Non-motoring > P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Bigtee Replies: 48

 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
www.flyingfilm.co.uk/

Watch this a fantastic aircraft the mustang and top marks to the pilot Rob Davies for managing to get out very quickly.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bromptonaut
He seemed to have retained control for a while - the other machine looks worse at first. Very low altitude bail though - was only under the 'chute for seconds.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Fenlander
The Mustang pilot acted in a very prompt manner... just 2 sec to dump the canopy after collision and only another 12 sec before he left the aircraft. That's not very long for life saving decisions/actions.
Last edited by: Fenlander on Tue 12 Jul 11 at 07:40
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Zero
I think he thought he had control of it for a while, and indeed it seemed he did, but decided then he didn't!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
Nutters. Large numbers of elderly aeroplanes being flown too close together by people without the skill and training to do so. The first time we see them (going from left to right) it looks as though they're rather wobbly. Indeed they were.

And over the heads of the general public too. Nutters!

 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Zero
Yeah, exciting init.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Crankcase
Mrs C and I were wandering the Gogs that day and I did peer at the planes with the bins, but luckily for me, being a sensitive soul, I was distracted by a Marbled White, so missed the otherwise inevitable palpitations.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 12 Jul 11 at 13:41
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - spamcan61
Looks like he very narrowly missed the tailplane when baling out, a very lucky escape indeed.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
Nutters. Large numbers of elderly aeroplanes being flown too close together by people without the skill and training to do so.

The "elderley aircraft" have been extensivly been re built with new panels and engines and are in tip top condition and been flown by display pilots with years of experiance not your newly passed out ppl.

Your comments are rather silly...
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
Rubbish, Bigtee. A complete amateur the pilot who bailed out, enjoying flying microlights and gliders and crashing P51s.

www.simplyplanes.co.uk/rob_davies_mustang_pilot.shtml

Even the Red Arrows manage the occasional mid-air prang, a rank amateur pilot (an engineer by trade) is not exactly in the same league as the other pilots on this link.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
He's no amateur pilot Mapmaker and is a very experianced display pilot & besides it wasn't his fault did you watch the clip he got hit from behind!!


Mapmaker i think you may need to go to specsavers.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
www.itv.com/anglia/pilot-speaks-about-crash48488/

Interview with pilot Rob Davies of the P-51
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - MD
There seem to be a few mishaps at airshows if youtube is to be believed.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I-BkpWvwGc

The mother of all of them. In all 29 deaths in this particular one - a harrowing account in a book I was reading on holiday. ATC lads were made to guard the bodies and clear the mess up, including the bus driver that drove them there. The show went on (bizarrely)
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Meldrew
Ramstein Crash - Frecci Tricolori

The Ramstein airshow disaster is the second-deadliest airshow disaster. It took place in front of an audience of about 300,000 people on August 28, 1988, in Ramstein, state of Rheinland-Pfalz, West Germany, near the city of Kaiserslautern at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base airshow Flugtag '88. Sixty-seven spectators and three pilots died, and 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bromptonaut
Rob,

Suspect in those days it was the residue of wartime phlegmatism. Johnny's bought it - can I have his egg at breakfast please.

In more recent times I was at Fairford in 1993 when the two Sukhois collided. The display continued. It was thought cancellation & mass exit would complicate rescue/recovery though in fact both pilots had ejected safely. Worst injury was to Belgian Air Force personnel who, under falling wreckage, had to hastily evacuate their vantage point atop a Hercules!!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - spamcan61
>> Rob,
>>
>> Suspect in those days it was the residue of wartime phlegmatism. Johnny's bought it -
>> can I have his egg at breakfast please.
>>
Having read (probably) the same book as RP then that's the conclusion I came to.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
I think it was specifically mentioned in the book that there was a "stiff upper lip" but still...!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - MD
I have only ever been to one airshow and that was as a kid. I don't even know where it was. Farnborough perhaps? Poss mid/late Sixties.....anyone?

MD
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Zero
Motor racing, Air shows, many many events attended by hundreds of thousands of people were dangerous in those days. As Brompo indicated, it was the generation of people who had bombs dropped on them!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - rtj70
Back in the late 90s I recall being in San Francisco when there happened to be an air display on. Similar to the Red Arrows but American air force (Blue Angels?). This involved what appeared to be close flying etc. (it will have been safe) but this was above the tall buildings and sky scrapers in SF. I thought it was a bit too risky to be honest.

