Brand New AC-130 Ghostrider A Total Loss

[Weetabix]

The key phrase here is "departed controlled flight."

I noticed that. Gentle euphemism, that!

[Aesop]

They didn't do "a simple barrel roll".
They departed any semblance of controlled flight, and then had to over-G the airframe wildly to return to a normal flight envelope and attitude.

It's more likely that the over-Gs were a result of the behavior of the aircraft after departing controlled flight, rather than as a result of corrective action.

I figure it was 50-50. At some point, the flight crew was riding the plane rather than flying the plane, pucker occurred, and then it was a full-on rodeo.

I suspect after taking off everything important, the airframe is going back to Marietta to be autopsied in detail, down to the rivets, by Lockheed's version of pathologists, with USAF engineers at their shoulders every step of the way. It may actually prove a boon to the company, and all end users, in the long run. You don't get a lot of $30M airframes to nearly break, and then analyze. It would be foolish in the extreme not to take full advantage of this opportunity.

And about the only way to may any kind of silk purse out of this sow's ear.

They most likely did that already at Eglin, at least to the "non-destructive inspection" level.

Yeah, I shouldn't be surprised if they did.
I figure the folks at the Marietta line will get it at some point, then go down to individual rivets, and reduce the thing to smallest components. And probably then begin cutting into smaller pieces, x-raying, &c.
An entire a/c worth of parts to inspect for the hows and whys of failure (and not) in a less than total loss would provide volumes of data on an airframe that already hit 60, and I can't see Lockheed nor the USAF passing up that chance, seeing as it'll be in service with us another 20-30 years, at a minimum, and probably still flying in some form long after we're all dead and buried.

[First Shirt]

...seeing as it'll be in service with us another 20-30 years, at a minimum, and probably still flying in some form long after we're all dead and buried.

Have a 10 year old grandson that plans on flying 130s when he grows up. I didn't have the heart to tell him that C-130s came into the inventory the year I was born.

[randy]

...seeing as it'll be in service with us another 20-30 years, at a minimum, and probably still flying in some form long after we're all dead and buried.

Have a 10 year old grandson that plans on flying 130s when he grows up. I didn't have the heart to tell him that C-130s came into the inventory the year I was born.

That conversation has probably been done by BUFF drivers as well

[First Shirt]

...seeing as it'll be in service with us another 20-30 years, at a minimum, and probably still flying in some form long after we're all dead and buried.

Have a 10 year old grandson that plans on flying 130s when he grows up. I didn't have the heart to tell him that C-130s came into the inventory the year I was born.

That conversation has probably been done by BUFF drivers as well

And probably by some of the Hog drivers, too!

[PawPaw]

The C-130 isn't older than I, we're basically the same age though I shade it by a few months.

One of the first running song I learned in basic, had a C-130

C-130 rolling down the strip
Airborne Daddy gonna take a little trip.

[TheArmsman]

Mission top secret, destination unknown,
We don't even know if we're coming home.

[Langenator]

Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door
Jump right out and count to four.*

*That last will become increasingly anachronistic as the T-10 series is phased out. The T-11 uses a count of five or six, IIRC.

[Termite]

A spin is just a stall, but a spin is where the wings are stalled unevenly, usually due to a yaw moment right before or during the stall of both wings. That movement starts an incipient and then stabilized rotation where both wings are stalled, but unevenly.

As Justin said, no stall, no spin. Spin recovery USED to be taught to student pilots going for their PP. Now it is only required for CFI, and perhaps commercial.

The Cessna 150/152 and 172 planes that are the most common trainers are extremely spin-resistant. And if spun, will generally recover by themselves, if the pilot simply lets go of the controls.

A Piper Tomahawk, OTOH, generally will not recover on its own, the pilot must make the proper control inputs. Some flight training schools like this, and are still using the Tomahawk as trainers.

