The US Air Force has about 550 KC-135 Stratotankers in service.
Prayers up for the crew and their families.
Posted on 05/03/2013 3:00:12 PM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
5/3/2013 - TRANSIT CENTER AT MANAS, Kyrgyzstan (AFNS) -- An Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker crashed May 3 in northern Kyrgyzstan. Emergency response crews are on scene. The status of the crew is unknown.
The crew and aircraft are assigned to the Transit Center at Manas near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Those 707’s are getting old.
And the rest is history.
Looked like an aft CG problem when I saw it. Whoever loaded and secured the cargo goofed IMHO.
No one survives a KC-135 crash on take off, most are over 50 years old.
You were looking at the 747 crash a few days ago.
“He said witnesses calling in on a hotline said they saw a parachute when the plane was falling. Others said they saw an explosion and the plane was broken in half.”
Prayers there was at least one parachute.
Those a/c have been upgraded to the latest instrumentation and the engines are the most powerful yet to be on a KC-135. It doesn't matter so much as to how old the airframe is if the maintenance is up to date but it does matter that sometimes bad things happen beyond anyone's ability to handle. The laws of physics, gravity and probability are always in force. As one with more than 20,000 hours in big Boeings I can tell you that complacency and inattention to reality is a sure recipe for trouble.
There was one that crashed at Loring AFB ME in late 60’s or early 70’s on take off and all the crew walked away from it.
Lost power as I remember and could not get off crashed right off end of runway
I know I wish we had those engines when I was flying them, still a damn good Airplane. Most, 90 + some % of crashes are pilot error, this may have been sabotage. I’d say take off weight was about 229,000 or about, way within optimum performance limits.
This one did not lift off, I know about that one. I have several thousand hours in them.
???
The US Air Force has about 550 KC-135 Stratotankers in service.
Prayers up for the crew and their families.
I flew many a mile on a KC-135s in the USAF. 1967-69 worked on KCs.
That is a great Airplane with out it bombing missions would have been very limited, we got little credit.
You’re thinking of the 747 dashcam video. This isn’t the same. The cause of this crash will have to be determined by sifting through the wreckage and communications records, if there were any.
The KC-46 is a better airplane and coming on line right now. NGC/EADS won the contract the first time around because the Air Force acquisition people pre-selected them and cheated the source selection in their favor. Believe me, Boeing never would’ve won that award protest unless they had court-level proof that the process was corrupted. Guess what? They did. Not that I think Boeing is wonderful, but I don’t want the builders of the A380 building our tankers. There were a lot of rookie mistakes done on the A380 and the band-aid fixes are scary.
And if you think American union labor is a pain in the ass, try dealing with French union labor that, by law, can only work 30 hrs/week and will only talk to you once a month through their embassy. I’ve had to deal with Messier-Buggatti on their aircraft carbon brake discs, so I know a little something about this.
The French were only making the empty fuselage and sending the pieces to Alabama. Northrop Grumman in Florida and in Alabama plus hundreds of other Americans sub contractors were doing all the rest.
And I know more than "a little something about this". And I can't tell you why I do.
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