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Connie crash. All survived, including my dad.


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I believe this happened at Patuxent River NAS. They were doing touch and go. My dad was a flight engineer with VW-2 but I think he was just along for the ride. This was toward the end of his 24 years of service and he may have been an instructor at this time. http://imgur.com/a/QnVpX

I guess I don't know how to add images so here's a link to the album.

Edited by silver1
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Cool set of photo's. Did they forget to lower the gear or something?

No, you can see the nose gear down in the last photo. I don't know what happened. Maybe someone here knows how to search Navy records.

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You can see the main gear doors in a couple of the pictures and, judging by the skid marks, the main wheels were in contact with the runway. Main gear failure of some kind?

Tom

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Not a big fan of touch and go for a couple of reasons. Let's see, in the pictures the nose gear is down, the mains gear doors are open, and there is a pretty impressive set of skid marks going up to the aircraft. Looks like the engines were pulling a fair amount of power when the props hit the runway. Sooo, if it had switches on the gear (newer aircraft have them...one type I flew had multiple switches on the the main legs for different systems and the bigger aircraft I flew had switches on all the gears (called "weight on wheels" "ground sensing" or just micro switches for just a few terms) you should not have been able to raise the gear unless the you override the switches. Pretty much everything I flew you could override the switches (we were told all too often it was in case we were running out of runway and wanted to stop....however I think the real reason is that if you going flying and you are off the ground and the switches have a problem or they are fouled in some way you can raise the gear and get rid of that drag, which is the only reason I ever overrode the gear switches). However I read somewhere that some not too bright P-38 pilots in an effort to do a "sharp" or cool take off would put the gear switch in the "Up" position when they started their take-off and when the aircraft would lift off the gear would come right up (cool eh?) however if the aircraft hit a bump on the runway you could have the gear start up and the aircraft would settle on the runway and you would have some explaining to do...(not sooo cool?).

Part of the reason I don't like touch and go in a bigger aircraft is that you are charging down the runway and changing flap and trim settings as well as heating up your brakes...and as far as the FAA is concerned it isn't a "landing" since you need a landings to a "full stop" for currency...so why bother? Not knowing the Connie's gear system I'd guess maybe someone was too quick on the gear handle and either there are no "squat switches" on the gear or they failed... I'd also guess that like a lot of bigger aircraft there is a automatic brake application as the gear start up to stop the wheels spinning and that might be the reason for the skid marks. Another reason might be the tires getting fouled in the gear doors as the aircraft settled onto the runway stopping the wheels from turning. The "heavy" I flew you did not touch the brakes after take-off...it could cause tire damage. I think that was true on most the bigger aircraft I got paid to fly...

In the airline operations I flew (a couple of companies) the flying pilot would call "Positive rate" when seeing the rate of climb go positive or the radar alt start showing some distance or the altimeter showing an altitude increase) the non-flying pilot would call "positive rate" to confirm and then the flying pilot would call "gear up". In something like a DC-10 you would feel like the aircraft was going flying as you rotated but the mains could be on the ground for while longer, you had to see one of the instrument indications before you called "Positive rate". (I seem to recall in the 10 our eye level was over 20 feet above the runway and the pilot seats were 20 or 22 feet in front of the nose gear (making it a bit strange to getting used to taxiing it, you had the flight deck swinging out over the side of a taxiway all too often, if you kept the nose gear on the taxi line you would run the mains off the taxi way and you had to watch "Threshold Crossing Height" on an ILS since some approaches would have the mains hit before the runway so you had to ease a little high close in, the mains could be quite a few feet below you while landing and it had two radar altimeters, on "Normal" and one by the mains when the gear was down...

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Touch and gos are acceptable for currency requirements during the day in tricycle gear aircraft. Full stop is required in tailwheel and at night. Anywho...I'm thinking it could have been a hard landing. The break point on the fuselage is where you'd expect it after a hard landing, and that would also explain why the mains are missing. Just a theory.

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145941_Lockheed_EC-121P_Warning_Star_US_Navy_%2810984824144%29.jpg

Cool, your first link shows a plane from VW-11. His previous assignment. Argentia, Newfoundland. I'm sure he manned this plane. Your second link is not working.

Bonus picture: Another crash he was in.96.jpg

97.jpg

Edited by silver1
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Touch and goes were a fact of life in the P-3. Being an aft observer during "Pilot Field Training" was the pits.

If I had a nickel for every touch and go I did, I'd be buying up kits left and right!

