CHI04LA147 · North American T-28C
North American T-28C · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Manitowoc County Airport (MTW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA147
- 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
North American T-28C
- Aircraft type
- North American T-28
- 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
- N404DK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manitowoc County Airport (MTW), Manitowoc, WITo not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged during a forced landing after takeoff following a loss of engine power. The pilot stated that as he was reducing to climb power after takeoff, about 200 feet above ground level, when he felt a severe vibration and heard several "bangs." He reported that the engine "wound down". He made a slight left turn toward an open field adjacent to a barn to set up for a gear-up forced landing. He noted that the touchdown was smooth and the aircraft slid for approximately 335 feet. The aircraft yawed as it slid and came to a stop when the tail struck a ditch adjacent to a roadway. A post-accident examination determined that the #4 articulating rod had failed resulting in the engine failure.
Probable cause
Failure of the number 4 piston articulating rod resulting in a complete loss of engine power during initial climb. The ditch was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA147
- Event ID
- 20040610X00782
- Case number
- CHI04LA147
- 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, coordinates. 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: c27de22ca63364e94a105891c9aa0aa336f2ffb32d1c8bd1918babc9a47eb4cd; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:24:01.828Z.