It’s very important for a fighter pilot to have confidence in his kit:
After an extensive investigation and grounding, the Air Force doesn’t know why some F-22 pilots have suffered symptoms similar to oxygen deprivation while flying the fighter (including one last week) and has returned the full fleet to service. During the more than four months that the aircraft was grounded the Air Force failed to find a common thread that linked at least 12 reported incidents in which pilots reported hypoxia-like symptoms while flying the jet. According to Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz, the oxygen system was not the cause of a fatal crash during a November 2010 nighttime training mission. Prior reports published by the Air Force Times have stated that tests performed on Raptor pilots have found toxins in the pilots’ blood. And reports previously published by the Air Force Times, and an Air Force accident report, suggest that not everyone is convinced the jet’s oxygen system is trouble-free.
One gets the sense that the Raptor bubbas aren’t quite there yet.
Seems like a re-play of the Navy’s WW II experience with early torps that failed to work but which Naval Ord claimed worked “jes fine.” Took many, many months and the needless loss of many lives to get the ordnance bureaucracy to admit their mistakes–all the while blaming the combat sub crews for failing to properly maintain/operate the wpn. Or the USAF failure to recognize–in fact deny–early-on in SEA that the heat, humidity, dust conditions and the vibration of combat maneuvering rendered many Sparrows inoperable–that it had to be an aircrew problem–as they were not built to be used in the austere conditions under which they were shipped/maintained/utilized. Or the USAF delusion that the Litton INS on the F4 could be properly maintained w.o a Litton tech-rep at every F-4 Wing. Problems? What problems? (actually, they had one at every Wing in SEA, but pretended one for all of USAFE worked “jes fine.”)
I remember many a rainy day in Udorn RTAFB when the canopies were opened on the F-4′s,that the accumulated water went directly onto the INS and radio equipment causing several ground aborts.
The heat and humidity over there was causing the potting compounds on just about all electrical connectors to “Revert”, that is, going back to a wet, electrically conductive state, leading to multiple system failtures, and stray voltages where they should not have been.
This happened to the F-105′s more than the F-4′s as the former had more electrical connectors sealed with the potting compounds that worked great in Germany and the U.S. but failed when in Southeast Asia’s environment.
Problem is, VX, that the Navy didn’t have the funds to truly debug our torpedoes until well into the war. S.E. Morison had some rather trenchant remarks about that.
You had the early Sparrows. 15 years later I had upgraded sea sparrows. Trade you. What can one say, NATO system supported by NEMESIS.
Ok, for the purists, NMSES but speaking as an old FCO if I could have closed the range on their HQ and offices and opened fire, they’d be toast.
VX- had a relative who was a Armament guy on a couple of
different carriers in WW2 he hated that MK Xlll torpedo.
for the life of him he could not figgure out why we simply didn’t copy the Japanese,”Long Lance” and fire them back at them. The TBM crews would have tales of erratic tracking and
actually bouncing of the target…
Interestingly enough, the Germans had the same sort of issues with their torpedoes depth-keeping and with their magnetic influence exploders that we did, for pretty much the same reasons. Their ordnance department swore up and down that it must be the U-Boat crews’ failures to properly maintain and operate them…
During the Norwegian campaign, several U-boat commanders did not engage after they got aware of the issue with the magnetic torpedoes, but let British vessels go. They did not have enough/any more torpedoes with contact fuzes on board. This amounted to at least three battleships and a similar number of cruisers …
It resulted in some court martials. Do you have any sources on whether somebody got executed or not?
Here is a bit of a different “returned to service” story.
On October 5, 2009, Air Force Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez was shot through the chest during a fierce firefight in a muddy village in western Afghanistan. Gutierrez, a 29-year old Special Forces Combat Controller, was coordinating air support for an Army Special Forces team sent after a high value Taliban target. Ignoring a sucking chest wound and collapsed lung, Gutierrez continued directing aerial attacks, almost certainly saving the lives of nearly 30 outnumbered American and Afghan forces. Now fully recovered, Gutierrez has been nominated to receive soon the country’s second-highest military honor, the Air Force Cross.
===================================
Directing a final strafing run, Gutierrez picked up his blood-soaked equipment and began trudging over a mile back to the team’s vehicles. He radioed for emergency evacuation, suffered another collapsed lung, waited for the helicopter to arrive, and then finally passed out. He did all this while losing half of his blood—over five pints. Remarkably, and due largely to his directing air support, no American forces were killed on the mission. In fact, Gutierrez was the worst wounded of all.
His recovery took 19 months, part of it spent at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Today, he is an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School in Hurlburt Field, Florida. I asked him what he wanted to do next. “Get back to Afghanistan,” he replied, “and do the same thing all day, every day.”
Air Force Cross? Appropriate…
But, I’m thinking MOH would be more appropriate…
WOW.
