Identify MH17 debris at crash site

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While searching for photos of the cockpit of MH17 for a blogpost I found the photo shown below. It looks like a part of the nose landing gear. There is a hole in the part.

Soon I found some other pictures on the internet showing this part. For example this photo by Joost Bosman.

By identifying the part and the position of the part in the aircraft some more knowledge could be obtained from the location of the detonation of the missile.

So I sent out some requests on Twitter for more information. Within a few minutes someone said this looked like an actuator. I was not known to this word so that made searching a lot more easier. Someone else sent a Tweet with  link to the Boeing 777 parts catalog. The part could the the nose landing gear retract actuator.

This is a hydrolic device used for retracting the nose landing gear after takeoff.

This image shows the nose landing gear.

The partnumber is 293W2302-2. I found a couple of photos showing the inside of the nose landing gear bay of a Boeing 777. None of the photos showed an actuator which looked the same as on the crash site. 

The image on the left is the actual actuator of a Boeing 777-200. You notice the differences.

Someone else on Twitter suggested this actuator must have been cargo carried by MH17.

That makes sense. I did quite some research on all sort of actuators used in Boeing 777 but could not find a match.

Additionaly is this strange this actuator did not have anything attached to it. You would expect that when the aircraft disintegrated some parts were still attached to this actuator.

The cargo manifest indeed shows aircraft parts and helicopter parts. However the weight of those parts (less than 6 kgs) did not match the assumed weighth of the part.

Update October 12.

It  is the main landing gear actuator of a Boeing 737 series aircraft. So it was transported as cargo. Perfect match

 

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