Breaking News...F 18 Crash near 805 freeway in San Diego

[FieryDragon]

More news soon. It just happened within a hour ago. News crews are sure to post something soon. This is all they say so far.

F-18 Crashes Into Home At Genessee Near Route 805 - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego

http://www.cbs8.com/stories/story.148319.html

Live footage available right now.

Video

[Gimmie2]

yet more proof that the only absolute law is murphys...

[BenKenobi]

guess it got broke

[FieryDragon]

Ok...here's the same link but now it has been comfirmed two dead people. Thats sucks alot.

2 Dead, 2 Missing After FA-18 Crashes Into Neighborhood - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego

Oh yeah..btw, this is one of the jets my grandpa was on the team for aero-dynamics for.

[Reconsnipe1]

That is amazing he wasent hurt.

[FieryDragon]

Update...3 dead now.

[FieryDragon]

I talked with my grandpa about the accurance yesterday and he was able to explain a little bit about the matter, being his plane and all. I thought a few of you palne buffs would take an interest to his thoughts.

Hi kiddo - The only info I have on this is what I heard on the news. The guy was approaching Miramar and had total engine failure, stayed with the bird till the last moment and then ejected. With the engines dead, the Lift/Drag ratio goes down (i.e. the aerodynamic drag goes up). Since the glide angle is the angle whose tangent is Cd/Cl (the drag coefficient/the lift coefficient) the glide angle of the bird with engines windmilling is steeper. Plus if the bird was any dirtier (landing gear and/or flaps down) the angle would get even steeper. To give you a feel for relative steepness of glide angle, the L/D of a sailplane is on the order of 30 to 40, a glide angle of about 1.5 degrees, my old bird the P-51 had an L/D of about 4 in a dirty configuration, a glide angle of about 14 degrees.
I bet that 18 jock doesn't know yet about the poor people who died in that house, but he is really going to feel awful when he gets well enough to be told about it. I know I would.
I had engine failure on takeoff on a pre-dawn mission the morning I went in at K-46, what a helpless feeling. Thank God I didn't kill anybody,especially me!

Love - Granpa' Ralph

[FieryDragon]

Another email.

This was pretty big news down here yesterday, especially because my office is right on the freeway and I could see the smoke billowing up right after the crash. It was only 1 or 2 off ramps north of the temple. It was really close to here. SCARY!!!

Was this the bird you designed? Or was this General Dynamics bird?

Chadd

His response...

I helped design the thing way back when. It might be interesting to know that I had a German WWII Me-109 (Messerschmidt) fighter pilot working with me for a while on this bird. He actually designed the gun ports just ahead of the canopy in the front of the bird. In those days it was known as the YF-17 experimental fighter. We had a fly-off with the XF-16 to see who would be selected by the Air Force. It was rigged we found out later. The birds were supposed to be combat ready in the fly-off. Ours was. Theirs didn't even have the radar installed to make the thing lighter and more maneuverable. They won the Air Force competition. Both Northrop and General Dynamics had an in with the Navy just in case whoever lost could try to sell it to the Navy. Our contact was MacDonnell (long before the company became known as MacDonnell - Douglas). Interesting to note that the partnership we had was strictly on a handshake between Jack Northrop and Ol' Mac. When Mac died, Junior took over and every thing became so damned formal. You remember when Ruthie and I went to St. Louis. That's when I represented Northrop in the Aerodynamics Group at MacDonnell. General Dynamics had absolutely nothing to do with the original design of the bird.

Love you guys - Granpa' Ralph