B52 crash off Guam

[havoc]

B-52 crashes off Guam, Air Force says

No word on fate of 6 crew members; 2nd accident for island base this year

The Associated Press
updated 10:13 p.m. MT, Sun., July. 20, 2008

HONOLULU - The Air Force said Sunday that a B-52 bomber carrying six crew members crashed off the island of Guam.

The Coast Guard said two people have been recovered from the waters. Their condition was not immediately available.

Rescue crews from the Navy, Coast Guard and local fire department were searching for the others.

Officials said the crash occurred about 25 miles northwest of Apra Harbor.

The accident is the second for the Air Force this year on Guam.

In February, a B-2 crashed at Andersen Air Force Base in the first-ever crash of a stealth bomber. The military estimated the loss of the aircraft at $1.4 billion.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: B-52 crashes off Guam, Air Force says - Military - MSNBC.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25777752/)

[VinRouge]

Hope everyone is ok;
thoughts are with those involved at this time. :(

[vapilot2004]

A little more from Reuters:

MANILA (Reuters) - A U.S. B-52 bomber that was due to fly in a Liberation Day parade in the U.S. territory of Guam on Monday crashed into the Pacific Ocean soon after take-off, news reports and officials said.

At least six crew members were missing, according to the website of Kuam News, a local station.

The U.S. airforce said in a statement it had no information on the status of the crew. It did not say how many people were on board the bomber or give a reason for the crash, which happened at 9:45 a.m. (2345 GMT or 7:45 p.m. EDT), 15 minutes before the parade was about to start.

An air force official was quoted on the Pacific Daily News website saying the plane was meant to take part in the parade.

July 21 is the day Guam commemorates its 1944 liberation from Japanese occupation in World War Two.

The island, under U.S. control since 1898, is the only significantly populated U.S. territory to have ever been occupied by a foreign power.

In February, a B-2 stealth bomber, which costs around $1.2 billion, crashed at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. The two pilots on board ejected safely.



Edited to add the crew was based out of Barksdale AFB.

[Leaky]

A B-52 bomber carrying six crew members has crashed off the island of Guam in the Western Pacific Ocean, the US Air Force said.
The Coast Guard said two people have been recovered from the waters. Their condition was not immediately known.
Rescue crews from the Navy, Coast Guard and local fire department are searching for the others.
Officials say the crash occurred about 25 miles northwest of Apra Harbour.
The accident is the second for the air force this year on Guam.
In February, a B-2 crashed at Andersen Air Force Base in the first-ever crash of a stealth bomber. The military estimated the loss of the aircraft at 1.4 billion US dollars.


Doesn't sound particularly good - our thoughts are with their families and friends

[sleeper]

B-52 bomber crashes near Guam - CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/21/guam.crash/index.html)

(CNN) -- A U.S. Air Force B-52 with six crew members on board crashed off the island of Guam on Monday, an Air Force spokesman said.


The B-52H Stratofortress was in Guam as part of a four-month rotation.

Search crews have found no survivors, but they are still looking, said Lt. Elizabeth Buendia, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Coast Guard in Guam. They located an oil slick but have not seen any wreckage, she said.

Rescuers with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy were searching a point in the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles northwest of Guam, a U.S. territory, where the plane is believed to have crashed, said Capt. Joel Stark, spokesman for Andersen Air Force Base.

He had no information on whether anyone survived.

The B-52H Stratofortress was based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and was in Guam as part of a four-month rotation, Stark said.

It went down about 9:45 a.m. local time (7:45 p.m. ET Sunday).

A B-52 from Andersen Air Force Base was scheduled to fly over crowds celebrating Liberation Day, which commemorates the U.S. capture of Guam from Japan in 1944, Stark said.

But it was unclear whether the plane that crashed was the one that had been scheduled to perform the flyover.

[HalloweenJack]

Its actually the forth accident at Guam this year;

feb 12th a prowler went down 20 miles from the base , feb 23rd was the B2 , march was the B1-b landing accident and now this B52


Today's B-52 crash is fourth military aircraft incident in past year - News - MSNBC.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25778390/)

[Marcel_MPH]

Again interesting...

