Re: TBM down in Az?
Fri May 11, 2018 3:09 pm
TBM Tony wrote:As far as WW2 Restored warbirds, didn't the same thing happened to a REALLY NICE Blue Nose P-51D (TF?) years ago ? Same Place ??
Glad folks are O.K, Bummer for the turkeyMaybe, Maybe, there (Might) be some small detailed parts recovered to go to another....
I'm holding out hope that maybe she righted herself and glided to a soft landing somewhere. Maybe she'll be found in a year or two like a new "Lady Be Good". So glad to hear both guys got out and are still here. That is the most important part for sure.
Re: TBM down in Az?
Fri May 11, 2018 8:11 pm
I noticed this on the OP's link.
Date: 07-MAY-18
Time: 16:01:00Z
Regis#: N337VT
Aircraft Make: GRUMMAN
Aircraft Model: TBM 3
Event Type: ACCIDENT
Highest Injury: SERIOUS
Aircraft Missing: No
Damage: UNKNOWN
Activity: UNKNOWN
Flight Phase: UNKNOWN (UNK)
Operation: 91
City: FORT APACHE
State: ARIZONA
Does that mean it's location is known? I would think a search team(s) would be working on it and it's just not made public yet?? I would also think knowing the approx position at eng failure, altitude (12K), direction and glide ratio....someone who is skilled at doing position calculations could figure out a search area.
Date: 07-MAY-18
Time: 16:01:00Z
Regis#: N337VT
Aircraft Make: GRUMMAN
Aircraft Model: TBM 3
Event Type: ACCIDENT
Highest Injury: SERIOUS
Aircraft Missing: No
Damage: UNKNOWN
Activity: UNKNOWN
Flight Phase: UNKNOWN (UNK)
Operation: 91
City: FORT APACHE
State: ARIZONA
Does that mean it's location is known? I would think a search team(s) would be working on it and it's just not made public yet?? I would also think knowing the approx position at eng failure, altitude (12K), direction and glide ratio....someone who is skilled at doing position calculations could figure out a search area.
Re: TBM down in Az?
Sat May 12, 2018 1:00 pm
CoastieJohn wrote:Does that mean it's location is known? I would think a search team(s) would be working on it and it's just not made public yet?? I would also think knowing the approx position at eng failure, altitude (12K), direction and glide ratio....someone who is skilled at doing position calculations could figure out a search area.
Given the terrain, the location is going to be "Somewhere East of Phoenix". No one is going to hike in there even if they had the exact GPS coordinates & walk off with parts. There's a well known B25 wreck in Los Angeles County that's an ordeal to get to & it's barely two miles from a freeway.
Re: TBM down in Az?
Sat May 12, 2018 6:06 pm
ZRX61 wrote: Given the terrain, the location is going to be "Somewhere East of Phoenix". No one is going to hike in there even if they had the exact GPS coordinates & walk off with parts. There's a well known B25 wreck in Los Angeles County that's an ordeal to get to & it's barely two miles from a freeway.
Looks like they have narrowed down a search area and are looking for it....at least according to this article.
http://www.wmicentral.com/news/latest_n ... 4a629.html
Pilots flying WW II bomber eject over reservation
By Laura Singleton The Independent
May 11, 2018
On Sunday, May 6, two men flying a 1943 TBN Avenger WWII torpedo bomber ejected from the plane over the Fort Apache Reservation and survived after their parachute chair landed in the forest, hanging up on tree limbs.
The men, who have not been identified, ages 54 and 59, were flying the aircraft from California to Chicago when the incident occurred. The pilots reported seeing smoke and flames coming from the engine, according to reports relayed by the White Mountain Apache Tribal Game and Fish rangers that responded to the call.
However, the men said that the plane somehow righted itself and continued flying. They did not see the plane crash, however, the direction of travel was east-northeast towards Loafer Bench and Mt. Baldy on the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation.
