C-17 Down on Elmendorf

[Mickey]

Jeff was my neighbor while I was at Elmo. I did not know him that well but talked with him many times. My thoughts go out to his wife and children. The 3 WG has had its fair share of tragdey, this only adds to it.

[MattAK10]

At the airshow today.

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[Guest Crew Report]

http://www.elmendorf.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123215942

[Royal]

http://www.elmendorf.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123215942

Briefly looking at the picture of the charred remains of the vertical stabilizer almost made my stomach turn. Those photos cut deep. Here's to the crew and their families.

[PirateAF]

Audio w/ slideshow of yesterday's memorial service.

http://www.adn.com/2010/08/02/v-swf/1392779/c-17-crash-victims-honored.html

Alaska daily news write-up of memorial service.

http://www.adn.com/2010/08/02/1392479/elmendorf-memorial-recalls-c-17.html

Here's a toast...

[Clayton Bigsby]

Briefly looking at the picture of the charred remains of the vertical stabilizer almost made my stomach turn. Those photos cut deep. Here's to the crew and their families.

After years of working on/in that jet, I know what you mean, felt the same way.

[Toro]

Pissing contest removed. If you want to talk about AIBs, SIBs and other issues of such, start a new thread or take it out of respect for the crew

[Guest Raptor08]

Here is a video of the tribute poem read at Arctic Thunder in memory for the crew of Sitka 43, as well as the missing man formation done by 4 F-22s. Definitely moving, godspeed to those fallen airmen.

Edited August 8, 2010 by Raptor08

[ExBoneOSO]

And in the "it's a small world" category - would you believe the pilot of the Ted Stevens crash was the father-in-law of Maj Malone? Prayers to his daughter, and to all involved...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/us/12pilot.html?_r=1

Whatever problem the plane carrying former Senator Ted Stevens encountered before it crashed on Monday night, it was not pilot inexperience.

The pilot, Theron A. Smith, known as Terry, was a second-generation bush aviator and a 28-year veteran of Alaska Airlines, where fellow workers voted him a “Legend of Alaska” in 2001. He belonged to a flying family with a history of pioneering and of tragedy.

His father began flying in Alaska in the early 1940s. His wife, Terri Ellis Smith, a bush pilot herself, frequently co-piloted with him in their vintage Grumman. She is related to a founder of Ellis Air Lines, one of the carriers that merged to become Alaska Airlines.

And the Smiths' son-in-law, Maj. Aaron Malone, a pilot in the Alaska Air National Guard, was killed on July 28 in the crash of a C-17 cargo plane at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. Three other airmen were also killed in the crash. Major Malone was married to the Smith’s daughter, Melanie.

Another child, Brian M. Smith, is a private pilot.

The plane that Terry Smith was flying on Monday, a single-engine DeHavilland DHC-3T, owned by GCI, an Alaska telecommunications provider, was not nearly big enough to need a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder, so investigators will have to work without the “black boxes” to piece together what happened. And it was also flying in an area without radar coverage.

Typically in such crashes, the investigators begin by trying to map out the four corners of the wreckage, to rule out in-flight break-up and look at the wreckage to determine if the links between the pilot’s controls and parts like the rudder, the elevators and the flight control surfaces, like ailerons, were intact; they will also look to see if the engine was producing power at the time of impact.

Another possible suspect is “controlled flight into terrain,” meaning that a pilot, often trying to stay below clouds in an area of poor visibility, flies into the ground. General aviation — that is, noncommercial, nonmilitary flights, especially in propeller-driven single-engine planes at low altitude — are notoriously prone to this hazard. The extent of Mr. Smith’s experience flying in the area where the crash occurred was not immediately clear.

Mr. Smith was familiar, though, with many kinds of flying. In October, he and his wife were flying a Piper Cub in New Zealand, where they liked to vacation, when they were forced to land in a dry riverbed after something leaking from the engine, probably oil, spread over the windshield so they could not see, according to a news report in New Zealand. They were rescued while hiking to safety. “That walk was worse than ditching the plane,” Mr. Smith was quoted as saying.

In a travel article last year on Alaska’s Iditarod dog sled race, ForbesLife magazine listed the Smiths as “a very good resource for finding capable pilots and airplanes.”

Mr. Smith even spoke at a conference last year on seaplane safety run by the Alaskan Aviation Safety Foundation.

Before he retired from Alaska Airlines in 2007, Mr. Smith was the chief pilot in the airline’s Anchorage base. Kevin Finan, who was the vice president of flight operations at the airlines when Mr. Smith was a captain there, said he used to fly into Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutians, with him. The flight is particularly challenging because the island is often obscured in bad weather.

Mr. Finan called Mr. Smith “one of the best pilots I’ve ever known.”

“There wasn’t anybody who was a better pilot than he was, particularly in Alaska,” Mr. Finan said in a telephone interview. Mr. Finan said he did not know anything about the particulars of the crash in Alaska on Monday, but as far as the plane involved, “he would be plenty qualified to fly that, for sure.”

