The aircraft ended up on its nose following a suspected brake issue.
The landing gear partially retracted when being lowered.
John Sessions, (chairman of the Historic Flight Foundation museum) told me the FAA (or NTSB) determined there was no structural damage and the event is being labeled an incident.
So, new prop, spinner, repairs to bottom cowling, engine inspection or overhaul.
John told me that even after the gear retracted, there was no damage to the underwing radiators/oil coolers.
Also in one of the newspaper photos, the barrel of the right faux 20mm cannon is loose.
Sessions had nothing but praise for the airport staff, emergency responders and the aircraft maintenance ships in the field that assisted in the recovery of the aircraft.
Deer Park is a former wartime training base about 25 miles North of the Museum's base at Felts Field. It's a fire bomber base, training center and home to a couple of aircraft maintenance operations.
Its main runway is 6100 feet, due to that and light traffic, the HFF often uses it during training flights for the Spitfire, P-51B, B-25 and DC-3. My home is very close to the flight path and about equal distance between KSFF and KDEW, so I frequently see the aircraft enroute.
I'm a volunteer at the museum and was working Friday.
I had a 20 year career as a Public Affairs Officer in the Air Force and a former TV journalist. I prepared a brief news release, emailed it to John, and after his okay, sent it to the area media.
In it I confirmed aircraft ownership, pilot ID and stressed no injuries and the fact there was no one else aboard.
And mindful of people's lack of familiarity with warbirds, I also included a couple of lines about what a Spitfire is and its history. (One TV station somehow managed to mangle that in a remarkable display of ignorance of both history and journalism.)
In the release, I used the figure of it being one of 11 airworthy Spitfires in the U.S. from John Terrell' s thread "Worldwide Number of Warbirds Flying by type'. Thanks John!
Media coverage was fairly heavy but largely correct.
Sessions was open with a newspaper reporter who was the airport manager. We put the news release out by noon, and it was being used by TV stations on their websites within minutes.
If you release information on a timely manner, you'll usually get pretty responsible reporting without too much conjecture/speculation by those who don't know the facts.
Nothing is worse than an aircraft owner/operator trying to duck media coverage after a newsworthy public event.
Overall, it received only slightly more coverage than if a general aviation type had same thing happen. Obviously, you'll get more coverage with a unique aircraft operated by a well known organization.
Sessions' has plenty of UK aviation contacts to help return the Spitfire to the air as soon as possible.
Overall, in our conversation he was pretty sanguine about the event. He has flown warbirds long enough to know sometimes things happen.
He also knows it could have been worse for him and the aircraft.
If you haven't seen it, the main newspaper story is here with photos...
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/ ... ark-crash/
Last edited by
JohnB on Tue Jul 11, 2023 11:00 am, edited 1 time in total.