Ran out to the rifle and pistol club to test some handgun loads yesterday afternoon despite the wind, taking advantage of the 70-plus temps before we go Arctic starting on Saturday here in west central Texas.
While I was out there, I saw a twin-engine plane come in behind me -- not unusual as the pistol and rifle ranges are perpendicular and directly adjacent to the approach of the main runway here at Avenger Field. The wind was blowing pretty hard and I heard him cut his engines and then a bit of a thump and figured he had just landed a little hard in the quartering crosswind. I had my headphones on at the time, and the pistol bay is about a dozen feet below the landing elevation in the borrow pit where they took the material to build the runways. Went back to shooting, thinking there was something a little odd about it. When I closed the gate and headed out, a guy at the rifle range flagged me down. Did you hear that plane belly land, he asked? I looked behind me and there must have been seven or eight emergency vehicles, an ambulance and a fire truck clustered around the aircraft, sitting just off the strip on the grass. Whoever the pilot was knew what to do to improve his chances. I'm sure the belly of the plane is damaged and of course both props are bent.
And that was the missing piece of what seemed odd about the whole thing: When I glimpsed him coming in on his approach, he had no landing gear down! He came to rest just off the tarmac on the grass, about 500 yards from where I had been shooting.

That really sucks for the pilot. But, crap happens. I hope he didn't sustain damage to the engine internals. If he flopped on grass it may not be too bad.

Back in the 1980's I was working in my front yard and a Swearingen Metroliner with Eastern Airlines came over on final for our runway 1. Didn't see any gear and didn't hear the usual air drag noise when gear is lowered. About 30 seconds later, I heard a God-awful sound like a machine gun coming from the airport direction. That night on local news I learned the pilots had forgot to lower the gear and belly landed with both props under power on a concrete runway. All six souls on board were injured including two severe spinal injuries amongst the 4 passengers. I always wondered what happened to those pilots. Perhaps flying Grand Canyon tours in a Twin Otter.

If I can see the cockpit I always look for three greens!

Did the Aztec intentionally land gear up? Knew a bloke blamed his wheels up on wind shear, bullshit, he did a go around, put gear up and not back down.

Then again, there is the old saying about retractable aircraft pilots, thems that have , and thems that haven’t yet!

Here is some sort of incident report one of the gang found regarding this aircraft:

One the other night at the Gold Coast Queensland. Good landing too.

Great they walked away from it.

Looking at that flight path I would say he had been trying to get the gear down, finally made the decision to put it down on the belly and chopped the engines to prevent/lessen engine damage.
Just a WAG!

Bad part of a belly landing is that the engines have to be torn down and inspected for bent or cracked components. Gets very expensive very quickly.