Without seeing a video of the landing, it is difficult to say exactly what happened in this incident. 20 mph HEADwinds should not have been a problem for an aircraft of this size. A 20 mph CROSSwind or TAILwind would have been more of a challenge. The second image in the series does appear to show the aircraft in a slight bank, which would be consistent with a crosswind landing. Typically, on smaller aircraft, the drift associated with a crosswind is killed using side slip....a combination of bank (using the lift vector to kill the drift) and opposite rudder to keep the aircraft aligned with the runway. On large aircraft with wing-mounted engines, there are often severe limits as to how much bank can be used before tagging a prop or an engine pod, so the aircraft is brought in using crab (pointing the nose somewhat into the wind and using the thrust vector to kill the drift) and kicking that crab out with the rudder just before touchdown. That latter technique requires good timing so that a drift does not re-develop before contact. If the aircraft touches down with any significant side-drift, that does tear up the tires......and you can't just buy B-29 tires from Goodyear or any other tire manufacturer. With some of these old aircraft, considerable funds have been expended to have tire manufacturers make limited runs of these impossible-to-find tires, so I am sure that the CAF's supply of replacements is limited. If the crew did tear up some tires, I am sure that they felt terrible about it.....as most any pilot worth his/her salt would. Having photos of the incident posted publicly probably didn't make them feel any better about it......but certainly does not excuse rude behavior. The crew may have also been worried about the ramifications they might face from their organization. I doubt that they worried about FAA. No metal was bent and no one was hurt.
BTW, another possibility is a long landing (perhaps due to tailwinds) and overly aggressive braking. That would also eat up tires. The B-29s don't have anti-skid brakes, so you cannot just stomp on the brake pedals the way you can with a modern airliner. If you press the brake pedals too hard, you can flat-spot 'em....or worse.
Whenever I photograph an event, and witness something like this, I tend to avoid posting photos that would embarrass the crew and make their bad day worse. I think I've posted all of one derailment photo, and I only posted that one because I was actually IN that one.
/Kevin Madore
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2016 04:18AM by KevinM.
