MISSILE FIRED ON A310

[rsoman]

Following news reported in "New Indian Express" of Sun 29 July (Item attributed to
Press Trust of India - An Indian News Agency)

Quote
Mumbai : Airbus A310 Capt CM Edekar has reported of a missile being fired at, while on a flight from Nairobi to Mumbai on the night of July 23.The report has been sent to the Home ministry and Bureau of Civil Aviation Security.
Unquote

Looking at the flight schedules the flight involved is AI 200 operating NBO BOM .
No other details available.

Another "mistake" like the Iran Air downing by the US Navy??

[E. MORSE]

Well , with both the conflicts in the far North and South of the country , one would surely think that their planes might as well be standard equipped with chaff and flares !


cheers

:)

[BEagle]

Heat seeking missile or sikh heating missile?

This had better be just a rumour.......

[rsoman]

Well let us hope it is a rumour.
But there must have been an incident of some sort,since the captain's name is
mentioned in the report. Will any Captain risk it unless he is sure of the facts?

[rsoman]

Some more details available.
The plane was fired at while in Somali
Air space with SAMs.Flight was cruising at FL 330.
More details available at http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jul/29ai.htm

[BOEINGBOY1]

so how come the a/c wasn't bought down ? must have been the F16 like evasive manouvers !!!

[E. MORSE]

Surface to Air missiles just don't reach FL330 .

At least that's what they told me !

cheers

:rolleyes:

[Agaricus bisporus]

SA2s are certainly around in Somalia, there used to be an entire battery of them abandoned next to Berbera airfield in the north of the country, complete with radar, command vehicles etc. I'd have thought that the SA2 was a fairly technical system (liquid fuel?) and would be a real handful for the Somalis to resurrect and operate. There were persistant rumours in 93 that Aideed had got hold of SA7s too, but thankfully they never appeared. Interesting to read in the above link that the Indian Army had missile helos in Somalia. Anyone know where they were based, coz I never saw one? Mind, the Eyeties had a bunch of helos, (CH47s and Mangustas) there too, and they never flew either.

Remember the SA2 took out Gary Powers in his U2 at 60,000' in 1960 something, big reach but probably not very accurate.

And who in thier right mind sees a missile coming at them and does not warn ATC and other traffic? Sounds real odd, that.

[Vfrpilotpb]

Was this Pilot from Egypt, or did he have wing mirrors :D

[Wino]

Actually a number of Civilian Jets have been hit by SAMs and not downed. That is the beauty of pod mounted engines vs internal engines like a fighter would have.

I know of at least 2 corporate jets that were struck by stinger type missles. They DIrectly impacted the engine destroying it, but the damage was more or less contained in the engine and the aircraft limped home on one engine.

Its one of the reason's that I don't believe the Missle Thoery of TWA...

Cheers
Wino

[RATBOY]

Thereare SAMs and there are SAMs. The SA-2 and SA-3 are the real deal and sure could hit an airliner but they are a also fairly massive affairs requiring lots of maintenance and skill to use, as well as spare parts and specialist technical knowledge and a target acquisition radar. A scarebus may be big but it is small at 33,000 ft.compared to the whole sky.

The shoulder fired stuff is great for scaring folks and can hit airliners in takeoff or approach regimes but can't reach them at cruise, obviously. I don't know the size of the warhead of the Stinger or Redeye but do know that the Russian copy of the Sidewinder, in whatever configuration it was in then blew a lot of tailpipes off of Israeli A-4 Skyhawks without actually shooting the aircraft down during the 6 day war.

[5150]

Did they get a TA/RA?

[Den_Dennis]

Regarding the missle theory...

According to a friend of a friend of my uncles brother (actually a NTSB investigator)
the section of a 747 with the highest IR sig is not the 4 Pratts at climb power but the air conditioning packs under the CWT.
So any IR seeking missle would hit there and not one of the engines.
When asked to clarify, he told me that the exhausts are washed with cool fan discharge and therefore have a lower IR sig therefore hiding the hotter internal parts of the engine to a IR seeking missle.

Well he had me convinced.

: DD :

[Slasher]

Den, check that. KAL 007 (B747-200) was hit (admittedley by AAMs not SAMs) in the aft cabin after smashing through the RPB, and another hit #3 engine taking out the #3 main tank (and of course its wing), not any aircon pack.

[Den_Dennis]

I have considered the KAL-007. The fact of the matter is that only about 1000 items of debris were recovered from the wreckage field and the FDR and CVR were never recovered - so I think that we cannot conclude where the missile struck the plane.

Admittedly it did take the 747 a little over 12 minutes to disappear from radar from a height of 35,000 speaks volumes about the amount of control the pilot had.

The missile carried around 70lbs of explosives, enough I would think for the engine to be completely destroyed and substantial wing damage affecting the control a lot more than the transponder recordings show.

Pure specualtion, I know, feel free to 'help' me with my interpretation.

Still, it does seem highly improbabal that the A/C pack is hotter than an engine. If the missile did strike the engine, then I would have thought with number 4 engine being furthest from the fuselage, it would have had the coolest background -therefore the hottest signature,for the missile to aim for and not number 3.

