Neptune Firebomber lost with 2 crew+another lands on 1 main

[Total loss]

I use the term Fire Bomber as most know what that is v the proper USA term Tanker
Lockheed Neptune P2V

http://wildfiretoday.com/2012/06/03/two-air-tanker...

A great landing (cross wind) by the pilot of this one with only one main gear down
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1672640150001/rough-lan...

[Eric Mc]

Sad to hear when one of these old ladies is lost or damaged - not to mention the fatalities.

The video clip in respect of the fatal crash has the fire fighting spokeman saying that the aircraft are World War 2 vintage, which isn't quite right. The Neptune entered service after World War 2 and the examples that we saw in the clips appear to be ex Canadian machines.

[anonymous-user]

Nice bit of text book "not got the whole undercarriage" landing there! ;-)

I assume that it's not just the wing in ground effect, but just that it ended up sliding along on the underwing pod, but he seems to manage to keep the left wing up for a long time before the prop finally gets it ?

[Eric Mc]

He would have delberately held the port wing up as long as he could before he had no choice but to lower it. The "pod" under the wing is actually a J57 turbojet.

[Mojocvh]

Some damming comments on that first link there...

[Chuck328]

Mojocvh said:

Some damming comments on that first link there...

And not without some justification. A pal of mine who flew the Lockheed Electra, over a four year period had something like twenty plus engine failures including two double fails and one triple fail
He received commendation from BALPA (I think) for getting back on the runway)

As much as the engineers try to keep them going, there is a case for saying enough's enough.

[Eric Mc]

And these aircraft are working in a very tough environment, encountering conditions that the designers never envisaged.