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Just another oh hum day for a Herk crew


Muff Millen
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Let\'s see a C117 do this....Got this off the AFA magazine site.

Muff

Just Another Day: The crew of a C-130 transport from Pope AFB, N.C., overcame the failure of two of the aircraft\'s four engines during a flight March 19 in Southwest Asia to safely deliver five wounded personnel to their destination. While in flight, the No. 2 engine began leaking oil and had to be shut down. About an hour later, the No. 3 engine began malfunctioning and eventually had to be turned off as well. As if that wasn\'t enough, the aircraft\'s autopilot, radar, and No. 1 compass system also went dead. But through it all the crew persevered and reached the destination, landing the C-130 without incident. \"While I have shutdown engines in flight before and regularly operate aircraft that have certain degraded capabilities, I have never faced such a compounded emergency before,\" said Capt. Steve Cheek of the 43rd Operations Support Squadron, who piloted the fateful mission. Amazingly the aircraft was fixed and flying the next day, albeit with a new No. 2 engine. (Pope report by 2nd Lt. Chris Hoyler)

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So what happened to #3 that was so bad that they had to shut it down with #2 already in the bag. We practice 2 engine out approaches/landings here in AFMC. They arent any fun. Think I might have restarted the leaker before landing, provided it was shut down with enough oil left to do so. Great job guys. Nobody really needed the compass, radar, or autopilot anyway.

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It doesn\'t fly great on two, thats my point, not at any significant gross weight anyway. It will cruise at a greatly reduced altitude for awhile but an approach on two can be extremely challenging, especially for crews who don\'t practice it and to my knowledge only AFSOC and AFMC practice it. Don\'t even think about going around, it won\'t work with -15s never mind -7s. Sure the Coasties shut two down for search ops but they don\'t land that way, for a reason. Lucky for them the two dead ones were not on the same side. The flight manual does allow for a cruise engine shutdown for an engine losing oil to allow for a restart at a later time for just such an occasion. All I\'m saying is that if I have a few gallons of oil left and the leak isnt to severe and the chance of a fire doesn\'t look that risky I\'m going to strongly recommend you restart the leaker for the approach/landing.

I don\'t know what their particular situation was so I\'m not trying to second guess their logic. Cudos to them for bringing it home safe.

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Guest cobra935o

The -1, section 3 says its OK in specific situations under loss of oil. This is also practiced in the sim.

Nathan

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I haven\'t opened a military -1 in almost 23 years, but didn\'t the introduction have a disclaimer that said something like the instructions in the -1 were a poor substitute for common sense?

Actually, the situation in the original post really did resemble a \"oh hum day\" in Angola! That was fairly commonplace with the clapped-out Hercs that Transafrik flies.

Don R.

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