An interesting event a Mildenhall earlier this month

[Vulture 01]

https://www.pprune.org/military-aviatio ... nasty.html

Looks quite hairy, from the pictures and comments on the PPrune thread.

[Mike]

Video already posted here :- viewtopic.php?f=350&t=210396

[Snoop 95]

https://www.pprune.org/military-aviatio ... nasty.html

Looks quite hairy, from the pictures and comments on the PPrune thread.

That's very interesting as I had watched it 'live' on YouTube and wondered what had happened to cause that scary landing. Certainly looked very dramatic and my heart was in my mouth at one point. As I recall the conditions were dry, warm and calm, so I think any sort of adverse weather influence would be minimal. What did seem unusual to me was the speed the aircraft was doing as it got towards the turn-off, whereas the KC 135's have usually slowed considerably by that point. I know that is not conclusive of anything, but I found the pprune comments very informative.

[Evergreen 44]

Agreed very testing conditions and shows the high quality of the training involved to achieve a landing like that first-time
The wind strength and particlarly the gust would have been very significant factors during the approach with approach speed and descent rate adjusted accordingly

The worst part are the last 50 or so feet when you are committed and if a gust catches one wingtip it is enough to upset the other side rapidly enough to make suitable correction almost impossible in time to prevent adverse contact

Think of large waves crashing on a beach. Wind is also a fluid and with a lot of energy it behaves like that near to the ground when it hits the flat surface.
Having seen an active airfield covered in snow with a strong blowing wind you quickly see what conditions are really like 50' from the ground and how erattic and dynamic the wind gradient really is

Once on the tarmac in those [ video example] conditions you need to get the airframe below flying speed ASAP, - all the more likely with a strong head-wind adding to wind speed over the wing. The consequence of max rate braking is that you impart more energy into the brakes than normal making a brake fire/tyre blow-out likely. To counter that the taxi speed is higher to cool the brakes and let the fire truck catchup to escort you to a distant part of the ramp

[Stug298]

a touch of wind sheer and some heavy landing checks i would think.....