B-1B belly landing Incident

[hitman]

Yes yes yes this happened a while ago but I found out about it today and I knw it hasnt been posted here so here you guys go...

 

What I read in the Air Force weekly said was that the pilot made the mistake of NOT PUTTING THE GEAR DOWN. The pilot (apparrently) had a gunjam in the brain housing group.

http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003781.html

[SuperKungFu]

...he forgot to put the gear down? lol wtf. But wouldn't the cockpit instruments warn him about the gears?

[hitman]

Well my suspicions are that perhaps the coffee pot was brewing or something I dont know..

[Kuky]

errr... I thought the ground control would have (and should have) noticed landing gear was not extracted and notified and warned the pilot about this !?

[hitman]

One would think...perhaps there are better references as to why they belly landed but the article I read in the AirForce Times said it was pilot error.

[hitman]

http://www.murdoconline.net/pics/b1belly.html

[AJ.eightFive]

There are only two types of pilots, those who have never landed with gear up, and those who have. I pray to god every day that I don't join the second group.

 

"Speed's good, gear down, latched... 3 green no red."

 

:pilotfly:

[Swartz (LT)]

I work on the B-1 and saw the after math of what happened. I was deployed to Diego at teh time it happened. The jet was incoming from home ( Abilene, Tx) on its way to Diego. Right before the Bone (B-1) came in they had a buff ( B-52) land and had Hot brakes. (when they push the breaks to hard, chance of them catching the tires on fire). The Buff was at the end of the runway when the bone was on final. (This is hush hush) The pilots were to focused at the pilots that flew the buff and were looking at the buff and talking to each other. The pilot turned off the B*tching betty and kept talking to the copilot. By the time he realized it all he had time to do was gun it. Which in turn, it actually saved his life. At the speed they come in, if he woudn't have gunned it the Bone would have started flipping end over end and would have been a very bad ending for the pilots. So, he actually (Take this as you will) did the smart thing. Could have been alot worse. It wasn't pretty though. We had over 200 people from the island walking the length of the flight line to pick up the scraps of metal and flight line that the plane left behind in its wake.

[hitman]

Thats a good enough explanation to me...dont know why the Air Force had to keep this one under wraps..and believe me I know ANYONE would be fixated on something that might just go up in flames.