To date, the plane has not been located despite coordinated efforts by WMAT Game and Fish, DPS, Forestry and the Apache County Sheriff’s office. Due to concerns about the plane causing a forest fire, multi-agency resources were employed to try and find the aircraft.
BIA Tribal official Candy Lupe said an wildfire engine went out immediately after authorities found about about the incident fearing that wherever the vintage plane may have gone down it could have started a wildfire. She said they never found a crash site or any evidence of one. One of the parachutes was reportedly found in the location where one of the men landed after bailing out.
The men were “pretty banged up” according to WMAT Game and Fish Ranger Arvin Lavender, who was one of the first personnel to respond to the call. “One of them sustained a facial fracture in the fall from the tree where his parachute caught,” reported Acting Chief Ranger Wayne Amos. “The other one had a split on his leg, but both spent the night in the forest and were able to walk out to the highway the morning of May 7,” Amos added.
Both men were transported to Indian Health Services Hospital, treated and released where they arranged travel back to Chicago.
And a 2nd article with more info. This article has a Youtube of the aircraft doing a flyby.
https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/D ... 812-1.html
Duo Bails Out Of TBM Avenger
By Russ Niles
May 12, 2018
A Chicago pilot and his passenger survived bailing out of their TBM Avenger on May 7 over northeastern Arizona. Ron Carlson and the passenger, so far identified only as Kenny, hit the silk near Fort Apache in Navajo County after an apparent engine failure in the freshly-restored warbird. The two were ferrying the big single-engine torpedo bomber from Phoenix to Chicago when things went wrong. "I was on the instruments and a big bang in front, and everything just started shaking,” Carlson told NBC’s Chicago affiliate. There was no place for a forced landing on the rugged terrain below and smoke was filling the cockpit. "The smoke was getting worse," Carlson told the station "Kenny was getting a little itchy back there so I made the decision to leave the airplane.”
Kenny went first and clung briefly to the wing before letting go. Carlson followed and both were banged up but not seriously injured when they landed. They spent a night separated before they found each other on the mountain the next morning. Kenny followed a gravel road and found help, returning in a pickup truck. "An hour later I was taking a rest and boom, a pickup truck comes by with Kenny in it," Carlson said. "So I know at that point, the adrenaline just went out and the next thing I knew I had a cold Gatorade in my hands--so that was the best thing.” The wreckage of the aircraft has not yet been found.
Carlson bought the aircraft in flying condition in Australia in 2017 and it underwent restoration in Stockton, California. He was flying it home from restoration when the mishap occurred. The aircraft. The Avenger was built for the U.S. Navy but spent most of its life in Canada, first in the Royal Canadian Navy and then as a waterbomber in British Columbia before going through various owners in the U.S. and finally being exported to Australia in 2006. The plane was re-registered in the U.S. in 2017 and underwent a thorough restoration, including making the rear-facing wing-mounted machine guns functional. They get demonstrated in this short video shot two days before the crash.
Re: TBM down in Az?
Fri May 25, 2018 9:09 am
From today's AVWEB email:
https://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/ ... ail#230861
When Only Luck Will Do
Russ Niles
It would be hard to imagine a better-prepared aircraft for the mission at hand than Ron Carlson’s TBM Avenger. The old warhorse was to take off from Phoenix for a series of relatively short fuel stop hops to Chicago where Carlson, a well-known successful architect, was going to tuck it into a snug hangar, to be brought out on special occasions to demonstrate how naval aviators did their bit in the Second World War.
But the Avenger was no hangar queen. It had a flown a lot in its 70 years. After fulfilling its role as a torpedo bomber in the South Pacific in the Second World War for the Navy, it did similar duty over the roiling seas of the North Atlantic with the Royal Canadian Navy. After that it was a waterbomber in Canada before undergoing restoration to its former pugnacious glory.
It left North America for the airshow circuit in Australia for 10 years and that’s where Carlson found it for sale for two-thirds the cost of a new Skyhawk.
