C-5 crash at Dover

If indeed there were no fatalities, then they are most certainly lucky - full of fuel, etc. - Wow!

 

To quote Candy, " They can buff that out in the morning."
Ouch !

 

Wow...I'm glad no one was injured. The C5 must be built extremely well! I can't help but think that there is a healthy dose of luck there, though. I wonder what happened. Hydraulic failure, maybe? I doubt they lost the engines, but I dunno...

 

Latest reports say that the pilot reported No.2 flaming-out and " other" problems croping up that determined his turning back for an emergency landing. No fire resulted due to inert gas in the tank spaces above the fuel. GREAT to hear that! It works !
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I don't think I'll be through by mornin!

 

Wow, they were lucky as hell! It looks like the cargo broke loose and blew the nose off. Scary stuff.

 

Those fuselages aren't designed for very heavy lateral loads since they fly in a forward direction most of the time. Same for the tail section of the fuselage but they have to react higher lateral loads than the front end. It appears that the left wing dug in and whipped the airplane to the left and broke the nose and tail in the process. The cargo load could have stabilized the tendency to swerve or to swap ends..
Switchesoff

 

Here is some additional info (second hand, so take with appropriate reservations)...

 

Thanks for the insight - great story.

 

1944 in a B-24. Pilot with both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the runway. Copilot with left hand on the throttles and eyes on the instrument panel. Flight engineer behind the aisle stand calling out airspeed. 140....135.....130...130.....128.....126.....then as loud as he could ..125, 125!!! That was critical number that you did not go below. AND every body knew when it was on the airspeed indicator. Six eyes and three guys.

 

I am not familiar with the C-5 landing procedures but I have to assume that the high lift system is a powerful one like the Boeing 727 or 747; slats and double or triple slotted flaps. These systems require a lot of thrust to move them through the air to make them produce the tremendous amount of lift that they are capable of producing. On the 727 if full flaps and slats were selected you had better have all three engines at near full power to keep the bird in the air. If the C-5 had a full load( 700K plus ) and one engine out I would not think that full flaps would be a prudent thing to do even if it is allowed in the flight manual. I don't understand why the FMS would have to be re-programed but then I'm not up on the new magic. Even flaps forty takes a lot of juice to fly the profile.
I would like to be re-educated on this one.

 

Thank you, Mark. It sounds like the airplane wasn't able to maintain adequate approach speed and experienced an under-shoot due to improper flap settings for the power available. I used to teach 727 familiarization and 747 familiarization and I recall that the lift coeficient was almost doubled with full deployment of the high lift devices on a 727 but the drag went sky high and required 80 - 85% power to drive the dirty configuration through the air. I worked on the C-5 Boeing proposal in the 60's but I can't recall what Lockheed ended up with on trailing edge flaps but I think that it would be a pretty powerful design to allow operations in and out of short unimproved fields that was part of the original requirement.
I was going to contact my old bunch at Boeing PD but they are all too young to have any in-house info on the C-5. I'll try anyway.
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Mark, you have a PM

 

I had some problems with your address. It is there now.
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