Also found an article with some pictures of the type...

DutchOps.com - Boeing B-52 crashed off the island of Guam... (http://www.dutchops.com/Interesting/USAF_B52CRASH.htm)

[ORAC]

BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, LA (KSLA) - A "high-ranking Pentagon official" has confirmed to CBS News that four sets of remains have been recovered from the crash of a Barksdale AFB B-52 off the coast of Guam.

The information comes from CBS Pentagon Correspondent David Martin. According to Martin's source within the Pentagon, no survivors are expected.

However, Lt. John Griffin with Anderson Air Force Base on the island said a "search and rescue operation is still on-going, the key word being rescue."

Earlier Monday morning, the commander of Barksdale AFB's Second Bomb Wing said an aggressive search and rescue operation was still underway off the coast of Guam for the crew of a B-52 that crashed Sunday.

Col. Bob Wheeler made a brief statement regarding the crash, but offered no new information as to the fate of the plane's six crew members.

The base did provide a number for familiy members to call. That number is 318-456-8400.

[vapilot2004]

My cousin is from Guam and told me his father, still trying to sell their house, heard on the local news that this is the fifth military crash in and around Guam. Will try to get confirmation.

[DelaneyT]

... Associated Press now reporting 3 dead.

Also reported: "The three crew members were wearing their life vests when their bodies were recovered."

"The unarmed B-52 bomber was en route from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base to conduct a flyover in a parade on another part of the island when it crashed around 9:45 a.m. Monday about 30 miles northwest of Apra Harbor, the Air Force said."

_____

Circumstances of this mishap are already starting to sound very odd.

The 'parade flyover' mission is also an unfortunate indicator.

Perhaps the facts will be publicly released in a year or so ?

[GreenKnight121]

Normal US procedures require flotation vests for aircrew when flying over the ocean... so that is nothing startling.

[Squirrel 41]

And to restate the obvious:

RIP to the crew; our thoughts are with the families. Perhaps more poignant at this time of conflict than to lose a crew on straight ops.

Up, into the wide blue yonder....

S41

[havoc]

NEW VIDEO: B-52 crash victims identified | ShreveportTimes | The Times (http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080723/NEWS/80723028)

[ORAC]

Air Force says no survivors of B-52 crash off Guam

HONOLULU (AP) — All six crew members aboard a B-52 bomber that crashed off Guam were killed, the Air Force said Wednesday as the search effort shifted focus from rescue to recovery of the crew and pieces of the wreckage.

Two bodies have been found; the Air Force, without elaborating, said in a news release that forensic specialists were trying to identify additional remains recovered.

"Losing this bomber crew has been a tragedy felt by everyone here and across the Air Force," said Brig. Gen. Doug Owens, commander of the 36th Wing.

The six crew members were identified as Maj. Christopher M. Cooper, 33, aircraft commander; Maj. Brent D. Williams, 37, navigator; Capt. Michael K. Dodson, 31, co-pilot; 1st Lt. Joshua D. Shepherd, 25, navigator; 1st Lt. Robert D. Gerren, 32, electronic warfare officer; and Col. George Martin, 51, flight surgeon, who also was the deputy commander of 36th Medical Group at Andersen Air Force Base.

The bodies of Cooper and Williams were recovered, the Air Force said.

"Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families of these airmen," said Col. Robert Wheeler, 2d Bomb Wing commander. "We appreciate the military and civilian organizations who are continuing recovery efforts to bring our airmen home."

A panel of Air Force officers is investigating the crash.

[Photoplanet]

The whole situation sounds terribly sad.... I know the B52 has ejection seats for the front crew, I have not seen any news footage that indicates whether any of the crew ejected. Maybe it was at very low level, I don't have any facts on that either, but to lose an entire crew on a 'flypast' mission is terribly sad, regardless of any other facts.

Our thoughts must be with the families of the crew.... A routine day gone terribly wrong.

[brickhistory]

B-52H has six ejection seats - four that go up - pilot, co, EW, and the one at the defunct gunner's seat (not in the tail like the D model, but up front facing aft like the EW's) and two firing downward - nav and radar nav.


