7 Die in Fiery Georgia Crash of Lockheed ‘Flying Laboratory’

A one-of-a-kind cargo plane described as a “flying laboratory” crashed and burned Wednesday after taking off from an Air Force base, killing all seven people aboard, authorities said.

The plane clipped a corner of a Navy medical clinic but caused only minimal damage and no injuries there, said Lt. Pat Blassie, spokeswoman for Dobbins Air Force Base in suburban Atlanta. About 50 workers had been in the clinic.

“I heard a hum. Something was coming down. Then I heard a boom,” said Navy Chief Hospital Corpsman Douglas High.

“All we tried to do was get everybody out the front door,” High said, adding that the back of the clinic building was in flames. “There was no way we had access to the plane.”

Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. John Atkinson was driving on the base when he saw the crash. “It hit nose-first into the ground about 40 feet in front of me,” he said. “As soon as it did that, a wall of flames came up.

The plane was a modified L-100, the commercial version of a C-130 Hercules Transport. It was built and owned by Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., which has a plant adjacent to the base. The victims were Lockheed employees, company spokesman Doug Oliver said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation. Oliver said the plane was conducting an engineering test at the time, but he would not elaborate.

The C-130 is a troop and cargo transport plane used by the military, but the plane that crashed was a special version used by Lockheed for testing, spokeswoman Susan Miles said.

The plane, developed in 1984, was the only one of its kind and was called a High Technology Test Bed, or HTTB.

According to Lockheed, the plane was a “flying laboratory,” equipped with data-gathering equipment to test new technologies. It was designed to fly at lower-than-normal speeds, mainly to test short-distance landing.