RFS air tanker feared crashed in NSW

[pmccarthy]

The spotter said he flew up a valley and the Herc did not follow him out. Would the spotter be from the same US team or would he be local?

 

 

[skippydiesel]

Crew fatigue is well looked after on fires. The bigger machines have multiple crew and change out regularly.

I recon that front in NSW was the one that came though Vic on Wednesday. We went to a fire near Lake Bolac on Wednesday and conditions were very rough in the lee of the Gramps making flying hard work. 

 

FYI - I did not suggest there was no fatigue management - my informant suggested that the operational hours for crew on these sorts of missions was potentially much more than for, say an airliner. Juan Brown (see Kyle Comms comment) video briefly mentions this possibility.

 

 

[onetrack]

The ABC now has aerial footage of the crash site. It's not exceptionally good footage, but it shows what appears to be an impact at a fairly steep angle, with virtually total destruction of the aircraft, and the debris trail spread over about 300-400 metres.

 

I see no major components that have survived. It's difficult to tell from the destruction trail if the impact was wings level or not.

 

If the wing/s separated in flight, I would've expected them to be highly visible, and picked up by the ABC aerial photography crew.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-24/three-firefighters-who-died-in-nsw-tanker-crash-named/11897704

 

 

[kgwilson]

It certainly points to a major mechanical failure of some description. With such total destruction it will prove incredibly difficult to determine the cause. It has been done before though as they piece tiny fragments together to establish which parts were attributable to the impact and which weren't and then determine what failed.

 

 

[Cosmick]

With the investment and technology in this type of aircraft would it carry the black box. 

 

 

[Student Pilot]

I had heard the tailplane was intact, no sign of anything of any size in that footage. Absolute destruction. 

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Was there still a full load of water on board? If so, that would exacerbate the gust loadings which may have come close to or exceeded the design loadings. I can imagine some dreadful sharp-edged upgusts what with the mountains plus the wind plus the fires. Such a sad end to a wonderful endeavor, what with the aircraft and organizations and crew.

 

 

[kgwilson]

It has a CVR but as far as I know does not have a FDR.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Was there still a full load of water on board? If so, that would exacerbate the gust loadings which may have come close to or exceeded the design loadings. I can imagine some dreadful sharp-edged upgusts what with the mountains plus the wind plus the fires. Such a sad end to a wonderful endeavor, what with the aircraft and organizations and crew.

 

Reporting today said they'd actually dropped the load before the crash.

 

 

[red750]

The video above states that the large tankers carry retardant, not water. Water is carried by the helicoters .The report on Ch 7 news said the plane had dispersed its load and made a sharp left turn before it crashed. They said debris was scattered over a kilometer. 

 

 

[skippydiesel]

Very few aircraft accidents have a single cause - the old Swiss Cheese theory, holds good for most, if not all.

 

 

[saccani]

Very sad, 

 

Some reports of structural failures in C 130 in USA in similar applications - ABC

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-23/large-air-tanker-c-130-water-bomber-crash-cooma/11894892

 

If you look into the maintenance history of the previous C130 structural failure in the US, you will find a years long gap on the records when it was being used by the CIA.  It was speculated that unrecorded high g loading in sneaky operations may have been a factor in the early centre wing box fatigue failure.  I looked into the history of this airframe (#4904) a while back, it was built in 1981 as a Naval EC130Q TACAMO, a fairly relaxed role from the structural point of view, essentially a communications relay for a global thermonuclear war.  It then had the special electronics removed and was placed in AMARC, with engines etc removed before Carlson got it for aerial tanker conversion.  It’s basically a C130H.  The earlier failure was with one of the early production C130A, which had some significant structural issues which were corrected in later models.  The 2012 crash was not a structural failure, but due to a microburst producing a down draught that exceeded the climb performance of the aircraft at full power, even after it dumped its load.  They didn’t have enough height to fly out of it before they hit the ground.

 

 

[saccani]

The video above states that the large tankers carry retardant, not water. Water is carried by the helicoters .The report on Ch 7 news said the plane had dispersed its load and made a sharp left turn before it crashed. They said debris was scattered over a kilometer. 

 

Indeed, but the retardant is mostly water, with a thickening agent, colouring agent and an environmentally friendly retardant like ammonium sulphate which act like a fertiliser afterwards (borate based ones tended to kill everything).  