The Smiths flew a Grumman Albatross, a 60-foot-long plane capable of landing on water. In December 2001, they took it on the inaugural flight of a route for private planes from Nome, Alaska, to the Siberian village of Provideniya, Russia. Six planes made the trip; the Albatross carried extra fuel so the others could refuel on the Russian side.

In the 1980s, in the era of glasnost and perestroika, Mr. Smith was captain of an Alaska Airlines jet that made two historic flights across the Bering Sea to lay the groundwork for scheduled service between Alaska and the Russian Far East in 1991, according to the airline. The plane, an early model Boeing 737, with Terry Smith’s name painted on it, is now in the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum in Anchorage, said Bobbie Egan, a spokeswoman for the airline.

[BigFreddie]

And in the "it's a small world" category - would you believe the pilot of the Ted Stevens crash was the father-in-law of Maj Malone? Prayers to his daughter, and to all involved...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/us/12pilot.html?_r=1

And the former head of NASA, Sean O'Keefe who happens to be the current CEO of EADS-NA (bidding on the KC-X contract) was on board the aircraft as well. It has been a bad week or two up there for sure. A civilian PA-32 crashed on a glacier, the Army National Guard sent a UH-60 to retrieve them and it ended up rolling over when it landed on the glacier. When the Alaska Air Guard HC-130 and HH-60 were sent to pick up that group, they couldn't get to the scene so they dropped off 4 PJs who skiied into the scene. The HC-130 and HH-60 then got re-routed to the Stevens crash... Busy week in Alaska...

BF

Edited August 14, 2010 by BigFreddie

[M2]

:salut:

Officials at JB Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, on Sept. 16, 2010, dedicated the memorial to the four airmen who died July 28, 2010, in the crash of a C-17 transport assigned to the joint base's 3rd Wing. A 1:24 scale C-17 model is the centerpiece of the Sitka 43 memorial, which stands in the main hallway of the 517th Airlift Squadron's headquarters. Here, Lt. Col. Patrick Weeks, 517th AS commander, catches the veil that shrouded the C-17 model after actor Gary Sinise released it during the dedication ceremony.

Remembering Sitka 43: Airmen and guests gathered earlier this month at JB Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, to dedicate a memorial to the four airmen who died July 28 in the crash of a C-17 transport assigned to the joint base's 3rd Wing. A 1:24 scale C-17 model is the centerpiece of the memorial, which stands in the main hallway of the 517th Airlift Squadron's headquarters. It honors the Sitka 43 aircrew that died: Maj. Michael Freyholtz, Maj. Aaron Malone, and SMSgt. Thomas Cicardo from the Air National Guard's 249th Airlift Squadron, and Capt. Jeffrey Hill from the 517th AS. Lt. Col. Patrick Weeks, 517th AS commander, called the model "a celebration of the guys that we lost back on 28 July." He added, "They were friends of ours. They were fathers, they were brothers, they were husbands, and they were fellow airmen, just like us." (Elmendorf report by David Bedard)

[Guest Alarm Red]

Final safety message is out.

[08Dawg]

Always thought Gary Sinise was a class act. Here's just another example.

[Napoleon_Tanerite]

Final safety message is out.

link/copy paste?

[Coasta]

Just finished reading it. That shit pisses me off.

[Guest Crew Report]

Just finished reading it. That shit pisses me off.

Same here

[LockheedFix]

Your safety guys should be able to request access from the Safety Center to the Powerpoint briefing that was given to the PACAF/CC as well as the video. I just watched the cockpit animation along with the HD video that was taken from the tower. It's very disturbing (very reminiscent of the Fairchild B-52 crash), but a lot can be learned from this mishap.

[abmwaldo]

For Chuck17 or any other 517th guys who may read this board how did Gary Sinise end up helping present?

[stract]

I read the SIB final message...wow.

[Guest Hueypilot812]

I read the SIB final message...wow.

Watch the animation video. It makes your stomach turn a little.

[Chuck17]

Sinise was at Elmendorf for a concert and was asked to help dedicate the SITKA 43 memorial by leadership. He was happy to oblige.

Chuck

[Champ Kind]

I read the SIB final message...wow.

Watch the animation video. It makes your stomach turn a little.

Saw it today.... Twice.

Agreed.

[M2]

Pissing contest removed. If you want to talk about AIBs, SIBs and other issues of such, start a new thread or take it here out of respect for the crew

Once again, take the SIB/AIB discussion to the link Toro posted; especially if you want to see all the posts I moved over from this thread.

Please, no more sidebars; keep this thread focused out of respect for the crew!

Thanks! M2

Always thought Gary Sinise was a class act. Here's just another example.

Agreed.

[tunes]

going to talk to our safety guy monday and look at it

[USAF Pilot]

Too tired to figure out how to reply to M2's quote above and get the quote to show up (picture of the C-17 dedication with Gary Sinise)...

Couple of interesting tidbits:

While standing at the top of the stairs and looking over the left winglet (#4 engine side), it lines up almost perfectly with the crash site

While working in the EOC that day, learned that the Yukla 27 crash site overlapped the Sitka 43 site

The primary road used by CFR and later the investigative team, was built to access the Yukla site

Elmo's got some scars...

Edited October 9, 2010 by USAF Pilot