B-52 drops engine near Minot

A B-52 flying a training mission suffered an engine mount failure approximately 25 miles northeast of Minot AFB. The aircraft landed safely with no injuries to the crew. A UH-1N was sent from the base and recovered engine debris.

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — An engine dropped out of a B-52 bomber during a training flight on Wednesday, the Air Force has confirmed following questions from Defense News.

www.defensenews.com...

I have done engine mount pin inspection before to check for corrosion then sprayed the pin with molycote, it is kind of like a metal grease. Most engines are only held on with two pins a fwd and rear one so if one fails the other can't take the strain, I assume this is what happened in this instance.

a lot of things start to drop when your around 60 years old...

a reply to: Jinn82

Most likely. It's interesting only the one separated. Usually when one goes, it gets pushed over into the other and both go.

I can't help it Zaph, I can't help it! Please forgive me!!

a reply to: Zaphod58

Heh, all the times I've flown, I've always worried that I'd look out the window only to see one of the engines suddenly gone.

a reply to: eriktheawful

The nice thing about the B-52 is they have 7 more.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Just thinking about people on the ground:

"Honey? Did you get the car washed?"

"Yep! Went ahead and waxed it too! Car looks gr--"

CRASH!

"oh crap."

In 1963 here in South Carolina, we had "maneuvers" as the older people called it. The official name for it was Swift Strike 2. There were over 250,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all in this area of about seven or eight counties. Every now and again a blue pick-up would pull up in front of our house, it being air force, an airman or two would open up canvas sides and start calling someone on the radios. Being an inquisitive 9 year old, I axed who they were talking to. One of the airmen would say something like "stand there for a few minutes and you will see".

You would hear them many minutes before they arrived. Three sometimes four B-52s would come rumbling over - right over our town. AT&T had recently built a 500 foot microwave tower right in the middle of town and I kid you not - the B-52 that was flying over the tower would have to lift his wing to clear the tower. Needless to say, I as a small kid was impressed with the firepower that was displayed during that summer. I will never forget that summer!

a reply to: eriktheawful

www.dailymail.co.uk...

a reply to: NightFlight

They lost a number of B-52s doing low level runs. They were designed for high altitude penetration of Soviet airspace. When they changed to a low altitude mission, the aircraft wasn't stressed for the forces they took, and they found the vertical fin would fail. They had to redesign parts of it for the higher stress loads.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Shrapnel from the sky!

Scary stuff.

a reply to: [post=21717986]Zaphod58[/poah, the engines I work on are modern day ones where the pins are on the center line so if it fails it should theoretically not move sideways before the other pin fails, and that is set to fail if the other fails, not sure about older engines though, maybe they got lucky.

a reply to: eriktheawful

It's pretty rare for parts to actually hit something like that, but yeah, it can be pretty scary when it happens.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Nowadays on the newer aircraft all services are cut off to the engine if that happens, so even if one pin is holding it, fuel, Hyds, generators are cut off, and also the pilot can do that by pulling the fire handle

Ohhh. want a B52 engine on display in my yard. Why didn't it fall off and land in MY back yard. I'd cover it with a tarp so it looked like a woodpile till they quit looking for it.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: eriktheawful

The nice thing about the B-52 is they have 7 more.

Wonder what the glide distance is on one of those beasties

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: Zaphod58

Shrapnel from the sky!

Scary stuff.

Like the time the airforce dropped a nuke from 15000 feet, can you imagine that panick on the ground! Thank god it didnt have the core in it!

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

Depends on altitude and the speed of the aircraft at the time. Medium to high altitude you're going to see some distance.

a reply to: Jinn82

There was no time to try anything but pulling the ejection handles. Once the vertical fin went they went out of control and immediately went down. Several crews went down with the aircraft it was so fast.