Author Topic: B1B down off Diego Garcia (Read 1749 times)

Hangtime · « **on:** December 12, 2001, 12:25:00 PM »

Ruh roh.

Hope the crew got out ok...

Mighty1 · « **Reply #1 on:** December 12, 2001, 12:55:00 PM »

All 4 crew members were rescued.

Animal · « **Reply #2 on:** December 12, 2001, 12:59:00 PM »

excellent.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #3 on:** December 12, 2001, 01:14:00 PM »

Glad to hear they made it out OK. Capsule eject is a risky buisness.

I wonder if the Taliban has claimed responsibility for this downing yet? I expect it to be soon after claiming responsibility for a blackhawk loosing its landing gear.

AKDejaVu

indian · « **Reply #4 on:** December 12, 2001, 01:19:00 PM »

B1B's dont need much help in crashing they were in the news almost constantly for awhile. Glad they all got out.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #5 on:** December 12, 2001, 01:29:00 PM »

I was in when they were grounded. The base commander was doing his preflight when he looked up to see one of his planes doing an overflight with fire coming from its wing-root. Needless to say, the decision to ground them was made almost instantly.

The fuel cell rupturing (wing sweep issue) and bird strikes have claimed quite a few of these bombers. The irony of more being lost in training than ever saw combat (or were likely to see combat) did not escape anyone in the late 80's.

AKDejaVu

Eagler · « **Reply #6 on:** December 12, 2001, 01:44:00 PM »

playing the odds, bound to happen with number of sorties, just a matter of time

glad to see they have grabbed the crew

Hangtime · « **Reply #7 on:** December 12, 2001, 02:16:00 PM »

I think we also lost a heluva lotta B29's before they were finally deployed.

Any new A/C programme has extreme risk, and the B1B's constant role change and redesign was an accident waiting to happen.

Still; we need this bird; and by all crew accounts it seems to be one heluva airplane.

AKIron · « **Reply #8 on:** December 12, 2001, 02:25:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by AKDejaVu:
Glad to hear they made it out OK. Capsule eject is a risky buisness.

AKDejaVu

Sure is. While I was stationed at Cannon AFB in '78-'79 two F111's went down. Crew survived one, didn't the other. Seems I remember hearing the rocket motors destroyed the chute on that one.

eagl · « **Reply #9 on:** December 12, 2001, 09:54:00 PM »

The B-1B doesn't use capsule ejection. It has 4 conventional seats firing upwards. This design mod was made so late in the process that the windows in the back are now placed down around the back seater's elbow and are useful only as "day/night indicators". The ejection seats are raised significantly from the original seat position. I'm not sure what kind of survival gear they carry (larger crew style raft in addition to single man rafts?) but I know there have been recent cuts in the survival gear that tankers carry so the KC-10 that was the on-scene SAR asset probably didn't have much to drop to them.

In any case, it was good to hear that they got out ok.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #10 on:** December 12, 2001, 11:03:00 PM »

Ah.. I can believe they changed to ejection seats... but that is not how the plane was originally designed.

The capsule eject was the cause of a few fatalities early in its service life... sounds like they went away from it.

AKDejaVu

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #11 on:** December 12, 2001, 11:16:00 PM »

Hmmmmm... I've been searching and can't find any mention of a capsule eject with the B-1B... but I'm sure it existed at some time (maybe in the B-1A?). There's not really much history on the plane, just up-to-date info.

AKDejaVu

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #12 on:** December 12, 2001, 11:21:00 PM »

I kept searching and stumbled across this at http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/8629/lancer.htm

Quote

The B-1A was designed with a speed of Mach 2+ in mind but the specification of B-1B dropped the speed to Mach 1.2 which enable the B-1B to adapt a simpler wing sweep mechanism compare to the B-1A. The ejection system was also changed, instead of individual ejection for each crew member, the B-1B allows the entire crew to be eject in an jettisonable crew escapable capsule where the crew compartment would be blasted away from the plane by 2 solid fuel rocket and descend back to earth in 3 parachute.

I also stumbled across another site that mentioned a firing order for ejection... so its a tad bit confusing.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #13 on:** December 12, 2001, 11:31:00 PM »

Ah... rounded up this at http://www.af.mil/news/Jul1998/n19980709_981005.html

Quote

"Originally, the B-1 had an ejection capsule, but that had too much of a weight penalty," Santi said. "Individual ejection systems were simpler but involved four hatches and four crew members. We were able to develop a quick-sequencing system that extracted people without them running into each other. The big issue was diverging the seats."

Damn.. I knew it had one. I didn't know they moved away from it. I worked on F-111s and alot of sweep-wing capsule-eject stories would float back and forth.

And AKIron... We only had one ejection while I was at Mt. Home AFB (with F-111As). Unfortunately, the plane was inverted at about 300 feet when the pilots ejected on a cold January day. I was on the recovery team for that one... not a pleasant memory.

AKDejaVu

[ 12-12-2001: Message edited by: AKDejaVu ]

funkedup · « **Reply #14 on:** December 12, 2001, 11:34:00 PM »

Eagl is always right about USAF equipment.

B-1B has 4 ejection seats not a pod.