B-1 makes hard (belly) landing at Diego Garcia

MKopack · by **MKopack** » 10 May 2006, 12:58

B-1 makes hard landing

By Bruce Rolfsen, Times staff writer

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.

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 won’t say why the crew landed the plane with its landing gear retracted.

During the landing, the B-1B caught fire and emergency crews extinguished the flames.

[...]

Source: http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php? ... 762951.php

elp · by **elp** » 10 May 2006, 13:29

Last month or so is bad for airframes. Yikes.

Roscoe · by **Roscoe** » 10 May 2006, 15:51

The day I (and others) were having a promotion party at the club, I noticed that nobody from my squadron was there. Needless to say I was a bit miffed so I called the ops desk...turned out a Warthog landed belly up that afternoon on our runway, and since we were the only active duty fliers on the base (Kelly AFB depot) our guys were required to support.

It was actually pretty amusing. First off, the plane was one of 4 weapon school grads on a cross country, so the pilot could not blame inexperience on his failure to lower the gear. Second, our guys noticed that the handle was down...but everything else indicated that the gear had not been commanded down. The pilot obviously pushed the handle down after ground impact to cover his A$$.

Funniest part though was the initial radio call from the SOF. Seems the plane had a travel pod with golf clubs in it and the impact crushed the pod and scattered the clubs all over the runway. Also note that the runway is close to the Kelly/Lackland golf course. So, the SOF arrived at the scene, saw the clubs, and announced over the radio "my god, we killed a golfer...everybody look for plaid"

falconfixer860261 · by **falconfixer860261** » 10 May 2006, 20:20

Roscoe wrote:The day I (and others) were having a promotion party at the club, I noticed that nobody from my squadron was there. Needless to say I was a bit miffed so I called the ops desk...turned out a Warthog landed belly up that afternoon on our runway, and since we were the only active duty fliers on the base (Kelly AFB depot) our guys were required to support.

It was actually pretty amusing. First off, the plane was one of 4 weapon school grads on a cross country, so the pilot could not blame inexperience on his failure to lower the gear. Second, our guys noticed that the handle was down...but everything else indicated that the gear had not been commanded down. The pilot obviously pushed the handle down after ground impact to cover his A$$.

Funniest part though was the initial radio call from the SOF. Seems the plane had a travel pod with golf clubs in it and the impact crushed the pod and scattered the clubs all over the runway. Also note that the runway is close to the Kelly/Lackland golf course. So, the SOF arrived at the scene, saw the clubs, and announced over the radio "my god, we killed a golfer...everybody look for plaid"

Dude - send that into Readers Digest for Humor in Uniform.

Eggroll135R · by **Eggroll135R** » 13 May 2006, 11:11

Seems $1 million dollars is a little on the low side. Back in the late '80's when a B-1 at Dyess made a nose landing gear up landing at Edwards, I thought the price tag was around $4 million to fix it...

BTW, has anyone been to Diego? I'd give my left, uh arm, to do another TDY there!!!