Offshoreonly.com - ot,Testimony to an A300B4 (Missile Damage to Airbus A-300)

To those of you who are wondering what happened to the DHL A300B4 coming
: out
: of Baghdad last Saturday, take a look. Aircraft was hit at 8000 FT, lost
: ALL
: hydraulics and therefore had no flight controls, actually did a missed
: approach using only engine thrust and eventually (after about 16mins)
: landed
: heavily on runway 33L at Baghdad. This was fortunate because with no
: steering the aircraft veered of the runway to the left, had they landed
: on
: 33R veering to the left would have taken them straight into the fire
: station. The aircraft then travelled about 600 metres through soft sand
: taking out a razor wire fence in the process, see LH engine pic, and
: came to
: rest almost at the bottom of the sloping area between the runway and a
: taxiway. All three crew evacuated safely down the second slide, the
: first
: one tore on the razor wire. I flew in with a team on Tuesday in one of
: our
: Metros and some special equipment we'd had made locally in Bahrain and
: some
: provided by Airbus. Using a USAF D9 Caterpillar pulling a 100 metre
: cable
: fitted to the back end of each bogie and a nice new aircraft pushback
: tug
: with a towbar on the nose gear, we were able to remove the aircraft just
: on
: dusk on Tuesday night and towed it to an Iraqi Airways graveyard on one
: side
: of the terminal. We stayed overnight in the USAF camp on the airport and
: went back to the aircraft on Wednesday morning to allow the insurance
: survey
: to be completed and then secure the aircraft. Basically, LH engine
: rotates
: in a fashion, has ingested lots of razor wire and is knackered. RH
: engine
: has seized, probably from ingesting loads of sand at maximum reverse
: thrust
: and inlet cowl has unacceptable lip damage, probably from hitting the
: razor
: wire fence posts. The No 8 axle appears to be cracked as the wheel sits
: at
: an odd angle. The bulk of the damage is the LH wing. About 3 metres of
: rear
: spar is missing in front of the outboard flap, the wing has bulged
: upwards
: and downwards where the initial explosion appears to have occurred, one
: O/B
: flap track is hanging in the breeze and one has a small piece of flap
: still
: attached, the rest of the flap is nonexistent. The pics show the huge
: crack
: that has occurred to the rear spar inboard of where the spar has burnt
: away,
: possibly from loads on the wing during the landing process. The front
: spar
: appears to be intact. The point of entry pics show where a projectile
: entered Tank 1A, which was full of fuel, and, after it ignited,
: proceeded to
: burn away at the spar. The fuel tank ribs in the area directly in front
: of
: the O/B flap are burnt almost 50% through. The crew obviously did a
: fantastic job in getting the aircraft back on to the ground and one can
: only
: assume that it was most fortunate that they were not aware of the state
: of
: the wing as they could not see it from the cockpit. It also says a lot
: for
: the structure of the aircraft that it withstood the impact of the
: (whatever
: is finally determined to have hit it).
:
: I'm sure there will be lots of other photos and videos flying around the
: net, but at least these ones are genuine. The worst part for us was the
: airport was shut down on Wednesday and we had to be driven in an
: armour-plated Landcruiser Troop Carrier from Baghdad to Balad, 60 miles
: to
: the north, from where we flew back to Bahrain in our Metro again. I
: trust
: you will all appreciate just how lucky these guys were. Regards,
:
: DHL International Aviation,