I am a little dubious over the KAL-007 shooting. I do not want to believe the hype and say it didn't happen, but a lot of things in the ICAO report do not add up.

: DD :

[ 01 August 2001: Message edited by: Den_Dennis ]

[Ignition Override]

Agaricus: Right. I flew right over (just before, or during final approach, less than 2,000' AGL) an SA-2 site in northern Somalia in '81 or '82, while flying senior officers (from Tampa, FL) there. We were in Mogadishu for a week, in order to fly these guys to possible supply/deployment bases, to be used in case of a future "problem" in the Middle East.

Certain readers must not be aware of the tragic losses of many high-altitude B-52s (and crews) over North Vietnam due to SA-2 launches. It was 1973? I would call that a high-altitude missile. This fact is noted in many books and tv programs about the war.

[ 02 August 2001: Message edited by: Ignition Override ]

[mutt]

DD,

We actually operate some B747 aircraft with anti-missile protection systems and chaff dispensers. AFAIK, all of this equipment focuses on the engines and not the pack overflow.

Looking at schematics of the aircraft, I would also say that the outflow values are quite some distance behind the CWT.

Just my 2 halala worth.

Mutt :)

[ 02 August 2001: Message edited by: mutt ]

[Wiley]

Wino, you might be comparing apples and oranges in discounting the missile theory completely regarding TWA800.

There are missiles and there are missiles… Everyone here is talking about heat seeking missiles that, if absolutely accurate, will hit a target's highest IR signature. (I can't comment on whether that would be the jet exhaust or the aircon pack outlets on a 747.) Most, but not all 'lightweight' missiles, (the shoulder-launched varieties) fall into this category. (Military aircraft use flares to avoid such missiles.)

Then you have your active or passive radar homing missiles. (Most of the bigger, more sophisticated surface to air missiles fall into this category). Either guided by a ground station or using their own radar guidance systems, (or a combination of both - ground station guidance until within short range of the target, then switching to their onboard seekers for the final homing), they will seek out the largest radar signature - the centre of the cruciform - where the wings meet the fuselage. (Military aircraft use chaff to avoid such missiles.)

Getting back to the IA A310, it's interesting that no official report seems to have followed this pilot report. You would have to hope that if there's any basis to this, a Notam would have at least been issued for traffic overflying Somalia. To say that authorities and airlines know this incident has occurred and have ignored it is stretching the conspiracy theories beyond my comfort levels. Just surmising here, but if the incident did occur, my guess would be that some warlord's clan launched an old SA2 or 3 unguided within sight of the IA crew. (I'm told by friends unfortunate enough to have seen one, that an SA 2 launch is quite spectacular and guaranteed to concentrate the mind if you're in an aircraft within sight of it.)

I wouldn't have thought it would take a rocket scientist (no pun intended) to launch such a weapon (ie, simply 'light the taper' and stand back to watch the fireworks). It would be a very different matter to set one up with all functions operational, acquire a target and track it properly and then launch it for a successful engagement.

If the incident did occur and authorities are apparently ignoring it, I'd say it's because they know that this was just someone pickling off an old missile to watch the fireworks or impress his friends. I may be wrong, but I do not believe an SA 2 launched this way could acquire and track a target after launch - unless God was really trying to tell you your time has come.

[Den_Dennis]

I know what you are saying Mutt, and I hate to hide behind someone elses comments - but the very fact that this guy was part of the NTSB for many years, suggests that he knows better than I.
I haven't been able to check his credentials out, but he certainly is consistant in his background knowledge of events and accident investigation techniques.

I am no thermodynamic engineer, so although I was sceptical, I bowed to the greater knowledge.

Point taken on the location of the outflow in relation to the CWT.
: DD :

[Den_Dennis]

To clarify,
An IR detector was setup on the climb out path of a major airport by the NTSB, and the hottest part of the aircrafts were the a/c packs themselves(not the outflows) directly underneath the CWT.

I have done some checking and found that the air leaving the overbleed ducts is at about 400 F and the max cont. exhaust gas temp is a huge 1625 F. That is not including any cooling due to fan wash.

So that means that the a/c packs have to produce a greater IR sig than the engine exhausts - sounds improbable to me.

Anyone shed any light on this ?

: DD :
: DD :

[Covenant]

The theory of the fan wash from the bypass blanketing the hot exhaust gases is quite plausible.

On the other hand, the cold air would have a pretty low static pressure, particularly at altitude. I'm not really sure how much of a barrier it would be to IR.

The NTSB experiment appears to have been performed during climb-out where the air in much denser and more likely to absorb IR and lead to a lower signature at the engine.

A cold substance between an IR detector and a hot body isn't much of an impedance. Look at those new spy cameras the FBI and DEA use that can see people through walls!

Plausible it may be, but like others, I find it hard to believe.

[max_cont]

Don't the military use cold air to hide/ reduce the IR signature on helos and fixed wing as a matter of basic design philosophy?

If it didn't work, I'm sure they wouldn't go through all that effort and expense for nothing.

Just my two cents worth guys.

Cheers all.