Comments on: B-52 Crash

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:48:30 +0000

Bryan, the B52-D could (and did) make it back to base with only four engines. The B52-G when used in Operation Linebacker never could, their crews always ended up having to bail because the plane would try to go into a spin if they applied full power to the remaining four engines. The shorter tail and lack of ailerons on the B52G/H wrecked havoc with the ability to control the plane in that scenario. (Note that the B52H is identical to the G with the exception of its engines, which are turbofans rather than turbojets).

The life preservers are water-activated and do not require any action on the part of the flight crew to deploy them. The flock of birds scenario is certainly possible. If they were banking on a go-round at under 1,000 feet and a flock of birds took out even two engines at the exact wrong time (when the bank angle was, say, 30 degrees), you end up sliding sideways into the drink similar to Czar-52 before the other turbines have a chance to spin up and get you out of that situation because you can’t increase lift on the down wing via deploying ailerons to keep the jet from continuing its bank past 45 degrees — you don’t have any on a B52-H. The Buff would slam into the water wing first and break up into little pieces as the rest of the plane pivoted on the wing.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:20:48 +0000

They have released the crew list and the sixth person was a flight surgeon, a Colonel, who would have been logging his flight time, so you know they weren’t messing around.

As long as they have dropped their load and have four engines, one of which on the other wing, they can land normally.

All I can think off is they were flying low and hit a flock of birds taking out multiple engines and there wasn’t time to recover.

Since they recovered two bodies with their life preservers deployed it sounds like they ditched and broke up when they hit the water.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:53:33 +0000

Indeed, very strange. B-52’s have lost entire engine pods (two engines) without a problem, indeed one Buff’s engine pod came down through the roof of a church near my home in North Louisiana once (whee!). Regarding why six were on-board, the extra two people were likely passengers (the usual crew on this sort of trip is four, because while it only takes three people to fly the plane, an extra set of hands sometimes come in handy). One of the “perks” of being a top commander in the Air Farce is that you get to take joy-rides in the passenger seat (former gunner’s seat) of a B-52 whenever you feel like it. In this case, however, it turned deadly :-(.

Most previous B-52 crashes have occurred because the pilot was “stunting” the plane — flying it beyond its parameters. The B-52G/H in particular, with their shorter tail and lack of aelerons, are not very “stuntable”, they are easily stalled, lack of aelerons means no means of generating more lift on the “down” wing to pull it back up, and their shorter tail is incapable of providing sufficient force to haul the tail around to get out of the stall. Another source says that this crew was practicing for their flyover when they went down, shades of Czar-52. But if there were six people on board, this tends to indicate that the pilot had a good reputation — the reason why Czar-52 (which crashed in 1994) had only four people on board, and all four were high-ranked officers in the air wings involved with the air show, is that each of these officers refused to have any of the men under their command fly with Bud Holland as the pilot because they knew Bud was dangerous and instead took the danger upon themselves, this was supposed to be Bud’s last flight before retirement and they were afraid he was going to do something dangerous. That does not appear to have been the case here.

So I’m as puzzled as you right now as to what really happened. Given the facts it seems very unlikely that this B52 was “stunting”. On the other hand, it’s damned hard to take down one of these big Buffs with anything short of stunting — some of the B52D’s in Vietnam made it back to base with half of a wing shot off with no real problems (albeit granted the “D” had aelerons and the tall tail to help there).

– Badtux the Flightless Penguin