How in the heck do you get a 747 in that much trouble? All 7 of the crew were lost.

Dramatic video appears to show 747 crash in Afghanistan - CBS News

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Horrible.

Cargo was not tied down properly and it shifted most likely. Horrible thing o happen since the crew can't fight gravity that much.

Simple. Loss of lift. Loss of lift occurs when the air moving under the air foils (wings) yield less than what the airframe needs to stay airborne, given it's speed and pitch. Once you lose (control) of a big, fat 'n heavy plane like that at low speed/low altitude, (however you do it) with no altitude to recover - it crash, go BOOM! Looks like they stalled it on ascent, with too much attitude and pitch. Why the aircraft stalled? Who knows. It does look as if the pilot was attempting to recover, but he ran out of altitude.

I heard speculation about the cargo shifting. Trucks I think.

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Reminds me of the infamous B-52 crash video from the 90s:
1994 Fairchild Air Force Base B-52 crash - YouTube

(of course, there the pilot was actually trying to push the envelope)

That guy was a scr#w up that outranked the crew members, was totally hot dogging (trying to show off) in the craft, and had a history of numbskull dangerous operating of the B52.

Low speed yielding insufficient lift and no altitude == crash.

You just don't imagine such planes can simply fall out of the sky. The B52 was clearly in trouble. It was amazing to me it stayed in the air as long as it did. The 747 once it started having trouble really came down like a rock.

Simply shocking.

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..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

How can the cameraman (driver of the car) be so quiet through it? He was able to quiet down the dog, you could hear the guy breathing, yet he made noise, and there was no noise when the plane exploded...so close to the car.

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I hope there is enough left for them to figure out what went wrong. At least we could then try to keep it from happening again.

In the first part of the video where the plane was first visible, it appeared to be very nose high. My first thought was that it was tail heavy. The remarks about the cargo shifting are extremely plausible.

Once the aircraft rotated, you would think that this would be the time that the cargo would come unboomed. If it were seriously tail heavy at that point, I think most any pilots instinct would be to stay on the ground and deal with whatever is in front of him.

It would also be plausible that the booming held for a few seconds after rotation, but in the severe climbout angle of these big monsters, the booming turned loose a few seconds later when it was too late to do much about it.

A plane balanced too far forward is difficult or impossible to get off the ground. One that is loaded too far aft will get off the ground, no problem, but with it being loaded tail heavy, you can never get the nose down to develop enough airflow across the wings to produce lift.

IF it was indeed a tail heavy aircraft, or more accurately BECAME a tail heavy aircraft, they were doomed.

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I fully expect that in order to keep it from happening again, all they will have to do is see that the cargo is henceforth properly tied down. That, of course, after proper weight and balance has been performed.

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Yes.

The loud whine of the likely wide-open throttle to the engines a moment or two before the plane hits the ground was clearly audible on the video I viewed. It struck me as unusual for the driver of the webcam vehicle to remain silent except for trying to keep the dog in the vehicle quiet, later in the tape. I believe he also exclaimed a curse word late in the tape. What crossed my mind was that the driver was either immune to emotion in witnessing such a calamity because of past experience or cultural conditioning. It also crossed my mind that he may have been part of the making of the disaster if in fact it was a terrorist event in the making. And lastly, the guy was not supposed to have a pet dog on-board during his tour of duty, and was trying to keep the dog quiet from the taping of the audio in the truck/SUV he was driving.

Larry,
About stalling;
As you know, a pilot dooms his plane losing valuable altitude by freezing-up in continuing to hold a yoke cranked back, in a stall situation. The longer a pilot holds the yoke cranked back thinking he is going to overcome the imminent stall with forward thrust, the slower the aircraft speed, and the more altitude he will need to recover from the stall on the way down. The natural instinct to pull-back on the yoke in a stall, and instead push forward to save the plane, must be overcome by training - lots of training.
If a pilot does not to try to overcome a stall by pushing forward on the yoke, or whether doing so did or would have had any saving affect in this incident, is impossible to know at this time.

Skid, you are correct as it applies to an aircraft within balance limits. In this case, however, I truly believe that the aircraft was tail heavy. In that situation, you could bury the yoke forward and it wouldn't make any difference. He was an ATP pilot or some foreign equivalent. I can't imagine that with the hours, training and testing that it takes to get to that point, that he didn't have that yoke pushed all the way through the panel with every muscle in his and his copilots body.

There was a similar accident a few years ago with a commuter airline somewhere in the South. There was a tragic weight and balance calculation mistake. The aircraft was hopelessly tail heavy. The pilot started climbing out and it went over just like the 747 in the video. It was similarly close to the airport because it went over into a hangar.

It certainly does appear that the 747 was either the victim of such a tragic weight and balance miscalculation, or the tie downs came loose on one of the vehicles being carried. Either way, it was a horrible mistake.

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2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

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