here, it is pretty hard to land short and not just hit the wall, so I am a little baffled by the landing short part.
I didn’t know Air Force F-16’s even had the capability to make a “cable arrested” landing. From what I know of the Navy procedure, I can’t imagine how a pilot not trained in making “arrested” landings could be expected to make one under the stress of his emergency situation, especially at night.
Apparently, new Air Force aircraft will already have them, and older frames are being fitted with a similar, but less capable tailhook. Called the “BAK-12” system, the hook grabs a slightly raised cable that can be strung across most any runway that will allow the system to be built into it, even commercial airports.
The cable is attached to flexible but very heavily weighted straps, that all get dragged behind the ailing ship, slowing it withing 800-1200ft (compared to 300ft on a Carrier).
Happened to run across this, thought y’all might find it interesting.
People need to hang for this.
Literally.
The chain of command killed this kid. He was dead when he released the brakes.