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From: gwishon@blackbird.afit.af.mil (Gordon D. Wishon)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: B-1s in the Gulf
Message-ID: <1991Jan24.032329.18058@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 24 Jan 91 03:23:29 GMT
References: <1991Jan19.033121.66@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: Air Force Institute of Technology; WPAFB, OH
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From: gwishon@blackbird.afit.af.mil (Gordon D. Wishon)

waylancm@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Legion) writes:

>Well, B-1s ARE supposedly capable of doing the conventional mission. I say
>supposedly because as I recall, they got grounded (again) about a month
>ago(anybody remember exactly? I just kinda sighed & shook my head), and
>I haven't heard of them being re-activated. Even if they were, I don't think
>I'd trust them too far "...if *I* was a jenrul..."

>From the 21 Jan 91 Air Force Times:

_B-1Bs remain idle until part is fixed_

By Joby Warrick
Times staff writer

The Air Force's B-1B Lancer bomber fleet, grounded since Dec. 19, will remain
idle indefinitely while crews replace an engine part that failed during sep-
arate mishaps over Texas and Colorado, officials said.

The grounding was ordered after an engine fire forced a B-1B crew to make an
emergency landing Dec. 19 during a training mission at Dyess AFB, Texas.  The
97-plane fleet had been grounded briefly six weeks earlier after another B-1B
dropped an engine over a pasture in southeastern Colorado.  No one was hurt in
either incident.

Although the B-1B fleet is grounded for routine training missions, the planes
still would fly in the event of a national emergency, said Strategic Air
Command spokesman Capt. Harry Edwards.

<text deleted>

...investigators believe both incidents started with tiny cracks on an engine
blade.  The cracks worsened until parts of the blade sliced through a retain-
er ring designed to protect the engine from such mishaps.

<The article goes on to say stronger versions of the retainer ring are being
shipped to the fleet, and that no B-1Bs would be permitted to fly until the
problem is corrected.  And finally,>

The fleet was grounded three times in 1989, once for fuel-tank problems, once
for escape-hatch failure, and once after a crash at Dyess in November.

<end article>

-- 
Gordon D. Wishon
Air Force Institute of Technology / Wright State University
gwishon@blackbird.afit.af.mil     / gwishon@thor.wright.edu