His dream was to use the aircraft to faithfully re-enact the drama, excitement and danger faced by the 20-something airmen who flew the colossal single into battle. As he polished every surface of the gleaming warbird in preparation for the trip home, he had no idea how close he would come to reliving the scariest aspects of that experience. You can hear it in his own words in this podcast.
After shipping the aircraft from Australia, the aircraft had to undergo a recertification inspection. Carlson hired the best people to essentially dismantle the plane, study its parts and put it back together again. As part of his personal mission for the aircraft, he oversaw the reconstruction of the mid-ships radio room and rear turret, which had been removed to make way for the firefighting tanks and gear. He even installed propane-fueled machine gun replicas to give airshow crowds and Veterans’ Day ceremonies a taste of the aircraft’s true purpose.
By the time he and his passenger Ken Franzese lined up for takeoff in Phoenix on May 7, every bolt had been tightened, every screw turned and every cable adjusted. No aircraft could have been better preflighted.
In that quest for mechanical perfection, however, a few things got missed. Carlson would later admit that while the aircraft was as flawless as anyone could have made it, there were a few boxes unticked on his personal checklist. Despite hundreds of highly skilled man hours spent imagining every scenario and mitigating its risk it was only a perfectly timed cavalcade of blind luck that allowed Carlson to express his wonder and contrition at surviving a truly remarkable aviation accident.
We may yet find out what let go inside the massive Wright radial pulling the 17,000-pound airplane over the mountains of eastern Arizona at 11,500 feet that day. Carlson hopes to recover the wreck and maybe even rebuild it. He has to find it first but he has a track record for such work.
As smoke filled the cockpit and the aircraft seemed sure to shake itself to pieces, survival was top of mind and that didn’t seem likely where he was sitting. He used hand signals to gesture to his passenger to leave the aircraft and use the modern replica of a wartime parachute to go the rest of the way down. When he bought them, the parachutes were more part of the quest for authenticity than a realistic option for returning to earth. Carlson said he wanted to relive the experience of a naval aviator as authentically as possible and that meant sitting on a parachute.
Franzese didn’t need any further prompting. “I looked back and he was gone,” Carlson said.
Carlson pitched the aircraft up and banked right, not realizing Franzese was still clinging to handholds on the outside of the aircraft. The maneuver allowed Carlson to swing his legs over the canopy sill and launch himself into the thin air. At the same time, it broke Franzese’s grip and sent him plummeting on a similar trajectory. The D-rings on both chutes worked as promised but before they could get used to the ride, they were crashing through trees in an unceremonious reunion with earth. Carlson estimates they were about 1,000 feet AGL when he went over the side and ride was short and not very sweet. One of Carlson’s condescensions to style over practicality was not properly tightening the parachute straps. The shock of the canopy opening shook him to the bone. It was the first parachute jump for both men.
Carlson never saw the plane again but he said Franzese told him the aircraft, which was trimmed for cruise, righted itself from the bank, leveled out and with its engine still making power flew on before he lost sight of it. It flew away with water, food, survival gear, matches, lighters, a satellite phone, first aid kits and all kinds of useful stuff carefully tucked away in the cockpit to be used in case of the unthinkable.
When they landed on the mountain top, Carlson and Franzese had literally only the clothes on their backs. Carlson was wearing a period correct Navy flightsuit. Its many pockets, hooks and flaps were utterly empty except for a half charged cellphone. Carlson tried to pull his parachute canopy from a tree to use for shelter and warmth but couldn’t budge it. Alone, injured and dehydrated, he spent an uncomfortable night on a bed of pine needles covered with tree branches. “They took off the edge,” he said. Of everything that flew away with that Avenger, though, what Carlson coveted most was one or more of those bottles of water packed neatly in the cockpit. It’s dry in those mountains and not a drop of water was to be found.
There is a lot of nothing in northeastern Arizona and since they were sure to be miles from the wreckage of the aircraft, their chances of being found by rescuers were practically nonexistent. But apparently there was something someone wanted on that mountain because they built a road to get to it. Carlson and Franzese found the road at about the same time early the next morning and were reunited. The road was being used for its intended purpose and soon the two were in the care of a couple of forestry workers from the local community.
