Quote:
Originally Posted by SaQSoN
All planes with retractable gear had 2 gear locks (one for each gear position) for each gear leg. And ONLY this locks were holding the gear in terminal positions, not hydraulic, or air pressure, or mechanical force from gear actuator (depending on how the gear was operated). The pressure was sent in the system ONLY when the gear was either retracted, or extended.
So, I repeat again: gear drop can be caused ONLY by lock damage.
However, it is quite possible, that hydraulic, or pneumatic lines, or whatever lines were used to operate gear could be damaged as well at hte same instance, as the locks, since they were usually located near the locks. Yet again, their damage is not related to the effect of gear drop.
PS Hydraulic fluid doesn't burn. The fire was probably from small fuel tanks, located on the front edge of Hurri wing. There is nothing in the video, that may hint, what caused the gear to extend.
PPS And after reading Hurri operating manual, I tend to believe, that in this particular case the pilot under attack occasionally engaged emergency gear down pedal, which releases the upper gear lock and lets gear to drop down under their own weight.
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+1 for this, and if a hydraulic line
was hit, but the up-lock was not, the gear could often be extended to engage the down-lock position via the aforementioned emergency system, where the pilot could extend the gear by using gravity, a hand crank or other "blow down" system. Of course if the gear falls out but doesn't lock down, you'll have a bad situation. It would be neat to see some of this in Il2, but I think there would be many other systems that would need to be modeled.