Edit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Angeles_flying_in_formation1.jpg

We were in China Town at the time. I probably have photos somewhere of my own.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 12 Jul 11 at 21:34
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
We missed them by a whisker last year in Key West - got to see their C130 pulling a few tight circuits though.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - smokie
>> Motor racing, ...dangerous in those days.

83 spectators killed at Le Mans in 1955...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Le_Mans_disaster
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
You are gratuitously rude, aren't you Bigtee.

It takes two to make a collision. Every single time.

 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
Mapmaker.

If im driving down the road and your infront of me and you jump on the brakes and i run into you it's my fault for not looking and been to close to stop safely.

All the aviation forums im reading/member of are disccusing this and the p-51 is not to blame here.

You are gratuitously rude, aren't you Bigtee. No but i do say it as it really is.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
A quick flick through the avaiation forums suggests that whilst the unnamed Frenchman (who will probably be banned from future airshows along with the pilot of the other French Skyraider who nearly met the same fate) certainly hit the P51:

1. It does not rule out the P51 being in the wrong place or otherwise suffering some failure before being hit;
2. Only a fool/optimist/ingénue would use dissimilar planes for a manoeuvre of that sort
3. If they insist on using dissimilar planes then they should have left 5 seconds not two between each plane;
4. They should have started in an echelon not vic formation.

Some of that means nothing to me, but it suggests inexperienced pilots undertaking inappropriate actions.


As for the elderly planes in shows like this being in "tip top" condition... why did the B17 crash land last month? What about the Mosquito in 1986? The South African English Electric Lightning a year or two ago? etc. etc. ad infinitum. If scheduled airlines fell out of the sky with a similar frequency to that of show planes then nobody would fly on them.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
Mapmaker

So do we ban all the vintage aircraft flying due to three you mentioned crashing over a period of 25 years?

The mossie crash im sure this was a carburetor problem and the engine stalled.

The Lightning was flown in South Africa at Thunder City and had Hydraulic problems and pilot unable to eject, There banned from flying in europe far too risky.

B-17 engine trouble.

Vintage cars crash on the roads lets ban them also and vintage drivers over 65 years old lets get shut of them too risky?

No i don't think so the airshow at Duxford is Europe's no1 venue for vintage flying & airshow at Flying Legends and safety is there no1 priority, i thinks it's fair to say we will never agree on this mapmaker.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Slidingpillar
Bigtee said
>>Vintage cars crash on the roads lets ban them also and vintage drivers over 65 years old lets get shut of them too risky?

Well as the owner of a vintage car, who has been in an accident, modern cars are the danger! I was stationary at a roundabout and hit up the back.

I think from what I recall the Mozzie crash was partly a carburettor problem that level flight or testing on the ground would never have shown and a less experienced pilot. That being said, 200 feet higher up the plane might still be flying as the pilot was recovering the situation at the time of the crash (video is on You Tube). Rolls Royce issued a maintenance bulletin for the Merlin engine to cover and prevent the situation in future.

The flipped Tridekker was blamed on prop wash and is known to be unstable on the ground. The planes ground crew were not far away and were probably waiting to support/walk the plane to its parking space. They were in in any event, first on the scene.

Aviation forums I've seen have speculated on the crash but fully cognisant the the AAIB will fully investigate and issue a report in due course available on the web (the Mozzie one is there).



 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Zero

>> If scheduled
>> airlines fell out of the sky with a similar frequency to that of show planes
>> then nobody would fly on them.

In 2010 there were 508 deaths resulting from scheduled airline services.
2009, 668 deaths.
2008 was a good year with only 455 deaths
2007 559 deaths

I shan't go on, You get the drift. There have been less deaths at airshows in the last 50 years than one year of commercial flying.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Focusless
>> There have been less deaths at airshows
>> in the last 50 years than one year of commercial flying.

Isn't the significant figure the ratio of crashes to flights flown? Any idea how they compare?
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Zero

>> Isn't the significant figure the ratio of crashes to flights flown?

In this case? No. The number of airshows is limited by planes and facilities. Its the number of corpses that matter.


