Word: 15e
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...works perfectly, the stresses of combat, accumulating slowly and insidiously, can overcome the world's best pilots. That's what happened on July 18 over eastern Afghanistan, when two Air Force officers stumbled into a series of missed signals and blown procedures. The errors combined to send their F-15E screaming into a dark mountainside in a steep, controlled dive at 550 m.p.h., according to an Air Force investigation released last week. (See the top 10 most expensive military planes...
...deadly sequence began when the backseat officer in the second F-15E - the plane whose pilot was in command of the two-plane mission - calculated the altitude of the lake bed at 4,800 ft. The flight manual required him to use a more precise altimeter than the device he used. He compounded that snafu when he mistakenly cited the elevation of their home base at Bagram - 4,800 ft. - as the elevation for the lake bed. That mistake apparently happened because Bagram's altitude had remained on the screen momentarily as he vainly sought to ascertain the lake...
...mission commander asked McDowell if he felt "comfortable" performing the dangerous dive. "Sure," he responded. Seconds later, McDowell's F-15E began diving from 18,000 ft. After streaking through blackness for seven seconds at a speed of 420 ft. per second, the plane's collision-avoidance system audibly warned the crew to climb four times in quick succession. Large arrows pointing upwards flashed onto cockpit displays. The crew didn't respond. Video recorded aboard the doomed plane and evidence gleaned from the wreckage showed the crew did nothing to avoid the mountain or try to eject...
...investigation cited the wrong altitude for the lake bed as the key reason for the crash (neither officer aboard the second F-15E was named in the probe) but spelled out several contributing factors. The crew was tired - wearing night-vision goggles increases eyestrain and fatigue - and crashed at 2:30 a.m., the sleepiest time in the human sleep cycle. Night-vision goggles reduce depth perception, especially when there's little ambient light and the ground is flat and barren. The crew "channelized" its attention on the attack run, ignoring warning signs that danger was imminent. Finally, "expectancy" played...
...array of U.S. aircraft filled the skies near Gardez, from high-flying B-52 bombers to low-circling Predator drones. F-15E Strike Eagles bombed ground targets, and AC-130 gunships provided close air support. But it was the AH-64 Apache and the AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters that were most lethal, firing missiles and heavy machine guns to take out caves and enemy forces...