USMC Air Refueling Mishap

Sluggo63

Sluggo63

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As someone who has done a lot of this type of operation from both sides, this is never an event to take lightly. At night and in the weather makes it that much more dangerous.

RIP, Marines.

Rescue mission in Japan after two US Marine aircraft collide http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46462814
 
2 rescued, 5 remain unaccounted
 
C-1 PILOT said:
I hate to, but am assuming the two rescues were the Hornet pilot and RIO?
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WSO but yeah, they’ve confirmed it was a two seater. Could be a deployed unit but the only station D model squadron at Iwakuni is VMFA-242 “Bats”.
 
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6 hrs a month. NVGs occasionally invert the scene. :confused: Personal radio and seat beacon don’t work.

Generally I’m all about personal responsibility but this is a command problem and not any single individual. Reminds me of the H-53 midair off Hawaii years ago. Local commanders getting reprimanded instead accepting the fact that 1) the Marines don’t have the money to keep aircraft properly maintained and 2) it’s a systemic culture of doing more with less in the Marines. Senior leaders need to take responsibility and not local commanders

 
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I spent time with the Navy as an Army pilot on LHA’s all I can saw is as a Army MTP what I saw the Marines try to cobble together and fly sometimes was eye opening...more with less...might of been an understatement. It’s been that way forever and even in the good times it seems to be the culture. Instead of four really good air frames lets fly six half assed ones and increase our readiness...I was undoubtedly biased at the time though I admit.
 
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Warlock said:
I spent time with the Navy as an Army pilot on LHA’s all I can saw is as a Army MTP what I saw the Marines try to cobble together and fly sometimes was eye opening...more with less...might of been an understatement. It’s been that way forever and even in the good times it seems to be the culture. Instead of four really good air frames lets fly six half assed ones and increase our readiness...I was undoubtedly biased at the time though I admit.
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6 hrs a month in an active duty unit just boggles my mind. I’ve got a Navy “The Hook” magazine from 87’ and back then tacair was averaging 22 hrs a month with a goal of 25 hrs. Good ole 80s DOD budgets are long gone I guess but dang, 6 hrs is horrible. Friend of mine in the Marine Reserves was getting 8 hrs a year in the Osprey. :eek:

You ever hear of the image inverting with NVGs? They use ANVIS-9s which are slight upgrade from the 6s we used. Never once had the imagine invert. I would think a fiber optic inverter issue but I’ve never even seen that taught as a example of a failure. Not sure if someone fabricated that part of the story or not.
 
35 AoA said:
Must have been a heck of a flight hour waiver program they were working :eek:
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Yeah he said they got hand me down aircraft from active units and they were all ragged out. Took him forever just to get thru the initial course at New River as well. Said active pilots had priority and several times his training period would get canceled for maint. I’ve never really heard him say anything positive about the aircraft. Despite the performance increase, he seemed to prefer the Phrog over the Osprey.
 
Don't feel too bad, it happens in the tinker toy landing gear service component too. I have a former co-worker assigned back to the B-1 and went non-current (non-medical) for 420 days. Many communities have that kind of pitiful track record, and that's on a non-sequestration year mind you. On the latter all bets are off. Back in the TAMI-21 days, a few fighter assignables (F-16s mostly) waited for so long that they just gave up on "the dream" and told AFPC "eff it, just send me somewhere I can fly" and took the early exit to U-28/MC-12 (PC-12/KA350) land. Waits in excess of 24 months as winged aviators. Might as well have been bona fide banked pilots a lá 1992.
 
I flew first Generation full face ANVIS and actually had only 2-3 flights with ANVIS 6’s sixes..All flying Cobras. I was one of the few units who did not adopt a mixed cockpit Flying the A model AH-64 and for me the IHADs Flir was better anyway from the backseat. Front seater flew with a degraded ( Optimized for targeting and killing things) TADs Flir so there was a case for the front seater having tubes

In a unit that used the call sign Nightstalker ( One word not two) In 1986 we took our full face and using a dremmel tool and cut away most of the face plate, both our unit and the 160th ( Knight Stalker Two words) from Campbell shared Info. Both units endured 15-6 investigations for destruction of Government property...MG Parker head of the new Army Aviation Branch put an end to the madness. Mrs Parker and her husband the General liked Lt. Norman and more so my bride...and soon the Aviation branch adopted the field modification for flying. CW3 Bill Kayes was the brainchild and responsible for seeding both units....
 
The whole chastising the unit for lack of discipline because of cockpit selfies made no sense. Have these investigators ever watched Hornet / Rhino Ball vids on YT?
 
Warlock said:
I spent time with the Navy as an Army pilot on LHA’s all I can saw is as a Army MTP what I saw the Marines try to cobble together and fly sometimes was eye opening...more with less...might of been an understatement. It’s been that way forever and even in the good times it seems to be the culture. Instead of four really good air frames lets fly six half assed ones and increase our readiness...I was undoubtedly biased at the time though I admit.
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How long ago was that?

My experience with Marine Air in the Navy (over the last 20 years) was always more along the times of “4 to make 2”.....meaning they’d have 4 H46s or MV22s onboard to have 2 FMC.

When it came to Harriers, it was more like 6 or 8 to make 2.
 
Late 90’s through 2001 working DOD DAST’s to write an interoperability manual to put Army Aircraft on Navy Ships...the hurdles were huge particularly with the arming of Attack Aircraft just trying logistical to get ordnance into the Navy system and the bigger issue for that none of it had arm safe switches and the waivers required. Spent most of the time on either Tarawa or Bonhomme Richard. You should see the look when had Chinooks and AH-64s on the flight deck. But so many issues and with size and no blade folding not to mention force structure and operations from a Navy flight deck and the required flight currency. Head=Latrine and it gets worse from there...no one spoke the same language and frankly other than for transportation to some place actual operations were difficult at best. As an example the AH-64 was tested by the Navy for ship operations early in its fielding. Hughes built two to Navy standards with different cockpit lighting and a few differences in the ordinance pod ejection system. They exceeded the allowable pilot saturation Workload for Navy Aircraft Operations and would eat up Marine budgets. No one was able to produce any meaningful info from those early tests. I Happened to fly both airframes when they were given to the Army and were never modified until the went back to the factory for Upgrades. We learned that Fire control systems on the A model AH-64 became unreliable after 15-20 min of overwater flight of large waves were present. The Doppler navigation system developed a bias error that killed the fire control system. We always knew tall grass could produce errors swaying back and fourth in a Firing position but large waves absolutely made it’s solutions unusable and put us out of constraints. Enjoyed my sea time but would rather have a tent on dry land.
 
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