The commandant of the Marines, an Aggie BTW, relieved a Colonel 3 months into a command and over a year after he ejected from an F-35 which continued to fly afterwards. I was an Army pilot for 20 years and have seen lots of "firings" for screwing up while flying but not for following the book. There were extenuating circumstances but still, seems a mite harsh to me.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/marine-pilot-loses-command-ejecting-205728405.html

Eh, I was not an aviator but this fits in line with what I would expect in the Corps. Just from that article, it was found that the aircraft was found to be flyable, even after loss of some instrumentation. Terrible situation for sure, but you don't even have to read between the lines to see the investigators believe he punched way too early. Even the last ditch stopgap excuse of maintenance failure came back clean. So no pinning on ground crew.

I was enlisted so no sexy next gen aircraft but you would not believe what I have seen Marines burn for in terms of equipment loss. For a Marine to lose an extremely precious F-35B and to be found basically at fault (albeit in just enough of a gray area to not be liable)? Yeahhhhh. This was a foregone conclusion to me. I also think the PR shenanigans didn't help, at all. Marines mess up all the time. And we always tried our damndest to keep it in-house. It is basically THE mortal sin unto itself to mess up in the public eye and this was as bad as it can get without someone dying. SOMEONE was going to burn and with that investigation, super easy to see who it was going to be.

Eliminatus said:

---

Eh, I was not an aviator but this fits in line with what I would expect in the Corps. Just from that article, it was found that the aircraft was found to be flyable, even after loss of some instrumentation. Terrible situation for sure, but you don't even have to read between the lines to see the investigators believe he punched way too early. Even the last ditch stopgap excuse of maintenance failure came back clean. So no pinning on ground crew.

I was enlisted so no sexy next gen aircraft but you would not believe what I have seen Marines burn for in terms of equipment loss. For a Marine to lose an extremely precious F-35B and to be found basically at fault (albeit in just enough of a gray area to not be liable)? Yeahhhhh. This was a foregone conclusion to me. I also think the PR shenanigans didn't help, at all. Marines mess up all the time. And we always tried our damndest to keep it in-house. It is basically THE mortal sin unto itself to mess up in the public eye and this was as bad as it can get without someone dying. SOMEONE was going to burn and with that investigation, super easy to see who it was going to be.

---

Oh, I completely get that. I had an ex-company commander who was commanding the Brigade that crashed a Chinook full of Golden Knights. It was 100% nobody's fault but it effectively derailed the colonel's path to a star. The Marines could have quietly pulled his next command before he took it, but he had to know he was toast after the incident.