Rockwell B-1B Lancer crash at KRCA

Yeah just saw this. Wild. Wonder what happened......Icing? Fuel starvation? Some major malfunction? Takes a lot to bring down a bomber that generally doesn't do anything dynamic, especially if it ends in a seemingly semi-controlled 4 man ejection.

Also, happy to hear of the successful egress. Though also sad, because the B-1 is one of my favorite airplanes of all time.
 
///AMG said:
Yeah just saw this. Wild. Wonder what happened......Icing? Fuel starvation? Some major malfunction? Takes a lot to bring down a bomber that generally doesn't do anything dynamic, especially if it ends in a seemingly semi-controlled 4 man ejection.

Also, happy to hear of the successful egress. Though also sad, because the B-1 is one of my favorite airplanes of all time.
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Like I noted before, the accident setup is almost identical to the crash of B-1B 85-0076 “Blackjack” from 36 years ago.
 
MikeD said:
Like I noted before, the accident setup is almost identical to the crash of B-1B 85-0076 “Blackjack” from 36 years ago.
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Probably not a stretch of the imagination. That must be a fast sequence. I wouldn't have expected it to be in such a large airplane, though I guess this makes sense, if the prowler did too
 
My kid's hockey coach is a former B-1 driver and I've been looking forward to the chance to chat him up about it. I will say that one of my college friends was formerly a mechanic on the B-1 out of Dyess and said they were junk airplanes (particularly the electronics). That might be, but they're certainly bad ass to look at. We used to get them for fly-bys before Texas Tech games.
 
Murdoughnut said:
My kid's hockey coach is a former B-1 driver and I've been looking forward to the chance to chat him up about it. I will say that one of my college friends was formerly a mechanic on the B-1 out of Dyess and said they were junk airplanes (particularly the electronics). That might be, but they're certainly bad ass to look at. We used to get them for fly-bys before Texas Tech games.
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It’s one of those points in time where the design pushed the limits of what slide rule calculations could overcome, but the electronic technology thrown at the problem was far from fully mature enough to handle it. F111 and in a lot of ways F14A were in the same boat. You listen to guys talk about the last few cruises of A model Tomcats and it was just a disaster. Preceding century series was kind of the black magic voodoo of Mach aerodynamics and theory. Build planes that would literally kill themselves if left alone to do it. The follow on generation had developed the aerodynamic performance and design down but them gremlin was in the avionics now.

Other big problem was the B1 losing its nuclear mission also meant losing its seat at the table for a lot of upgrades and fixes. And then we flew the crap out of the things to use as high altitude bomb trucks during GWOT and only upgraded systems necessary to that mission so now you’ve got competing technology eras trying to talk to each other.

What life was in them was quickly depleted. There is a reason the Air Force has been trying to divest or at least severely curtail the fleet size and it’s nothing to do with capability.

Honestly I think the SR-71 would have been viewed in much the same light if its history was more public. We crashed/wrecked a lot more of those than is generally known for the flight hours they were doing. It was never brought down by enemy action… because it honestly didn’t have to be.


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Lawman said:
It’s one of those points in time where the design pushed the limits of what slide rule calculations could overcome, but the electronic technology thrown at the problem was far from fully mature enough to handle it. F111 and in a lot of ways F14A were in the same boat. You listen to guys talk about the last few cruises of A model Tomcats and it was just a disaster. Preceding century series was kind of the black magic voodoo of Mach aerodynamics and theory. Build planes that would literally kill themselves if left alone to do it. The follow on generation had developed the aerodynamic performance and design down but them gremlin was in the avionics now.

Other big problem was the B1 losing its nuclear mission also meant losing its seat at the table for a lot of upgrades and fixes. And then we flew the crap out of the things to use as high altitude bomb trucks during GWOT and only upgraded systems necessary to that mission so now you’ve got competing technology eras trying to talk to each other.

