Text/HL
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > vanished engine in the air</h1>
During the Gulf War, a large number of KC-135 tankers of the US military were deployed to various air bases in the Middle East. At this time, Saddam Hussein's army, which was the invader, could not cope with the three-dimensional strike carried out by the multinational coalition led by the US army, and the Iraqi army stationed in Kuwait was also making the final resistance.
In 1991, a KC-135E tanker of the United States Air Force flew on a mission
In the process, it was found that the two engines on the left side had disappeared in the air...
The KC-135E tanker involved, the left wing empty
The KC-135 aerial tanker is a large aerial refueling tanker developed by boeing Corporation of the United States on the basis of the C-135 military transport aircraft developed for the United States Air Force.
On the evening of February 6, 1991, on the apron of Jeddah International Airport in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Air Force Ground Crew prepared for the KC-135's pre-takeoff and assisted fighters on combat missions at night.
The C-135 military transport aircraft is a Boeing 707
Prototype 367-80 was developed on the basis of the prototype
The mission was carried out by a KC-135E tanker numbered 58-0013 with the call sign "Whale 05", and Major Kevin Sweeney was the commander of the aircraft with more than 20 years of military aviation experience. According to his description, during that period, there was a highly fifteen percent chance that the skies over the Middle East theater would be shot down.
The Iraqi Air Force during Saddam's time was equipped with certain equipment
A number of MiG family fighters and the French Mirage F1
Pictured: Iraqi Air Force MiG-23
At 5:25 p.m., the KC-135E, towing a 150-ton weight, flew toward Kuwait on a planned route that would first fly to rita waypoint in the northeast, turn right and fly eastward, and complete the refueling mission at a distance of three hundred kilometers from the Kuwaiti border with the E-3 "watchtower" early warning opportunity to receive the oil.
E-3 "Watchtower" AWACS of the same origin as the KC-135,
Although old, it is still the main force of the US Air Force
In the pitch-black night sky, the crew needed to keep the radio as silent as possible to reduce the possibility of detection by enemy troops. A friendly KC-135 maintained the same course, flying 500 feet above Whale 5, with 45 minutes left before the confluence.
suddenly! The plane leaned sharply to the left without warning, rolling a slope of up to 110 degrees in a second, and before they could turn back, the plane was leaning sharply to the right. Again and again, the crew had to find a way to control the "disobedient" KC-135.
Did the missile hit them?
Knowing that the KC-135 based on the base of the airliner can not withstand this toss, commander Kevin thought of the subject he was trained to increase the resistance by releasing the speed plate to balance the out-of-control aircraft.
With the attitude of trying it out, the unit released the speed plate. The release of the gear plate enhances the aircraft's control over rolling. The roof leaked in the rain, and at this time, the fire alarm of the No. 1 and No. 2 engines sounded rapidly! The commander was busy controlling the plane at this time, and had no choice but to send tubing operator Steve Stucky to help check the fire in the rear cabin.
Steve looked solemn after observation and returned to the cockpit to report:
"No fire, engines 1 and 2 were missing"
Number 85-0013 KC-135E
The left wing engine suspension was empty at this point, and fuel was spurting from the junction of the wing and the engine. After an emergency 50 tons of fuel, the plane finally remained stable at 16,000 feet, and the crew tried to return with a glimmer of hope to avoid parachuting in a war zone far from the base. At a distance of 130 nautical miles from Jeddah airport, they contacted the tower and declared their emergency. The hope of a safe return seems to be growing.
The absence of the left engine caused the hydraulic system to be affected, and without the hydraulic system as an aid, the status quo only allowed them to manually lower the landing gear.
Pictured: Boeing 737 manual landing gear release handle
Modern airliners, landing gear in the hydraulic system is not working properly can also rely on manual release, pull handle requires about 40 kg of pulling force, after pulling out the rest of the work will be handed over to gravity.
Ground personnel were shocked by the KC-135 after landing, 4 broken tires, bare aircraft parts,
In particular, the left wing, which lacked two engines, attracted countless people to watch.
The crew finally used brakes to stop the aircraft, and if the KC-135 used reverse thrust, it would cause the left and right wings to lift unbalance and create a rolling effect.
Soon after, a nomadic Tribe of Arabia found the engine that had fallen off in the desert
The results of the accident investigation showed that the aircraft was affected by the wake of another KC-135 "Whale 20" in the same direction. At the time of the incident, the "Whale 5" flew 500 feet below the front aircraft, and although the spacing between the two aircraft met the standard, the crosswind of up to 85 knots still blew the wingtip vortex of the front aircraft into the path of the rear aircraft.
