This article is literally repeating an article from The Sun, a tabloid with a better track record of reporting on royals caught on holiday with their knickers off.

There are a lot of covers on ports and weapons on a combat aircraft sitting on the flight deck, the implication is that it was the inlet covers, which is impossible, the engine wouldn't have operated with those on and they are kind of obvious. It's much more likely this was a cover on something like a pitot tube or AoA sensor.

It's also possible that something just blew off the deck and it had nothing at all to do with crash, The Sun is reporting on some hot tip from the shipboard rumor mill, not the Ministry of Defense.

I thought it might be some other (non-engine) cover too, but the more I thought about it, the less likely that seemed. I seriously doubt a pilot would eject just because of a lack of airspeed indication, for example. The airplane is still flying, and if the pilot knows the airplane well they can still land it.

It's probably not too much of a conjecture to assume that these fit in front of the stator vanes and would be effectively supported by them, so would not come in contact with the the rotating turbine blades. Even if the turbine blades could create a vacuum, the maximum pressure it would have to hold is 14 pounds per square inch bridged between the vanes. I'd also guess that "cheap" is relative and they are using something between high-end commerical and engineering-grade plastic (still way cheap compared to the composites on the aircraft), and that this could withstand the pressures for at least the few seconds/minutes it took to fire it up and toss it in the drink.

I'm more surprised that they didn't notice it in firing up the engines - don't they run it briefly to full throttle as part of their checks? Seems it would at least sound badly off-tune, but what do I know...

Major fck-up all around...

None of it makes any sense at all.. there's no way one of those covers can stay on during engine startup without a million warning lights going crazy in the cockpit, there's no way the cover could possibly not get ingested during an engine runup.

And this was a carrier takeoff, so the engines would have been held at maximum thrust prior to launching off a catapult and possibly would have been run at afterburner as well. The inlet flow for that would develop far more than 14psi as the volume of air ingested is enormous. The mass of air ingested is measure in tons per second.

I think this is just incompetent journalists. Not that I've ever done pre-flight on an F-35 but there are probably MANY protective covers that have to be removed during preflight.

It most likely was another cover left on which did not impede takeoff but threw the systems for a loop after takeoff and the pilot wasn't well trained enough to figure out an emergency procedure on such short notice.

>The inlet flow for that would develop far more than 14psi as the volume of air ingested is enormous.

The max difference is 14 psi because that's atmospheric pressure.

Yes, this does make little sense at all

If it is actually a full inlet cover, there will be _zero_ airflow, so just < 14psi pressure on the cover. (I was just answering how it could avoid being ingested if it was a full cover.)

If it is some other smaller cover on some auxiliary inlet, it might make more sense, as it could definitely screw up the sensors, airflow, whatever, and not get ingested.

I'm sure we'll all be really interested to see what really happened, 'tho I'm not sure we ever will.

> this was a carrier takeoff, so the engines would have been held at maximum thrust prior to launching off a catapult

This plane uses vertical take-off.

HMS Queen Elizabeth doesn't have a catapult.

Which of course means the engine had to have been at full thrust.

I doubt you'd be able to get up to full thrust with the covers on though. If it wouldn't be sucked in and shredded/burned (in which case it wouldn't be seen floating in the sea), it wouldn't be possible to get the amount of airflow you ned to get it up to full thrust for takeoff.

I agree this whole story is conjecture.. And a cover floating in the sea doesn't mean it would have had anything to do with this plane.

Agreed. In the past, people have been sucked into the intake of jets on a carrier, I don't think a canvas rain cover is going to be able to block the intake. At worst maybe it'll scratch up the blades on the way through. Hell, I half expect the covers are designed exactly so they aren't substantial enough to damage the engine if they get sucked in by accident.

Not a stupid question. The explanation doesn't make sense, for many reasons. A large one being the sheer number of people who would have to be blind to a red cover over the engine intake that they all know is not supposed to be there.