A B-52 bomber aircraft that crashed at a US Air Force base in California, killing eight people aboard, made a sharp right and then nearly completed a 180-degree turn before plunging to the ground.
Article is written confusingly as the author does not seem to understand that the speed quoted, ~1500m/min, is the descent rate and does not include airspeed.
The plane’s actual impact velocity was certainly much higher than that.
If we translate the bizarre unit of 1500 meters/minute out of anti-intellectual “I’m too stupid to divide by anything other than 10” units and into the figures the ship’s instruments are calibrated in.
1500m/min works out to 4921 ft/min, which is what your typical VSI is calibrated in. For context, that’s about where a 737 pilot would stop calling it a “descent” and start calling it a “dive.” A 5,000 foot a minute descent is pretty quick, that’s loss of cabin pressure descent territory. A more typical descent-from-cruise will be done at 3000 ft/min or so, which would take you from cruising at 30,000 feet to sea level in 10 minutes.
1500m/min works out to about 48 knots or so, that’s what your typical ASI is calibrated in. I would be very surprised if you could get a B-52 moving that slow off the ground. That just happens to be the VSO speed of a post-1980 Cessna 172. You can’t get a Skyhawk going that slow, let alone a Stratofortress.
So yeah, the BUFF hit the dirt going faster than that.
Article is written confusingly as the author does not seem to understand that the speed quoted, ~1500m/min, is the descent rate and does not include airspeed.
The plane’s actual impact velocity was certainly much higher than that.
I guess AI has replaced journalists already. That escalated quickly.
If we translate the bizarre unit of 1500 meters/minute out of anti-intellectual “I’m too stupid to divide by anything other than 10” units and into the figures the ship’s instruments are calibrated in.
1500m/min works out to 4921 ft/min, which is what your typical VSI is calibrated in. For context, that’s about where a 737 pilot would stop calling it a “descent” and start calling it a “dive.” A 5,000 foot a minute descent is pretty quick, that’s loss of cabin pressure descent territory. A more typical descent-from-cruise will be done at 3000 ft/min or so, which would take you from cruising at 30,000 feet to sea level in 10 minutes.
1500m/min works out to about 48 knots or so, that’s what your typical ASI is calibrated in. I would be very surprised if you could get a B-52 moving that slow off the ground. That just happens to be the VSO speed of a post-1980 Cessna 172. You can’t get a Skyhawk going that slow, let alone a Stratofortress.
So yeah, the BUFF hit the dirt going faster than that.