Travis AFB KC-10 boom falls in hay field

A Travis KC-10, flying near Mountain Home AFB in Idaho, had the boom fall off in flight. It landed in a hay field in the area, with fortunately no damage or injuries. The aircraft was flying in support of Gunfighter Flag at the time.

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a reply to: Zaphod58

Oooops....I wouldn't want to be on the maintenance crew that serviced that part of the aircraft last....or the inspector.

a reply to: HarryJoy

I got a look at a closeup picture and it looks like the bolt snapped. So either something happened between inspections to damage it, which is unlikely, or something was missed at the last NDI.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Ok... as you said at least no one got hurt and that's by far the most important thing and maybe it was the wrong grade bolt or a defective bolt. Accidents do happen it's just the nature of the beast when we have systems as complex as they are it's inevitable that failures will occur. It's actually a miracle that things don't happen more often.

Must be the toilets again...

a reply to: HarryJoy

As old and hard used as the tankers are, you're right, it is a miracle, and a testament to the maintenance crews.

just as a " what if "

what if the boom link failed while it was connected to a recieving aircraft ???

would the recievers disengage cams have the leverage to eject the connector with the mass of the boom dangling from thiem .

or would it be eject and let the mess crash ?

has there been a actual incident where a aircraft taking on fuel parted with the brocken mechanism still attached to them ?

a reply to: ignorant_ape

No there hasn't been. The few incidents where the boom has separated previously have happened during the initial lowering for the boom checks before the receivers got there.

As for failing while hooked up, the odds are that it would fall and hit the receiver aircraft, as well as ripping the boom out of the receptacle. So pretty much wait until you're clear of the tanker and pray you can get out.

a reply to: Zaphod58 Wonder if they had to do a emergency break away and then it separated due to damage in the maneuver?That happened a few times when I was active,but I don`t recall any damage occurring.

A failure happens at its weakest point so either something has jammed or overloaded the boom or the bolt had a wear failure or an inbuilt flaw.

a reply to: Blackfinger

I'm betting it had evidence of internal cracking showing on the last NDI, but they missed it. It's a pretty clean break though. I might be able to get my laptop to play with the pictures better than my phone so I'll try to post it.

Looking at the bigger pictures, it looks like the whole gimbal may have seized and broken, instead of it breaking at the fork.

Dry bearings or bushes..Thats not good....Sometimes pressure washers are too powerful and penetrate the bearing seals pushing out the grease and turning whats left to well yuck..

The aircraft was preparing to refuel a group of F-15s that were flying for the exercise. They were still between 10 and 15 minutes from hookup. The boom operator was doing his pre-hookup checks when it separated.

Lucky escape in this case and some forensics no doubt underway right now to pin down the exact cause and avoid a repeat in anymore of the fleet.

The RAF here are still completing talks to dual fit some more of our Voyagers (A330's) with the ARBS boom as well as the Probe / drogue setup to allow tanking for all aircraft in the UK inventory as we've got Rivet's , C17's and P8's soon which arrive as per US specs rather than probed-up as we prefer to use.

Tanker mishaps are never fun, been on a Chinook many years ago when a drogue fractured as the pilots captured it, had to swap to the other tanker pod for some juice but the pilot was happily telling us we were all cleaning the fuel of his nice clean heli when he dropped us off!

Oh man, I love a good TFOA report. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. Old aircraft and new aircraft are scary.

a reply to: cosmania

Some of the jokes about it were pretty good. "Boom B/R." "Dammit Carl!" "Boom intermittently becomes disconnected in flight." "Probably CND it."

Wow.... would hate to be in that maintenance squadron..

Heck we got yelled at for a navy screw up when they flew back as a unicorn(yes our supervision sucked, they almost made rimpac not fun)... couldnt imagine the fallout from the boom falling off.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Depends on what the cause turns out to be. It's possible it was something out of their control, like it just came back from PDM and they screwed up.

Oops indeed! During my 15 years at Travis in the 80s & 90s, we went through such a bad string of dropped objects (wheel/tire assys, wing panels, petal doors..BIG oops!) that it resulted in the 60th MAW being ignominiously renamed the 60th Bomb Wing for a while...not a fun time on the ramp! Very glad to see that no one was hurt in this latest incident.