Detached Wings From Doomed Turkish C-130 Seen Spiraling Into The Ground

The War Zone ^ | November 11, 2025 | Joseph Trevithick

[Red Badger]

Aviation Ping!.........😪

[greenbrier]

A C-130 breaking apart in midair - seem inconceivable.

[Red Badger]

20 people were on board.........

Airplanes don’t just fall apart on their own.

They need lots of ‘help’................

[Uncle Miltie]

Or a muslim sense of maintenance …

[Uncle Miltie]

Inshallah.

[volare737]

I have no idea what that is, but it does not look like a C-130.

[Red Badger]

If just the front of the fuselage fell off I could see that, but both front and rear?.............

[Red Badger]

It’s upside down..................

[Blurb2350]

“. . . had taken off from Ganja International Airport.” Hmmm . . .

[rlmorel]

It looks like the entire wing assembly which if my memory serves me correctly, is attached as a whole on the very top (the back) of the aircraft in one piece during construction of the plane.

[Red Badger]

The aircraft mechanics...............

[T.B. Yoits]

I have no idea what that is, but it does not look like a C-130.

Apparently it's the entire main wing spar separated from the top of the fuselage. The fuselage dropped like a stone while the main wing spar with engines attached, spiraled to the ground, streaming wisps of aviation fuel.

[OldHarbor]

I does appear to lost the tail and the cockpit

Fwiw, a X post

That is weird. The article says they are buying used aircraft but the planes have been updated . Stress cracks ?

[Psalm 73]

"Or a muslim sense of maintenance …"

There's a good reason why most Arab countries use Brit and American expats to perform aircraft maintenance.

They are a little more complex than tents and camels....

[ConservativeMind]

Undiagnosed metal fatigue?

[Paal Gulli]

57-year-old airframe bought 15 years ago from the Saudis. Preliminary examination didn't discover any bullet holes or other damage indicative of a "shoot-down." Common (reasonable) guesses across the blogosphere include corrosion of the airframe or cargo breaking loose and causing internal structural damage. Every failure has to have a first occurrence and my first instinct was that it might be airframe failure due to repeated pressure cycles, which of course also would be related to quality of maintenance. Wikipedia has a list of C-130 crashes and this is the only one that appears to be spontaneously breaking up in flight.

Seeing the wings (presumably with the nose still attached) spiraling stably toward the ground reminded me of Eugene Moran, the B-17 tail gunner whose plane. the Rikki Tikki Tavi, was shot to pieces on a bombing mission over Nazi Germany. The tail fell off, with him still in it, and somehow miraculous was statically and aerodynamically stable FLYING BACKWARDS. Moran was essentially in his own glider falling to earth. And to compound the miracle, he landed in a stand of trees, which slowed his deceleration on impact to a survivable rate.

Unfortunately, the rest of the airframe (and crewmen) didn't have Moran's good luck.

[CodeToad]

Tukey hints at unusual flight attitudes. Hmmm...

[jerod]

First of all... That does not look like a C-130 in that photo... Secondly... C-130’s are among the safest and most reliable aircrafts ever created. For the wings to fall off a C-130, it would take a major error on the part of the maintenance crew.

[Fresh Wind]

Looks like they are enjoying Ganja!