Top all-time · #335
Admiral Cloudberg
Personal blog · admiralcloudberg.medium.comwritinghistoryother
Admiral Cloudberg's personal blog at admiralcloudberg.medium.com covers writing and history. Since 2020, 155 different Hacker News readers have linked it 234 times, most often “The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this author's long-form Medium analyses of airline crashes and their investigations, usually as the detailed account to read about a specific accident.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called excellent, engaging and long-form; 'far better' than another account; 'can't beat' it for aviation safety.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2020-11-02
- The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)12 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2022-12-24
- Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2023-12-09
- Reaping the Whirlwind – Inside the Potomac River Midair Collision9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2026-07-29
- Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370?9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-03-27
- The Madness in our Methods: Crash of GW9525 and our broken aeromedical system7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-04-29
- Admiral Cloudberg: the TWA 800 investigation (2022)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-09-25
- Lost Souls of Grammatiko: The crash of Helios Airways flight 5224 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-10-30
- Admiral Cloudberg4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-01-31
- A legal and moral question: The crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 (2021)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-07
What Hacker News says?
When people tell me the Russians deliberately plotted to crash the Smolensk flight, I ask them to read https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/all-the-presidents-men-t...
Comment linking /all-the-presidents-men-the-story-of-the-smolensk-air-disaster-and-the-death-of-lech-kaczy%C5%84ski-590a3977f
on “Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting”Submitted Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804 as a story · 257 points
HN discussionObligatory long form link: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fire-on-the-mountain-the...
Comment linking /fire-on-the-mountain-the-crash-of-japan-airlines-flight-123-dadebd321224
on “Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available”Submitted Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023) as a story · 179 points
HN discussionPrison and even the death penalty should absolutely be considered for the bean-counting Boeing execs that deliberately drove safety into the ground for profit. The blood of innocents is on their hands, and yet they get to cheerfully cash in their stock options. Airbus execs seem fine[1], so they'd have nothing to fear here. [1]: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-...
Comment linking /a-matter-of-millimeters-the-story-of-qantas-flight-32-bdaa62dc98e7
on “FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s”Submitted Designed to Crash: the story of Antonov An-28 HA-LAJ and its demise as a story · 108 points
HN discussionNot a big difference if everyone was with fastened seat belt. There is a real story of another 737 of Aloha Airlines flight 243 where part of the fuselage blown away together with unlucky flight attendant at 24000 feet: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-ne...
Comment linking /falling-to-pieces-the-near-crash-of-aloha-airlines-flight-243-18f28c03f27b
on “FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s”Submitted Flying the Unflyable Plane: The near crash of Air Astana flight 1388 as a story · 105 points
HN discussionIf the engineering of this plane wouldn't have been that great disaster would have loomed.[0] No question about that. [0] https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-...
Comment linking /a-matter-of-millimeters-the-story-of-qantas-flight-32-bdaa62dc98e7
on “FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s”Submitted A legal and moral question: The crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 (2021) as a story · 104 points
HN discussionhttps://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/madness-in-morocco-the-n...
