Impressive footage of a B-1B “Lancer” performing a crash landing on lakebed.
The following video was recorded on Oct. 4, 1989.
It shows the successful crash landing of a “Bone” (85-0070) on the surface of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base, where the plane was diverted after an in-flight failure to the #2 hydraulic system prevented it from lowering the nose gear.
A dry lake in the vicinity is all you need in case of emergency: the huge lakebed minimized the damage to the plane as the following image shows.
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.
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3 Comments
The airframe is not supposed to flex like that but it survived…not much in the air today that could take a sudden load like that so well…
This video reminds me of an incident on August 27, 1990 when a United Airlines 747-400 landed at LAX with only the outer main gear extended. The inner main wheel assemblies and the nose gear failed to extend. At the time I was working on the 12th floor of an office building on Century Blvd. with a great view of the LAX south runway complex. I had a radio scanner tuned to the various LAX frequencies and was lucky enough to watch and listen to that incident. No significant damage to the plane and there were no injuries. Another example of great piloting!
The airframe is not supposed to flex like that but it survived…not much in the air today that could take a sudden load like that so well…
Now THIS is a CRASH….landing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApIlK9-5uFk
This video reminds me of an incident on August 27, 1990 when a United Airlines 747-400 landed at LAX with only the outer main gear extended. The inner main wheel assemblies and the nose gear failed to extend. At the time I was working on the 12th floor of an office building on Century Blvd. with a great view of the LAX south runway complex. I had a radio scanner tuned to the various LAX frequencies and was lucky enough to watch and listen to that incident. No significant damage to the plane and there were no injuries. Another example of great piloting!