Douglas C-54 crash in Alaska

[exhaustgases]

I had watched the Juan Brown video on this, I'm thinking as are some others that commented that making the left turn into the bad side didn't help matters much, that is the direction ATC told them to turn to get back to the airport.
I wonder if they could have just tried to land on that river area?
Sad deal.
It will be interesting to see what is figured out about the engine doing what it did.

[quemerford]

There are plenty of recent cases on Blancolirio and Dan Gryder's channel where ATC have given direction to turn into the wrong engine; or not asked which engine has failed prior to giving a steer. Lessons still being learned it seems.

[mdwflyer]

There are plenty of recent cases on Blancolirio and Dan Gryder's channel where ATC have given direction to turn into the wrong engine; or not asked which engine has failed prior to giving a steer. Lessons still being learned it seems.

Not speaking to this accident, not enough info for me to comment. With regard to the last two posts, something that comes up pretty much every training event in a pilots career:
-Aviate
-Navigate
-Communicate

[JohnB]

I wonder if they could have just tried to land on that river area?

I can't imagine an off airport landing in rocky/wooded terrain while carrying 3200 gallons of heating fuel as a payload in addition to the aircraft fuel for a round trip.

That much weight behind the pilots in tanks of unknown crashworthyness doesn't sound very inviting.

This wasn't going to be a Captain Sully deal landing on a nice deep, wide and straight stretch of river.

The admittedly very few Alaskan rivers I've been on aren't that deep or wide. The banks are usually rocky.

They were close enough to the airport to make that the preferred option...even if it meant a turn.

[RyanShort1]

If you've seen the video, my personal opinion is that it's very unlikely that ANY action taken by the crew once the fire started was likely to save them, short of bailing out.

[DoraNineFan]

If you've seen the video, my personal opinion is that it's very unlikely that ANY action taken by the crew once the fire started was likely to save them, short of bailing out.

I've never seen a big radial grenade like that and wondered if it damaged the flight controls. You can see parts falling from the point the engine let go.