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| B-1 makes wheels up landing at Diego Garcia |
| 2006-05-10 |
| A B-1B Lancer made a wheels-up belly landing at Diego Garcia Monday, skidding down the runway for 7,500 feet, according to Air Force reports. The four-person aircrew escaped from the plane. The B-1B was home based with the 7th Bomb Wing, Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one. The 20-year-old bomber was landing at Diego Garcia, a remote base in the Indian Ocean, at the end of a ferry mission that started at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The Air Force wonÂ’t say why the crew landed the plane with its landing gear retracted. They drew the short straw. During the landing, the B-1B caught fire and emergency crews extinguished the flames. Because damage estimates are more than $1 million, separate Air Force accident and safety investigation boards will look for the cause of the accident. Under a million and they just ignore the whole thing? Production of the supersonic bombers ended in the mid-1980s. With inflation taken into account, today the planes would cost more than $283 million each. I saw one on e-bay for a lot less than that. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #11 We had a series of accidents (eight in 13 months) at Holloman in the late 1960's, including one wheels-up landing with an F-4 (a possum climbed into the nose-wheel well at night, not spotted when the bird took off). Standard procedure is foam the runway, have every crash vehicle standing by, and pray. Worked for the guys at Holloman, and obviously worked for the B-1 crew. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-05-10 21:08 |
| #10 Dyess AFB [mod note: please learn to do links, 'kay?] |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2006-05-10 19:28 |
| #9 Back in the 1980's an Egyptian C-130 closed Bermuda's national airport for weeks after it was stuck on the runway after a wheels up landing. (word has it that they FERGOT! to put em down) Not go That is why there are checklists. But it does not mean that the crew was incompetent: during a landing involving a very heavy storm (the company lied to the crew about the weather), a landing circuit usnuaually short (ie the workload was bigger than usual), the crew of an american liner forgot the line of the check list about arming the spoilers. Meaning that brakes had no effect since only 20% of its wight was on the wheels, the reamining 80% was being taken off by the lift generated by the wings. The plane went out of the lane and many died. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-05-10 17:43 |
| #8 |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-05-10 17:38 |
| #7 I only care that the four walked away clean. Let's get some new equipment for these folks, damn it. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-05-10 17:29 |
| #6 When I was at Travis AFB in the mid 80's, some lucky pilot landed wheels up on a C-5. Forgot to put them down. Needless to say the Wing Commander and Base Commander were pissed. A C-5 pilot neighbor of mine said the crew had been doing touch and go's that day and ignored the audible warning in the cockpit. I'm pretty sure his flying days were over. |
| Posted by: texhooey 2006-05-10 16:36 |
| #5 Gear up landings: those that have and those that will. The key to avoiding this is tight crew coordination (drill drill drill) and religiously adhering to the Landing Checklist. You can go through the motions and put the gear lever down, but you HAVE to see those three Green lights that tell you that the gear is Down AND Locked. I wonder if fatigue had anything to do with it. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2006-05-10 16:33 |
| #4 Only one runway on DG. I hope the airfield is back up soon. Back in the 1980's an Egyptian C-130 closed Bermuda's national airport for weeks after it was stuck on the runway after a wheels up landing. (word has it that they FERGOT! to put em down) Not good. |
| Posted by: Hupomons Omase5417 2006-05-10 15:46 |
| #3 Aviation mishaps are investigated by different folks seperated by dollar thresholds. I'm not sure what the exact amounts are for the Air Force but low costing mishaps can be investigated by a safety officer from the unit, larger dollar amounts mean higher up the chain of command goes the investigation. It sounds like the million dollar mark is is where it becomes a class A misshap and where big Air Force steps in to run the investigation. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-05-10 14:52 |
| #2 The Air Force wonÂ’t say why the crew landed the plane with its landing gear retracted. Journalists are idiots. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-05-10 14:48 |
| #1 Comments on the in-line: 1) Any landing where you can reuse the airplane is a great one. 2)a) anybody can land on the rollers and b) really hard to get a B-1 to hold a hover long enough to pull the gar down by hand. 3)No longer front line sexy, not with F22 on the ramp and the JSF warming up. 4) was that the 'buy it now? feature???? Seriously, bringing something that big down and keeping it more or less toether until all the grinding stops AND be able to escape with all body parts together took a lot of skill, some amount of luck and the real Copilot was obviously on board! |
| Posted by: USN, ret. 2006-05-10 14:31 |