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Wow - an impressive series of photos that speaks to me on several levels. I spent three years flying off that same runway (one of two) at NAS Patuxent River in E-2 Hawkeyes - fortunately none of my landings were that exciting. VW-2 and AETULANT were part of navy's land-based airborne early warning (AEW) community that supported the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line of airborne and sea-based radar systems intended to detect the hordes of Russian bombers coming over the horizon - the granddaddy of today's VAW community. I would suspect the C-121J pictured was used for logistical support and pilot proficiency.

As a former squadron aviation safety officer and accident investigator, I sympathize with the poor guy who had to go out there and figure out what happened. Having a major wreck clobbering up one of Pax's main runways couldn't have been fun! Somewhere in the musty archives of the Naval Safety Center is likely a aviation mishap report detailing the investigation and causal factors of this mishap. Wish I still had my contacts there - it would be fun to see if they could dig up this report!

What's the story behind the photos of the floundering PBM? It looks like a hard water landing bashed in some of the hull platting up forward and induced some serious flooding.

-Scoobs

Edited by scoobs
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Hey, I'm not saying people don't do touch and goes, I'm just saying I don't think it is a good idea in bigger or really any airplanes. A while back one of the services (or one of the Guards) quit doing them at least for a while). I think the risks are not worth the gain. Let's see, during my line flying we were told DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING except the throttles and flight and ground controls (brakes and guard the tiller) while on the runway while landing while still on the runway since the odds of screwing up are too high...so we go charging down the runway and we change trims, flaps and leading edge devices (and the guy doing it has his or her head in the cockpit, not seeing what the heck is going on outside) yet it is too dangerous to turn the landing lights off on the runway...? Sooo which is it?

Certainly they are done mostly at lower weights but watching them do touch and goes at Travis while we were waiting to go it looked as if they would leave the gear down trying to cool the brakes so do you have a chart to cover the estimated heat after starting a "go" and you have to not go... Also you are setting up habit patterns that you are not supposed to do during your normal job. You've also tossed out your performance data (at least I've never seen any data for touch and goes) since all the TO data I've seen (that we actually use in the cockpit...we might be able to stumble part way through a flight manual take off performance problem but that would take also an accurate chart of the airport and surrounding terrain and knowing myself and most the guys I flew with maybe a couple of days to get the "wrong" answer" LOL, dispatch has pros to figure that stuff out when you have something unusual to deal with) has you starting at certain intersections toward "beginning" end of the runway...not at 52 knots about 4000...or is 3743 or is it 6026 feet down the runway...and wait that was 45 knots nope 89...

Hey, I'm just an old crabby guy, I'm not much for holding the nose up and using aerodynamic braking in a transport either...LOL

Got to admit I do wonder just what happened to that Connie...the more I look at those pictures the more questions I have! Maybe a hard landing (falcon20's suggestion)? I don't know much about Connie accidents but I also thought it was interesting that I couldn't see any flaps out, what looking around I've done it seems to indicate that flaps were routine for take-offs in the Connie and of course landings. Maybe a no flap landing in training? That kinda stuff at least in my career was only done in the sim (you get into tire limit speed as well as brake energy issues). I heard that 767s tend to bend in front of the wing when a nose gear first landing happens...could that have happened here? Maybe others can see some flaps out? Hmm, flaps up landing and try to force it on? Love to see the accident report!

Edited by sanmigmike
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I certainly agree that touch and gos aren't the best idea in larger more complex aircraft. Brake energy loss isn't a problem though, because you don't touch the brakes during a touch and go. Land, roll/reconfigure, and liftoff. As a check airman, I have my guys fly to a rejected landing, 50' or so. This solves all the problems. It counts towards a landing during the check ride, demonstrates ability to effectively initiate a go around, and reduces wear and tear on the aircraft. Landing to a full stop, taxing back, then departing multiple times puts you at risk just as much as touch and gos do. It interrupts normal checklist usage, the after landing checklist and after start/taxi checks certainly do not agree on switch position, so which do you do and what do you ignore? There's no established procedure there. Also, every landing to a full stop actually uses the brakes, thereby decreasing the available brake energy for each additional takeoff (abort) and landing. You won't find performance numbers for 5 patterns worth of brake loss. To sum up, the training environment is a complex, non-standard one that requires good judgment and common sense to safely accomplish the goals of the day. There is no one correct answer.

Edited by falcon20driver
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What's the story behind the photos of the floundering PBM? It looks like a hard water landing bashed in some of the hull platting up forward and induced some serious flooding.

