The Ridiculous Design Flaw of the Sukhoi Su-24

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Myself being ukrainan and huge aviation enthusiast I absolutely love the modern day russian SU-24 pilots' balls' pun. LAMO

Something similar happened in South Korea and its F-15K jet. This time it was purely operator error by a high-ranking officer. Similarly to how Sukhoi reacted Boeing thanked ROKAF for its accidental "live test" of a zero-zero ejection from its F-15 fighter jet and offered free replacement parts.😂

It was probably around the early/mid 1970's when my dad was stationed at SJAFB in North Carolina. An airman in performed a 0-0 ejection while in what I remember to be an F4 in the hangar. The investigation determined he took his own life.

I hope Guy Severin found out the Americans were impressed enough by his ejection seat to consider adopting it. That's certainly a feat to be proud of and a stamp of a quality design if your sworn ideological enemy will even consider adopting it.

Copy the aardvark that was also a dog. Good plan.

Thank you for a fascinating look at a piece of Soviet aviation history.

Find a girl who loves you the way Soviet aerospace engineers loved titanium.

I remember this from the first mission in Hitman!

Thanks!

Now its firing britsh storm shadow missiles. And other nato armorments.

5:43 ohhh Burn!!! i love the narration, i'll sub, here get your like

Two related stories from Sweden: when I did my conscription service as an aircraft mechanic on the Saab J35J Draken, the cockpit featured — on each corner on the center console — a tiny metal loop, screwed directly into the metal frame.

These were for the boot restraints, that pull the pilot's feet close to the seat when ejecting. Previously our — the aircraft mechs' — manual for readying the cockpit after a flight said "Lay the straps crossed over the base of the control stick". But when I got in, the manual now said "Hook the restraints into these loops".

Why?

Well, one day in the early 90's — after the Draken had spent nearly 4 decades in the air without this being an issue — one pilot forgot to strap in the boots.

He taxied onto the runway, and took off.

As the main wheels got airborne, he instantly knew something was wrong, as the plane started rolling, and he could not counter it. After just a couple of seconds, he understood that the roll would continue, which — with the Draken's poor low speed performance — would lead to a crash. He ejected, was saved, and the plane became one of the very last hull loss accidents for Draken.

What had happened?

Turns out that during the preflight control surface tests — which involved vigorous and large control stick movements — the boot straps had jammed where the control stick interfaces the floor. This then made it impossible for the pilot to use the stick for roll on take-off. Hence, the loops.

—-

Second story: in 2007, a Saab JAS-39 Gripen made an 8.6 g turn to turn downwind at Vidsel airbase. As the pilot rolled out on the downwind leg, the canopy was — unexpectedly — jettisoned. The pilot realised something was about to go very wrong and started reaching for the ejection handle. He did not get that far, because the seat activated on its own, threw the pilot clear of the plane, which subsequently crashed in the Norrland forest next to the main runway.

What had happened? Turns out that this was a JAS-39C, the second generation Gripen. The "Cesars" got bigger cockpit screens. But, the control column got in the way of the lower screen. Okay, we can fix that, move the control column back. But, the ejection seat handle is there! Well, we can fix that too, just move the handle back, right up into the pilot's crotch. And while we are at it, let us make it rigid, flat and cone-shaped.

Martin-Baker tested this, Saab and the Defence Material Administration signed off on it, and all was peachy.

…until that ejection. The investigation revealed that the seat log said that the handle had been pulled and activated the seat. The pilot assured everyone he had not touched it. But what then, had pulled the handle?

The g-suit had. Remember that 8.6 g turn? When the pants inflated, they had pulled the handle up. Major WTF… Martin-Baker, we tested this, did you do something with the handles after testing?!

Well… we changed supplier of the handles, MB said. Aaand… turns out they did not quite follow the specs used during testing, and so the friction between handle and pants were different compared to when we tested.

Hold on, the Swedish Accident Investigation Board thought, this cannot be the first time something like this has happened. So they called the JAS-39C divisions to ask "Have you had any occurences where the ejection handle appeared to have come loose?" The reply… "Well, now that you mention it…" there had been such occurrences, where the mechs had to push the handle back down again, in order to get the safety pin in. It was just that they had not used the incident reporting system properly to alert anyone to the issue.

To be fair, the Su-24 attrition rate wasn't too bad for the 60s and 70s.

While Paper Skies provides suburb aviation videos the little peaks into day to day life of Soviet Aviation is what I really watch for. Just wish he had a twin who was equally into Soviet Ground Forces lore lol

I'm not sure if I've ever heard a more Russian story. Well, maybe not more Russian that Peter and the Wolf, but that story was fictional.

i have not heard of the Su-24 but it looks like a russian version of the F-111 or a dual seater mig-23

OMG, I was laughing so hard at the animation to this one, that pilot looking up at where his navigator had gone was priceless! 🤣

You know a aircraft needs some serious help when the pilots get into the cockpit and the first thing they do is crank up their CD player with ACDC highway to hell

The Soviets never named their planes so they adopted NATO code names when referring to to their planes. When NATO nicknamed the SU-25 the "Frogfoot" It's crews were offended. When they later learned that their Western counterparts in the A-10 community rejected the name "Thunderbolt 2" And insisted on referring to them as the "Warthog" The SU-25 crews exclaimed "Ok! Frogfoot it is!"

F-111 "Ardvarkski"

" Russian engineers were carried away and also copied everything that the landing gear were attached to " LMAO ! XD

can you provide your sources/references ?