Reports of Large Air Tanker down in Australia-Jan 2020

Looked slow, perhaps a wing stalled and it went nose first.

There was an update that they made a drop at 200 feet, and while in a left turn the wing clipped a tree. The CVR was recovered, but all the data was from a previous flight, so no useful data was recovered.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Sadly as most of us suspected, this is going to be a clear case of CFIT. The video footage taken of the lead up to the crash pretty much all but proved it. What I found interesting was how long it appears the CVR wasn't functioning. The last recording was of a flight Stateside before they arrived in Australia.

Interim report on the Tanker 134 crash in Australia. The initial fire location they were supposed to drop on had serious winds, bad enough that Tanker 137, a 737, experienced uncommanded rolls up to 45 degrees, and after their drop told fire commanders they weren't going back to that location. They passed that message on to Tanker 134, as they were enroute to the same location.

Tanker 134 circled the area before deciding it was too dangerous. They were then routed to the Good Good fire, 58 km away. After their drop they were seen at a pitch attitude of 12 degrees, and a maximum of 30 degrees left bank. At the end of the video that was recorded just before their crash, the aircraft was at approximately 6 degrees right bank, and 6 degrees nose up. They then began a descent after reaching a maximum height of 330 feet. No CVR data was recorded. The last data was from a training flight at McClellan, when it appears that the inertia switch was activated, disabling the CVR. There was no checklist including checking the CVR, even though the information was displayed for the crew.

www.atsb.gov.au...]Interim report from ATSB.

a reply to: Zaphod58

What’s 151kph for one of these aircraft? Too slow, too low and Ground obscured by smoke or is that enough speed?

Looks like they turned into a 50kph tail wind, would you lose lift or power or anything with a strong wind behind you or would it push you forwards?

Tragic.

a reply to: Forensick

That was ground speed, so it was affected by any winds on the aircraft as well. The max recorded speed was 151 knots, which is roughly 174 mph. The recorded increase could easily be from the wind switching to a tail wind