RIP to the crew and their families.

[DelaneyT]

B-52H has six ejection seats...


...so did they all eject ?

Seems odd that no one survived, but the bodies were all recovered relatively quickly. Ocean is VERY deep around Guam.

Some apparently had inflated life vests, and were recovered floating in the ocean. How did that happen, but no one survived ?

What mishap scenario would account for these reported circumstances (...low altitude ejection, ditching, aircraft breakup, etc) ??

[rlsbutler]

Can someone explain what this means ?

For someone who got to Canberras after the problem was solved, is this the case of a runaway tailplane ?

If the statement is that the tailplane was set at the wrong angle, does it mean by the pilots in flight or by the ground staff beforehand ?

Indeed, by nose down pitch do they mean that the tailplane had (too great ?) a negative angle of attack or that the trim was correct for a nose-down aircraft attitude ?

[slatch]

Well, the plane had been flying for a while before the Crash. The aircraft took off along with other aircraft to preform a flyby. THe aircraft were vectored in trail by atc and then decended into a VFR coridor for the event. The B52 was the last aircraft in line. The aircraft were about 5 miles in trail and 2000 ft when ATC terminated radar and communications. When the B52 did not show up after the flyby ATC called the tower to see if they saw it. THey had not seen the B52. ATC then vectored the F15's that were in the flyby ahead of the B52 back toward the begining of the VFR corridor were wreckage was seen. The aircraft crashed soon after cancelling. Seeing all of the aircraft decended below Radar coverage ATC was not concerned when the B52's target was lost. So what ever happened seemed to happen quickly after they started there decent. Unfortunitly sounds like CFIT/water. And I believe the B1B landed gear up at Diego Garcia, not Guam.

[rlsbutler]

Obviously this report observes the conventions of a different culture from ours. There is a lot of unit pride and a heavy, if slightly disjointed, concentration on Process – abbreviations and order-book references that make the report seem technically important. This contrasts noticeably with the slightness of the material from which the final conclusions are drawn.

Of course part of the tragedy here described is that in the end so little physical evidence was available. The conclusions were bound to be conditional, provisional, probabilistic. Still it is surprising how firmly the president concludes that the stabiliser position pointed to a trim runaway. Indeed to my eyes it might seem remarkable that the president is personally identified with the conclusions, when perhaps ideally the whole board should be agreed on them.

Since the jackscrew is so important to the conclusions, we might be sorry not to get more of an explanation of the mechanism of which it is part. I do not get the answer to my last question (15 Feb at 18:00) and am left to assume that the 4.5 to 5.0 degrees “nose down” setting of the jackscrew was a stage in the upward movement of the stabiliser’s leading edge. We are not told what S&L speed that setting would have been good for, or what setting would have been expected as the aircraft cruised at 240 kts. The report might have discussed the possibility that the mechanism containing the jackscrew had itself physically failed. We are told how slow the manual trim would be, but not how fast the powered trim moved. From the long history of this redoubtable aircraft, the board only finds two previous examples of supposed trim runaways. If they really believe they have identified a third, it is surprising that there is no sense that the board, or its president, feel that anything should be done to make the trim system safer.

There is surprisingly no authentic pilot input anywhere in the report. The aircraft’s final manoeuvre has been tabled at Figure 3. No doubt the table has been skilfully smoothed to the satisfaction of the computer analysts that made it. But what pilot would be convinced that the aircraft, while rolling into a 50 deg bank, would have started to reverse the roll half through ? Or, if that was a real event, what was going on ?

Anyway, taking the table’s bank angles at face value, it feels natural that the PF would elect to lower the aircraft’s nose by selecting a steepish angle of bank and holding the pitch angle of level flight. This avoids the negative G that causes rear crew to make loud vomiting noises over the intercom. Normally, once the desired descent has been established in this way, the pilot would pull back on the stick to hold the bank and speed. If he trims (and I expect that noone lets an aircraft like the B-52 get much out of trim) he would be trimming in the sense that the report would describe as nose up.