The platitudes, homilies, quotations and clichés just burst forth from stories like theirs and Carlson has likely heard them all by now from ever-helpful friends and colleagues. But if there’s one thing he learned from his remarkable experience it’s that all the elements that go into a successful mission need a thorough preflight, including the mindset of the pilot. You can bet the pockets in that flightsuit will be jammed with all kinds of useful stuff on his next flight and the parachute straps snug.
At risk of joining the peanut gallery that Carlson is almost certainly tired of by now, a couple of those familiar quotations come to mind.
As Sam Levenson (and a few others in similar language) said: “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Perhaps the one that sums up this experience has no formal attribution but is familiar nonetheless.
“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”
https://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/ ... ail#230861
When Only Luck Will Do
Russ Niles
It would be hard to imagine a better-prepared aircraft for the mission at hand than Ron Carlson’s TBM Avenger. The old warhorse was to take off from Phoenix for a series of relatively short fuel stop hops to Chicago where Carlson, a well-known successful architect, was going to tuck it into a snug hangar, to be brought out on special occasions to demonstrate how naval aviators did their bit in the Second World War.
But the Avenger was no hangar queen. It had a flown a lot in its 70 years. After fulfilling its role as a torpedo bomber in the South Pacific in the Second World War for the Navy, it did similar duty over the roiling seas of the North Atlantic with the Royal Canadian Navy. After that it was a waterbomber in Canada before undergoing restoration to its former pugnacious glory.
It left North America for the airshow circuit in Australia for 10 years and that’s where Carlson found it for sale for two-thirds the cost of a new Skyhawk.
His dream was to use the aircraft to faithfully re-enact the drama, excitement and danger faced by the 20-something airmen who flew the colossal single into battle. As he polished every surface of the gleaming warbird in preparation for the trip home, he had no idea how close he would come to reliving the scariest aspects of that experience. You can hear it in his own words in this podcast.
After shipping the aircraft from Australia, the aircraft had to undergo a recertification inspection. Carlson hired the best people to essentially dismantle the plane, study its parts and put it back together again. As part of his personal mission for the aircraft, he oversaw the reconstruction of the mid-ships radio room and rear turret, which had been removed to make way for the firefighting tanks and gear. He even installed propane-fueled machine gun replicas to give airshow crowds and Veterans’ Day ceremonies a taste of the aircraft’s true purpose.
By the time he and his passenger Ken Franzese lined up for takeoff in Phoenix on May 7, every bolt had been tightened, every screw turned and every cable adjusted. No aircraft could have been better preflighted.
In that quest for mechanical perfection, however, a few things got missed. Carlson would later admit that while the aircraft was as flawless as anyone could have made it, there were a few boxes unticked on his personal checklist. Despite hundreds of highly skilled man hours spent imagining every scenario and mitigating its risk it was only a perfectly timed cavalcade of blind luck that allowed Carlson to express his wonder and contrition at surviving a truly remarkable aviation accident.
We may yet find out what let go inside the massive Wright radial pulling the 17,000-pound airplane over the mountains of eastern Arizona at 11,500 feet that day. Carlson hopes to recover the wreck and maybe even rebuild it. He has to find it first but he has a track record for such work.
As smoke filled the cockpit and the aircraft seemed sure to shake itself to pieces, survival was top of mind and that didn’t seem likely where he was sitting. He used hand signals to gesture to his passenger to leave the aircraft and use the modern replica of a wartime parachute to go the rest of the way down. When he bought them, the parachutes were more part of the quest for authenticity than a realistic option for returning to earth. Carlson said he wanted to relive the experience of a naval aviator as authentically as possible and that meant sitting on a parachute.
Franzese didn’t need any further prompting. “I looked back and he was gone,” Carlson said.
