KC-135 crashed in Kyrgyzstan.

Looks like a KC-135 went down in Kyrgyzstan. Initial eyewitness reports say the jet was on fire then exploded and fell to the ground in three pieces. As far as I know none of my old squadron mates were involved. A very bad week in aviation.

 

Any word on where the plane/crew was out of? Who deploys to Manas these days?

 

Reports of USAF KC-135 crashing near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

McConnell according the tail.

 

Here where I live we see McConnell 135's flying into town for touch and gos all of the time. Very sad day.

 

Looking at the seventh photo down, it shows both main landing gears still in the retracted position. In the background I think I can see part of the wing/body fairing. It looks like that part of the airplane impacted flat in a vertical descent. The last photo shows the boom and the ninth shows a strut and engine cowling. I can see the over-wing and under-wing strut attach forgings and again it looks like they were not moving forward very much when they hit. Strange. The photo showing the MLG is looking aft. In the background a part of the trailing edge fairing (Area B) can be seen. First photo is the vertical fin, farther down in the string of photos you can see the starboard outboard wing and aileron with a fuel vent stringer in the forward part. The photo of the strut and engine appear that it was separated from the airplane before it hit the ground , like it landed flat as a separate chunk. The rest of the airplane is spread all over the place.

 

In the comments of the link a person claims that eye witnesses said the plane was flying low and burning. It exploded in midair and fell in three main pieces... Very odd.

 

Why do people in second and third world countries feel the need to climb on aircraft wrecks?

 

I ran into one of our maintainers this afternoon. He said they looked up the mx history of the jet and saw no red flags. Also it was an active duty crew from Fairchild AFB. Hearing about a crash of an aircraft that you flew for 20 years really is tough.

 

Flat spin, perhaps? It resembles the wreckage of the BOAC 707 that crashed near Mt. Fuji in the mid-60s after a freak mountain gust knocked over the vertical tail, and the resultant aerodynamic upset caused progressive structual failure. The aircraft crashed with almost no forward speed and there was no fire, but all on board were killed by the impact.

 

After reading some posts on Linkedin, it appears that the Russians and Chinese have been pressuring the government in Kyrgyzstan to get the US out of the region, so there is a good chance that maybe the airplane was sabotaged. KC-135's don't catch fire and explode. It has never happened in 50 years.

 

Curiosity but also sometimes a little FU to the most powerful country in the world just because they can....

 

Watching the local news from Spokane WA today and it's been confirmed that the plane and crew is from Fairchild AFB.

 

Not limited to them... first world also. Any kid anywhere would, given the opportunity.

Human nature.

 

I think part of that is just their posturing to get more $ from the US. They play the US off the Russians and make a fake conflict.

 

Russia gave them a couple hundred million and the Chinese just offered , or gave them, 1 billion. It's all beyond me so I shouldn't comment.

 

I wanna say that I read an article a few months back that we gave them 2 billion for continued use of the base for some amount of time that I can't recall right now. It's really sickening but I suppose it might be cheaper than some of the other options if we are going to continue making A-Stan a national priority.

 

Tuff older airplane. These airplanes will be almost 100 years old by the time the KC-46 has finished production. Assuming we can afford the KC-46 in significant #'s.

 

You bring up an interesting point about the AF and new airplanes. When we bought the KC-135 we bought 82 per year! Also remember we were getting a bunch of B-52s C-141s T-38s plus several types of fighters. The AF has tried for a long time to get some new tankers. As of now there will be 179 KC-46 delivered by 2028.

 

Bob-I enjoy reading your posts and I know how much aviaion experience you have under your belt, but I feel that I need to correct you on your comment. While catching fire in flight is rare, in flight explosions are not new for the -135's.

There have actually been at least 3 KC-135's to explode in-flight, with one of most widely known occurring in 1989 at Loring AFB, Maine. The airplane was returning to Loring AFB, Maine after an early morning refueling refueling mission over Canada when it's exploded in flight, not far from the base. Upon investigation, they found that a hydraulically driven aft body fuel tank pump was operating without fuel in the tank (the fuel was used to cool the pump) overheated, and caused fuel vapors in the tank to explode. The AF gounded the fleet and implemented a change where we were required to keep a minimum amount of fuel in the tank.

As a prior boom operator myself, this latest crash hit pretty close to home for me. I've flown several missions in and out of Manas and I can only pray that the crew had no idea what happened and it was over quickly.

 

This is the crew that was lost....
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Thanks, 10boom, for updating me. I stand corrected. I worked on the very first Model 717 design in 1954-57 and prepared many installation drawings and did a three dimensional structural illustration of the entire wing. I lived with that airplane for 5 years got to know it from stem to stern and I guess that I am pretty proud of it. I should have figured some things out like the pump incident because there were other things similar to that like the engine mounted hydraulic pumps with seals that deteriorated and contaminated the entire hydraulic system. many other problems that were fixed but over all the KC-135 is one fine airplane.
Thanks again for correcting me.

 

It's a great airplane. A testament to the way we used to make things. I have many fond memories of passing gas in that airplane.......no pun intended.

 

The AF went through several operational procedures and automatic pump shut off systems to prevent this. The final solution was to replace the pumps with pumps that are cooled with hydraulic fluid instead of fuel, these pumps (the foward and aft body AR pumps) have always been hydraulically powered and are the only 4 pumps that can be used to off load fuel. The center wing pumps are electrically driven. I was at Eielson when one of the KC-135 blew up on the ground because of one of these pumps.

 

Jim, you opened up a memory of KC-135 pump problems that I was involved in fixing. A general flew a KC into Renton and demanded an immediate fix to a chronic problem of hydraulic fluid contamination. I went to work on a Friday and that afternoon I was assigned to work with an engineer to make a fix. I got home the following Monday. We worked through the weekend non stop to reroute the pump output lines through the strut and into the fuel tanks where they were coiled to cool in the fuel. Electrical wiring stuff had to be added, changed, and rerouted. I was making the drawing changes as he was doing the redesign. The problem was with the hydraulic pump that operated as long as the engine was running, it couldn't be shut down. Output fluid was run through a bypass loop when there was no demand. Unbelievably, the shaft seals were leather and if I remember correctly the pump was a Vickers pump and the seals were being destroyed rather fast and sluffing off leather junk into the system. The pump manufacturer refused to do anything about it, assuming that they were the only source. BUT we went to Kellog and I think an outfit called Iron Fireman. Kellog said that they had a pump with variable output and that it could be run in a neutral mode and it had nylon seals. You know what the company did , I think. That was a long weekend working with a guy named Wayne Huntsburger who passed away last year. Helluva nice guy and a good engineer.