Ugg, another F35 at NASJRB Fort Worth. F-35B Crashes While Landing at NASJRB Fort Worth Thursday – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
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The main Lockheed-Martin assembly plant for the F-35 is located at JRB Ft Worth.
I see them take off and land regularly. Probably doing testing for the Navy’s B model. I hope the pilot is okay.
My family lives near the base in White Settlement.
Honestly thats why I dont think the local news is going to follow up with this like the B17 crash. To much money floating around the economy here to bad mouth it. The last one was barely talked about here at all. Wasnt parts from that one landing in white settlement?
There was a crash last year of a trainer that was flying in from Corpus Christi that crashed nearby, both pilots ejected, but yeah; that one was real hush hush.
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That’s B looks like it was not destroyed and may be recoverable/repairable. Bent and battered a bit, but not totally destroyed.
Never knew that. We’ll have to have a beer. I watch them almost daily myself, but it’s not nearly as fun as it was back in the early nineties watching them put the new F-16’s through their paces after each one was assembled. Unfortunately I remember one taking an inverted nose dive back in '89 during a training attack on the airfield.
T-45 Goshawk? From the same source as above:
Cheers,
M
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yes, that was the one I thought of. During the first few hours they were saying F35, but i didnt see the part where they corrected the report. it was live When i first saw. i might have gotten this one twisted up in my head with that one.
November 17, 2021: An RAF F-35B toppled into the Mediterranean Sea after the pilot tried to abort take-off from HMS Queen Elizabeth. Early reports suggested its engine sucked in an are inlet cover.
Hello Reynier,
I live in Lake Worth. You can’t be too far away. Feel free to give me a shout some time.
Respectfully,
Allen
Good footage of the complex mechanics involved in the VTOL mode: F-35B Lightning II Fighter Jet Take Off and Vertical Landing in Japan US Marine Corps - YouTube
Unrelated, but gotta love this ‘alternative form of vertical take off’ at the 01:30 mark: Test Pilot TV Series 1986 - The English Electric Lightning - YouTube
Appears the forward lift fan simply failed.
There is a long driveshaft and a high precision gearbox that runs forward from the engine to power that fan. I believe it is very rare for this to fail.
If the pilot’s OK that is good news. But it must be soul-crushing for the folks in the assembly building to see all their hard work turned to scrap just outside the door!
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They’ll pick apart the wreckage and see what went wrong, then make the appropiate corrections to ensure this doesn’t happen again. They’ll probably ground all B models to ensure they all have this issue fixed.
last grounding was from faulty ejection seats. At least that wasnt an issue here.
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Dang, I knew this one had some problems but this article gives you cause and effect, if your a bolt counter maybe be interested, if not, scroll along… 
The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety released a report in December 2020 that detailed over 6,000 noncombat accidents between 2013 and 2018 that claimed the lives of 198 servicemembers and destroyed 157 aircraft at a cost of $9.4 billion. The commission’s report specifically cites the F-35 as one of the biggest reasons. The services made major decisions about shutting down legacy aircraft programs based on the early, rosy schedule predictions of the F-35. Spare parts contracts were not renewed, depot maintenance was cancelled, supply and maintenance facilities were shut down, personnel transferred, and parts became scarce for the legacy fleets. Readiness rates plummeted and lives were destroyed because of unending F-35 schedule slippages and burgeoning sustainment costs.
DOT&E reports that as of October 2, 2020, the F-35 program had 871 unresolved design flaws. Ten were classified as Category I, the most serious type of flaw.
Let me shorten this… FOr the benefit of the TL;DR crowd.
Basically, it states that the brass within the USAF loves big, new and shiny things and wants to replace all tried-and-true equipment with shiny, new, untested stuff. So, they basically shut down the capabilities to keep the tried-and-true stuff operational and battle ready while under the assumption that the shiny new thing will be ready on time and under budget, which we all know is never the case.
Meanwhile the makers of the big, shiny, new thing are having problems with bugs in the system and having cost overruns because their math was not on the money when it came to cost of production, so they delay and delay while the USAF brass is throwing a tantrum like a 3-year-old because they don’t have the big shiny new thing that they wanted to replace the tried and true stuff they just pulled the plug on.
In essence; the brass is putting the cart before the horse.
so there…
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agree, wonder if there has ever been a piece of equipment ever brought in below or earlier than expected in any branch ?
I don’t think there is, between the whole deal with the M16 Assault Rifle back in the 50s to the Bradley in the 80s and the V-22 Osprey in the 2000s. We’ve gotten sold on equipment that will be the end-all solution, but, when you peel back the layers of bureaucracy within the Defense Department, the GAO and industry… Hoo-Boy!
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I understand that this was consistently so in the case of the products of the Skunk Works such as the SR-71. It is counter-intuitive as one would think black projects with concealed budgets and small production runs would have a tendency to over-run, but this was not the case. There was not the usual pattern of putting sub-contracts out to tender but instead working closely with a trusted group of regular partners and producing a closely-specified original product, although these proved capable of being subsequently modified for alternative uses because the original design was sound from the outset. Hence the U-2 is still in service nearly seven decades after the original was approved, the first batch being delivered within a tight time-frame and under budget.
Regards,
M
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Always had great admiration for Kelly Johnson’s projects! And to think Blackbird was designed in and era when a “computer” was a mathematics specialist with a slide-rule and a pencil…
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