B1 with swing wing stuck

[reheat]

Does anyone recall the time a B1 out of Fairford could not pull his wings forward whilst in flight?, and after much deliberating with Fairford Ops and inflight manuals, I believe they ended up diverting to Germany, possibly Ramstein.Not sure of the outcome. Believe it must have been late eighties or early nineties.

[stevef]

Yes I remember it well. Lot's of interesting chat on HF with phone patches back to the US etc. trying to sort the problem. I have it in a log book somewhere in the loft
Steve

[reheat]

What year, can you recall?

[mushbuster]

It was June 94, landed at Rhein Main (now Frankfurt), the aircraft was 84-0057 "Hellion" operated by 9BS of 7BW at Dyess, there is a picture of it with its undercarriage on fire in Wickipedia just after it had stopped. There was something like 200' of the runway remaining having used over 11000 feet to stop, if you look at the photo you can see the runway piano keys, a brown trouser moment for the crew.

[reheat]

Thanks for the reply’s.

[luxto]

I remember it as well, it was on the 20th June - Niter47. Didn't take them long to fix it because it returned to Fairford the following day, flying back to Dyess with the other 3 on the 22nd June.

[eagle driver]

I was at Rhein Main when this incident happened , we had just arrived at the Zeppelin bridge over by the main gate.
When it made one practice approach, before landing and came to a halt at the end of the runway.
Shortly after the brakes caught fire ,fire crews were quickly in attendance and the fires were out after a couple of minutes.

[T_J]

B-1B with a brake fire after a hard landing at Rhein-Main AB, Germany, June 1994

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_ ... 1_fire.jpg

From

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_B-1_Lancer

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They'd almost certainly never land in Europe again with stuck wings, AFGSC's risk appetite is far lower 27 years later.

[seven]

Its easy to say that when the incident hasn't happened again. I'd be most surprised if it turns out the SOP in that event now is to abandon ship, or to divert(and thus have to AAR) to the US.

Bit of a cursed airframe actually, I had to Google the serial as I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen her, let alone knew of this incident! Didn't meet a good end.

Edit, I had already been thinking this, as I've seen no evidence of the B-1's swinging their wings on this deployment, perhaps this is a protective measure? Or maybe they can't, not really the need for it anymore. Or maybe they are just going all Iranian F-14s on us...

[Snoop 95]

Edit, I had already been thinking this, as I've seen no evidence of the B-1's swinging their wings on this deployment, perhaps this is a protective measure? Or maybe they can't, not really the need for it anymore. Or maybe they are just going all Iranian F-14s on us...

If they no longer swing their wings back this would have major implications for airspeed, fuel burn and flight duration wouldn't it? But of course air safety comes first.

[page_verify]

Wings go back once they've finished climbing and are cruising.