F-16CM Crash at Shaw AFB - July 2020

[IanH755]

Hi All,

Just seen this news, Pilot confirmed dead sadly

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34537/f-16-c...

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/...

From a few stills of a video allegedly from the scene post "crash", the wreckage looks like it might on the Ramp/ASP so I'm not sure if it's a "crash" as such or if maybe it's a ground incident (the images could be misleading) but the loss of life is always sad. It's not been a great 2020 so far for the US aviation community, I wonder if there will be another "general investigation" like happened a few years ago when the USAF went through a similar spate of incidents in a "short" time?

[RobGT81]

Sounds like there was uncertainty about if his undercarriage was down, had another aircraft inspect it but might have been too dark to be sure. One report suggested he flew a low pass to eject but not sure they would do that. Whenever I have seen aircraft with gear stuck up, they tend to dump/burn all their fuel and come in for a slow belly landing. Maybe the gear was stuck mid travel and sent the jet cartwheeling.

[Simpo Two]

RobGT81 said:

One report suggested he flew a low pass to eject but not sure they would do that.

Not seeing the logic of that, unless there's a very strong wind and the airfield is surrounded by crocodiles...