Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Now THAT'S a landing.

This Lockeed P-2 Neptune, now an air tanker following it's military service, made an impressive landing at California's Sonoma Air Attack Base despite one set of main gear refusing to drop.



That actually looks fixable. But due to the age of these Neptunes, she'll probably wind up for sale to a museum or as a parts source for the rest of the still-flying fleet.

And yes, I'll take it if they don't want it any more.

7 comments:

  1. Nice landing, it's a shame the bird was damaged.

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  2. gotta wonder why he didn't leave the other gear up and land alongside the runway....

    and why did he keep the engines running on the no-gear side? Trashed a perfectly good prop there.

    Then again, he was very likely a bit busy....

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  3. I think he did right. A belly landing on grass would likely have caused a lot more damage to the aircraft than sliding it in on smooth concrete, especially as he was able to really slow it down before it touched ground. Studies show that grass belly landings really tear up a fuselage because the ground is not smooth and level even if it looks like it.

    As for keeping the engine running, killing that engine on final would have given him a "dead" wing and made it a lot harder for him to bring it in straight and slow like he did. Also, it doesn't look like the engine was forced to stop. If anything, the prop might have been ruined but if the engine didn't suffer a sudden stop, it's crank is probably still ok. Regardless, an engine rebuild is still cheaper than the structural damage that he avoided by keeping to running and controlling the landing.

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  4. That's some highly skilled flying to bring her in like that. Any landing you can walk away from right? Hope the plane is fixable and brought back into service or to a deserving pilot.

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  5. Anonymous11:55 AM

    The landing took some major skill

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  6. Yep nice landing, and you're right on the dead wing issue... he'd have run out of aileron and rudder a LOT sooner, potentially ground looping much faster.

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  7. Yep nice landing, and you're right on the dead wing issue... he'd have run out of aileron and rudder a LOT sooner, potentially ground looping much faster.

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