A U.S. Air Force A-10C Thunderbolt II made an emergency landing “without its landing gear extended” at Georgia’s Moody Air Force Base on Tuesday. The pilot was uninjured in the incident and was released following an evaluation by flight surgeons. An emergency was declared in flight and the aircraft landed on Moody’s primary runway.
According to a statement from the base, the aircraft was conducting a routine training mission. It is assigned to the 75th Fighter Squadron, which is stationed at Moody as part of the 23d Wing. No further information regarding potential causes of the incident has been made public. An investigation is being conducted by an Interim Safety Board.
This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
It would be an emergency in any other plane; not so with an A10.
Wholeheartedly agreed Mark – that is one rugged bird.
In most planes it’s only an emergency if the pilot makes it an emergency. Otherwise, it’s just old news. Even the NTSB doesn’t want to know about gear-up landings.
Interesting that the A-10 was actually designed to land gear up with minimal damage. Look at the inboard profile on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
Hopefully the runway wasn’t badly damaged by the A-10.
Jon H: Ha – Yes, the runway likely took the worst of that encounter!
100 thumbs up. That’s funny!
I read somewhere else that (according to the rumours) it was a technical issue with the gun that damaged the nose gear, preventing correct extension. A similar incident occurred in July 2017: https://theaviationist.com/2020/04/08/photos-of-an-a-10c-after-a-belly-landing-are-a-reminder-of-another-key-feature-of-the-warthog-its-landing-gear/
MM. why did the blowdown not work?
Where’s the canopy ?
We had a similar A-10 accident at Alpena (KAPN) August 2017. The canopy was recovered in the northern Michigan woods and was later reused I understand! The cause of the accident was a cannon miss-fire/explosion. The explosion took out the aircraft hydraulics and filled the cockpit with smoke. Hence the canopy vamoose thing. No hydraulics, no nose landing gear for sure. The bigger deal was the live rounds still loaded in the gun after the belly landing. Two semi’s trailers full of sand were parked infront of the aircraft for safety. The aircraft remained in the middle of the runway for a few days until the air guard could get a weapons team here to unload the hot rounds from the damaged gun.
I didn’t know that the Flying Tigers had moved to Moody, my old UPT base.