Warbird Information Exchange

I was curious if there were any DC-3/C-47 pilots here on WIX. I'd love to get the take of someone who is familiar with the Gooney's flight characteristics on the accident / crash site that I've been researching. I'm having a bit of a time reconciling reports from the two closest eyewitnesses (one, a 14 year old girl claimed "the plane is chasing me" and the second, an adult male said "I didn't know which way to run. Wherever I went, the plane seemed to coming straight at me, so I just dove onto the ground", which would seem to be indicative of a spin) and how the plane ended up in a nose down attitude upon impact. The CAB reports that a DC-3 usually takes about 3,000 to recover from a spin/stall. They were estimated at 2,500 feet and the ground was 500 feet. With 2000 feet of the 3000 feet used up at impact, shouldn't they impacted at a shallower angle instead of being nose down?

My theory is that they were trying to recover, as the CAB reports the plane's spin had been arrested by the point of impact. When they realized they weren't going to recover in time and there were houses in their path, the pilots pushed the nose down to spare sny bystanders. .

PM me and I can send you the CAB Report and a link to the eyewitness account.

Scott Perdue (who posts as Gunny Perdue on WIX I believe) has flown the Gooney, he may be of help with specific piloting perspective.

That being said, I don't know if I agree with your analysis that the eyewitness statements point to the airplane being in a spin. Humans can't run fast enough to really significantly change their angle to an aircraft that is generally coming at them. Especially if, as the witnesses said, they were running different directions, then they were REALLY not getting away from the airplane's flight path.

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Pilots are very self sacrificing. They always point the aircraft away from houses and crowds, even when they are out of control or completely incapacitated.

<Sarcasm OFF>

Frankly I find this frequent assertion very tiring, even though some may find comfort with it.

I'm not a pilot, so that's why I was asking for pilots' opinions.

The CAB indicated the plane rolled right, rolled left and then went over top and entered a right handed spin. By the point of impact the spin had been arrested, but the plane ended up almost perfectly nose down. There was a lot of experience in that cockpit. It would seem a nose-down impact would have been the last thing one would have expected, especially given the room to affect a recovery, albeit an incomplete one.

bdk - there definitely have been accounts of pilots sacrificing themselves or their planes to save bystanders. You may wish to believe that it was merely coincidence, but I choose to believe otherwise.

Jack

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It's what you learn after you think you know it all, that counts.

Yep, I agree.

Sick of hearing this too.



TM

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"Welcome back Mr. Lasky."

Prime example of someone wanting some honest help understanding a situation and posters kicking them in the teeth. Don't want to help? Don't post.

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Cheers!

Lance Jones

current and qualified in the mother Douglas, shoot me a line ,or PM !!!

When recovering from a spin, the nose is generally pointed well down. If not, you would stall again and most likely enter a secondary spin. In fact, there have been many fatalities from pulling up too aggressively from the post recovery dive and entering a spin once again.

Besides stopping the spin rotation, you need to reduce angle of attack and increase airspeed. Both necessitate a nose down recovery attitude.

I'm not saying that self sacrificing has never happened, only that during the last few moments in a situation with limited control, the pilot's input may have little to no effect. How many reports were there of the pilot steering the aircraft away from the grandstands at Reno, when his head was not even visible in the canopy?

Sorry if I am unable to meet your standards. You might want to apply for a moderator's position so you can ban me.

All good bdk, I took no offense.

I did get a chance to correspond with a pilot who had about 1,000 hours in the Gooney Bird. He said they had lousy stall characteristics and felt my scenario was quite unlikely. The crew was probably more focused on affecting the recovery than what was outside their window. While it would have been nice to rewrite history, the CAB got this one right.

Sometimes it is tough to remain detached when you are researching people, and you find yourself asking the questions "Why did they have to die?" Self-sacrifice provides an easy and more noble answer than human error. Unfortunately in life (and death for that matter), answers are seldom easy and sometimes the causes are less then noble.

Interesting thread, albeit of sad origin. Good luck with your investigations, SaxMan.

I agree with bdk, and the others in being skeptical of the self-sacrificing pilot cliche. Not because I don't believe it, or don't like pilots, but because in most cases, as SaxMan's noted, it's usually invented to salve a nasty event to some degree.

That said, it does happen. One warbird example was the death of Martin Sargeant in his Spitfire PR.XI PL983 at a French airshow in 2001 was due to him choosing not to land on the grass emergency runway that he was lined up for after an engine failure due to the people picnicking on the runway. In that case there were qualified expert witnesses (and IIRC a radio call). Had people not been where they shouldn't, Martin would've survived a forced landing.

Regards,

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Excellent example James. In that case the aircraft was under control and the pilot sought an alternate landing site which didn't turn out well. If an aircraft is hurtling towards the ground out of control it is a different story altogether.