A-10 makes wheels up landing at Edwards

[busdriver]

Wasn't the Hog designed so that a gear up landing wouldn't cause much damage?

[60 driver]

**REVIVAL**

I have a question or two about the hog. I was reading a few days ago about how it was designed so that its wheels protruded slightly when raised so that it could make a belly landing with minimal damage (as stated here already) in case the landing gears couldn't be lowered. I also read that the gears are hinged at the back, so that if hydraulic pressure was lost, the pilot could manually release them, and with a combination of gravity and wind resistance they would lower and lock into place.

In a battle damaged situation (or just a mechanical failure) where you lose hydraulic pressure, when/how do you decide whether to try to manually lower the gear and then land vs landing with the gears up. I would assume that if you had battle damage and a main (or one of the three) was blown (sts) away, you'd come in gears up so as not to cartwheel or possibly flip on touch down. If that was the case, is there a way to know in the cockpit that you're missing a gear, or are you replying entirely on a wing man visually ID'ing that?

Any specific emergency thought processes or procedures for that kind of stuff?

If any of that is OPSEC, sorry and disregard.

Thanks

You're kind of confusing two different scenarios, one being total hydraulic loss, and the other, coming back with one of the gear stuck up or missing. You can see the mains from the cockpit, and your winger can check whether they're locked, and also look at your nose gear (which you can't see) if there is any doubt about that. There's a chart is the back of the -1cl (or used to be) that outlined all the landable configurations of the hog with various combinations of gear extended. Basically it's landable in all of them, but most guys would consider landing gear up before landing with a retracted nosegear and two extended mains, due to concerns about pole vaulting the aircraft if it was a rough runway. I haven't read the report but that sorta looks to me like what this guy did.

Keep in mind that not all gear problems are hydraulically related - but since you asked, you can get the gear down and have brakes whether you have zero, one, or two hydraulic systems operating. If you have one or two, couple of extra checklist steps, put the gear down and land, no big deal. If you have zero hydraulic systems operating, the question now becomes not so much whether to put the gear down as whether or not to eject. Manual reversion (flying the aircraft with cables like a 45k lb cessna) was designed to keep the aircraft flying long enough to get you back across the FLOT so you could eject over good guy land. Guys have landed the jet in man rev, but it has killed at least a couple of them that I know of.

Bottom line: You're normally going to put the gear down if you can.

Quick story: Many moons ago, one my squadron's young wingmen got distracted in the pattern while TDY and forgot to get the gear handle down. He actually had a pretty nice touchdown, and pretty much kept it on centerline most of the way during the "rollout". Total damage: One each destroyed B and D model TGMs (which the aircraft was sitting on) and 2 scraped rudder caps. We flew it home 4 days later. It's a pretty rugged old airplane.

Edited February 18, 2009 by 60 driver

[airdawg83]

It also works to check out hung ordnance.

Sorry that just made me crack up!

[donkey]

Thanks 60 driver and Hoss, that clears it up for me. Makes sense that it's always going to be a dynamic situation and it's "it depends."

Thanks.

[TreeA10]

A few years back when I was stationed at Eielson, we had a Hawg land gear up after a gun malfunction. A slow burn round exploded in the gun bay and sent shrapnel through the bulkhead separating the gun bay from the nose gear wheel and caused the nose gear to be stuck in the UP position.

The decision was made to land gear up and to also pull the Emergency Brake handle. This moves a valve that allows the brakes to work in the UP position. The landing was fairly uneventful with damage done to the lower tail caps, a couple of antennas, a saber drain, some TERs, and the main gear tires themselves due to the snubber. Rollout was about 3500 feet on centerline. A jet sitting on the runway with no gear and the engines running looked rather odd. The attitude of the jet sitting on the runway had the gun muzzle about 6 feet or better above the runway.

The crash recovery guys were parked on the edge of the runway with a crane and had the jet up on the main gear in about 20 minutes and the jet was back in flying condition in a couple days.