 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
Bigtee wrote: "The "elderley aircraft" have been extensivly been re built with new panels and engines and are in tip top condition"

Bigtee also wrote: The mossie crash im sure this was a carburetor problem

And also: B-17 engine trouble


Nice to see such consistency!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
Mapmaker. Your boring me now.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
Bigtee, your intelligent debate and wit never cease to amaze me. ;)
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
Interestingly, Mosquitos, P51s and any other types did fall out of the sky when they were even new out of the box, a lot of pilots lost their lives due to mundane mechanical failures, poor maintenance etc in their prime. Nothing to do with age.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Mapmaker
>> Interestingly, Mosquitos, P51s and any other types did fall out of the sky when new.

Indeed they did. Whilst training pilots etc. was not cheap, the real need was to produce as many aircraft as quickly as possible for them to be shot down/otherwise damaged and pilot safety was not the only consideration. My father was an engineer in the RAF during the war and talked about the disposable aircraft the US produced. They were riveted together, not bolted, so as to speed up production. A component failure within the riveted area was therefore not repairable and the 'craft had to be scrapped.


Brompton: I have nowhere suggested an outright ban - or any sort of ban at all. What I wrote was "Nutters. Large numbers of elderly aeroplanes being flown too close together by people without the skill and training to do so. Even the Red Arrows manage the occasional mid-air prang. Nutters."

(And the bits I picked up from the aviation forums were (apparently) written by a display pilot. I take them with many pinches of salt, but repeated them purely for the sake of countering an argument based on exactly the same reputable source.)


The Mossie pilot would have been fine if he'd been acrobatting at 10,000 ft, he wasn't so he wasn't. Any reader of Biggles knows that during a dogfight you will quickly lose height and then will be in a far more dangerous position - where the danger becomes the 'craft, not the enemy.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Thu 14 Jul 11 at 13:10
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bromptonaut
Mapmaker,

I'd be a bit chary of what you read on aviation forums. Many of the contributors to pprune for example are not even pilots, never mind professional ones.

While a few Mustangs, Spits etc have been used as rich boys playthings those flown in displays are subject to controls and all pilots need a CAA display authorisation.

A number are lost through accidents. In my time the big ones have been the UK Mossie (that was owned/flown by BAe) and the P38 Lightning that went in at Duxford in 96. The pilot in that case, Hoof Proudfoot, was an ATPL holder whose day job involved flying for a major airline.

What I'm saying in a nutshell is that it's acceptably safe to go on flying these things while there's a market for those willing to watch. The law of averages mean there will be accidents. Sometimes the pilots will be killed but the existence of display rules etc mean the chances of innocent spectators or residents/passers by being hurt are infinitesimal.

There's little if any justification for a ban as your postings seem to imply.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - helicopter

Anybody see the picture in the Telegraph of the Fokker which flipped over when caught by a gust of wind at Duxford yesterday .......

Pilot ....embarrassed but able to walk away.....
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
I have to confess about reading it in the Mail - with an appropriate witty headline.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
www.channel5.com/shows/monster-moves/episodes/episode-2-333

Well worth watching - some unusual shots on disassembling a Spitfire some P51 stuff as well.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - WillDeBeest
Was reminded of this thread this weekend when the Mustang pilot popped up in the Guardian's Experience feature.

tinyurl.com/Mustang-Guardian
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bigtee
A very lucky man he is.

Shame about the wreck of the p-51 it will get a re build at some point.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14960728


Another P51 crashes.
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Bromptonaut
Accident Investigation Bulletin for Feb covers this accident.:

tinyurl.com/7snt4zv (link to incident summary page on AAIB website)
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Dog
Two delta wing €urofighters just flew overhead - awesome noise!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - R.P.
Super way to spend our taxes...!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Dog
Glad they're on 'our side' though - awesome things they were (very low flying)
they would put the fear of God into anyone without a single shot being fired!
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Old Navy
A couple of them had a near miss with a a helicopter I was a passenger in at about 500' near Applecross. I can confirm that they can put the fear of God into you and seriously upset helicopter pilots.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 10 Feb 12 at 10:38
 P-51 crash and bail out Duxford. - Dog
Good to see there is a deployment of Typhoons in the S. Atlantic en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._1435_Flight_RAF
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