But what is surprising about Figure 3 is how the steep descent was virtually established by the time that the aircraft had reached my steepish bank angle. A B-52 pilot would put me straight on this, but that looks to me like an uncomfortable and clumsy bunt – the president’s Scenario No 1. If the PF is indeed pitching down into this turn, he will have to trim nose down as he does it. If he is that clumsy, who is to say that he is not then keeping the trim selector pressed from then on. Which brings up another question for the board: what are the trim selection override arrangements as between captain and co-pilot ? Further, if as the president suggests one of the pilots was using the manual trim control and if the cutout switch was not operated, would manual override the electrical selection ?

Nowhere does the board consider the likely power settings during this descent. What do the speeds and descent angles tabled in Figure 3 tell us about the power settings at the start of and during the manoeuvre ? As the aircraft accelerated through Vne and off the bottom of the table, are we to conclude that the captain never thought to shut the throttles at any stage ? If so, why ?

I cannot help wondering if the general has gone to a lot of trouble not to speak ill of the dead. Quite old-fashioned really.

[FOG]

Risbutler,

Please remember that both the USAF and USA use full time accident investigators that do not necessarily have experience on the particular type/model series vice the USMC/USN model where everyone is from the particular type/model series with the requirement of only one being a trained accident investigator. Very different results though I have seen reports from both processes that immediately raised my BS flag as being impossible.

S/F, FOG

[DelaneyT]

{Ref: risbutler #22}

...yes, seems odd the Board President found the "cause" of the mishap to be "a mis-positioning of the stabilizer trim".

The obvious question is what caused that stab-trim mis-positioning -- which would be a closer answer to the actual root cause of the crash.

USAF used to be extremely fussy about determining & formally using the word "CAUSE" in any mishap report, so that corrective action could pinpoint the fundamental problem in a sequence of events.

The Board states they could not determine the reason for the improper trim position-- which obviously means they could NOT determine the mishap Cause. No 'cause' should therefore be stated in the formal report.

And I agree that power-settings should have been mentioned somewhere in the report discussion.

Your speculated uncomfortable bunt descent is also of concern since the whole purpose of this mishap sortie was a flyover/airshow. We know from many decades of mishaps with such formal & informal displays that some pilots have a tendency to exceed normal safety considerations.

[FOG]

Delaney,

Since the DoD are being forced together the use of cause is mandated. The USAF and USA tried to eliminate the whole concept of privilege which the Naval services fought and again the compromise doesn't satisfy anyone except those who want purple homogeneity at all costs.

At issue with the jointness is the creation of better data bases that are searchable. That means causes have to be declared and then placed into pre-determined categories so that data fields are auto populated. I recently had to write a mishap report that was inaccurate in it's conclusions due to the nature of the system now in place. My only recourse was the additional comments block where I could correct factual errors (lost time doesn't count if not consecutive, the casual factor didn't honestly fit into any pre-determined category, etc.)

Having stated the above there is a USAF Col. who still owes me a 25 y/o bottle of Talisker over a mishap report about ten years ago that people disagreed with and the USAF later had to completely re-write.

Basically two choices; either the new system forced bad data which is happening, or incompetent report which has happened. Remember that the 1st link is a public affairs take and the 2nd is not the full FOUO report.

S/F, FOG

[FJJP]

Au contraire, there IS extensive pilot input into the report. Apart from one of the Board members being a pilot, there was extensive simulator runs done - that was the pilot input. Even if the President had flown nothing more than a Tiger Moth, the discussions the Board would have had with the pilots flying the simulator runs would enable them to reach sensible conclusions.

Having read through the whole document, the Board reaches a reasonable conclusion. The only thing the MP could have done was to crank on 120 degrees of bank, accept the loss if his engines, but got the aircraft into a level position to allow the crew to eject. I don't think that that would have occured to the average pilot sitting in the cockpit with seconds to react - armchair piloting is wonderful.

In a UK Board that I conducted as President [take-off crash] I enlisted the help of an AIB behavioural scientist. He explained that it takes seconds for the pilot to identify that there IS a problem, seconds to IDENTIFY the problem, seconds to work out a course of action and seconds to actually carry out those actions - can be as much as 30 seconds from start to finish. Even more if the problem is unusual and not routinely practiced in the simulator.