Carlson pitched the aircraft up and banked right, not realizing Franzese was still clinging to handholds on the outside of the aircraft. The maneuver allowed Carlson to swing his legs over the canopy sill and launch himself into the thin air. At the same time, it broke Franzese’s grip and sent him plummeting on a similar trajectory. The D-rings on both chutes worked as promised but before they could get used to the ride, they were crashing through trees in an unceremonious reunion with earth. Carlson estimates they were about 1,000 feet AGL when he went over the side and ride was short and not very sweet. One of Carlson’s condescensions to style over practicality was not properly tightening the parachute straps. The shock of the canopy opening shook him to the bone. It was the first parachute jump for both men.
Carlson never saw the plane again but he said Franzese told him the aircraft, which was trimmed for cruise, righted itself from the bank, leveled out and with its engine still making power flew on before he lost sight of it. It flew away with water, food, survival gear, matches, lighters, a satellite phone, first aid kits and all kinds of useful stuff carefully tucked away in the cockpit to be used in case of the unthinkable.
When they landed on the mountain top, Carlson and Franzese had literally only the clothes on their backs. Carlson was wearing a period correct Navy flightsuit. Its many pockets, hooks and flaps were utterly empty except for a half charged cellphone. Carlson tried to pull his parachute canopy from a tree to use for shelter and warmth but couldn’t budge it. Alone, injured and dehydrated, he spent an uncomfortable night on a bed of pine needles covered with tree branches. “They took off the edge,” he said. Of everything that flew away with that Avenger, though, what Carlson coveted most was one or more of those bottles of water packed neatly in the cockpit. It’s dry in those mountains and not a drop of water was to be found.
There is a lot of nothing in northeastern Arizona and since they were sure to be miles from the wreckage of the aircraft, their chances of being found by rescuers were practically nonexistent. But apparently there was something someone wanted on that mountain because they built a road to get to it. Carlson and Franzese found the road at about the same time early the next morning and were reunited. The road was being used for its intended purpose and soon the two were in the care of a couple of forestry workers from the local community.
The platitudes, homilies, quotations and clichés just burst forth from stories like theirs and Carlson has likely heard them all by now from ever-helpful friends and colleagues. But if there’s one thing he learned from his remarkable experience it’s that all the elements that go into a successful mission need a thorough preflight, including the mindset of the pilot. You can bet the pockets in that flightsuit will be jammed with all kinds of useful stuff on his next flight and the parachute straps snug.
At risk of joining the peanut gallery that Carlson is almost certainly tired of by now, a couple of those familiar quotations come to mind.
As Sam Levenson (and a few others in similar language) said: “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Perhaps the one that sums up this experience has no formal attribution but is familiar nonetheless.
“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”
Re: TBM down in Az?
Fri May 25, 2018 5:18 pm
I'd bet they wish they'd put a SPOT Tracker or something similar on the plane!
Re: TBM down in Az?
Fri May 25, 2018 8:34 pm
If the 406 ELT didn't survive, it's likely a SPOT tracker wouldn't have survived either.
I wish I had his contact info because if he hasn't already reached out to the Civil Air Patrol, it would be a great idea. We have a Radar Forensics team that is called upon regularly by the NTSB and FAA and while we wouldn't be able to do a search under the Air Force (no missing persons), there are ways for us to assist local and state agencies in searches and we do training all the time, so there's a chance something might be able to be worked out between the Arizona Wing or NHQ and him to help with the search.
I wish I had his contact info because if he hasn't already reached out to the Civil Air Patrol, it would be a great idea. We have a Radar Forensics team that is called upon regularly by the NTSB and FAA and while we wouldn't be able to do a search under the Air Force (no missing persons), there are ways for us to assist local and state agencies in searches and we do training all the time, so there's a chance something might be able to be worked out between the Arizona Wing or NHQ and him to help with the search.
Re: TBM down in Az?
Sat May 26, 2018 6:05 pm
CAPFlyer wrote:If the 406 ELT didn't survive, it's likely a SPOT tracker wouldn't have survived either.
