The bulk of the F-35 crashed within airfield boundaries, though parts of the cockpit, canopy, and ejection seat landed just outside the fence. With just 200 feet between him and the ground, the pilot ejected and landed safely just outside the airfield fence line. The mishap pilot lit his afterburner to try to regain control, but was unable due to the low altitude and airspeed. Investigators noted there have been over 600,000 F-35 flight hours “with no known similar incidents of wake turbulence impacting the ADS.”īut on this flight, the F-35 put itself in a position with “virtually no chance of recovering,” the test pilot said.

“When the oscillations were happening, I did see really large flight control surface movements, stabs, trailing edge flaps, rudders all seem to be moving pretty rapidly like, probably at their rate limits, and huge deflections.”Īir Force jets are often equipped with computers that make minor control adjustments mid-flight, and they usually work without issue. The jet “looked like a totally normal F-35 before obviously going out of control,” one F-35 test pilot who saw the mishap from the ground told investigators. The poor assessments led to the ADS calculating incorrect flight adjustments, and the pilot found the system disregarded his own attempts to get the jet back under control. In this case, the disturbed air made the ADS occasionally stop listening to data coming in from sensors on the right side of the aircraft, and stop listening to data from the left side altogether.Įach time the ADS switched between those primary sensors and backup sources for gauging flight conditions, the further its assessments drifted from actual flight conditions. The ADS is made up of sensors that collect information from outside the aircraft so that the aircraft computers can calculate the minute control adjustments needed to keep flying. He flew through the disturbed air for about three seconds, which threw off the jet’s air data system (ADS). With landing gear down on final approach, the mishap pilot felt some rumbling due to the wake turbulence of the F-35 ahead of him. This illustration in the Air Force investigation shows the arrangement of the formation of F-35s using the callsign ‘Legs’ shortly before the Oct.

Real f 35 cockpit