Marine C-130 down in Miss.

I may be wrong, but it looks as though it came to rest upside down. Having jumped out the back of these many times, I think I recognize the ramp door lying bottom face up where we might expect the remains of a vertical stab. I'm not sure how they came up with remains spread over 5 miles...that makes this a bit more of a mystery to solve...

 

Will- She looks relatively intact. Wonder if the debris scattered around was lightweight material that was carried up in the fireball? Have seen that on several accidents.

 

Report I saw said it exploded in mid-air, at about 20k feet alt.

 

rest in peace.

 

Agree!

 

Taz. Agree. Destruction seen looks mostly like it's from the fire and a confined impact. I'm wondering if they actually crash landed and flipped tail over nose once ending in the filmed position, bottom up.

 

That could help explain a 5 mile debris radius, but not what we see on the video...at least not very well. Then again, it's early.

 

The following is pure speculation....

Something that immediately comes to mind is some variety of prop/gearbox failure. The fun part about having a prop come off is there is a good chance it will take out the other prop on that side and punch a big hole in the fuselage. Not necessarily gonna take down the plane but it's a pretty good way to start that direction, see pic below. There are several more pics from this sort of incident if you google it. If that happens at altitude it would easily chuck various pieces across a wide swath yet leave the majority of the aircraft in a readily identifiable pile.

Another incident which sticks vividly to the mind was where a Navy or Marine Herk had a life raft (stored below panels on the top of the wing root area) come out in flight and wrap themselves around the tail. This caused the aircraft to go into a spiraling dive and lost something like 10k feet before the life raft came off. That would leave a few panels and life rafts spread all about.

Since I'm thinking about ways to die in a C-130 there is also the fairly recent issue where some were found to have corrosion in a large bleed air pipe that ran right next to the oxygen system. That was a issue that led to some vivid mental images. Bleed air leak burns into oxygen system right in the immediate vicinity of cut off switch which would cause an out of control fire that really could be contained until the supply is depleted. Not sure how that would cause a wide debris field though.

Last but not least they might have just been carrying hazardous cargo that went bad.
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could a fan/compressor blade failure ,have cut the hyd lines and start the problems?

 

The fact that it was a tanker leads me to think that it may have had something with the refueling system.

 

I just read ,this was a ''spec-ops'' marine unit on the way from NC to S.CALI,


https://www.yahoo.com/news/least-16-dead-military-plane-123840996.html

 

Low rumbling explosion when high in the air eye witnesses.

 

Thanks for making some sense.

 

Horrible accident, whatever the cause. Aircrews sign up for the possibility of an accident, but you hate to see others get killed, too. Bad enough when only the crew dies.

Bleed air leaks are really scary if that is what happened. Almost like a blow torch when one of those lines breaks. Happened to me a couple of times, luckily with no real damage. Immediate abort both times, once on take-off with a depot repaired bird and once at Mach 1.6 during an exercise.

 

just saw this,plane broke on two just ahead of wings?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/07/28/marine-corps-grounds-cargo-plane-fleet-after-fatal-crash-that-killed-16/

 

This triggered a thought about the first B-52's had hp engine bleed air to run the alternators that were located under the forward fuselage fuel tank. That was changed after one of the turbines burst and sent hot pieces up into the tank. If I recall, 14th stage bleed air is 450+ degrees. A leaking bleed air duct can be deadly.

 

"Aboard was the team’s ammunition and supplies..."

I suspect the cause might be there...

 

There was a photo in the book "Air Force" of a B-17 laying shattered on a taxiway in England that had just blown up while waiting to take off on a WW2 bombing mission; the caption says that the explosion also took out the airplane waiting behind it. I wonder if a shift in poorly tied-down ammunition might have sparked the explosion that destroyed the C-130?