What I see in that video is the plane starts dipping to the right just prior to touching down as if a severe crosswind forced it. Also heard that the data showed that the descent rate was 1100 feet per minute, way too much and no sign of the aircraft flaring like normal.
Conflicting reports........... xwind, no xwind. he hit heavy on stbd side I think. Big bounce, stbd(?) gear collapsed. SHTF, Imagine the angle if T tail didn't shear off. At least it was level on it's back. Should have gone around with that descent rate or diverted.
That's what I was thinking, a rear quarting wind could reduce his lift leading to the high rate of descent, and push him enough to the right that he slammed that gear down. Cant count the number of learnings where it certainly felt like I was going to do something like that from my perch in the back. Hell half the landings in Adak Alaska felt that way.
Adak........... you're old! Went to A school years ago with a airman that was stationed there, he hated it.
Adak........... you're old! Went to A school years ago with a airman that was stationed there, he hated it.
Met gooney birds. And the flying set a pretty high standard. Approaches were usually challenging. For a 20 year old, it was a helluva first deployment. Oh, also got my first and only Captains Mast out of the way 
Were you the one using the binoculars?
If they surfaced, I was tasked with using my 70mm film camera to take pictures. Barring that my job was setting loading and launching the sonobuoys.
There can be a great variation in crosswinds. Steady not to hard to compensate for..... Otherwise you can get caught out. We'll see what the investigation said.
