A 10 Warthog Landing Gear

Images of a Thunderbolt 2 on the tarmac afterwards a gear-up landing at Moody AFB, bear witness how the jet’south Main Landing Gear (MLG) design contributes to make the set on shipping so resilient.

A U.S. Air Force A-10C Thunderbolt Ii, assigned to the 75th Fighter Squadron, performed a successful emergency gear-upward landing at Moody AFB, Georgia, on Apr. vii, 2020. The airplane pilot safely escaped the shipping.

The starting time images of the aircraft on its abdomen were published past the prolific Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook folio. The shots bear witness the Warthog (as the aircraft is nicknamed within the fighter pilot community) with its canopy somehow jettisoned (or diddled off) sitting on its wheels and AGM-65 Maverick missiles on the tarmac: a scene that, missiles aside, is strikingly similar to the one depicted at at the Alpena Combat Readiness Preparation Center, Michigan, on Jul. 20, 2017, after Capt. Brett DeVries, 107th Fighter Squadron airplane pilot from Selfridge Air National Guard Base had simply become the first ever A-x pilot to state with no awning and with the landing gear up.

An image of the A-x involved in a belly landing at Moody AFB on Apr. 7, 2020. (Prototype via Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook Page)

As we reported in detail dorsum and then, Capt. Brett DeVries was function of a four-send on a routine training sortie from Selfridge to the Grayling Air Gunnery Range. After performing half-dozen flop passes over the gunnery range to drop their ordinance, each A-ten took a plough firing the 30mm gun. However, on his 2d pass, at 150 anxiety AGL (To a higher place Ground Level), DeVries’ gun malfunctioned. Simultaneously, the canopy of his shipping blew off. Later on climbing to a safe altitude and outside the range patterns, in bound to the closest airfield, DeVries, chased by his wingman, tried to lower his landing gear: the gear started to come down, just the nose gear was hung upwards from the gun damage leaving no other option than retracting the gear and perform a belly landing.

Capt. Brett DeVries airplane pilot of the 107th Fighter Squadron from Selfridge Air National Guard Base of operations, next to his Warthog after an emergency landing on July twenty, 2017 at the Alpena Combat Readiness Preparation Middle (Image credit: U.Due south. Air National Guard)

Forth with the airplane pilot’s skills, a key function in the successful outcome of the emergency was back then and probably yesterday too, one of the A-10’s peculiar features: its MLG (Main Landing Gear) design.

When retracted, the Thunderbolt Ii’due south main landing gear wheels remain partly exposed: during a belly landing, depending on the stores carried by the shipping, the wheels that partially protrude from their nacelles can provide a cushion to blot the impact with the runway; they can too reduce the chance of burn down and generally speaking, the overall damage to the fuselage. In addition, when the gear is upwardly, the wheels go along to guarantee the braking activeness, assuasive the pilot to control the aircraft through differential utilize of the cycle brakes. That’due south why the MLG design is ane the features that make the iconic aircraft then resilient.

Back to the April 7 mishap at Moody AFB, while an Interim Safety Board is investigating the incident, we can’t simply notice that, according to rumours, the aircraft suffered a gun malfunction that also damaged the landing gear, equally happened in 2017. Let’south see if the official investigation confirms the similarities, not only in the outcome, but besides when it deals with the root-causes of the incident.