The Whale 5 unit did not take into account the effects of strong crosswinds
The aircraft was affected by the wake, the strong overload caused by the large rolling left and right, the two engines were ripped off raw, and the No. 3 and No. 4 engines were only one bolt left each, and the aircraft almost became a 100-ton "giant glider".
58-0013 source in desert sequestration: Airliner.net
Finally, the "Whale 5" unit also relied on the tacit understanding of the members to safely drop the "100-ton giant whale" with two engines.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="105" > "stealth killer" aircraft wake</h1>
Jets generate wakes when they fly through the air. In flight, lift is generated by the pressure difference between the upper and lower surfaces of the wing, the pressure of the lower wing surface of the aircraft is higher than the upper wing surface, and the air flow from the lower wing surface around the wing tip to the upper wing surface at the two wing tips. At this point, the aircraft moves forward and the air flows relatively backwards, forming two vortexes at the two wingtips of the aircraft.
Viewed from the rear of the aircraft, the vortex on the right rotates counterclockwise, while the vortex on the left rotates clockwise. The air currents in the vortex rotate backwards and downwards, weakening in intensity over time, and the wake also moves in the direction of the wind.
The wake of the large transport aircraft sinks at a speed of several hundred feet per minute, and the strength and speed of the wake gradually weaken with time and distance. The origin of the vortex is stabilized 500 feet to 1000 feet below the aircraft. When the atmosphere in which the aircraft is located is unstable, it accelerates the attenuation of the wake. Now the standard vertical spacing of 1000 feet and horizontal intervals of more than 10 kilometers should be safe enough.
In early 2017, when an Emirates 560-ton A380 was flying from Dubai to Sydney at an altitude of 35,000 feet, its own strong wake blew over the Bombardier Challenger 604 business jet that was traveling on opposite directions 1,000 feet (about 300 meters) below, causing the latter to fall 10,000 feet (about 3,000 meters) in 48 seconds, and after a single failure, it was forced to land at Muscat International Airport in Oman, and the strong bumps caused passengers on the business jet to be injured to varying degrees. The aircraft was subsequently scrapped.
RVSM Airspace: The vertical spacing between FL290 and FL410 (which includes these two altitude layers) is reduced from a low altitude of 2,000 feet to 1,000 feet (300 meters), which can increase the flow of the route and allow more aircraft to fly on the economic altitude layer. But the 20-ton Bombardier fell victim and was scrapped after a safe landing.
Bombardier 604 Business Jet, Tumble Before VS Tumble After Tumble
As the aircraft gets bigger and bigger, the greater the wingspan of the aircraft, the stronger the wake of the aircraft and the greater the impact on flight. We generally divide the wake into three parts by region: wingtip vortex, surface layer turbulence, and engine tail jet. The "life" of the surface turbulence and the engine tail jet is very short, and the influence distance is short; while the wingtip vortex rotates stably and exists for a long time, so the wake usually refers to the wing vortex.
The effect of wake on the aircraft can be summarized as: induced rolling, loss of altitude, reduction of climb rate and excessive structural overload. Although the wake of the aircraft is difficult to observe with the naked eye on weekdays, it does affect flight safety under certain conditions.
Due to the disparity in physique and the sinking movement of the wake, if the Challenger business jet at that time was scheduled to fly at an altitude higher than the A380, even if it was 1,000 feet apart, it would not suffer the fate of scrapping.
Trail clouds that can be seen with the naked eye are exhaust gases discharged by aircraft
Water vapor condensation phenomenon caused by the mixing of ambient air
Looking at various major aviation events around the world, we can find that the heroic crew represented by Sichuan Airlines Flight 8633 and the "Hudson Miracle" are all from the "military to civilian", so will the flight level of civil aviation pilots from the military be higher?
"Heroic Captain" Liu Chuanjian once said:
"The army has tempered my tenacious style and perseverance, but whether it is military aviation or civil aviation, the nature of flight has not changed but the difference in operating methods and regulations, or it depends on how well individuals are integrated into this system and play their own role."
China's civil aviation safety flight record has been more than ten years, and the safety guarantee is not only dependent on the efforts of the crew, but also inseparable from the full support of aircraft maintenance, dispatch, air traffic control and other departments. Every take-off and landing is inseparable from the help and dedication of every post in this system.