I wish I had his contact info because if he hasn't already reached out to the Civil Air Patrol, it would be a great idea. We have a Radar Forensics team that is called upon regularly by the NTSB and FAA and while we wouldn't be able to do a search under the Air Force (no missing persons), there are ways for us to assist local and state agencies in searches and we do training all the time, so there's a chance something might be able to be worked out between the Arizona Wing or NHQ and him to help with the search.
Yes, but they might have a "last ping" location on the tracker, unlike the 406 - some options ping every 2.5 minutes. I've been looking at potentially putting one on a plane I fly in regularly.
For $50/yr it seems like a good deal to me. https://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=129
Ryan
Re: TBM down in Az?
Sun May 27, 2018 10:15 pm
RyanShort1 wrote:Yes, but they might have a "last ping" location on the tracker, unlike the 406 - some options ping every 2.5 minutes. I've been looking at potentially putting one on a plane I fly in regularly.
For $50/yr it seems like a good deal to me. https://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=129
Ryan
The guys who most recently broke the Cannonball Run record had some kind of GPS pinger set up that was allegedly sending signals every 30 seconds IIRC. Gave location, heading, speed etc.
Re: TBM down in Az?
Fri Jun 08, 2018 3:38 pm
Did some looking around and did not see any new updates on the plane being located. Anyone hearing anything?
Re: TBM down in Az?
Thu Aug 30, 2018 7:22 am
still missing?
Re: TBM down in Az? - May 2018
Sat Jan 19, 2019 1:00 pm
Now I bet them indians will look a little harder!! Land might be closed but that don't mean you can't fly over it!!
https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/20000-Reward-For-Lost-Warbird-232141-1.html
And an article with some new info and pics of the two on the ground.
https://www.wmicentral.com/news/apache_county/a-tale-of-survival-and-the-search-for-a-lost/article_c249ee52-d03a-5c5f-8ca3-979d37feda32.html
https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/20000-Reward-For-Lost-Warbird-232141-1.html
And an article with some new info and pics of the two on the ground.
https://www.wmicentral.com/news/apache_county/a-tale-of-survival-and-the-search-for-a-lost/article_c249ee52-d03a-5c5f-8ca3-979d37feda32.html
Re: TBM down in Az? - May 2018
Sat Sep 14, 2019 2:34 am
search map and clues at the bottom of this page
https://tbmavenger.blogspot.com/2018/06 ... TvCA3-Pu1Q
https://tbmavenger.blogspot.com/2018/06 ... TvCA3-Pu1Q
Re: TBM down in Az? - May 2018
Tue Sep 17, 2019 1:40 pm
Asking out of curiosity....at a minimum there are lost Avenger bit out there somewhere in the desert. who owns them now? is it finders keepers? the insurance company? Salvage rights? how does that all work?
Re: TBM down in Az? - May 2018
Tue Sep 17, 2019 5:29 pm
This is a privately owned aircraft and is still personal property registered to a private owner. If it had crashed on private land, the owner would be responsible to the landowner for recovery and restitution expenses to remove the aircraft, or he could perhaps abandon it in place due to a high cost of recovery, or environmental harm if the aircraft was attempted to be recovered.
if you find an aircraft or part of an aircraft it is your responsibility to determine the best course of action, however the most important thing is always going to be DOCUMENTATION first.
If the aircraft has come down on Federally Mandated Tribal Lands, the aircraft wreckage will probably belong to the tribe until the owner buys it back from them if they agree to a "sale". In no way is the aircraft in question abandoned.
A word on where tribes see themselves...
https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/v ... ntext=ailr
if you find an aircraft or part of an aircraft it is your responsibility to determine the best course of action, however the most important thing is always going to be DOCUMENTATION first.
If the aircraft has come down on Federally Mandated Tribal Lands, the aircraft wreckage will probably belong to the tribe until the owner buys it back from them if they agree to a "sale". In no way is the aircraft in question abandoned.
A word on where tribes see themselves...
https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/v ... ntext=ailr