After 22 years of attending the Reno Air Races, I have seen planes collide, explode, or disintigrate in mid air, and skilled pilots bringing in many crippled aircraft safely. This year Margie and I were not there, I know exactly where the P-51 impacted. I knew it was going to be bad, and it is. It may very well be the death of The Reno National Champion Air Races. That would be sad, but understandable. My heart goes out to the victims at Stead field. It's a very black day for Air Races! A second note, if you watch the videos, there will be others that will surface, you will note the pilot was desperatly trying to pull up, not to save himself, he knew his fate was sealed, but to not impact the stands. If he had hit there, and it would have been Sunday, I would estimade 3 to 4 hundred casualties. Sadly he missed a crowd free impact area by only 40 feet.... If he could have managed that, all the debris would have been thrown away from the crowd. That pilot is a HERO in my book!
My heartfelt condolences to all that were injured or died, their families, and the racers. Death toll up to nine Death toll rises in Reno air show crash - US news - Life - msnbc.com I'm sure the pilot's last moment was extreme frustration he could not clear the crowd. It looks like a control surface in the tail failed critically.
One of the greatest thrills from my youth was attending air races. I remember the planes overhead and the closer they passed to us, the more thrilling. This is a terrible outcome for the event. I hope it is not the end of the sport.
So sad, good thoughts and prayers for all involved. My wife and I had talked about heading up for the race this year, instead we decided to go to Hot August Nights because we needed a break sooner.
To really mar the record, there was another air crash with only one casualty this week. (The pilot was the casualty.)
Impact left a crater 3ft deep - 8ft across. Nev. air race crash site shows violence of impact - US news - Life - msnbc.com
It would appear that the 74-year-old pilot of the P-51 Mustang, Jimmy Leeward was indeed a hero, and that he was trying to impact a spectator free area with a broken airplane. Sadly....he didn't quite make it, and over a half dozen spectators did die. Even more sadly, the sport that he loved will probably be negatively impacted by this tragedy. Already there are idiots out there that are screaming about why something like this has to happen. Too bad.
It'll be hard (not to be confused with impossible!) for the sniveling, bed-wetting attorneys to make money off of the PNOKs of the paying spectators. Oh....I'm sure they'll try, bottom feeders that they are!
Here's a sequence that shows startup, takeoff, and the Ghost’s last moments just before the fatal dive. If you look closely you’ll see the tailwheel extension the first physical sign of something amiss, occurring just before the pitchup (and perhaps inducing it). The airplane is in a vertical bank rounding the pylon, then tips left past vertical with a bobble that indicates it was unintended. The tailwheel drops out somewhere in that millisecond. The airplane rolls level, stays level as it pitches up, tailwheel fully extended. During the climb it commences to roll right and keeps rolling until it falls (stalled?) level inverted. At the top the trim tab tears loose, but doesn’t fully detach for a few fractions of a second, trailing and buffeting and doing god knows what to the stick forces until it breaks free (visible in the last frames of the video). The audio sounds like the throttle did get retarded, or the prop advanced, or something – the engine isn’t just running flat out – so perhaps Leeward was conscious. Anyway, it looks like the trim tab was NOT the precipitating event, but came after something else began to break apart in the tailcone. Might have been a problem with the tailwheel uplock that couldn’t take the high G of the pylon turn, so the tailwheel flung out, perhaps with enough force to break or damage the elevator control linkage and put the airplane out of control, with the torn off tab perhaps the result of flutter induced by the elevator floating free of severed linkage. The NTSB should be able to determine (if they’ve been able to recover them) whether damage to the elevator linkages was pre-crash or post-crash. I think a reasonable safety enhancement for future races would be a requirement for G-suits, to prevent inadvertent blackouts (if Leeward was knocked unconscious by the high G pitchup). A lost trim tab sent a P-51 into an uncontrolled climb 9 years ago, blacking out the pilot for a few seconds. He recovered and landed safely. It would add weight to the raceplanes, but reducing the possibility of having these 3 and 4 ton 500mph missiles hurtling uncontrolled a few hundred feet off the ground next to thousands of spectators would be a good idea. http://player.vimeo.com/video/29519344?title=0
Living in Reno this is a big event every year. It is sad something like this happened the scary part for me was that I was planning on attending this year as I wanted to get some pictures with my new camera. However, that weekend I decided to go to the Green Drive Expo in SanFran to check out the new Prii on display... Glad i did. My thoughts and prayers go to all those affected.
Very difficult to see trim tab to conclusively say it wasn't precipitating event. Powered by Packard, extremely(?) clipped wings and a razor back, didn't realize that, RIP, :amen: thanks APK. Was that a B/C model or a retro modified "Malcom Hood" model "D?"
Funny how when it's OUR family that's killed - it's ok to pursue legal remedies. If air race pilots had dead man controlers (the technology has existed for decades) the g force blackout scenerio would be easily avoided. But heck, aren't all laws written in blood?
