On the morning of February 6, 1992, a five member crew from the
Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Tactical Airlift Wing based at
Standiford Field in Louisville, Kentucky, was performing touch-and-go
landings at Evansville Dress Regional Airport as part of routine pilot
proficiency training. The crew consisted of an experienced instructor pilot,
two co-pilots, a flight engineer, and a loadmaster.
The type of military airplane -the Lockheed C-130-B Hecules -
which crashed in Evansville on February 6, 1992, was renowned for its
safety record and reliability. C-130 crashes are rare events. Historically,
most aircraft crashes occur during takeoffs and landings.
At the time of the crash, one of the co-pilots was flying the aircraft
under the supervision of the instructor pilot. According to U.S. Air Force
investigators, the crash was attributed to pilot error, which produced an
unrecoverable stall following a low level approach maneuver over the
airfield. A stall results from insufficient airflow under the wing of an
aircraft. The stall was the result of insufficient airspeed at the time a
turning maneuver was executed. Without sufficient airspeed or altitude
(approximately 1,300 feet), the crew was unable to regain control of the
aircraft before it crashed.
The aircraft went down approximately one mile south of the
departure end of Runway 22 at 9:53 a.m., impacting in the courtyard
behind the Drury Inn and Jojo’s Restaurant. The aircraft attitude and rate
of descent produced a very small crash impact zone. At the time of
impact, the aircraft was descending almost vertically at a rate of between
4,500 and 6,000 feet per minute with the nose elevated 4-degrees above
vertical and the right wing 47-degrees below horizontal. The impact
created a crater 8-feet deep and 12-feet across. The immense force of the
impact splashed burning aviation fuel toward the hotel and broke windows
across the center portion of that building. A large piece of the tail section
of the aircraft landed on the rear quarter of the restaurant causing it to
collapse, pinning two victims. Part of the skin of the right wing was
propelled over the hotel into the parking lot south of the hotel and large chunks of the concrete pool deck and airplane parts landed on the 4-story
roof of the hotel.
The fireball created by the crash impinged directly against the
center portion of the north wall of the Drury Inn. Windows broken by the
force of the impact and the radiant heat allowed the fireball to spread into
several hotel rooms on all four floors. However, fire spread beyond these
rooms was minimal in most instances because of fire-resistive construction
separating the guest rooms from the corridors. In the few locations where
the fire did extend beyond a guest room, doors had been left open by
guests or hotel housekeepers. Fire extension in the corridors was minimal
due to the limited fuel loading and interior finishes.
The fire was accompanied by choking black smoke produced by the
burning aviation fuel. The high concentration of aviation fuel present in
the air after the airplane broke apart made the smoke particularly dense
and acrid due to incomplete combustion of the fuel.
The hotel operators believe that 75 to 80 people were inside the
building at the time of the fire. This number included 11 employees of a
local plumbing supply company and two instructors from the University of
Southern Indiana who were conducting a total quality management seminar
in a fourth floor meeting room. The post-crash fire killed nine of the
people in this meeting room and seriously injured the other four. In
addition, 11 other hotel occupants sustained various injuries, mostly from
smoke or toxic fume inhalation.
At the Jojo’s Restaurant, two employees were killed when part of
the airplane impacted directly on the kitchen area in the southeast quarter
of the building. Two workers, a waitress and a dishwasher, were pinned in
the wreckage of the collapsed portion of the structure. Approximately 25
people escaped from the restaurant unharmed or with minor injuries.
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