On Jan 30, a C-17 Globemaster 96-0002 made a “gear up” landing at Bagram in Afghanistan. I just received the following interesting pictures that show that the aircraft, assigned to Charleston AFB, S.C., was extensively damaged. The crew escaped the aircraft safely and the emergency resulted in the temporary closure of the runway. Air operation resumed on Jan 31. The pictures show the gear lever was in the UP position, meaning the pilot did not command the gear extraction.
This accident was the second bad C-17 landing in Afghanistan during the past two months: on Dec 23, another C-17 overran at Kandahar after landing. A similar accident occurred on Aug. 6, 2005, when a C-17 Globemaster rolled off the runway damaging its nose and right main landing gears. The runway was closed for just 30 hours before Air Force and Army engineers were able to make it fully operative again.
@ KYLE Yeah from what I heard when I was in training, the LM couldn’t get the door open, so the seal manhandled the door and managed to get it open, depressurization pulling him out and killing him. That’s why they put a pressure gauge above the crew doors.
Nice to see the C-17 was finally shaken out. I was a supervisor with Douglas Acft when they started production. They were lucky to have “merged” with Boeing.The straight-out fraud and shortcuts to meet milestones was crazy. Douglas seemed to have an on-the-fly attitude to making schedule. One thing which got done was “transferring” unfinished work as “discrepancies” to other work packages. Screwed up work needing repair got moved this way too . Training on things like wing tank sealing was a joke. Mechanics sometimes stole handsoap from the toilets to scrub bulkheads prior to sealant. The first plane pissed fuel all over the place at Edwards AFB, and no wonder.