VIDEO: Flightglobal expert analyses Bagram 747 crash sequence: The fatal departure of a National Air Cargo Boeing 747-400F from Bagram air base on 29 April has been caught on amateur video. This is what the video shows:
The first sight of the aircraft on film shows it in an apparently steady climb through about 1200ft above airfield level, just after take-off, but with an extremely high nose-up attitude.
Within about 3s of appearing on film the aircraft's port (left) wing begins to drop, and 1s later the roll reverses, the right wing dropping. Simultaneously, the 747 begins a dramatic yaw to the right, the nose dropping fast. The roll stops at an angle of about 110deg to the horizontal, by which time the forward airspeed is well below flying speed and the aircraft is just falling sideways through the air. As some airspeed is recovered in the fall, the pilots manage to roll the wings level.
