Warbird Information Exchange

Excellent article about Jim Wright and the Hughes H-1 replica. I haven't read the final NTSB report but would like to add from my memory. First of all, Jimmy Leeward flying his P-51 there to fly chase and help out isn't a surprise. He really was , maybe the nicest guy in sport aviation. Second, the word at the time as told to my dad, an EAA board member and relayed by EAA founder Paul Poberezny, was that he was "scud running" trying to get the airplane home.
The airplane had an ultrarare Pratt & Whitney R-1535 double row Wasp. Who knows what those sound like in the air? With only a couple of those engines in existence, how were they able to rebuild it and maintain it? Where did they find a propellor to go with the design? NO doubt Hughes had the prop designed and custom built for the airplane. The weather was bad at the time of the accident.
I remember at the time that Art Vance, JR. crashed the POF's Hellcat scud running it was incredulous that a person of his extreme ability and aviation career could go down that way. A friend, now a retired Major General of the USAF, told me he almost went down scud running. He had a small civilian plane and was so hyper focused on getting home that he ignored the VFR rules. He continued on, getting lower and lower. Eventually he said he realized he was following cars on the interstate just above their roofs and below the trees. He said it wasn't the first time but it was his last.
Mr. Wright was well liked and he may or may not have had engine or prop problems to go with the accident on that IFR day.

Just because you don't bail out doesn't mean you are being heroic with regard to civilians. Trying to bring a disabled aircraft to a safe landing is a very, very strong urge for experienced pilots. In the back of your mind, you know that if you "save" the plane, you think you are more likely to save yourself and maybe those on the ground, but it's your own hide that is first in line. I've put a plane with a seized engine in a field before, and your focus is entirely on flying the plane to the point of least lethal impact. It doesn't add to these men's heroism to invoke simple, unprovable conjecture that they were thinking first of civilians, nor does it detract from their humanity to accept that they were engaging in a logical effort to survive.

The reality is that the faster, heavier, hotter the plane, the less likely it is that riding it in will save anyone, including the pilot... unless you have a runway of sufficient length, adequate gliding distance, and control of the aircraft.

No doubt everyone wants to survive, some don't latch on to that regardless of the cost to others though, military history especially is replete with examples of this.
In Dyess's case, one of the persons saved by his actions wrote a thank you note to his mother, thats good enough for me, but for you apparently, he was simply trying to save his own ass and its just a coincidence that in the process of this, others were saved. Whatever.

Obviously - I take it by "runway" you mean an improvised landing area, if an aircraft can make it to a runway dead stick then none of this is in play