According to Air Force Reserve Command officials, the wings-level landing managed by the air crew of the C-5 that crashed Monday morning just short of a Dover AFB, Del., runway, saved the lives of all on board. Col Udo McGregor, commander of the 439th Operations Group at Westover ARB, Mass., said, “The survivors are survivors because [the pilot] put it on the ground wings level.” McGregor, who is a veteran pilot with more than 10,600 flying hours—7,000 in C-5s—added that the type of emergency the crew faced is one for which they have trained “hundreds of times in a simulator.” (Here is a list of survivors and a short history of the C-5.)
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
