Navy Chief
January 3rd, 2015, 13:22
The other day, I was listening to a talk show that was interviewing a former USN F/A-18 pilot, who remarked that the Hornet was the first "Fly By Wire" fighter aircraft.
That just didn't seem correct to me, so I checked and found this:
http://www.firstmicroprocessor.com/thereviewers/russell-fish/
It states in one of the paragraphs that the Tomcat was the first to employ such technology.
When I was at Pax River, the Tomcat was just being introduced to the fleet. I distinctly recall an incident on the flight when a civilian contract maintenance type was killed when the flaps of the Tomcat (that they were working on) went to the full position, and the guy in the cockpit had not touched the controls. The accident was blamed on a faulty flight controls computer. If I remember correctly, that accident was one of the reasons why mobile electric power carts had to be positioned away from the aircraft, to prevent such occurrences.
NC
That just didn't seem correct to me, so I checked and found this:
http://www.firstmicroprocessor.com/thereviewers/russell-fish/
It states in one of the paragraphs that the Tomcat was the first to employ such technology.
When I was at Pax River, the Tomcat was just being introduced to the fleet. I distinctly recall an incident on the flight when a civilian contract maintenance type was killed when the flaps of the Tomcat (that they were working on) went to the full position, and the guy in the cockpit had not touched the controls. The accident was blamed on a faulty flight controls computer. If I remember correctly, that accident was one of the reasons why mobile electric power carts had to be positioned away from the aircraft, to prevent such occurrences.
NC