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:

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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.

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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.

These feels like the standard the Department of the Navy uses for ship captains -- in the modern Navy, if you ground your ship/boat you are relieved. End of story.

Doesn't matter whose fault it was.

An F-35 lost is probably as costly as repairing most grounded destroyers or subs.

The "don't make the Marine Corps look bad" is also a compelling explanation.

In Vietnam we were trying to extract a recon team in contact in the Ashau Valley, the Platoon Leader was the #3 in a heavy C-Model gun team trying to mark their location even though the gun lead had already done that. He flew right into a bunch of trees and crashed our only hog frog and we spent 30 minutes extracting them and almost lost the guys we were there for. Then we had to go back and blow up the gunship BC of where it was. I never saw that platoon leader again until our 50th reunion and he left early when everyone started making fun of him. He's a legend in our unit but for the wrong reasons.

c model?
hog frog?

F4GIB71 said:

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"Back in Old Army when I was a fish"... er, in my 18 years of flying, they were continually emphasizing "do not delay the decision to eject". I've lost friends and heard many safety briefings where someone was lost because the waited too long. I ejected from an out of control aircraft, and my pilot did not. All this Monday morning quarterbacking does is plant the seed to "try just a bit longer" to recover. Give it back to the taxpayers, we can't replace the pilot.

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I've been on a couple mishap investigations. But never a class A, thankfully. But the thought is that, under most circumstances, the pilot did everything they were taught to do. Their training is the culmination of every instructor they had. Whether they survived or not, they probably did what they thought was the right thing to do.

It has got to be a tough line to walk. What constitutes punching out too early? I think we all know what's too late. I would imagine the investigation report covers what altitude he was at, and how long he waited to trouble shoot before punching out. Also, I've been on an investigation where one pilot's recollection of evens was VERY different than the other pilots, and both were plausible. It's also tough as an investigator, because you don't want to blame the pilot when they did nothing wrong, or their mistake was reasonable error.

But, I guess, the DoD has decided someone needs to pay the price.

CanyonAg77 said:

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c model?
hog frog?

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Think he means the UH-1C. And depending on weapons configuration it had various nicknames like hog or frog. Not familiar enough to know what was what.

CanyonAg77 said:

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c model?
hog frog?

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Huey gunship, instead of 2 7-shot rocket pods and 2 miniguns the hog frog had 2 19 shot rocket pods and a .40mm grenade launcher on the nose.

The F-4 had minimum ejection altitudes of 2000' for controlled and 10,000' for out of control ejections. The F-101 (yes, I'm that old) was 2000' and 15,000' respectively. Really crappy ejection seat and no sequenced ejection so neither could punch out the other guy

Was this the dude who showed up at someone's house after he ejected asking to borrow their phone to call BDOC?

You don't jump out of a $109M fighter which then proceeds to fly another 60+ miles and not expect some consequences. He's the commander of a test squadron and executing demanding flying scenarios should be his bread and butter.

Not sure if I can judge him. But I also wonder how a plane in such horrible shape, flew for a long time after.

Sounds like the "Cornfield Bomber"

74OA said:

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You don't jump out of a $109M fighter which then proceeds to fly another 60+ miles and not expect some consequences. He's the commander of a test squadron and executing demanding flying scenarios should be his bread and butter.

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Spot on.

74OA said:

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You don't jump out of a $109M fighter which then proceeds to fly another 60+ miles and not expect some consequences. He's the commander of a test squadron and executing demanding flying scenarios should be his bread and butter.

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I recall being told "a Marine's life is worth a pack of HIMARS rockets." Basically half a mil in death benefits with a bit to cover the training expenses.

Sure an experienced pilot is worth more on the balance sheet than a basic infantryman, but let's face it: if you're solely responsible for extremely expensive national security level assets… there's something of an expectation that you'll do everything possible to avoid losing it.

Napkin math: 35 lifetime earnings go into each of these aircraft. So when you dump one you're wasting 35 human lives worth of time and effort to save what remains of your own life. Don't like the obligation? Don't sign up.

Totally related and at the same time unrelated stat: Somewhere I've seen the estimate that it takes $6,000,000 to train a pilot.

I'd believe that. Recall a million from 50 (ouch) years ago

CanyonAg77 said:

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Totally related and at the same time unrelated stat: Somewhere I've seen the estimate that it takes $6,000,000 to train a pilot.

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Not 20 years ago.

I'll have to go back and read the story but I seem to recall there was still one working backup system, no alarms, no warning lights, etc., which would have allowed a landing.

Having been in the military, major decisions like this are made so many times based on results. Commanders, two, three, four layers removed, have been fired for a young officer or NCO doing something stupid downtown, or a DUI which resulted in deaths.

In this case, if there was still an operable system backup, he ejected, and the plane continued to fly and ultimately crashed. A multi-million dollar loss.

It would be very interesting to know how general Smith's decision is viewed by the Marine aviation community. Would most Marine pilots agree with Smith or think their fellow aviator got shafted.

Not that generals should make decisions based on troops' opinions, but sometimes one can either completely lose the respect of the group or gain their respect.

I've seen lowly WO1's get shafted for lesser "mishaps" so I can't imagine the USMC letting a full colonel off the hook for losing a flyable plane costing $80-100 million. Now I flew in the Army and the higher up in rank I got the less time I flew as a PIC and the only single ship birds were the cheap ones but you can bet if the boss crashed one we'd be getting a new boss right away.

hillcountryag86 said:

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It would be very interesting to know how general Smith's decision is viewed by the Marine aviation community. Would most Marine pilots agree with Smith or think their fellow aviator got shafted.

Not that generals should make decisions based on troops' opinions, but sometimes one can either completely lose the respect of the group or gain their respect.

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I asked my husband, a Marine pilot, what he thought. Basically he stated while he may have followed procedures that fact that the plane kept flying for 60+ miles was, unfortunately, a very very bad look. Thus, it's not at all surprising that the commander got relieved.

On a side note we socialize with a fairly large number of Marine pilots and their opinion of Smith is not what one would consider very positive. Apparently Smith was, at a symposium last year, was asked if the Marines would consider initiating or increasing bonuses for Marines as recruitment in certain areas is lacking. His response was, and I'm paraphrasing, "Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine". Well, that apparently went over like a turd in a punch bowl with many, many people.

I was Army so don't really have a dog in this fight but GOs who say **** like that are, in most cases, completely out of touch with what's going on in their own world.