Originally Posted by Fluglehrer

RIP to the crew and prayers for the families.

Here's a Neptune gear up landing (Left main not down) that must have happened about the same date. Looks like a pretty skillful job of keeping it on the runway as long as possible. Are those really jet engines in the pods outboard of the radials?
Rough landing for air tanker

I wonder if fatigue cracks were an issue. I believe that is what folded the wings on a fire fighting C-130 10 years ago. Here's the report: Untitled Page
The report says all of the cracks reduced the structural strength to only 50% of limit (30% of ultimate): "At the request of the Safety Board, Lockheed performed a residual strength analysis to identify the vertical load factor that would have caused the center wing lower surface to fail based on the known fatigue damage documented in the metallurgical report. Lockheed concluded from the analysis that: “The center wing failed at a load that was approximately 30 percent of the design ultimate strength of the center wing and that the presence of fatigue cracks at multiple locations and in multiple structural elements reduced the residual strength to approximately 50 percent of design limit load and compromised the fail-safe capability of the structure.” The report opined that, “Failure was likely caused by a symmetric maneuver load exceeding 2.0g during the final drop of fire retardant.”"

Interesting that they've found large cracks in the Neptune fleet (24" crack on a wing spar and skin) earlier this year: Followup on crack found on P2V air tanker

Fire fighting has to be one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous job in aviation. I wonder what the fatalities per 100,000 hours looks like. Grim.