Back at Pope 1987

[olcatmech2]

Think this may have been the Herk that was damaged by an Oxygen recharger hose stuffed behind a circuit breaker panel. I took this photo during a Rodeo at Pope around 1987.

[Fleagle]

What the "sam hill" were they using the thing for? Took our overhead a buncha headache to get us a "load trainer" - one fine evening a trailing herk in a HE airdrop formation wound up with the HE extraction chute' and clevis (sp?) embed itself just inboard the #4. Investigation complete the load trainer (aka the "pull toy") went missing. Next thing we knew it was back on the ramp over on X-ray row with a "pet rock" in pallet position 1 and we couldn't use it for training anymore.........the mishap aircraft was back on line about the same time the pull toy got shoved into the flightline "corner"

VR

Fleagle aka Rowdy

[fenmonster]

Think this may have been the Herk that was damaged by an Oxygen recharger hose stuffed behind a circuit breaker panel. I took this photo during a Rodeo at Pope around 1987.

When I was stationed there (87-94) the "official" story was that the cargo comp A/C plug was left installed. It caught fire shortly after turning on the A/C. It was used for load training after that..

[olcatmech2]

Ok I stand corrected there and thanks. Now where did i read about the oxygen recharger hose and the circuit breaker panel?

[Dan Wilson]

That was a little rock bird, it got a new 245 forward and went back on the line if I remember right.

Dan

[Spinner]

That was a little rock bird, it got a new 245 forward and went back on the line if I remember right.

Dan

And still flying with the 62nd.

[bobdaley]

74-1693 from Dyess had a ground fire while at Pope in 1984. It has been reported as a LM trainer at Pope a few times since then, could that be it?

Bob

[TSgtRet]

I remember a story about a Radar troop hooking up a "non-standard" radar pressurization tester behind a circuit breaker panel, damaging a LOX kine and torching the whole starbord side of a Herk at Dyess back in the 70s.

[Dan Wilson]

If that pathetic thing I call a brain is working right, the little rock bird burned because during ISO (or one of the checks) someone pushed the co-pilots O2 recharging hose out of the way by pushing it back into the CB Panel. During taxi out it finally shorted out on the breakers (metal doesn't do so good across electrical terminals) and started a nice 02 fire.

Dan

[CBowman]

Of all emergencies encountered by flight crews, few are likely to attract the full attention of everyone present more quickly than a flight station fire. Certainly in no other flying situation is there greater need for timely and appropriate crew response - and a generous portion of plain, old-fashioned good luck.

Most of us are familiar with Murphy’s Law, that wry commentary on the apparent perversity of things in general and products of high technology in particular. The principal tenet of this facetious effort to describe the methodology of misfortune is that if anything can go wrong, it will. Two “corollaries†which may be said to derive from this “law†are that every solution breeds a new problem,, and that if there is a possibility of several things going wrong in a given situation, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. Murphy’s Law and its corollaries seem to have had special applicability in connection with the unfortunate circumstances surrounding a recent Hercules aircraft mishap. Let us take a close look at just what happened.

in this case, and at the seemingly innocent action that paved the way to what could have been a full-blown disaster.

It was a bright winter day. Checklists were being accomplished as the aircraft moved out of the parking area toward the runway for an early morning functional check flight following an extended maintenance layup. All seemed to be in order. Suddenly, smoke was seen inside the flight station near the copilot’s side windows. Flames appeared, and then a heavy, blowtorch-like fire shot toward the copilot’s instrument panel from the vicinity of the copilot’s side circuit breaker panel. The flames increased in intensity as the aircraft was stopped and crew members made an emergency evacuation. Fire and crash equipment operators on the scene were able to save the airplane, but the flight station area sustained heavy damage (Figure 1).

Post-mishap investigation and analysis revealed that there had been an extensive rehabilitation effort in the airplane during the maintenance layup. The refurbishing work included a thorough repaint of the flight deck. To facilitate the repainting process, many cockpit furnishings and hardware items were either removed from the airplane entirely or placed far enough out of the way to protect them from beingunintentionallypainted. Among those items moved “out of the way†was an externally braided flexible tube in the oxygen supply system (Figure 2) that is used to recharge the copilot’s MA-l portable oxygen unit.

