An A-10 Warthog Landed With Busted Landing Gear – Here’s the Story

By Maya Carlin

Whenever a military air training exercise goes awry, potential loss of life and irreparable damage to airframes are always the greatest concerns for every service. In April, a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report disclosed that 300 Army and Air National Guard helicopter crashes resulted from pilot error.

This report followed the most recent Black Hawk crash that killed two crew members from the Tennessee National Guard in February.

While human error is a factor, airframes and their components can also malfunction.

In 2020, an average training flight over Georgia left A-10C Thunderbolt IIpilot Capt. Taylor Bye without landing gear and a cockpit canopy. Stunningly, Bye was able to land the airframe with minimal damage to the plane or the runway and without injury.

A-10 Mishap

On April 7, 2020, Bye was conducting a typical surface attack ride during a training exercise around the Grand Bay Bombing and Gunnery Range in Georgia. During this ride, 

A-10 pilots fly their airframes to shoot enemies on the ground at low altitudes. 

When Bye tried to launch the A-10’s gun, however, she encountered “several failures that prevented her landing gear from deploying, caused panels to fly off and sent her canopy soaring through the sky,” according to the Air Force’s official release.