Posted on 12/11/2019 6:09:19 PM PST by BenLurkin
Chilean officials say they have located debris believed to be from an air force plane that went missing on Monday.
They said the wreckage was found floating 30km (19 miles) from where the C-130 Hercules cargo plane with 38 people on board last made contact.
The wreckage was spotted in a body of water known as the Drake Passage.
The plane was en route from Chile's southern city of Punta Arenas to the country's Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base in the Antarctic.
The located debris "could be part of the remains of the sponges of the internal fuel tanks," Air Force Commander Eduardo Mosqueira told reporters on Wednesday.
Mr Mosqueira said the air force would carry out "corresponding checks" to determine whether the wreckage was from the missing plane.
Three of the passengers were Chilean soldiers, two were civilians employed by engineering and construction firm Inproser going to carry out work on the military base, one was a student and the remaining 15 passengers were members of the air force, an official said.
The three soldiers who boarded the Hercules plane on Monday were Col Christian Astorquiza, Lt Col Oscar Saavedra and Maj Gen Daniel Ortiz.
There was only one woman on board: 37-year-old geographer Claudia Manzo joined the air force in 2008 and was passionate about remote sensing - obtaining information about areas from a distance by aircraft or satellites.
Also among those travelling to the base were two brothers, Luis and Jeremías Mancilla. Jeremías, 27, had been hired by the air force to carry out work on the electrical circuits on the base.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The Drake passage is freezing and not a friendly place. Prayers for those people.
Not good, I watched Juan Browns report on this last night.
Having been an air crewman on a C-130 variant, I can tell you there has never been a successful ditching at sea.
As in no survivors. Not once.
Over the entire 60 year life of the aircraft. And probably the best airplane ever built.
Thank you for that.
Why would that be the case? Is it because so few ever lost power over water?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PjyGJO7Qm0
With zero radio transmissions indicating a problem or emergency, I suspect it suffered some kind of rapid catastrophic failure like the USMC KC-130 crash in 2017 and tore herself apart too rapidly for even a radio transmission.
The official video reconstruction above is from the accident investigation.
Thoughts?
wings iced, de-icing boot failure? Ice would build up and build up and build up and then, plop, it’d fall like a rock
In flight break-ups are almost unheard of. Your video might be the only one.
What usually gets them is outboard engine failure upon takeoff. And pilot error.
The one I remember most is an EC-130Q (from VQ-3) taking off from Wake Island, losing an outboard engine at low altitude, losing air speed and trying to ditch. That was circa 1979.
Crew two.
No survivors.
C-130s don’t float.
Hmmm, looks like this is a Sat photo of “something” floating in the ocean that maybe could be from the plane... sceptical. My prediction is there will be no confirmed trace. It’s a very remote part of the world.
Appears to be a somewhat inaccurate statement.
For example: Colombian Air Force C-130 ditched in the Atlantic in 1982. 13 on board. Eight survivors picked up.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/17/us/aircraft-ditches-in-sea-five-on-board-missing.html
A US one went down in the Pacific in the 1990s. One survivor (of 11 on the plane). Too late in the evening to look for any more.
I have over 5000 hours as a C-130 loadmaster and I know of at least one C-130 ditching where the aircraft remained intact and eight people survived. That was a Colombian C-130 that ditched in 1982.
The C-130 uses bleed air for deicing, not boots.
I’m glad they made it.
A rarity for sure.
As you learned in your training.
One man’s opinion. The C-130 has a way to go to beat the DC-3. Still flying cargo since WW II.
This claims the passenger list and flight path aren’t accurate:
RIP.
A What’sApp audio message sent by a passenger stated that the plane was having electrical problems per this article:
https://news.yahoo.com/crashed-chile-plane-had-emergency-2016-air-force-142652357.html
Per this article the plane would have been halfway to the Antartica base when contact was lost:
https://www.stripes.com/news/chile-c-130-missing-with-38-passengers-on-way-to-antarctica-1.610549
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