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C-5 down at Dover (merged)

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The term normal for normal landing weights, as previously stated is only a limit on a foot per minute at touchdown... i.e. no assault landings above that weight! Simple ground affect would keep you above the limit from a normal approach when landing above normal weight. I assure you that a surprisingly high number of landings occur above the stated normal landing weight! Not a big deal.
 
A friend at Dover emailed me last night with the following. Immediately after take off hit a massive flock of gulls. Number two stalled and was shut down. Declared emergency, started a return. All three of the remaining engines were coming apart. Hit hard, tail broke off bounced, a couple of times(notice the photos, no skid marks).on last impact, nose gave way. I`m just the messenger.
 
Seagulls

retired guy said:
A friend at Dover emailed me last night with the following. Immediately after take off hit a massive flock of gulls. Number two stalled and was shut down. Declared emergency, started a return. All three of the remaining engines were coming apart. Hit hard, tail broke off bounced, a couple of times(notice the photos, no skid marks).on last impact, nose gave way. I`m just the messenger.

No offense, your friend is smoking crack.
I visited my friend in the hospital yesterday...no birds...only one engine shut down.
 
Messenger

Not shooting...just my attempt at dry humor...This is nothing that wasn't released, but they were returning after #2 was shut down...the rest is still a mystery. We should have an official answer soon since the plane is relatively intact, we have the FDR and the crew can tell their stories. The gear really absorbed a lot of the crash. It was reassuring to see that the emergency equipment worked and that the nitrogen system that is used to remove oxygen from the fuel tank eullage and the fuel may have prevented a fire. In the local paper, the fire department said that there was 3 inches of fuel on the ground when they were trying to get the pilots and engineer out and they had to figure out a way to get the 50' ladder braced because the ground was "spongy with fuel"
 
lstorm2003 said:
#1 The object of the game here should be to figure out what happend so we can prevent it from happening again in the future.

#2 There is nothing wrong with speculation so long as everyone knows it is just that. SPECULATION!

#3 EVERYTHING is easier to figure out with the benifit of hindsight. Unless the pilot or crew was grossly negligent, NO ONE should be blaming them for this crash.

My $0.02

I agree. In that spirit I will post verbatim the contents of an email that was just forwarded to me. I CANNOT vouch for the accuracy of the information and I DO NOT know the source:

From a C-5 pilot...He sent it to me with two requests: remove his name and send it to any pilot I wish. His reasoning was, if/when this is the official cause, maybe if other pilots read it it will save someone's ass. I agree.
----------------------------------

Hi All

This has really turned fascinating. A good buddy of mine was a (xxxxx) guy in the wing at Dover and still has connections. He gave me the current skinny on the crash--none of it official--until the board says so.

It was not a bird ingestion but a "reverser unlock" on the #2 engine that started this. They lost a C-5 with all aboard a few years back in Germany for the same cause. This crew however shut down the engine before an actual unstow took place. The airplane was well over 700K gross weight with FOB of over 300K. The airplane had the newest version of the C-5 flight deck with big panel glass. Unfortunately, only one of the three pilots was really comfortable with the new equipment and FMS.

The crew decided because of their weight to fly their approach to the longest runway, which unfortunately was only being served that day by a Tacan (fancy VOR for you civilian types) approach. They also decided to fly a full flap approach to keep the approach speed down. This isn't prohibited--just highly discouraged. The recommended flap setting for a three engine approach is Flaps 40. During the approach the crew became worried about not having enough power to fly a full flap approach and selected flaps 40--which they were now too slow for. Here's the point all you glass cockpit guys should sit up and take notice about. The one guy who was familiar with the new glass and FMS was also the one flying the aircraft. He became distracted inputting the new approach speed in the FMS. There was also some confusion about just who was flying the A/C while he had his head down updating the speed. Long story short--the got way slow and into the shaker, and actually stuck the tail into the trees and it departed the aircraft first. The nose pitched down hard and the nose and left wing impacted next snapping off the nose. Several cockpit occupants suffered spinal compression injuries. The guys sitting at the crew table behind the cockpit actually came to a stop with their legs dangling out over the ground.

The miracle of this was the left outboard fuel tank was broken open and none of that fuel managed to find something hot enough to ignite it and the other 300k. Again, a bunch of very lucky people.

So I guess there really is a reason we bitch at guys for hand flying and making their own MCP and FMS inputs.

Again, I am posting this VERBATIM and UNVERIFIED for general background only. Almost all of my C-5 experience is as a PAX sleeping in the back. I have however, experienced the pitfalls of trying to type and fly at the same time.
 
I received almost the same e-mail from a "Fred" buddy. Un-verified as well, although he flys Fred, he is NOT involved with the Dover unit so he cannot confirm either.

