Photos of Louisville plane crash show engine pylon coming off

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The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, have issued dramatic new photographs in a preliminary report into the deadly UPS cargo plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky, earlier this month.

The photos suggest the left engine came off before it caught fire.

The photos released show the left engine and the pylon holding it to the UPS plane's wing, coming off the plane as it began to take off.

Then a massive fire, as the engine exploded up and over the fuselage. Dooming the three pilots on board and killing 11 people on the ground. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives.

"This might be the toughest Thanksgiving that their families have ever been through," said Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

In the plane's remains, the NTSB said, investigators found fatigue fractures in the pylon structure holding the engine to the wing.

As the NTSB notes, haunting similarities to a 1979 crash involving the previous model of the same plane that killed everyone on board.

"This is all that was left of the American Airlines flight 191 as far as it got on its way to Los Angeles."

Investigators later determined the engine and pylon came off that plane after being damaged during maintenance.

The FAA quickly ordered regular inspections of similar planes.

The UPS plane that crashed in Louisville, built in 1994, went through routine maintenance in October but wasn't yet due for a heavy, detailed pylon inspection.

"The similarity of the engine and pylon coming off the wing is too obvious just to ignore but the details of how that happened, well that's something the NTSB is going to be challenged with ," said MBC News Aviation Analyst Jeff Guzzetti."