What life was in them was quickly depleted. There is a reason the Air Force has been trying to divest or at least severely curtail the fleet size and it’s nothing to do with capability.

Honestly I think the SR-71 would have been viewed in much the same light if its history was more public. We crashed/wrecked a lot more of those than is generally known for the flight hours they were doing. It was never brought down by enemy action… because it honestly didn’t have to be.


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I may have mentioned this before - if I did already, mea culpa....one of my instructors at the regional was a former F-14 pilot. I asked him one day how many traps he had, and he said "242.....but I had 243 cat shots."

I had to think about that for a second as he smiled. "You punched out of a Tomcat?"

I'm paraphrasing the next part but it went like, "Yeah. The A-models were a little squirrely."
 
killbilly said:
I may have mentioned this before - if I did already, mea culpa....one of my instructors at the regional was a former F-14 pilot. I asked him one day how many traps he had, and he said "242.....but I had 243 cat shots."

I had to think about that for a second as he smiled. "You punched out of a Tomcat?"

I'm paraphrasing the next part but it went like, "Yeah. The A-models were a little squirrely."
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Or, it could’ve been possible he took off from an aircraft carrier and landed at a land base. So, it’s a valid question you asked.
 
MikeD said:
Or, it could’ve been possible he took off from an aircraft carrier and landed at a land base. So, it’s a valid question you asked.
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Yeah, in this sense, I have a number of cat shots that didn't end with a trap.
 
"The images of the crashed B-1B come from a webcam in the city of Box Elder, which is situated just to the southeast of Ellsworth. The webcam is operated by NewsCenter1, part of KNBN, a local television station primarily affiliated with NBC."

It's kind-of weird to have a webcam streaming 24/7 video of an Air Force base's runways, yeah?
 
Minuteman said:
"The images of the crashed B-1B come from a webcam in the city of Box Elder, which is situated just to the southeast of Ellsworth. The webcam is operated by NewsCenter1, part of KNBN, a local television station primarily affiliated with NBC."

It's kind-of weird to have a webcam streaming 24/7 video of an Air Force base's runways, yeah?
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This may be the first the Air Force has heard of it.
 
Minuteman said:
"The images of the crashed B-1B come from a webcam in the city of Box Elder, which is situated just to the southeast of Ellsworth. The webcam is operated by NewsCenter1, part of KNBN, a local television station primarily affiliated with NBC."

It's kind-of weird to have a webcam streaming 24/7 video of an Air Force base's runways, yeah?
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mwflyer said:
This may be the first the Air Force has heard of it.
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Probably Yes and yes. Although it’s not difficult to do. If there is a commercial building just outside the base perimeter on the flightline side, it’s entirely possible that a security camera can see a lot of the runway/taxiway and anything in the open on the ramp. Many, many Air Force Bases fall into this im sure.
 
MikeD said:
Probably Yes and yes. Although it’s not difficult to do. If there is a commercial building just outside the base perimeter on the flightline side, it’s entirely possible that a security camera can see a lot of the runway/taxiway and anything in the open on the ramp. Many, many Air Force Bases fall into this im sure.
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If I recall well, sometime last year a private citizen was ordered to take down his "legal" webcam that was trained at some military facility. It was done based on National security.
 
Maybe the aircraft has strong feelings about the definition of what is a sandwich?
 
melax said:
If I recall well, sometime last year a private citizen was ordered to take down his "legal" webcam that was trained at some military facility. It was done based on National security.
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San Diego I think, some guy filming the navy boats
 
Regards security, many air bases have things on the ramp that can easily be seen from outside the perimeter fence. For example, the E-4B Nightwatch NAOC jet sits on APU power on the ramp at DMA when AF1 is somewhere in the western US. It can easily be seen from the junkyards across the runway and just outside the perimeter fence, not more than 800 yards or so away. Hell, if someone was going to do something nefarious, it could probably be done. But, that’s how it is for such a large aircraft and the base layout.
 
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