MIA01LA171 · Lockheed P-38L-5LD
Lockheed P-38L-5LD · Accident: fire en route
From Tullahoma Regional Airport William Northern Field (THA) to Greenwood–Leflore Airport (GWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA171
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Lockheed P-38L-5LD
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed P-38
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N25Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tullahoma Regional Airport William Northern Field (THA), Tullahoma, TNTo Greenwood–Leflore Airport (GWO), Greenwood, MS
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · descent
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Fire
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Eng assembly, blower/impeller/integral supercharger › Fractured
- Eng assembly, blower/impeller/integral supercharger › Perforated
- Eng assembly, blower/impeller/integral supercharger › Separation
- Fuel system, line › Punctured
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Lockheed P-38L-5LD "Lightning" was being ferried from Tullahoma, Tennessee, to its home base in Texas following its participation in an air show. During descent into the Greenwood, Mississippi area for refueling, the left engine backfired, ran roughly, and the cockpit filled with thick smoke. With reduced cockpit visibility, and a need to get the aircraft on the ground as soon as possible, the pilot chose a cotton field for a forced landing. Postcrash examination of the left engine revealed the supercharger sustained an internal compressor wheel failure that shot compressor blade pieces through the supercharger housing and the fuel feed line. High pressure 100 octane fuel spewed inside the left engine nacelle, ignited, and caused the in-flight fire.
Probable cause
the failure and uncontained separation of supercharger impeller blades for undetermined reasons during normal descent, resulting in a punctured fuel line and the subsequent in-flight engine fire and emergency descent and forced landing to a farm field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA171
- Event ID
- 20010628X01280
- Case number
- MIA01LA171
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: be780f79a164e8f2465f1903125a2e6dd90f01604d7d504f4af5464ff0cf3723; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:50:20.809Z.