No1RCfan

The Beautiful B-17 Aluminum Overcast operated by the EAA suffered a gear collapse yesterday at the Van Nuys airport in CA. Both mains apparently collapsed. More info can be found at <www.EAA.org> and a video is at <www.cbs2.com>. The damage looks to be fairly significant, the ball turret was pushed up into the fuselage and the support was pushed through the top of the fuse. All the props and engines were damaged. The chin turret was crushed. While i was attending TTC getting my a&p this aircraft was in our hangar while on its tour stop in tulsa, i was able to go inside this great aircraft. Hopefully the great team will get her back up and flying. The EAA has a dedicated maintenance team that i am sure will work vary hard to get her airborne again. If anyone has more info please share.

No1RCfan

I found more info about the mishap and some pics. [link=http://www.beechcraft.org/b17-accident/]http://www.beechcraft.org/b17-accident/[/link]>

Kmot

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http://www.b17.org/

KFalcon

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That really sucks! Hate to see pieces of history getting damaged like that. Hope it returns to flight.

FLYBOY

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Man, that has to suck! Its a nice bird.

balsa brain

They brought that plane to Cecil Field in Jacksonville,Fl. and I went on the walk through tour and that plane was beautiful.I had my digital camera with me but had not charged the batteries and it went dead after one shot[&o] Sure hate to hear this but am sure the guys will get her back in flying condition eventually.

Bill

jack01

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I wouldnt worry about it. They'll fly it again for sure. Engines are rebuildable, and props are replaceable. The airframe itself seems to be OK, which means that they still have a good plane to work with. Plus, even though the ball turret is a little defunked, the fuse itself seems to be OK. Plus, the ball turrets in B-17s retract a little for landing anyway, so it might not be as bad as it looks.

airbatic

Had the B-17 been produced in St. Louis at McDonnell Douglas, the landing gear would have not failed. No McDonnell Douglas produced plane has ever crashed.

Kraus

IronicRcAv8r

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Wow -- I find that very hard to believe

FLYBOY

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airbatic, You have some pretty strong opinions. Your starting to come across as a troll. I'll ask you once to tone it down a bit.

thanks

P-51B

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None?...ever?...even that F-18 in Raleigh NC a few weeks ago?...or the two off Norfolk last year?...or...

Chevelle

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There was of course that famous MD10 crash in Chicago when an engine fell off.

scottrc

Kraus is meesin with us guys, he's made silly comments about Mcdonald Douglas in a few threads here in the Fullscale Forum.

racer8297

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And wasn't it an Alaska Airways MD80 whose jack screw got stipped or stuck and the plane lost all pitch control and crashed into the Pacific off the California coast?

Jim

ifixairplanes

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Gee, so then this video i have linked here of an MD-80 crashing isn't in fact an md 80 but another plane in disguise???? i can't beleive how openly ignorant some people are
[link=ftp://ftp.scoob-e.com/MD-80.mpeg]click for short vid[/link] when asked for user name and password put: [email protected]
leave the password field blank


sean

Lowlevlflyer

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Always has to be some idiotic Dips**t around to mouth off.

Arrowflyer

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Gee, that kind of hurts--- being is my dad was the design engineer on that bird and I don't think Roy Osling (the project engineer) would appreciate that ether (although I don't know if he's still around). I had spent a week going through the old microfilm drawings with my father and Roy when the Boeing flight Museum was rebuilding a B-17 at the Renton plant in the late eighties-early 90's. Picked up a lot of information just listening to those two old engineers as we crawled through the plane. One of the main topics was metal fatigue on aircraft of this age.
Those landing gear retract mechanisms may look good and stout, however considering their age they may need replaced. Organizations who take on the tasks of keeping these birds flying may want to look at some high tech methods to determine if parts need rebuilt or replace with new machined parts. I really don't think it has to do with where the plane was manufactured. But, when you here about a B-17 loosing a wing tip (Blame my dad for that one), he replaced the aluminum wing tip attachment points on the "G" model with magnesium. This was one of the ways they were trying to save weight, don't worry, it won't affect the flight characteristics much.
RV