This came up yesterday (sorry German voice in the video, but he’s not giving information to us pilots anyway).
Two military pilots died in what is obviously a ground strike. May they rest in peace, sad enough.
But what struck me is why the bloody hell can’t they recover from the ok-ish attitude? Right wingtip hits tree, float flies away. The right engine is running (as far as it looks like). Or is it not? If not it would be a stall into the dead engine. Can anyone shed a light for me?
It looks like the right aileron is stuck in the position full right from the crash. Looks like the left one is moving but the right one is not. That would be really hard. They seem to be in a slight slip already when dropping the water and the sum of all this was too much, so that they entered a right-turn stall immediately after hitting the tree.
I think they got a massive downdraft getting over the fire and get too much sucked by the ground. This is a very dangerous job and crews are getting really tired in their duty during such wild fires…
It looks to me as if something (a large piece) came off on hitting the tree.
gallois wrote:
It looks to me as if something (a large piece) came off on hitting the tree.
Indeed. It might be the right float. Ripping it off might have damaged the wing integrity or aileron control. We’ll have the answer in the investigation report.
I am always in awe of water bomber pilots. Very difficult and dangerous job indeed which requires a great deal of courage. RIP to those two brave pilots.
In some review of this event,, we can see that right aileron is locked in high position after hitting the trees (at 13:36)
OK now that’s what I concluded right from the beginning, as I wrote. You could see it in the video. The right aileron doesn’t move anymore after hitting the tree. I also already posted that the right float went away when hitting the tree.
What a really sad outcome. But it looks unrecoverable.
