Federal investigators released dramatic photos Thursday of an engine flying off a doomed UPS cargo plane that crashed two weeks ago in Kentucky, killing 14 people, and said there was evidence of cracks in the left wing’s engine mount.

A series of six photos showed the rear of the engine starting to detach before it flew up and over the wing as flames erupted. The next image shows the wing engulfed by fire as the burning engine flies above it. The last image shows the plane starting to get airborne.

But the MD-11 plane only got 30 feet (9.1 meters) off the ground, the National Transportation Safety Board said, citing the flight data recorder in its first formal but preliminary report about the Nov. 4 disaster in Louisville, Kentucky.

Three pilots on the plane were killed along with 11 more people on the ground near Muhammad Ali International Airport.

The NTSB said the plane was not due yet for a detailed inspection of key engine mount parts that had fractures. It still needed to complete nearly 7,000 more takeoffs and landings. It was last examined in October 2021.

Earlier this week, Bill Moore, president of UPS Airlines, an arm of UPS, said the company is working with investigators to determine the key cause of the crash.

The NTSB report said there was a similar event in Chicago in 1979 when an American Airlines DC-10 crash killed 273 people. The DC-10 was the predecessor of the MD-11.

“The left engine and pylon assembly and about 3 ft of the leading edge of the left wing separated from the airplane and fell to the runway,” the report said.

The MD-11 and the DC-10 have some of the highest accident rates of any commercial planes, according to statistics published annually by Boeing.

AP Video by Thomas Peipert