B-2 Bomber Crash-Guam

Sidious

Well-Known Member
Looks like the intial investigation revealed mositure to be the culprit in giving erroneous airspeed readings. Amazing to see how something so simple can destroy something so complex. Anyway, here's the article and footage of the crash.

Clicky B-2 Bomber

But was it the moisture in the air that the computers miscalculated (density) or did moisture get into the system and screw it up? Thoughts?
 
The previously mentioned article didn't really do justice to the story.



The Air Force says the first crash of a B-2 stealth bomber was caused by moisture in the sensors that forced bad readings.
The moisture in 3 of the 24 sensors threw off the preflight data calibrations, which caused the flight control computer to force the aircraft to pitch-up 30 degrees on takeoff. That resulted in a stall and subsequent crash on Feb. 23.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2026740/posts
 
When I was active duty, we had a cherry picker punch a hole in the vertical stab of a C-5. The supervision was furious and wanted to "hang" the operator. After extensive troubleshooting on the cherry picker, we came to the conclusion that moisture caused the control system to do exactly the opposite of what the control stick called for. We only got it to do it a couple times, but it did do it. Turns out there was some water in a box that caused a few relays to short and made it possible for the stick to work backwards briefly.
 
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