C-130 Wing Cracks?

[Gordo]

Does anyone have any information regarding the C-130E wing cracks. I've hears several oler Es have been grounded when the wing boxes were inspected. I was told that the inspections are now on hold since every insection has resulted in grounding an airplane. Is there any truth to this? I recall a C-130 firefighter plane whose wings ripped off in flight. The mishap airplane was later found to have wing cracks that were a causal factor in the wings falling off. Thanks.

 

[DenverDude2002]

I believe the C130 that lost its wings was a C-130A model.....

 

[Rolling-Thunder]

It was a C-130A, and I thought the wing cracks were the direct cause of the crash.


http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020902/aw48.htm

 

[Gordo]

The E model wings are the same as the A'a and B's. The wing cracks were a causal factor in the A's wing ripping off. I was just curious if there was any info on the USAF's E models now that they are 40+ years old. Thanks.

 

[414Flyer]

Actually there were 2 C-130As that lost their wings in fire work, and other C-130A USAF it happened to.
I thinke the civilian C-130A that lost wings on fires, are rumored to have had some missing history and a big gap in logs and documentation from the 1960s when they were loaned to other parts of the government. Some of the operations and activities those 130A were involved in might have contributed to their losses later.

 

[Rolling-Thunder]

Gordo;

Maybe this will be of interest to you:


http://p074.ezboard.com/fc130herculesheadquartersfrm3.showMessage?topicID=139.topic

 

[dtfl]

gordo..

The Air force sends the aircraft to depot-level maintenance every 6 years I believe? At AFSOC we had to have new wingboxes put into some of our gunships and they started whining at us to not fly low level, not do static max power takeoffs, etc, because they just put new wingboxes on and every time we did something like I mentioned above, it took X many days or months off the life of the plane - they didn't want to put NEW wingboxes on them AGAIN before they mothballed them.

That A model had NOT had new wingboxes, which is why it broke and crashed.