-Scoobs

Nothing exiting. They hit a swell during takeoff.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The one nose gear collapse I saw in real life (Swift Aire at KSBP) the mains stayed down and the nose was on the ground...kinda pretty at night. Most all the pictures I've seen (and the one EMB-120 I saw a FO raise the gear on the ground) show the nose of the aircraft on the ground when the nose gear fails or doesn't go down or is raised...the EMB-120 mains stayed down.

I am a little puzzled at the comment that just taxiing an aircraft doesn't heat the brakes up. I flew the Shorts 360 (less than 30,000 pounds mtow but flown Part 121) for about 2000 hours and we were told about brake energy in ground school and that the multi rotor stator brakes produced heat by just taxiing. I then had about 6000 hours in the EMB-120 and again we got the same story on the brakes (less than 30,000 mtow and flown Part 135). I will say that normally you didn't use the brakes much on either of those...with beta and reverse you don't need to. However when you do a single engine landing and are unwilling to pull the good engine into deep reverse it takes a lot of brakes. And I did see a few melted tires on EMB-120s, not me but just luck. If a brake drags you are kinda screwed.

Then I flew the BAE-146 200A for about 2000 hours(about 90,000 pounds mtow and Part 121 and non-steel brakes...and no reverse) and brake energy became a bigger deal. A brake cooling fan inop was a big deal. We used the brakes a lot on those. If the brake cooling fans were inop we were really limited on quick turns. 500 to 600 C wasn't unusual for a landing. A friend got (so he claimed) a 1000 C landing no flaps at KRNO...(tires didn't melt or the plugs go but ground commented on the smoke from the brakes). An aborted take-off meant stopping clear of the runway and getting out the book to check on brake energy and you might not be able to move the airplane. We didn't get the life we expected out of the brakes since we didn't really get taught the proper way to use them and we tended to use them like steel brakes.

Then I spent about 5000 hours in DC-10-30 (around 570,000 pounds mtow, steel brakes, no brake cooling fans and you get to say "heavy" and "we're gonna to need a high speed climb today" :rofl: and controllers that are used to them are insulted that you might think they don't know that... The 10 wasn't too bad on brakes normally during taxi (and the guys that had time in Diesel 8s and 707s loved the 10's brakes) but there was a limit on how far you could taxi and then take off...an actual hard limit on distance. Any real abort brake energy became an a big issue (the FE knew to be getting into the chart but waited for us to say the words). We were hauling boxes so we were always bumping up against limits, either the runway limit or the mtow or burning off enough to get to our landing limit...we never were light enough to get very high in cruise (a fair amount of time with all too few numbers between stall and mach buffet when trying to avoid some weather). And yes in ground school, we were told that the nature of the multi rotor-stator or multi disk brakes meant that heat would be produced by just moving the airplane, even just towing it. (I saw the last two brakes on the port side main orange hot one time and that was after they started to cool, no other brakes were out of the normal range and the FE said when he first saw them they were a bright pale orange...tires just slowly melted and deflated. Interesting...)

Snooping around the net I found a comment on PRUNE by an old British pilot about a Dunlop training film in his past, Dunlop towed a V bomber around until the tires failed from a combination of heat from the "tyres" and the brakes. Old 707, DC-8 and 880/990 crews and mechanics have lots of hot or burning brake stories. A Connie pilot told of moving a Connie to a museum and having a brake fire and the tone seemed to be that it wasn't all that big of deal... Not too unhappy to have missed that part of the "good old days".

Soo, all I can say is that a lot of ground school instructors (and others) told me (and all the other guys trying to stay awake) that we produced heat just moving the airplane and that heat could be a problem but maybe they were pulling our legs.

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I completely agree that taxing does heat up brakes. There's a certain airport I used to frequent that led to a downhill taxi of 1.7%. Talk about heating the brakes! What I said was touch and goes don't heat up brakes compared to full stop taxi backs. During our touch and gos there is 0 brake usage combined with continuous cooling airflow. When we do full stops we have to use normal braking, and braking during taxing, with little to no cooling air. That leads to really hot brakes which we have no numbers for under that situation. So, if I need to I try and find a long runway to do touch and gos. If I can't it's full stop. But on check rides, I do rejected landings which solves all the problems. This is applicable to the aircraft I operate, as I can't comment on types I've not flown. I absolutely believe you about the big iron.

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  • 1 month later...

I don't doubt at all what you're saying about brakes overheating (had that happen a time or two), but it seems to me that if the brakes heat just by taxiing (without break application) then they're dragging which doesn't seem like a good thing to me... :cheers:

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