E-6B damaged in hangar accident

An E-6B Mercury being pulled from the hangar at Tinker suffered significant damage last week. The aircraft tail hit the hangar beside the upper cutout. Pictures from the hangar show the front of the tail against the front of the hangar, and the base of the tail displaced from the fuselage.





The incident is, obviously, a Class A, meaning over $2M in damage was done to the aircraft. It's not yet clear what other damage was done, or how long the aircraft will be down.

www.military.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Must have borrowed the pilots from Stratolaunch.

Other than being trained to jump from an Aircraft I have next to no knowledge of them so try not to laugh at the following question. How in the hell can that damage be estimated at 2 million dollars?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Ouch.....

So question.

Normally who is responsible for gettting the tail in the notch? And how much trouble are they in and whoever else in charge is in?

Missed it by THAT much...

The damage was probably structural and affected the entire rear end of the internals. That's the reason, I'm guessing, for the high price tag. Not sure if they added on the cost to make the garage door wider up there.

a reply to: Anathros

Because the entire vertical fin is probably going to have to be replaced. At a minimum the top, where the HF antenna is needs to be cut off and replaced, and at least one of the two attachment points at the bottom. I'm fairly sure that the attachment point can't be just replaced though.

Expensive mishaps were a very daily thing during my four years in the Navy.

I vividly remember one time when they stuck me on the ASROC missile loading crane and there I was with zero experience loading a missile and the crane began to malfunction and dangerously start to shake the missile while I running the crane.

Another time as we were loading torpedoes, we dropped one on the deck because my wimpy body just couldn't handle the massive weight. (yes they actually did this by hand believe it or not)

a reply to: Maverick7

Probably. And it'll probably need a new fin because of the damaged attachment point.

a reply to: grey580

The tug operator primarily, with the wing walkers having at least some responsibility.

a reply to: anzha

It looks like the tug stopped, and the driver put it in low and punched it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Meh looks fine to me Just back up and do it again and off it goes!
I know and knew a lot of people working at Tinker and wouldn’t be surprised if someone was drunk or super hungover during the incident.
But accidents do happen and I hate jumping to that conclusion.

Man...

One of my nightmares is having a repaired vertical stabilizer back in service.

Is it really well done. the repair ....Zaph ? Tail fin....the most important..... I wonder they weld high grade steel....naw not steel, huh....

a reply to: Zaphod58

Should have had a tail walker to make certain the tail went in the big horking hole it was meant to.

Without a close up look, my guess is a complete swap out for new, can't imagine any engineer signing off for those as ttachment pts being good after that.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Tow supervisor, his trainer and the flight cheif will take the hit IMHO. The tug driver can't see the tail should have been a tail walker with a hand opetated air horn to warn if it even got close

a reply to: Allaroundyou

I've actually heard from people there what happened, but won't say until it's officially released. It was a stupid mistake.

a reply to: GBP/JPY

They'll most likely replace the entire fin based on the pictures. They have some 707 fins in the Boneyard they can use.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Yeah that was my thinking too. The only way the tail shifted that far is for the front attachment point to have broken. That's not something I'd want to risk repairing.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I texted two friends there but was only told that they will get back to me about it when they can. Good little worker bees they are.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

I actually saw the pictures a couple hours after it happened, but they vanished pretty quick. You can get in a lot of trouble if you speak out of turn about an accident.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I knew they wouldn’t have told me about the specifics or really anything about it. I just wanted to let them know that I would be interested to know when they could speak about. I do really look forward to hearing more about this as I can’t remember the last time something like has happened.