The case was documented heavily within the Project Blue Book files. That case file is below, along with the extensive array of photographs at the crash site.

Document Archive

Project Blue Book: The Thomas Mantell Case — 7 January 1948 [92 Pages, 15MB]

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The post Project Blue Book: The Thomas Mantell Case — 7 January 1948 first appeared on The Black Vault.

This report discusses the October 31, 2014, crash involving the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) reusable suborbital rocket, N339SS, which was operated by Scaled Composites LLC. SS2 broke up into multiple pieces during a rocket-powered test flight and impacted terrain over a 5-mile area near Koehn Dry Lake, California.

The pilot received serious injuries, and the copilot received fatal injuries. SS2 was destroyed, and no one on the ground was injured as a result of the falling debris. SS2 had been released from its launch vehicle, WhiteKnightTwo, N348MS, about 13 seconds before the structural breakup. Scaled was operating SS2 under an experimental permit issued by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) according to the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 437.

Safety issues include the lack of human factors guidance for commercial space operators, the efficacy and timing of the preapplication consultation process, limited interactions between the FAA/AST and applicants during the experimental permit evaluation process, missed opportunities during the FAA/AST’s evaluations of hazard analyses and waivers from regulatory requirements, limited inspector familiarity with commercial space operators, an incomplete commercial space flight database for mishap lessons learned, and the need for improved emergency response planning.

Safety recommendations are addressed to the FAA and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Document Archive

In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, N339SS Near Koehn Dry Lake, California October 31, 2014 [155 Pages, 4MB]

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The post In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, N339SS Near Koehn Dry Lake, California October 31, 2014 first appeared on The Black Vault.

On January 13, 2017, Tamara Keith of KRWG/NPR reported the following:

The website at the Office of Government Ethics went down Friday afternoon, apparently overwhelmed with traffic, as the agency and its director found themselves at the heart of a growing political fight.

OGE website administrator Michael Hanson told NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben the site failure came as a result of the usually sleepy office’s website receiving 1 million visitors in just the last three days.

Normally, it gets about 300,000 — in an entire year.

There’s a reason the website’s traffic has spiked. The office’s director, Walter Shaub Jr., has been conducting an unusually public discussion about ethics with the president-elect and the people he has chosen for his Cabinet.

Shortly after this article, I filed a FOIA request on January 16th, 2017, for documents relating to this crash.

I received the following packet of documents on February 15, 2017.

Declassified Documents

 Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Website Outage, January 13, 2017 [12 Pages, 0.5MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/oge/OGE-WEBCRASH1.pdf

 Additional Pages Released April 6, 2017 [2 Pages, 0.9MB]

The post Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Website Outage, January 13, 2017 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The USS Hartford and USS New Orleans collision was a collision between the United States Navy Los Angeles-class submarine USS Hartford (SSN-768) and the United States Navy San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS New Orleans (LPD-18) on March 20, 2009.

It occurred in the Strait of Hormuz, between Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Musandam, an exclave of Oman. A US Navy investigation into the collision found that the the Hartford was solely to blame for the accident.

According to the Navy, the accident was caused by poor, lax leadership on the submarine and a failure to adequately prepare for and conduct the crossing of the Hormuz Strait by the sub’s crew. As a result, the skipper and several other officers and sailors from the sub’s crew were removed or disciplined.

 NAVY Final Report on the Incident [102 Pages, 4.2mb]

 Additional Documents Released by the NAVY [5 Pages, 1.26MB]

 Ship Deck Logs [10 Pages, 1MB]

The post Collision between USS Hartford and the USS New Orleans, March 20, 2009 first appeared on The Black Vault.

On 8 January 2005 at 02:43 GMT, San Francisco collided with an undersea mountain about 675 kilometers (364 Nautical Miles, 420 statute miles) south-east of Guam while operating at flank (maximum) speed and more than 200 feet (61 m) deep. The collision was so serious that the vessel was almost lost — accounts detail a desperate struggle for positive buoyancy to surface after the forward ballast tanks were ruptured.

Twenty-three crewmen were injured, and Machinist’s Mate Second Class Joseph Allen Ashley, 24, of Akron, Ohio, died on 9 January from head injuries. Other injuries to the crew included broken bones, lacerations, and a back injury. San Francisco’s forward ballast tanks and her sonar dome were severely damaged, but her inner hull was not breached, and there was no damage to her nuclear reactor.

She surfaced and, accompanied by the USCGC Galveston Island (WPB-1349), USNS GYSGT Fred W. Stockham (T-AK-3017), and USNS Kiska (T-AE-35), as well as MH-60S Knighthawks and P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft, arrived in Guam on 10 January. The U.S. Navy immediately stated that there was “absolutely no reason to believe that it struck another submarine or vessel.” Later, an examination of the submarine in drydock showed unmistakably that the submarine had indeed struck an undersea mountain which had only vague references on the charts available to San Francisco.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Department of the Army Documents on Incident [7 Pages, 316 kb]- Original request filed to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) back in 2005. These documents took 6 years to get.  Other documents are being processed.

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The post USS San Francisco (SSN-711) Crash, January 2005 first appeared on The Black Vault.

 USAF Aircraft Accident Investigation Board Report [ 1,448 Pages, 59.10MB ]

The post Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska C-17 Crash, 06/28/2010 first appeared on The Black Vault.