How the 'ell did he fly that home!!(old thread 2006)

A 15th Air Force B-24 Liberator with the top of the fuselage blown out by a flak burst that killed both waist gunners.

I’ll have to drive by 159 Colorado Ave. tomorrow, and see if Capt. Baca’s house is still there… or if something else is there now. I think I’ll drop a copy of the photo by the Daily Sentinel (local newspaper) as well.

Thanks for this.

A hole made by a 20mm cannon shell from a Japanese fighter, in the side of a B-24 Liberator. Note the splice in the rudder control cables, made by the bombardier (Lt. Louis Zamperini, in photo) using the arming safety wires from the bombs. The plane made it back to base with almost 600 holes in it and every enlisted man wounded (one later died).

A 15th Air Force B-24 Liberator with the top of the fuselage blown out by a flak burst that killed both waist gunners.

P-47D-30-RE Thunderbolt (s/n 44-21054) from the 364th Fighter Squadron,350th Fighter Group. It was being flown by Lt. Richard Sulzbach on April 1,1945 during a strafing mission in Italy. Sulzbach got a little too low and flew through a grove of trees. He limped the plane 120 miles back to base and made a good landing. The plane was repaired and flew again.

The aforementioned B-52 with no tail fin:

On January 10, 1964 Boeing test pilot Chuck Fisher and a three man Boeing flight crew were flying this B-52H on a low-level profile to obtain structural data. Over Colorado they hit clear-air turbulence and lost the vertical tail. Six hours later they landed safely at Blytheville AFB in Arkansas.

The IAF F-15D mentioned in post #8 landed at 260 knots and its arrester hook was torn off, but it was able to stop just short of the arrester barricade. This aircraft had 5 kills to its credit and was repaired and returned to flight. The pictures on the right side that show it on the ground are IAF photos and are authentic pictures of the aircraft right after it landed. The pictures on the left side that show an F-15 flying are digitally edited film that The History Channel used to tell the story since no actual footage of the damaged F-15 in flight have ever been released, or claimed to exist.

Holy God! 😮

All I can say is, again, how?? :confused:

Bumblebees fly, but aerodynamically, they’re not supposed to.

Has anyone got a shot of the AV 8B which some time in the 1980’s flew through a hailstorm & got back, despite the leading edges of the wings & air intakes looking like someone had gone along them with a 14 lb sledghammer?

Think this one has been posted before.

Leif Lundstens Hurri after colliding with a fellow pilot, autumn 1941, Skeabrea. He managed to land it, quite an achievement.

How did he fly this home after a Bear attack.

Simples, duck tape:D

I don’t know if this film clip has been seen on here before, it adds to the photographs on here
Just found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Kk1KBQ96_DI
Link to the History Channel film clip

Perhaps it threw a prop, and that spun off and hit the other. Props travel once detatched from an airframe!!!!

Steve

This is the SAHSA L-188 HR-TNL shortly after its landing at Cancun,Mexico.The aircraft lost the 2 propellers on #3 and #4 engine while in flight:

What created such a situation that this aircraft would loose two of its four props, and on top of that, both on the same side!

the photos in this thread are a testament to a/c’s durabiltity and strength in a crisis. so although in this picture it didn’t ‘fly him home’ after hitting a pylon (?) this pilot walked away with his life!!!! 😮

That’s really incredible to think that this guy actually made it out alive because from what I can see, he shouldn’t have been so lucky! 😮

Quick google produced this, taken from following site:

F 15 collision pics

Is this the one?

😮 😮

If these shots are real, that is really quite impressive flying! 😮 😮

Neil Williams – a bit more than ‘a few years ago’ – 1970s!

You remember the beginning correctly – but then, flying inverted, he brought the Zlinn in and rolled upright to land on grass… Somewhere there photo proof of his being absolutely on thebutton on the approach as the wingtip left a furrow in the grass as he brought the aircraft upright to land…

Covered, IIRC in his book ‘Aerobatics’. One of those truth is stranger than fiction stories.

Cheers
James

Neil Williams in the aformentioned Zlin, presumably before the mainspar went crack! (Picture from Blue Max’s archive – well that big box of piccies in the corner of the workshop!).

[QUOTE=BIGVERN1966]An Incident with an F15 losing a wing and making it back is in Richard Herman Jnr’s ‘Fire Break’ in the Book a WSO tells his pilot that an F15 body lift and Tailaron will keep the aircraft flying if a wing is lost and that an Israeli pilot was the first to do it. Never expected to see the photos however.

At least one of those F15 piccies is a poor fake. The one 2nd from the botom on the left is clearly faked as the flap on the left (and only!) wing is down as it would be for a ‘normal’ 2 wing landing. In a ‘single wing’ scenario, lowering the flap would vastly increase the asymmetric lift and almost certainly render the a/c uncontrollable – and would be the last thing a pilot in that situation would do. Note also the tailerons are more or less level with each other – not fighting a gross lift asymmetry as you’d expect.

I’m not, however, saying this never happened – all credit to the pilot concerned. Just that at least one piccie is a fake.

A couple more pictures of the SAHSA HR-TNL at Cancun:

Leading edge between engines 3 and 4:

Damage to fuselage:

There is a story in Jack Curries book ‘Lancaster Target’ where he flew a Lancaster back from Hamburg minus wing tips back to where the ailerons should have been then tried to land with bombs on board! they eventually ditched the remaining bombs and landed safely

I actually recalled both Neil Williams’ name and the fact that he rolled back again just before landing the second I pressed the ‘post reply’ button. But that’s life….

William

The ‘edit post’ button is your friend… 😉

Still open questions get more of a thread than statements!