Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Excellent Video of Malaysian Flt 17 being hit by missile

Excellent Video of Malaysian Flt 17 being hit by missile -



Looks like the right engine and wing area took the hit. Note the camera operator is able to record the moment of impact in the first 2 seconds of this clip. Note the smoke burst left behind on impact with the #2 engine area. There is a 18 second delay (speed of sound delay) due to the distance and altitude of the explosion. Question: how did this video operator know to have his camera running just prior to the missile explosion? How many people run their camera in the sky looking for an airplane cruising at altitude so high that most are not visible to the human eye? Note that the pilots are maintaining wings level, the airplane and burning wing still intact, in what appears to be an uncontrolled descent from 33,000 feet when the video ends at 1+19sec. (480P is best resolution available)(select FULL SCREEN)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaQzMv89eeo

Surreal,...knowing that those folks are still alive in there at that moment...

Tragic beyond words...

Yeah and what was going through the pilots and passengers minds.

This isn't the Civilian Plane that was shot down , it is a spy plane AN-30 according to the Video Title and translation of all the post to the video

Just a guess but I don't think that's a video of Malaysian Flt 17.

The reason being is it shows an airplane falling to ground that's essentially intact. The crash site of Malaysian Flt 17 is a large debris field strewn over a wide area and some reports say it's spread out over nine miles. There's also another video that shows parts and pieces raining down. It came apart while it was still in the air.

very tragic event, but I see some issues with the vid

1) The sky is totally clear, and other video of the crash shows overcast skies. Heck if the skies were totally clear, they (the missile crew) could have seen with binoculars that it was a passenger jet, and might not have shot it.

2) Debris (and bodies) are known to be scattered over a wide area, suggesting it broke up at high altitude. In this vid, the fuselage is intact, and even the right wing is still attached.

3) This vid shows a hit on the engine, like from a heat seeking missile. The SAM in question I believe is a radar guided missile(?), and would have hit the biggest target, the fuselage - which would agree with a total breakup at altitude.

So I'm not buying the vid.

Video was posted June 6th.

Were I investigating the missile attack, assuming this video is authentic, the first person I'd want to find is the one who shot the video.

Believe this is the plane being shot down you posted, and happened on 6 Jun, 2014 and its an AH-30...

Link

Phil

As I understand it, the missles that downed flt M17 had a war head with a proximity detonation, fragmenting type head. Once it got with a certain range it detonated and fragmented right before impact. Supposedly that breaks up the target more effectively. A tragedy either way.

Truly.

I guess those big planes can't maintain flight with one of their engines out.

THAT will teach me to do due diligence before posting links in an email.

Can't speak for Russian planes, but in the US, in order to be officially airworthy, a twin-engine plane does have to be able to fly (and even climb, if slowly) with one engine out.

However, if I were in a plane at that altitude with an engine burning that enthusiastically, my attention would not be on climbing at all, but on descending, as quickly as possible under control, to an emergency landing. The chief problem in a situation like that is not lack of power, but the facts that fire heats things up, aluminum softens when it gets hot, and wing spars are made out of aluminum. I'd want to get down before I lost that wing.

Once the fuel has all spilled out, what keeps the fire going?

Once the wing is gone, I don't care whether the fire is still going or not.

Would jettisoning fuel be a good thing because it would kill the fire faster, or would it be a bad thing because the trail of fire from the engine might ignite it and cause other problems?

Dunno.

I do know that once you get aluminum hot enough, it starts burning just like magnesium. Usually you think of flammable aircraft as being the ones with wooden frames and doped cloth surfaces; but I guess an aluminum aircraft could have a more severe version of the same problem.

I didn't know aluminum could "catch fire."

I didn't either, but it's pyrophoric just like magnesium is. You have to get it a bit hotter before it catches, but it'll burn.

Another interestingly pyrophoric metal is uranium. That's why use of depleted-uranium munitions creates such horrible birth defects: not because they create nuclear explosions, and not even because they're horribly radioactive; but because frequently when a depleted-uranium penetrator strikes, it gets hot enough to burn, which means that clouds of uranium oxide get into the air and soil and water and are ingested by people and animals in the vicinity. Mostly, that causes standard heavy-metal chemical poisoning; but there's also a bit of radiological damage, because even a not-particularly-radioactive isotope like U-238 can cause problems if it's actually inside your body.

They most certainly can fly on one engine. Even lose it at max gross on T/O past Decision Speed and still fly. Commercial jets cannot jettison or dump fuel.

Jorge, quick question. Wouldn't the crew be able to eject after a missile strike like this?