There is much written about the F-35 crash and there is much more to learn about the crash. Plenty of "Talking Heads" asking how could a "crippled plane" that required the pilot to eject still manage to fly 50-miles away and if it was capable of flying that far, why didn't the pilot just return to any available airfield.
Well, this "writing head" wants you to know that that are three models of the F-35 fighter.
The F-35A was designed for the Air Force to meet their requirements and is the conventional takeoff and landing variant.
The F-35C was designed for the Navy to meet their requirements and is reinforced to withstand the takeoffs and landing on an aircraft carrier.
The F-35 that crashed was the F-35B and it was designed for the Marines to meet their requirements and is the short takeoff/vertical landing variant (it can land and takeoff like a helicopter…)
One of the differences between all the models is the Ejection Seat… On the Air Force and Navy versions, "the pilot has to initiate the ejection." On the Marine version, it has an auto-eject function on its ejection seat, that can be pilot initiated or if the Aircraft senses certain factors the Ejection Seat self-actuates. The Self Ejection mode is useful when the aircraft is hovering close to the ground and something catastrophic occurs, the pilot would not have time to remove their hands from the controls and pull the ejection handle.
The self-initiating sequence is not unlike the way the airbags in your car operate, if you have a frontal impact, your side airbags do not deploy. It is all based on "sensed conditions…"
What has been speculated it that some catastrophic sequence of events caused the aircraft to initialed the Self Ejection Mode and the pilot had no control of the sequence of events nor could they stop it. Perhaps it was something as simple as a wiring harness that shorted out.
The fact that the plane continued to fly on it's own is not unprecedented. Back in the early 1970s at Luke AFB, we had a pilot flying an F-4 Phantom Jet go into an inverted stall and he ejected from the plane as it tumbled to the ground, however, the plane righted itself and continued to fly west. The un-piloted plane flew over California and was safely shot down once it was over the Pacific.
And you can google more of these "spooky stories…)
In the attached link below, the pilot did not initiate the ejection, the aircraft did…
Fly Safe…