There is a small opening, about 3.5 inches by 2.5 inches in size, on the forward side of the copilot’s essential DC bus on certain aircraft. With a little ingenuity, it is possible to fit the flexible oxygen filler tube through this opening. And this was the solution to the cockpit painter’s dilemma of where to place the tube to avoid inadvertent painting. Figure 3 shows the flexible filler tube pushed through the opening at the top of the forward end of the DC power distribution area. Notice that the filler nozzle is hanging down like a pendulum near the bus bar, and that the filler tube is resting on top of a rigid, oxygenfilled supply line (Figure 4).

So far, there is nothing obviously amiss in the arrangement. And in fact, as long as the airplane remained stationary in the maintenance shop and without electrical power, there was no trouble. Unfortunately, when the painting work was finished and it came time to return the aircraft to service, no one remembered to pull the flexible tube back out of the distribution panel and return it to its retaining clip.

This was a serious oversight, but there was still ample opportunity to save the situation. Although looking to see that the flexible oxygen filler tube is correctly secured is not a specific preflight checklist item, confirming that the pilot’s and copilot’s MA-l portable oxygen bottles are properly serviced is. Had these units been serviced or checked carefully, it is likely that the absence of the filler tube from its usual position would have been noted. This evidently did not happen, however, and the flexible oxygen line remained where the painter had put it, casually stuffed behind the electrical distribution panel.

The stage was now set for calamity, for it was at this point that the effects of Murphy’s Law took over. Running true to form, the earlier solution to the painter’s problem itself became a problem, and when the trouble started, what went wrong did so in the worst possible way.

Figure 3. A solution that bred a problem: this reconstruction shows how the filler tube was left in the accident aircraft. The nozzle (arrow) hangs free near a bus bar. When the aircraft began moving into position for its functional test flight, the pendulum motion of the nozzle end of the flexible filler tube during taxi caused the nozzle to touch the bus bar behind the copilot’s side circuit breaker panel, creating a short to ground at the point where the flexible tube contacted the rigid, oxygen-filled line. The rigid oxygen line then started to melt and quickly developed a leak. The result was a rapid sequence of smoke, flame, and then an oxygen-fed blowtorch fire. In this case, the aircraft’s location - on the ground, near fire trucks - coupled with the rapid crew response, prevented injuries and mitigated the effects of the damage. The results of this sort of event in flight can only be hypothesized, but the risks appear to be very high indeed.

How ironic that an honest attempt by maintenance people to find a convenient solution to their problem of keeping a flexible oxygen line from being painted also provided the genesis of a new and highly hazardous problem for the operator!

Engineering review is currently in process to block unwanted access to Hercules aircraft power distribution areas, but hardware alone cannot provide total protection against the consequences of innovative “solutions†to transient problems that fail to take all possible risk factors into account. No matter how clever the idea, real ingenuity always includes keeping safety job priority number one. It’s the only proof against the inexorable workings of Murphy’s Law.

[DC10FE]

Although something from the Lockheed Service News should be taken as gospel, that is not my recollection of the fire on 63-7815 (3889) @ Dyess.

That happened waaaay before 9/11 so security wasn't the way it is now. I remember driving down the flightline road right next to the airplanes with my then-wife & kids in my 1974 Ford station wagon & seeing smoke pouring from the fwd escape hatch. This was before cell phones so I couldn't just pick up a phone a call the fire department.

I guess my point is that I doubt 7815 was taxiing for takeoff, but just sitting in its parking spot. Of course that happened about 35 years ago, so most of the brain cells from that part of my brain were destroyed many years ago.

There is a photo of the mishap in the gallery labeled 3889e. As I also sorta remember that the nose came from Lockheed as an H-model & had to be modified back to E-model specs. That part may just be an urban legend, though.

Don R.

[bobdaley]

Seems like we are talkinhg about three different fires. 63-7815 at Dyess. 74-1693 and a third aircraft at Little Rock? Does any one know which tail number burned at Little Rock?

Bob