P-3 nearly crashes after recovering from 5-turn spin
 

For any former P-3 guys out there, incident occured earlier this week, here's the info I received:

Aircraft departed Whidbey Island (BUNO 161331) for a FCF flight. They were at 160 KIAS, approach flaps during a prop fails to feather check on #1 when #2 started surging. They bagged #2, but while doing so got to 122 KIAS. When they added power, they were way below VMC, and departed controlled flight. About a minute later, just before impact, they recovered.


45 consecutive rivets were pulled out on the starboard wing during the 7G pull out (rolling pull), after peaking at negative 2.4g's as well. It’s reported they did five spin rotations from 5500 ft - they bottomed out "between 50 and 200 ft"!! The inside of the fuel tanks were visible from pulled panels when they landed. This being categorized as a Class-A mishap.

Outstanding skills for the flight crew regarding the spin recovery!

I cant imagine doing that in the mighty war pig, I've done the VMC demo in that thing, and that alone was scary enough for me.

Wow!
Did they report any poo-poo in the seats?

The seat cushions have not been located. A poo-poo test will be conducted once they are retrieved. The investigating officer expects the test to be positive.

I bet their fun meters were pegged! Is there a "P3 Experimental Test Pilot" badge?

Good job, folks!

I'm coordinating numerous P-3's at RIMPAC,...they sure have a lot of squawks and gremlins. I hope they hurry up with the P-8.

Wow, what's the immediation action for that?

I'm thinking "controls release, feet off rudders..." probably wouldn't have worked for them.

Particularly impressive that they started at 5500 ft.

It was reported that some of the pax on the recent Quantas flight vomited after landing. Wonder how the P-3 crew managed. Poo-poo on the seats is proabably an understatement. I'm thinking poo-poo, pee-pee, vomit, and a handle of Jack Daniels, followed by more vomit.

a freakin' Orion? I can't even imagine how that would've looked :s

what exactly is the recovery procedure.... just get the nose down, idle power, hope for vmc, opposite rudder?

Seats
 

I'm thinking more like "seat cushions had to be surgically removed from all aboard!" If this is true, the fact that they recovered at all is amazing.