Comment linking /madness-in-morocco-the-near-crash-of-royal-air-maroc-express-flight-439-8dc5626ec3c3
on “Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff”Submitted The Case of the Missing Fuel: The story of the Stockport air disaster as a story · 94 points
HN discussion> I know that we like to circle jerk about "written in blood" around here but your take is asinine. Aviation regulations are indeed written in blood. I can recommend https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/ if you're into reading, or https://www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot if you're into watching for some education of how bad things used to be. Airplane crashes were an almost weekly occurrence, sometimes barely making it…
Comment linking /
on “Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]”Submitted Trial by Fire: The crash of Aeroflot flight 1492 as a story · 91 points
HN discussionThe Air Florida crash had very little to do with the airport and a lot to do with the pilots who took off with dangerous amounts of ice/snow on the wings. Fortunately, de-icing procedures have also improved since then - in the 80s, it was possible to have a long time between deicing and takeoff; today, deicing is done at the end of the runway, shortly before lining up for takeoff. Full story: https://admiralcloudber…
Comment linking /the-cold-laws-of-winter-the-crash-of-air-florida-flight-90-cdcba7847e0a
on “Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport”Submitted Passing the Buck: The story of the 2022 Wings Over Dallas air show collision as a story · 87 points
HN discussionDo you feel like an inadiquate imposter or something? I'm assuming you work in software. Watch some engineers in other disciplines and you soon recognise that many of them have about the same responsibility as a software engineer. Design is design. Or read about engineering failures like flight QF32 (mostly a success story): A paperwork review showed that the required signatures were missing from 131 out of 138 retr…
Comment linking /a-matter-of-millimeters-the-story-of-qantas-flight-32-bdaa62dc98e7
on “Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera”Submitted The Spiral of Wrath: The crash of Armavia flight 967 as a story · 65 points
HN discussionIf you read this long, allegedly well researched piece: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/all-the-presidents-men-t... tl;dr: "Amid the endless political struggle, it is easy to lose perspective on the Smolensk Air Disaster as, first and foremost, a plane crash. Had the President not been on board to politicize the tragedy, it would have been obvious to everyone that the flight that day was a disaster waiting to ha…
Comment linking /all-the-presidents-men-the-story-of-the-smolensk-air-disaster-and-the-death-of-lech-kaczy%C5%84ski-590a3977f
on “Missiles are now the biggest killer of airline passengers”Submitted Korean Airlines Flight 007 as a story · 43 points
HN discussionWikipedia's account says that the Boeing lost "about half" its wing. Admiral Cloudberg - https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-fickle-hand-of-fate-... - says "nearly in half". But from the scaled diagram of the collision in that article, your "outer third" seems more accurate. Either way - for anyone familiar with Boeing's WWII bomber heritage, the glossed-over assumption that the Boeing's situation was hopeless r…
Comment linking /the-fickle-hand-of-fate-the-amazon-mid-air-collision-and-the-crash-of-gol-transportes-a%C3%A9reos-ab407547b1b2
on “Missiles are now the biggest killer of airline passengers”Submitted Insanity in the Air: The crash of Pakistan International Airlines flight 8303 as a story · 43 points
HN discussionThats not true at all, and I have the receipts to prove it. When the Russians shot down KAL007, it was preceeded by numerous phone calls and meetings. Russian pilots cannot fire missiles without remote authorization from central command. The chain of communications is well documented. KAL007 was first radar identified and fighters were scrambled at 16:33. They obtained visual contact at or around 18:05 and reported…
Comment linking /a-shot-in-the-dark-the-untold-story-of-korean-air-lines-flight-007-a4ae6a4ef734
on “Missiles are now the biggest killer of airline passengers”Submitted Admiral Cloudberg: the TWA 800 investigation (2022) as a story · 35 points
HN discussionI’ve read a few of these in depth crash analyses: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/ I’ve realized that fires are a way bigger issue than you might imagine after a crash — things can go south really quickly. Multiple stories of planes going from “fire outside” to “people suffocating and burning to death in their seats” in minutes. Here’s one of a 737 in Manchester, taxied of the runway intact, 55 people died: http…
Comment linking /fire-on-the-runway-the-manchester-airport-disaster-and-the-tragedy-of-british-airtours-flight-28m-0a2054e27fff
on “Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport”Submitted A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32 as a story · 32 points
HN discussion> The wings are so utterly critical to flight I can’t possibly imagine any situation they’d be engineered to snap off under. I don't know enough about the details of the CRJ-900 to say for certain, but in general aerospace engineering does include considerations of this sort, where if a component breaks off you want to ensure that it separates in a specific way. from an Admiral Cloudberg article [0] about El-Al 1862…
Comment linking /concrete-and-fire-the-crash-of-el-al-flight-1862-7f2e8fa4bee9
on “Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport”Submitted Tears in the Rain: The 2002 Überlingen midair collision as a story · 19 points
HN discussionBoeing was culturally taken over by McDonnell Douglas leadership. What's fascinating albeit somewhat depressing is that it seems something similar happened when McDonnell merged with/took over Douglas as well: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-legal-and-moral-questi...
Comment linking /a-legal-and-moral-question-the-crash-of-turkish-airlines-flight-981-and-the-dc-10-cargo-door-saga-d22f0b9fa689
on “Intel's Humbling”Submitted The crash of American Eagle flight 4184 and the ATR icing story as a story · 15 points
HN discussion