All that fuel....very lucky nothing decided to be real hot at the time.
 
Does the C-5 have the ability to dump fuel?

Also, do the new C-5 avionics allow you to set up an "tactical FMS approach" to provide you with a backup GPS glideslope?
 
The C-5 can dump fuel.
The accident plane supposedly has the new avionics and I don't know what they can. Being a glass cockpit I'd like to think they'd have that ability.
 
Hmm... ok. I'm just wondering why, if they were able to successfully shut the engine down, solving the reverser problem, they elected not to gain some altitude, go into holding, dump fuel to get lighter, get situated with the approach and avionics setup and then come back for a lighter weight landing. Of course armchair quarterbacking is easy, but I'm just trying to figure out the chain of events that led to, what seems like, a rushed, heavyweight 3 engine approach. All other malfunctions aside, shutting down 1 engine on a 4 engined jet should not necessitate a rushed approach.

How is the performance of the C-5 at these weights on 3 engines?
 
TankerDriver said:
Hmm... ok. I'm just wondering why, if they were able to successfully shut the engine down, solving the reverser problem, they elected not to gain some altitude, go into holding, dump fuel to get lighter, get situated with the approach and avionics setup and then come back for a lighter weight landing. Of course armchair quarterbacking is easy, but I'm just trying to figure out the chain of events that led to, what seems like, a rushed, heavyweight 3 engine approach. All other malfunctions aside, shutting down 1 engine on a 4 engined jet should not necessitate a rushed approach.

How is the performance of the C-5 at these weights on 3 engines?

I don't know about what rate a tanker dumps fuel at but I have never seen any airplane that dumps it at a rate that seems fast enough. Also the book recommends a 40 % flaps approach and landing for a heavy weight 3 engine landing. My guess is the FSAS might have been trying to fly a full flap (100%) and they ran out of airspeed. I have a few years flying C5's but not the glass so it's just a guess. I find it weird that we still are not getting much info officially yet. One of my concerns with all this is the media and the generals will spin this into we need more C-17's ploy.
 
The 135 can dump at 6500#/min with all pumps going, but then again we were made for dumping gas....
 
L-1011-500 said:
I don't know about what rate a tanker dumps fuel at but I have never seen any airplane that dumps it at a rate that seems fast enough.

Good point. I was in the tanker mindset knowing we can dump 100,000lb in about 15 minutes.
 
I have been on the C-5 for some time. The light 0059 had was a TR light on no TR deployed. Plues if they did have a TR deploy in flight the Engine was shut down. I dont see any engine with the TR deployed. I dont know the answer to what happend only ideas which could be any number of things.
Satpak: The flight engineer can dump fuel anytime to get it down 732500 or 159250 on the fuel.
RJP: We use Jet A-1. We can use JP-8 but the bases and civilian airfields always have Jet A-1.

I have read on other post friends talking to those on the crew. Anytime a crash occurs crews are given a document not to discuss anything about the crash.
A report we be sent out in 30 days post crash report. Our unit we get the report and when it is released I will let everyone know.

C-5 MEM
 
Anyone have a copy of the FCIF that came out a few years ago telling us not to dump fuel? it also stated that you could dump fuel if it was an absolute emergency (implying 2 engine), but of the 7 times I have shut down engines in flight on FRED and a decade of flying it, I only flew with one person who dumped fuel (He dumped fuel in the 80’s) and the west German’s vectored the airplane to the boarder of East Germany so the wind would blow the fuel to the east side of the border. After many emergency returns, I would have tried to just land and let maintenance fix the bad micro switch so I could take off before I ran out of duty day... dumping fuel would never have allowed it.
 
I recall FCIF that certain situations items we can dump fuel. Here is the thing. If you have a engine shutdown we have all the time in the world to work the problem. Only a pylon fire would be my big concern to get it on the ground.

C-5
 
C-5 MEM said:
I have been on the C-5 for some time. The flight engineer can dump fuel anytime to get it down 732500 or 159250 on the fuel.
C-5 MEM

You can't dump it that fast. Even if you started dumping fuel a couple minutes after the engine shutdown by the time you circle to land you have not dumped enough to make much difference. I have been on the C-5 since 1986 and there is no way I would go out and hold to dump when I can land at max TO wt. We'll just have to wait until the accident report comes out. Even then it might not give many answers. Ask anyone flying the C-5 when the Ramstein crash happened. The official report was a T/R but that was to keep the war going. Not too many guys believe it was a T/R cut and dried.
 
TankerDriver said:
Good point. I was in the tanker mindset knowing we can dump 100,000lb in about 15 minutes.

FRED can dump 9000#/min from what I remember. Man I miss flying that thing! Kept my IFE skills sharp!:)
 

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