Hi guysJust watched our main UK news (ITV 18.30 zulu). Dramatic but terrible pictures of a c130 fire fighting plane going down in California whilst dropping fire retardent chemicals. Explosion or sudden fire in starboard engine/wing root area......then both wings off and she went in from about 500 ft. Crew of 3 all deceased. Our thoughts will be with their families today.Sorry, my normal signature is not appropriate but don't know how to remove it!

Yep, that happened just over the hill from me, in the Walker lake area where a terrible fire (only 7% contained after three days) is still raging. The entire town of Walker was evacuated. It closed 395 which is one of the principle routes down to the LA area for us. This is a very bad time of year for the entire West -- tinder dry and just waiting for a fire to start.Those planes are amazing -- it's a wonder there aren't more accidents involving them, considering how low they fly and how heavy a load they carry (there are five based out of my home airport here in Carson, and I've seen them takeoff many times).

A friend of mine from pilot training and C-130 initial qual is a pilot there at the Hollywood Guard, I think it was one of their planes. I'll be looking for more information, the C-130 community will be in anguish over this, first the MC-130, then this.Our hearts go out to the crew.Lobauex

My observation of the news video are that it looks more like a load factor problem than as the press is reporting it as first a explosion then the wing fell off. It looks more like when the wings seperated that the explosion was the result. Those planes are definitly used and used hard as I said earlier I think that load factor is going to be the root issue afterall how many times do those aircraft do BANKS of 30 dgrs or greater that put a great amount of stress on the structure.http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/Us...9d503cc53ab.jpg

Hi guys:SimMan is correct. Local news is now reporting that both wings folded upwards as the aircraft came over a ridge into an updraft. The underlying cause is suspected metal fatigue from the many hours of airframe use and abuse these planes endure.Alex CN562ZMinneapolis

I would say he's correct as well. We don't have a problem with explosions in the wings or wingroots. But, we do abuse these -130's that's for sure. The ones we fly are all 1962-63 models, and we give them a good 60 and 2 every once in awhile when flying low-level. It really is a testemant to the maintenance folks that these things stay in the air. It does look like stress that causes one wing to fail, then the other wing to separate. I only saw a small Realvideo footage of it on USAToday.com, so I'll have to see the news footage to get a better view. It didn't look like a military -130 either, looked civilian, can anyone confirm that?Lobaeux

>Hi guys: >>SimMan is correct. Local news is now reporting that both >wings folded upwards as the aircraft came over a ridge into >an updraft. The underlying cause is suspected metal fatigue >from the many hours of airframe use and abuse these planes >endure. >>Alex C >N562Z >Minneapolis Alex I have flown over power station chimney stacks and you can get violent turbulence from the hot air.The hot air pockets in that sort of fire must be extreme and place a severe loading on the airframe so maybe it wasnt metal fatigue as such but plain overloading :-(Peter

Holy Crap!!! I just saw this on the evening news here... I've never seen anything like that, both wings just folded up and separated right at the root. There's a high quality WMP video of it at www.foxnews.com... The wings definitely separated before the fire around them started.It didn't look like they were doing that much of a high G pull-up when the wings came off... very very strange.

It looks like a wing spar failure to me, the NTSB will figure out why it failed in time. That is a very ghostly video.Very sad. I feel for the crew in their last seconds on this earth, and also for the families who have seen this and must know what their loved ones went through. Ken

It was a C-130A which belonged to one of the contractors with CDF, like AeroUnion.

They're saying now that the plane underwent wing crack repair a short time ago... somebody's gonna be in big trouble here if that's what led to the crash.

Saw the news, too...made me flinch to watch :'( ...guess this must be that kind of accident one could not expect even in his wildest dreams. Wings just came off...could hardly believe what I saw :-( .God have mercy on the fallen crew.

Old air force 130s have had these same wing failures before, but they were supposed to have been fixed, and that was a VERY old herk. The 130 wing is all one piece, so when the wing fails, they 'both' do. It's akin to hanging from a horizontal bamboo pole-when it snaps, it snaps in the middle. Anyway, I thought I'd give some background. Earl http://www.bcenterprises.com/images/starship_sig.jpg