 

 

[saccani]

I am not wanting to be too quick to ask, but I heard on the news that it wasn't a simple crash.   It nose dived from a pretty high altitude.

 

Not so much CFIT.

 

Just curious to what happened - though I guess everyone is wanting to know.

 

Just for speculation, there was one some years ago that had an entire prop blade break off and go through the fuselage, cutting a lot of control runs.  That was through criminally negligent maintenance of the prop, where corrosion was detected at the hub end and they couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it and just put it back together.

 

 

[skippydiesel]

The "type" (if there is such a thing) of person who is willing and able to do this sort of work can only be marveled at, none more so than the flight engineers involved. I have tried to imagine sitting in my "office" being bounced around as if in spine dryer , without any direct control of  a very dangerous situation, while trying to do my work calmly & consistently. Some minutes must be like days and yet the do it every working day - that takes the whole equation to a much higher level. My awe is not sufficient.

 

 

[Student Pilot]

The video above states that the large tankers carry retardant, not water. Water is carried by the helicoters .The report on Ch 7 news said the plane had dispersed its load and made a sharp left turn before it crashed. They said debris was scattered over a kilometer. 

 

The LATs and VLAT in Australia do drop water/ foam depending on where the drop is. In sensitive areas just water is dropped, grass and scrub mostly foam and bush mostly retardant. SEATs do the same, choppers, medium and heavy mostly drop water/ foam very rarely retardant.

 

 

[saccani]

It certainly points to a major mechanical failure of some description. With such total destruction it will prove incredibly difficult to determine the cause. It has been done before though as they piece tiny fragments together to establish which parts were attributable to the impact and which weren't and then determine what failed.

 

Having had a chance to look at some pictures of the scene, the degree of breakup and the distribution of wreckage are consistent with other C130 crashes I have seen from CFIT.  However, I can only positively find one wing and it’s two engines in the wreckage, and one piece of wreckage which is a bit blurry but is consistent with the third engine.  The trail of wreckage seems consistent with controlled and level flight. The absence of propeller blades near the engines is consistent with a high level of power on impact (if not developing power, the blades are usually found still on the hub next to engine), which is easily determined by inspection of the turbine section.  I don’t suggest pilot error in the sense of making a blunder, but operating by necessity in a very demanding environment with tight margins, they may have run out of margin.  Many Hercules tankers don’t have an emergency dump provision, just dumping at max. rate if they have a problem.  Fifteen tonnes may not sound like a big load, but it can make a big difference in climb performance - how much of their load was dispensed prior to orientating towards rising terrain is unclear.  If a strong down draught or sudden reversal of wind was present and the load had not been fully dumped, the aircraft may not have had enough climb performance to counter that and climb above the rising ground.  It may be that they were let down by the lead aircraft.  The investigators will of course have better information to figure out what happened.  Whatever happened, it is inconsistent with a strong nose down attitude at first graze.  

 

 

[flying dog]

I just read saccani's post.

 

Interesting.

 

Dumb question/s:

 

Granted they were dropping water on the fire, and it would probably been from a low altitude.

 

But not to the point of tree top I would hope.

 

Way back the news report was talking about the last few seconds of flight - alas it was given in metres rather than feet.   (Sorry, I'm still a feet person for altitude)

 

I seem to remember they were 1,000 above ground level.    As that is/was in metres, that is quite high to run out of margin.

 

(No offence)

 

Has the CVR been played back to anyone yet?

 

 

[Aldo]

Was there still a full load of water on board? If so, that would exacerbate the gust loadings which may have come close to or exceeded the design loadings. I can imagine some dreadful sharp-edged upgusts what with the mountains plus the wind plus the fires. Such a sad end to a wonderful endeavor, what with the aircraft and organizations and crew.

 

Turbulence penetration speed is higher if you are heavy 

 

 

[Aldo]

The LATs and VLAT in Australia do drop water/ foam depending on where the drop is. In sensitive areas just water is dropped, grass and scrub mostly foam and bush mostly retardant. SEATs do the same, choppers, medium and heavy mostly drop water/ foam very rarely retardant.

 

Not quite true (at least in Qld) I have a number of friends in FB operations flying tractors and most loads contain retardant I’m not sure if this is different in NSW and VIC although I have a mate flying out of Cooma at the moment and the day of the accident he was carrying retardant also said it was a shit day the tractors can deal with most conditions but the 130 may not

 

 

[saccani]

I just read saccani's post.