Yeah, that was my thought too. Needs to be bumped up a grade.
Wow..
Problem is, he lived to tell the tale. MOH tough to get for living hero.
OOOps…forgot to post the link:
The Amazing SSgt. Gutierrez
Those F-22 oxygen systems…they aren’t made in China, by any chance, are they?
Might be somthing in the oxy delivery path, materiel substitution? Something volatile under the right conditions? It’s apparently random in effect.
New systems are a bitch.
Does the O2 come out of bottles? If so, might there be some sort of contaminant in the process of filling them?
My understanding is that it’s some sort of “rebreather” system that uses carbon filtration. Sounds like another attempt to answer a question that nobody asked…
It’s an onboard system which takes bleed air from the engine, runs it through some osmotic filters and such to extract the supposedly pure O2….lighter and doesn’t need filling on the ground after so many sorties.
It’s not really a problem. Our great leaders will direct that only those Raptor pilots that show no effect to that bit about “toxins in the blood” will be retained in the bird. All other pilots will be immediately transferred to other weapon systems and the pipeline will supply pilot candidates until they find enough ‘immune’ pilots to fill the seats. No redesign or mods needed. Problem solved. No problem here, move along, folks.
/sarcasm
Weuns not of aviator grade sat through several safety before flight briefings but nothing brings it to one until one is strapped into that helo and one looks to the left and finds that EOD has found the money to buy those men O2 emergency air in case the helo plummets into the sea and does the totally mandated roll over and drown everyone aboard and then look right and sees that the same providence has bestowed a similar grace on those EOD guys and all have cool helmets (not kevlar but rather head protectors of light weight and just right for bugging out of an upside down helo. Crew chief’s got spare air too, hanging out of a leg pocket. Bet the pilot and co-pilot do to.
You know the navy, being the navy, makes it mandatory to give all the luckless unfortunates that must fly over the sea in one of those things a safety brief, and a cranial and perhaps a life jacket. Only the discerning cognoscenti have the forethought to use command OPTAR for frequent flyers for the little touches such as air and helmets and flight suits and beacons and stuff like that.
Never mind all that carping. That’s what it was. Flew with a 3 star fleet commander out to somewhere or other with both of us in the helo in khakis, no air. No helmets. No briefing.
Yes, doomed.
3 Star? Those are quite expendable. Yuns already know that you are.
Did quite a few helo rides when on the CARGRU staff, and felt the same lack of love.
The “Spare Air” unit of the day was identical to the HEEDS except for the shape of the valve handle. It fit nicely into a discreet holster that wife, both protective and good at sewing, installed inside a float coat. And, when politely approached, the riggers were always willing to check the air pressure and top it up if necessary.
Bleed air does not sound like a great way to generate O2.
But I’m just a propeller driven, radial engine, civilian…
Has to be someone’s “great idea..”
USAF has long had more than its share of good idea fairies.
You know you’ve reached the limit when even the SYSTEM COMMANDS enter the FLEET ordered “Good Idea Cutoff Date” on their engineering change cutoff plan for deploying ships. No more of that sending ships off to sea with spanking brand new equipment with “Interim Tech Manuals”, usually no Operator Manuals and of course nobody with any training on how to use, employ, operate, troubleshoot or repair the thing plus on top of that, zero spare parts onboard or in the supply system.
Is this system installed in the F35?
And how is hypoxia related to toxins, I thought hypoxia is insufficient oxygen – symptoms of, and toxins are chemical compounds which interfere with various cellular functions in various ways?
I can see a lot of potential failure modes in such a lashup, compared to the simplicity of a 02 bottle. The troubleshooting would be challenging, I suspect a shortage of genius level toxicologists with equal expertise in hemotology, high and rapidly varying altitude effects on physiology, and osmotic filtration of gasses, as well as aircraft systems engineering and design.
Retrofitting a backup 02 bottle and a selector might be cheap plane and pilot insurance, considering how expensive both are these days.
Honeywell OBOGS (F-35 similar to F-22 but apparently not identical) info:
http://www.jsf.org.uk/JSF-UK-Industry-Team/Honeywell.aspx
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/05/air-force-oxygen-generator-inquiry-all-fighter-jets-051611w/
“…The Pentagon’s F-35 program office said that while the F-35 had absorbed many lessons from the F-22 program, the systems onboard the newer jets have little in common with the Raptor.
“The F-35 and F-22 have common aircraft and oxygen-system suppliers, but the systems are very different. The program has leveraged the lessons learned from F-22 development to enhance the F-35 across all subsystems, including the Onboard Oxygen Generating System,” said F-35 program office spokesman Joe DellaVedova….”
OBOGS isn’t exactly a cosmic gold plated innovation for the F-22, we’ve been using it reliably in the T-6 for years