Reader Rick Vatsaas forwarded us an email from a technician at DHL International Aviation who inspected the cargo plane that was hit by a shoulder-fired missile while departing from Baghdad Airport a few weeks ago:
“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 off 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.
“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.”
The photo below shows the wing of the cargo plane that was hit by the missile:
All of which, as Rick says, “underscores the risk President Bush took in coming to Iraq.”
-
-
Most Read on Power Line
Donate to PL
-
Our Favorites
- American Greatness
- American Mind
- American Story
- American Thinker
- Aspen beat
- Babylon Bee
- Belmont Club
- Churchill Project
- Claremont Institute
- Daily Torch
- Federalist
- Gatestone Institute
- Hollywood in Toto
- Hoover Institution
- Hot Air
- Hugh Hewitt
- InstaPundit
- Jewish World Review
- Law & Liberty
- Legal Insurrection
- Liberty Daily
- Lileks
- Lucianne
- Michael Ramirez Cartoons
- Michelle Malkin
- Pipeline
- RealClearPolitics
- Ricochet
- Steyn Online
- Tim Blair
Media
Subscribe to Power Line by Email
Temporarily disabled
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.