 

Interesting.

 

Dumb question/s:

 

Granted they were dropping water on the fire, and it would probably been from a low altitude.

 

But not to the point of tree top I would hope.

 

Way back the news report was talking about the last few seconds of flight - alas it was given in metres rather than feet.   (Sorry, I'm still a feet person for altitude)

 

I seem to remember they were 1,000 above ground level.    As that is/was in metres, that is quite high to run out of margin.

 

(No offence)

 

Has the CVR been played back to anyone yet?

 

One of the gentlemen here says they were using retardant, which makes sense, in which case they would drop in a line ahead of the fire, normally downwind or upsIope.  I don’t know the specifics for Coulson’s employment of their RDS XXL system.  Typical C130 drops are in the order of 150 feet above the vegetation @ 125 knots, with minimum safe drop above the surface at lowest release rate of 130 feet, at max rate, 249 feet, including 50 foot safety margin.  That’s to avoid knocking trees over and killing people.  You want it to slow down and fall vertical.  I don’t think even a 747 would drop at 1,000 feet.  Drop computers only used to go to 400 feet maximum, maybe they go higher now?  In practice, many drops may end up being made below these heights.  RDS can dump at an emergency flow rate to empty in 2.5 seconds, you really want one second, but that’s not too bad.  MAFFS, the common Hercules system, takes 4.3 seconds.  If you consider wind gusts in the order of 50 knots in the area, the possibility of fire related microburst etc..., or a wind reversal, there is not a lot to play with at drop height.  Hot conditions, dirty configuration, rising ground, it’s very challenging indeed. It doesn’t need a  mechanical issue to put you in, but it also is a factor of course, and it need not be a major one - one engine or prop misbehaving at just the wrong moment, when much of the margin has already been used, and you can’t climb faster than the ground is rising.  I don’t think the relatively long transit times help, the weather can be different by the time you get there, most likely worse on a stinking hot day.  It would be nice if there were more places to load the aircraft.

 

The drop heights given above do get increased to allow terrain escape, but they should give an idea of where they typically operate on the drop.  I have seen drops below 15 feet - this is, of course looked at somewhat askance.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I just read saccani's post.

 

Interesting.

 

Dumb question/s:

 

Granted they were dropping water on the fire, and it would probably been from a low altitude.

 

But not to the point of tree top I would hope.

 

Way back the news report was talking about the last few seconds of flight - alas it was given in metres rather than feet.   (Sorry, I'm still a feet person for altitude)

 

I seem to remember they were 1,000 above ground level.    As that is/was in metres, that is quite high to run out of margin.

 

(No offence)

 

Has the CVR been played back to anyone yet?

 

FD, the ATSB will be posting updates on this and these will have conventional references.

 

I couldn't find a preliminary report or file number, but it should only be a matter of days before the basics are posted.

 

 

[onetrack]

All I take from the crash site is power loss over rising terrain - a low angle of impact with debris over a kilometre - a wreckage trail similar to the Erebus disaster, as someone else has noted.

 

It appears the aircraft has screwed 45-60 deg to the port side as it skidded, thus I think the other two engines may be buried in the wreckage near the tail - i.e. - the tail assembly skidded up over the starboard wing.

 

I wouldn't like the job of trying to determine exactly what happened with the level of destruction there.

 

I really doubt the CVR will produce anything of major value, apart from maybe an expletive or two, because I reckon things happened very fast, and they would've had little time to fault find, due to low level flight, and they were possibly in heavy smoke and dust as well.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

I am interested in the role of the lead plane. Wikipedia says:

 

The Lead Plane function directs the activities of the airtankers by both verbal target descriptions and by physically leading the airtankers on the drop run. The leadplane is typically referred to as a "Bird Dog" in Canada or "Supervision" aircraft in Australia. The O-2 Skymaster, Cessna 310 and OV-10 Bronco have been used as spotter and lead plane platforms.

 

The press report says the lead plane flew through but was not followed out of the drop zone. So I want to know whether the lead plane flew a course that the Herc could not follow. Hence my earlier query about whether the lead planes are provided by the same operator (and would be fully conversant with Herc perfomance). 

 

 

[red750]

Received this feed on my FB page today..

 

https://newatlas.com/good-thinking/high-altitude-drop-system-night-aerial-firefighting/