Thats one beautiful airplane to total..... ouch.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14106730

 

Sad but luckily the pilot survived which often isnt the case when a crash is at an aishow due to altitude being too low to escape.

 

Probably the finest fighter aircraft of WW2. Beautiful lines especially the late ones with the bubble canopy.

Thankfully nobody was injured.

 

lucky pilots, shame about the plane

 

Thats debatable if it had the Merlin fitted then yes, if it had the pratt and whitley or whatever it was called, then no.
The Merlin made that fighter a perfect package

Tony

 

I thought they had a packard engine which was a licence built rolls royce

I see the Spad survived, has anyone seen one of those on the ground........massive LOL


Shaun

 

The D is lovely but still not a patch on a Spit'

I'm glad the wreckage landed where it did, my rents were there!

 

I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a Packard Merlin (V1650?) engined Mustang

I'm sure I read that all the early Allison engined ones were either scrapped or re-engined during the war, on the grounds of them being slow and ****


I'm not surprised the Spad survived, it would take more than a mid-air collision to drop one of them monsters, it was probably like ramming an artic with a pushbike

 

Crash sequence pics here...

http://forums.airshows.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35138

Is it me or does the stang look ok?

 

v sad, I've seen this one at the Gransden Airshow - beautiful

the debate over the Spit v the P51 will go run and run, but one things for sure when Herman Goring said in late 1943

"when I saw the P51 over Berlin I knew the war was lost"

I think it is the middle one i this pic



http://www.littlegransdenshow.co.uk/flying.php#

 

Yeah, it was 'Big Beautiful Doll'

 

A video here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xctYW...layer_embedded

 

An incredibly incompetent piece of flying by the man who hit the airrcraft in front of him. Absolutely no excuse for a mistake like that!

Les

 

Yes it looks ok to me too. He obviously still has aileron and elevator control in the recovery immediately after the collision, but then throws the canopy and doesn't seem to control further before the bail out. If anything the Skyraider looks further out of control after the collision, so it was pretty a impressive recovery and effort to get it down with such a chunk of wing missing - notwithstanding causing the collision in the first place.

 

Controls are only cable operated...if a cable stretched, snapped or even jammed/snagged at that altitude its game over. Bail out.

You can clearly see the wing tip has been damaged, that can easily jam an aileron. (edit: oops that was the other plane )

 

Can you? I can only see the slash in the rear fuselage on the Mustang. That could well have damaged cables to the tail granted, but in the video you can see he uses the elevator successfully immediately after collision.

 

Yep - I thought the P51 looked generally OK too - wonder where on the airframe it hit & what was damaged... it looks as if it hit the tail/rudder/elevator area - it seemed to nose dive pretty badly at the end, but I'm guessing the pilot had already let go of the controls at that point!

He didnt waste much time getting out - he was tres lucky!

Hope he had good insurance, can't image you can pick a new one of those up easily

 

He had limited control; the plane was on a downward fall all the way after the collision, so obviously couldn't maintain level flight. It only nose dived when he ejected.

On second look it looks like the tail section was caught. Which controls the elevation, so I guess that kind of explains it.

 

Actually after now looking at the pics BOB.T has linked too:
(copyrighted by Gundylunch off the Airshow forum)

You can see there is a big wedge took out of the bottom of the fuselage between the wing & tail - still don't think it was terminal damage tho!

 

The other point could be his direction of travel - if, say he was heading towards a built up area (houses, spectators etc.) and couldn't maintain altitude, it would be better to ditch the plane whilst its over an empty field rather than risk trying to save it and putting those on the ground at risk.

 

You might be right there, looking at the video again she noses down just before he bails out, as if he's sending her in. The Skyraider's wing tip collided with the right side of the fuselage so we probably can't see the worst of the damage in those pics, though it's obviously sliced through the underside so could well have damaged control cables. He's looks to me to have good command of pitch and roll since he recovers from collision so quickly. Perhaps he was worried the tail was about to fall off, as I guess it might have been.

I'm still astonished the Skyraider recovers, would love to see pics/vid of the full circuit and landing.

 

I think you are right in that there was probably damage to the control cables.

One way of abandoning an aircraft with an open cockpit is to apply full nose down trim but hold the nose up with the control column. With seat straps undone you let go of the control column and the negative G from the resulting nose down bunt will throw you out of the cockpit and clear of the 'plane.

If his elevator cable was severed in the collision then that method could not be used of course.

Les

 

Me too, did a barrel roll with a broken wing!.

 

Close up pics of the skyraider's wing:

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showp...&postcount=134

 

That is why I said probably.

 

Spad.......the Chuck Norris of single seaters LOL.

Reminds me of the book "Flight of the Intruder"

Shaun

 

Sad to see a P51 go down but good that the pilot was ok. Guess he didn't have long to decide whether damage terminal!

Love Spits although P51 came after and of course used the same Merlin engine. Certainly saved some B17 losses in 1944/45 with droptanks fitted!