USAF MC-12 and National Cargo 747-400F crash in Afghanistan

Originally posted by Zaphod58
I won't post it out of respect, but the crash was caught on video. At one point the aircraft rolled inverted, and started falling. The crew got the aircraft back upright, and the nose down, which is the proper response to a stall, but just ran out of sky.

Yeah, the video is out there on a few sites now, including Military.com.

Horrible to watch.

Here's a vid of a Navy C-2 that had cargo come loose on catapult shot from a carrier. Watching the 747 reminded me of the same thing. The vid here is one they like to use in naval aviation training in discussions about CG and its effects on flyability.

www.youtube.com...

How many died, isn't a 747 capacity around 200?

And where is the footage?

Originally posted by below
How many died, isn't a 747 capacity around 200?

And where is the footage?

There's another thread that has the vid. Just look it up.

This 747 was equipped for cargo, so the staffing would be minimal (I believe 7 in this case). Probably no passengers since it was a cargo-configured.

reply to post by below


The 747 capacity in passenger configuration is higher than 200. This was a freighter, which usually carries two crews depending on how far they're flying, which means 7-8 is usually the max they carry, unless someone deadheads with them.

reply to post by antar


It was a good question, so no worries. I try not to speculate on what may have been human error, until I have more information. If the cargo shifted, that means that (usually) three people had to miss that the chains weren't secured properly, one of which was the loadmaster, who was on the plane at the time of the crash. Loadmasters are usually pretty good about double checking cargo, as their butt is on the line too since they fly on the plane with the cargo and crew.

There are several mechanical reasons, but going by the video I'm almost 100% certain we can rule out the Taliban claims of shooting it down. There was no obvious damage to the plane, no signs of fire, or other obvious mechanical problems. It looked just like the witnesses said. It pitched up, rolled left, looked like they tried to recover, it rolled past level right, they recovered from that and got the nose down to pick up airspeed, and slammed into the ground. The crew did everything they could, and did it all right, they just didn't have enough sky.

reply to post by Zaphod58



What really fries me is that if the 747 was carrying the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders on a uso visit it would be all over the media. This is barely mentioned.

reply to post by k21968


www.airforcetimes.com...

The Army times has the same basic article.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Thank you , I saw where it was in your post after I replied. I have edited my reply and send you my sincere apologies.

i've checked every u.s. military website mentioned by responders to the op. the aircraft that crashed was a mc-12 liberty. there is no mention of a 747 anywhere.

reply to post by Lawgiver


It was a National Air Cargo 747-428. It'll come up on a standard Google or YouTube search. I just prefer to not have it posted here out of respect for the families involved. The crew did everything perfectly, and if they had been a couple thousand feet higher, they land at Bagram after dumping fuel.

Fightglobal.com and theaviationist.com also talk about it. I'm not sure they have the video though.

reply to post by Zaphod58


you are correct. i just found several more articles, all are reporting as 7 dead. my error. very sad.

Killed in the crash were:

Pilots Brad Hasler and Jeremy Lipka, First Officer Rinku Summan, First Officer Jamie Brokaw, Loadmaster Michael Sheets, and mechanics Gary Stockdale, and Timothy Garret. All but Timothy Garret were from Michigan, he was from Kentucky. Brad Hasler was the father of two children, with a third on the way. No word from the other crew families.

The investigation will be led by the Afghan Ministry of Transportation and Commercial Aviation, with a three man NTSB team, the FAA, and Boeing working along side them.

At least one source talked about departure procedures from Bagram Air Base, which includes climbing at the maximum climb angle that you can, for as long as you can, to try to get altitude as fast as possible, instead of a more gentle climb at higher speed, which makes the aircraft easier to control. A max performance climb would be harder on the cargo, and more likely to cause a cargo shift.

Maintenance tech Gary Stockdale told his brother, at least once, that he would die in a ball of fire. His brother reported that he told him he would either "die in a car crash, or a ball of flame in a plane."

reply to post by Zaphod58


Crap, those last few seconds of their lives must have been, "This is it".

One positive about this is that they died in their boots.

That may seem harsh, but in a world where I have seen so much suffering regardless of what the people did in their lives, at least they did not die in a hospital bed or worse a retirement home being mistreated by underpaid and unsympathetic orderlies.

May they rest in peace and always be remembered for the positive things they did, not the mistakes made if that is what this turns out to be.

reply to post by antar


I agree. I would rather go out like that, and have a few seconds of knowing I was going to die, than to take years to go, and die without knowing my family and friends finally. At least they were doing what they loved.

There's an animation out that shows what may have happened with a cargo shift, but it's flawed, in that it says that after the nose pitched up, the engines stalled. When the nose pitches up like that, the wings stall, not the engines. The engines will still be producing power, and operating normally, but the angle of attack of the wing is so great that the air can no longer flow over it, and it stops generating lift.

Very basic flight physics. If you look at a wing, the top portion is curved, and the bottom is flatter. As the plane starts rolling down the runway, the air going over the top of the wing has to flow faster than the air over the bottom, which creates a pressure differential. The air under the wing pushes up, which pushes the wing up, which lifts the aircraft with it.

As you climb, the angle of the wing, relative to the airflow changes. This is known as the Angle of Attack, or AoA. You can only increase this so far, before air stops flowing over the wing, and starts swirling off the top of it. Once this happens, the wing stops producing lift, and you enter what's known as a stall. To correct a stall, you have to recognize it and almost immediately push the nose down. This gets the wing back to where it's producing lift again, and increases your speed (most stalls are the result of a slow speed climbing situation).

Depending on how far you have to push the nose down, you build your speed up, then gently pull back on the stick to bring the nose up again. Now with the departure from Bagram, you're already getting close to a stall, as when you get airborne, you pull your nose up to about the maximum that the aircraft can handle. If the load shifted to the back, that would force the nose to go up farther, which would put the aircraft into a stall condition. The engines would still be operating at whatever thrust setting the throttles were set to, and producing thrust, but the wings wouldn't be producing lift. At the altitude the aircraft was at, a stall condition is almost always fatal. You have much less time to react to a stall than if they were even 2-3000 feet higher, and if you can't immediately get the nose down and the wings back to a lift producing angle, you have absolutely no time left to react and recover.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by Lawgiver

 

It was a National Air Cargo 747-428. It'll come up on a standard Google or YouTube search. I just prefer to not have it posted here out of respect for the families involved. The crew did everything perfectly, and if they had been a couple thousand feet higher, they land at Bagram after dumping fuel.

Maybe, maybe not - if the cargo did shift and put the CoG outside limits then they were doomed.

the video is pretty clear that it stalled and lost control - any "normal" attitude after that was probably accidental - the a/c lost airspeed and came down in a flutter.

As an aviation person it is horrifying to watch such things happen - but of course many happen without being caught on video, so when you do get to see them it is also fascinating!

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


The way they rolled so far to the side, almost inverted, and then rolled back upright leads me to believe they were fighting hard, and were getting it back under control. It didn't look like it would just suddenly stop that roll, and roll winds level without them fighting it.

damn it you beat me to it, and here i thought that for once i was first on posting a thread about a specific topic....anyways, this is the link for the thread i just posted half an hour ago www.cnn.com... it includes the video plus the names of those on board and some other...interesting claims.