B-52 crash on Guam-May 2016

a reply to: Zaphod58

Would location have anything to do with it? Not nearly as many places to divert if something goes wrong.

a reply to: Zaphod58


Maybe too much flying wildlife getting sucked into the engines on Guam?

a reply to: Bfirez

Guam is a good place for them, because they have the infrastructure from Vietnam for heavy bombers. That keeps them from having to build new infrastructure elsewhere. But once you get out in the Pacific, there aren't a lot of places to go if you're in trouble.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Makes one think all those pilots in the pacific theater in WWII had balls made of titanium.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Is it possible that the fire was the reason for the aborted take off? Also, do these craft not have on board fire suppression systems?

a reply to: TrueBrit

They have them in the engines, but depending on the cause of the fire it might not be able to put it out. Engine fires are pretty rare too. If the fire started somewhere else, they wouldn't have anyway to put it out. And it's entirely possible the fire started during the takeoff roll.

Guam Public Affairs is reporting it as a crash, so I'm assuming that they at least got airborne and then came down on the ramp, from fairly low altitude, and skidded across the ramp.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Atleast they got out, any clarifications on how though? Eject or not?

a reply to: Bfirez

The upper deck crew could eject, but the lower deck would require something like 500 feet to safely get out. That's why I'm assuming they didn't get high, and came down hard on the ramp and skidded. They aircraft had to come to a stop fairly intact for the lower deck guys to get out ok.

a reply to: Zaphod58

To me the pictures seem to indicate it was the skid scenario.

a reply to: Bfirez

That was the first thing that made me think that. Aircraft don't end up that intact unless it was a post abort fire, or they weren't very high. The B-2 that went down was entirely recognizable as a B-2 after they put the fire out.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Wasn't that some sort of input error, the computer thought it needed to pitch up at an extremely high AOA erroneously?

a reply to: Bfirez

They didn't turn the pitot heat on, so the ADC calibrated wrong. It read fast and nose low on takeoff.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Always seems to be some problem with the Pitot tubes. That's what screwed Air France 447 too, and also poor situation awareness by the crew.

a reply to: Bfirez

That was more poor crew coordination than anything else. They easily could have saved that airplane, but they failed to follow training. That was also a fairly unique situation in that they shouldn't have seen freezing on the tubes, except it was an odd type of rain.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Was their not some news recently about a new type of pitot tube, or a different way of measuring airspeed for the onboard computer? I thought I remember reading something about that around here.

a reply to: Zaphod58

A "well done" to the crew for getting out.I imagine it's an awful decision,dumping the 'plane-I wouldn't like to make it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Phew!

Well, at least there was no loss of life! I wonder what could have caused it then? Electrical short? Fuel leak? Combination of the two? I will await any further detail with interest!

Slightly off topic, but i used to live in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia in the 80s and we lived near the old airport which was used as an airbase. Every single day at the same time, a B-52 would come screaming over our house. You could hear it coming for a minute before it arrived and it made the house rattle. I was only a kid but i remember the thick black plumes of smoke coming out of all its engines because no other plane has that. I used to run outside to look at it every single day.

Shame about the crash. Amazing plane.

Time to dust off another BUFF in the Boneyard...

a reply to: Barnalby

Zaph and I were talking about that yesterday. He's probably got a pic of the replacement bird yesterday on his tour.