There is a particular type of stall/spin known in Alaska and Canada as a "moose stall".
Here's a description of one in a Piper Cub:

"The 'moose hunter stall' is a stall brought on by a cross controlled skidding turn. It is not the same as a cross controlled slip used during the approah to landing. In fact it is just the opposite. The moose hunter stall is similar to a spin entry. The configuration normally occurs with the wings somewhat level, the pilot uses the tail to turn the plane. The pilot skids the Cub, the ball goes to the out side. If the airspeed is too slow the plane snaps onto its back and begins to spin. The reason it is so deadly is that most people spot moose or other items 200 or 300 ft. above the ground, this leaves no room for recovery. A slip on the other hand is flying cross controlled. Cubs fly pretty good fully cross controlled. You can push the stick to the stop and apply full opposite rudder. The Cub will shake alot and shutter, but if you maintain flying speed they will not roll on their back. To experience a moose hunter stall, all you need to do is take your Cub up to about 4000 ft. agl, power back, level the wings, continue to bring the stick back until you feel a pretty good buffet. At this point push either rudder to the stop and whala you are in a moose hunter stall. The Cub rolls on its back, the nose drops and the Cub begins to spin. If you practice all the time and your Cub is light and loaded within C.G. you can recover in less than 500 ft. If you don't practice and you are loaded over gross with 180 lbs behind the rear seat then hang on. You will be glad you have 4000 ft. to recover."

[Netpackrat]

A Piper Tomahawk, OTOH, generally will not recover on its own, the pilot must make the proper control inputs. Some flight training schools like this, and are still using the Tomahawk as trainers.

Yeah, about the Traumahawk... The following was written by an engineer who was an instructor at Edwards TPS; he may still be but I haven't kept up with him.

An increasingly more publicized "failure" of an implementation the GAW airfoils is the Piper Tomahawk. When Piper was designing the Tomahawk, they were looking for any advantage they could gain over the Cessna 150 while using the same engine. One of the things they did was to use the "new" GAW airfoil to try to get slightly better performance. This worked out reasonably well on the prototype, which was used to do the certification. Unfortunately, in a story repeated far too often in history, the production engineers thought they were smarter than the design engineers and built the production aircraft with about half as many ribs as the wing originally had. (During a sheet metal workshop, I had the opportunity to de-skin a Tomahawk wing, and was surprised at how few ribs it had. This was before I learned this story.) Sounds good: less weight, lower parts count, right? Wrong! Remember what I said about this airfoil being very sensitive to the proper shape? The end result was that the skins were not stiff enough and would "oil can" under air loads, disrupting the airfoil shape. Wing bending under aero loads would also distort the airfoil. The biggest problem was with the stall characteristics. In the prototype, they were acceptable. On the production birds, the stall was unpredictable and would change from time to time. I did my flight training in a Tomahawk, and have most of my logged time in one (again, this was before I learned about the wing problem). Stalls in a Tomahawk are not a nice, gentle g-break like a Cessna 150. Instead they were characterized by a fairly sharp (violent?) wing drop, which seemed like at least 45° of bank and was unpredictable in direction. I'm not sure about FAR 23, but I'm pretty sure that the stall characteristics would fail the appropriate Mil Specs. My flight instructor tried to convince me that it was designed that way to "improve training," but I don't buy that anymore. I certainly wouldn't want that sort of "training" low to the ground during a botched turn to final, whereas a g-break would probably be recoverable. The clearest indicator to me was that I was sufficiently scared of the stall characteristics that I refused to practice any stalls in the airplane after I received my certificate. On the other hand, stalls in other aircraft, such as Cessnas or even the Piper Cherokee series are non-events. I recently read that the NTSB is calling for a re-certification of the Tomahawk stall and spin characteristics. The stories I have read correlate well with what I remember. I may have close to 100 hours in the Tomahawk, but based on what I know now, I really have no desire to ever fly in one again. Are you sure you want this airfoil?