From: Dave Brubaker (b52d@piace.com)
Date: Tue Dec 31 2002 - 06:05:09 PST
There was absolutely no reason for the APU to be running once the aircraft
had #2 engine running! They were just in such a big hurry to taxi the thing
that they forgot to shut the darn think off! A true example of haste makes
waste.
You can't help but think that the watching of the plane burning from lawn
chairs was just a cavalier attempt of bravado for the benefit of the camera.
I would be willing to bet the whole scene would have played out differently
if they were without the media.
David & Donna Brubaker
Member MVPA #18115
M-151A2
http://www.piace.com/~b52d/
President: Mid-Kansas MVPA
http://www.piace.com/~b52d/MKMVPA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul H. Anderson" <pha@pdq.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 7:54 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Fifi
>
> The B-29 Kee Bird was abandoned by the air force as far as I know.
> License was granted by the government of Greenland to salvage it.
>
> The recovery site was at the extreme limits of range for recovery within
> the budget they had. Avgas for the Caribou was shipped in to the "nearby"
> air force base. I don't recall the ranges, but everything was extreme -
> limited storage for fuel, limited shipping access due to freezing water,
> extreme range from the airbase to the recovery site and so on.
>
> IMHO, it looks and sounds to me like they were drastically underfunded,
> and frankly motivated by profit - they wanted to recover an approximately
> $1.2 million airframe for under $500K and resell it (parts of this were
> revealed in the PBS show).
>
> Clearly, they had insufficient equipment for safe recovery. Trucking out
> was not an option - no roads. Airlift was not an option - range too far
> and too expensive by far. They didn't even have fire extinguishers near
> the engines on initial startup (again see the PBS show). The engines were
> replaced with surplus engines that hadn't been rebuilt. The jury rigged
> gas tank for the APU was wired in and had a long rubber fuel line. No
> surprise that it came undone when bouncing around.
>
> They were terribly pressed for time - the cost of reaching and setting up
> camp made it difficult to leave the plane for another season, even though
> that would have been the right thing to do.
>
> There is a very long thread about the Kee Bird on rec.aviation.military (I
> think that's the name of the group) - people who were onsite helping
> recover the Kee Bird talked about it there. The main one I remember was a
> cameraman who was fairly defensive about what was going on (he pointed out
> the extreme conditions involved and certainly was right about that).
>
> No one asked me, but my first impression of watching the recovery on the
> PBS show was that it was underfunded and certain to fail. I could not
> believe the end result - just heartbreaking to watch. But in light of the
> level of funding in relation to the actual complexity of the task, it
> really isn't that surprising that it failed.
>
> As others have pointed out, there are other aircraft out there waiting for
> recovery. There is a European group trying to put together proper funding
> for safe recovery of these aircraft, and is partly an offshoot of the Kee
> Bird experience. I don't recall the web site.
>
> Paul
>
> On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Walter Houghton wrote:
>
> > I had not heard about Having to fly it out cause the govt said so in
either
> > case of the B-29's. I know that they were in desolate areas. So
probably
> > it was the best to attempt it. But in the case of the Kee Bird, being
in
> > such a hard climate. It probably would have been in the best interest
to
> > air lift the sections out by sky crane. I believe the largest part of
it
> > would be the center section of the wing.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> >
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