LITTLE ROCK — When the crew of a Little Rock Air Force Base C-130 began the second leg of a routine mission in Iraq, no one knew they were about to face a cascading in-flight emergency.
The 34 Iraqi officials and U.S. soldiers had settled into their seats in the C-130 cargo hold and the crew had begun to relax as they climbed out of missile range over central Iraq. Snout 76 - the plane’s call sign - was headed to Erbil, in northern Iraq.
The plane took off at about 7:30 a.m. on that hot and hazy day last week, as the temperature at Baghdad International Airport was passing 105 degrees headed to the usual 120. It was just another day in Iraq for the young crew from the base’s 50th Airlift Squadron, as they climbed past 11,500 feet and began their usual banter.
But somewhere along the side wall of the cargo hold,among the maze of pipes and tubes that make up the plane’s circulatory system of hydraulics, trouble lurked.
The plane’s passengers were about to suffer painful injuries as the plane lost power to its landing gear, brakes and flaps - all necessary for safe landing. Snout 76 was about to face an emergency that is practiced in training but rarely occurs.
“Having a blowout of this magnitude is very, very rare,” said Lt. Col. Nathan Allerheiligen, 50th Airlift Squadron commander. “The challenges that came from this situation was the multiplicity of the events the crew had to deal with nearly simultaneously.”
Senior Airmen John Pittman and Kevin Tidd, the loadmasters, were perched in their seats at the troop doors on the side of the plane near the tail, looking for trouble below. The pounding drone of the four prop-jet engines provided background noise to the chatter on the headsets.
“We heard a loud hiss, like a balloon losing air,” Pittman said. “We turned and looked and all we saw was red hydraulic fluid and a mist in the air.”
One of the main pressure lines in the plane’s primary hydraulic system had burst, spewing the hot, oily and highly pressurized fluid across the cargo bay like a severed artery.
Pittman punched the button on his headset to talk to the pilots. The first words out of his mouth were, “Oh crap!”
He told 1st Lt. Brian Fedor, the co-pilot, to turn off the hydraulic pumps in an effort to stop the drenching spay of noxious fluid. In the few seconds between the leak and the pump shut-off, more than 10 gallons of burning-hot hydraulic fluid shot across the plane. Some of it had vaporized, filling the air with an acrid and toxic gas.
The hydraulic lines and reservoir are just forward of the landing gear and wings, where the majority of passengers sit. The hot fluid soaked more than 20 of the passengers, hitting with a powerful force that coated their eyes, noses and mouths.
As the air turned toxic, Capt. Matthew Mansell, aircraft commander, clicked on the radio and said, “Smoke and fumes guys, let’s get our oxygen on.”
Over the next 20 minutes the crew worked to stabilize the passengers and clear the fumes from the plane.
“One of the main obstacles we faced was some of our passengers were Iraqi and didn’t understand the brief,” Tidd said. “As I was getting everyone on oxygen, we started noticing that people didn’t really understand what to do.”
Passenger oxygen masks in planes like the C-130 are folded into neat little pouches that hang over every seat. Pulling open the pouch reveals a bag that looks like a Jiffy Pop popcorn bag made out of aluminum foil and yellow cellophane. It is activated by tugging on a string and toggle and sits snug around the neck, covering the whole head in a marshmallow-shaped cellophane bubble. A small canister at the neck fills the bag with oxygen.
Even those who understand English in an in-flight emergency sometimes have trouble operating the strange contraption.
At the same time, Lt. Col. Maurice Young, a flight surgeon from the 55th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron who was flying with the crew, moved to the back of the plane to help those hit by the hydraulic fluid. The slimy fluid dripped off the ceiling and coated the floor, seats and passengers. He flushed out eyes and noses and mouths and helped the loadmasters ensure everyone stayed conscious.
Meanwhile, Mansell pulled the plane down to 9,000 feet, where it could depressurize and Staff Sgt. Jason Carlton, the flight engineer, popped open the emergency hatch in the roof of the cockpit to bring in fresh air and flush out the fumes.
The plane was headed for the nearest airfield, Joint Base Balad, where the plane and crew is stationed as part of the 777th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron.
“The engineer got the Dash-1 out [the operation manual] and headed to the back,” Mansell said. “We got off oxygen in stages as the air cleared to make sure everyone was OK.”
Carlton started cranking down the landing gear by hand, the wheels slowly lowered inch by inch as he turned the metal handle. It took another 20 minutes to get both back sets of wheels lowered and locked into position. He then turned his attention to the nose landing gear.
He hoped there was enough pressure and fluid in the system to work the auxiliary pump and lower the single wheel under the pilot’s feet. The other option was disengaging the gear and letting gravity pull it down. The crew turned on the auxiliary pump and oily fumes again filled the air.
“That was just enough to move the nose gear halfway, which meant you can’t gravity drop it,” he said. “That is one of the gray areas that is not defined in the Dash-1.”
The loadmasters continued to check on the passengers and tried to show a calm resolve.
Pittman, seeing the worry on the passengers’ faces and concerned that panic could break out, started dancing a jig for the passengers.
“To tell them it’s going to be OK,” Tidd said. “We tried to be very clear in sending the message that we were going to get on the ground safely.”
At that point, however, they didn’t know if that would be true. Mansell felt nervous for the first time. The feeling seemed to twinge everyone’s stomachs.
“We had four hours of fuel,” Mansell remembers thinking at the time. “We can circle and figure it out.”
After 15 minutes the crew decided to give the auxiliary pump another try. It had just enough kick left in it to lower the nose wheel the rest of the way.
“We were very happy about that,” Carlton recounted.
But the flaps still needed to be extended, it was vital to ensure a safe landing without brakes.
“If the flaps stick, it makes the plane uncontrollable,” Carlton said.
The flaps were manually cranked out with the help of several people in the back.
“It takes 330 turns altogether,” Carlton said. “It was a community effort in the back. We were covered in hydraulic fluid, everyone working together.”
They weren’t sure if the brakes were working, so the crew started working on charts and landing data. They determined they’d need 8,000 feet to land without brakes. They had 11,000 feet of pavement.
Mansell and Fedor began making a plan. Mansell had to land within the first 500 feet of pavement to allow as much room as possible. If he missed his mark, Fedor would call off the landing and they’d circle to try it again.
A test of the auxiliary pump indicated that the emergency brakes may work. The crew worked the radios, talking to base to coordinate the landing.
Cheers broke out from the passengers in the belly of the plane as they landed.
“I felt like I needed a paper bag,” Mansell said of the moments after landing, when the stress and worry caught up to him.
Fedor felt the same way, it hit him when he saw everyone on the ground.
“After that first moment of surprise,” Pittman said, “the way that our crew went around doing what we were supposed to do, in my head I somehow had it set that we were going to make it through fine.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/21/2010