So a trim runaway would have doomed the crew right from the start...

It happened on the Canberra until the double pole switch was introduced for the elevator trim.

[rlsbutler]

FJJP

As you mention it, I will gladly defer to your experience of this sort of proceeding. Although as you have not done so yet, can you say what you find to be unreasonable about the reservations that I have voiced from my armchair ?

I too can see that there is a pilot on his board and that experienced pilot instructors were involved in the simulation. What I do not see is the pilot’s point of view in the discussion. Did you have two lawyers on your board ?

In place of common airmanship, the report gives great prominence to the table at Figures 3 and 5. It fails to note the anomalies contained within it.

The simulation fails to replicate the observed flight profile illustrated in Figure 2. Boeings naturally demur at simulation outside the flight envelope, especially when (as it seems to me) Figure 2 tells us the aircraft goes mach-critical before it drops out of sight of the radars. That the test crew cannot match speeds and heights in the first half of the descent suggests that the simulator might be no more suited to this exercise than (if it as old as the airframes) it should be.

Second, why the presumption that the runaway was detected only as the aircraft had accelerated to the run-in speed ? Presumably the runaway would be initiated by a trim selection, rather than arising spontaneously. The PF can be expected to take little bursts of trim as he sets the desired dive angle and as the speed increases. If he gets more than he has selected, he will know it at once.

If I were briefing this manoeuvre, I would have gone for a descent at 300 kts (the flypast run-in speed) and a descent at 5000 ft/min which would get the aircraft to run-in height half way down the 30 nm inbound track. That works out at 8 or 9 pitch ND. Whether through clumsy handling or runaway trim, at 25 secs the PF should know the aircraft has pitched too far. That is when the captain should get on the case – unless a bit of a hairy dive was what the pilots had agreed on.

What the table shows is that at this point the PF takes off a bit of bank and then rolls back in again. Why ?

At 35 secs, as the speed builds, clearly there is a deliberate recovery action being taken; the wings are rolled level at approaching twice the rate of roll used originally. Although the speed is galloping through Vne, the nose comes up a bit at this stage and stays there for a calculated 15 secs before it drops away. Is this when manual trim is being used, if it is used at all (although of course this is time enough to reverse the stabiliser into a positive setting) ? Or are we to suppose that, with two pairs of boots on the instrument panel, that is the extent of the elevator’s authority in relation to the errant stabiliser ? In the last part of its dive this aircraft has stopped pitching down. At least that is what Figure 3 says. The lost Canberras were thought to bunt all the way, if they started with enough altitude.

While the 120 deg bank is what we might have resorted to if the Canberra’s dipole switch let us down, the idea of doing so in a B-52 is just ever so slightly theatrical.

The B-52 has enough bells-and-braces in its powered trim control, plus the cut-out and a manual selector as well. The pilots’ fingers would have wandered past these emergency switches every trip. Surely, self-preservation would have kicked in at the expense of “Recognise , Confirm, Bold Face, Reassess” ? – if runaway really was the problem.

Still, with your experience no doubt you are right to find the president’s conclusions reasonable. But I would still like to have been told whether or not the aircraft was under power throughout its last dive.

[FOG]

FJJP,

I have been the senior member on a couple of USMC boards and participated on a few more. I have worked with all three service mishap boards.

Notice that the senior member is a TacAir type pilot vice a heavy bomber and a BGen while the pilot is a Maj, as is the navigator. Assuming that the pilot is of the heavy bomber pilot persuasion as is the navigator, how much of their input was actually translated into TacAir then back into heavy bomber? Remember there is no USAF requirement to have anybody on the board be from the particular community in question, I can think of a HC-130 and a F-16 mishap where that was the case.

Simulators are far from perfect in depicting mishaps. Hornets were unrecoverable from falling leafs, Ospreys weren't susceptible to asymmetrical ring vortex, and Herks couldn't barrel roll in simulators until proven in real life. At best the simulator is a rough approximation based on different imprecise data points.

The medical representative (along with the safety officer) would have at least a familiarization course on the behavioral sciences and part of the check list for all services is to consult with the specialist.

S/F, FOG