Reno Air Races 2011.... Serious Crash

Jay Honeck said:
Sounds like the latest news is that he lost his trim tab in flight.

So...did the pull-up cause the loss of trim tab, or did the loss of trim tab cause the pitch up? I hope they have better quality video of the aircraft than we've seen, or it's going to be pretty tough to determine. There's not much left to analyze.

:sad:
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Here's a picture showing the missing trim tab:

http://yfrog.com/j21x8ihj

Absolutely tragic...... :sad:
 
schmookeeg said:
This whole things sucks -- but help me understand how a departed trim tab would cause an uncommanded pitch up -- one that correcting with elevator couldn't control..?
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It may not have necessarily been an uncommanded pitch up, but more a matter of flutter.

Flight controls generally need to be balanced just right - to the point that when you paint an airplane, an A&P must rebalance all the controls. If they aren't balanced properly, you can get flutter which at certain speeds can cause an aircraft to either be uncontrollable or shake itself to death.

Losing a trim tab inflight is a considerable loss of weight for the elevator. I imagine that when it let go, the airplane became very difficult if not impossible to control at the speed he was flying.
 
I am not sure if the P-51 has a trim tab, or anti-trim tab. But whatever it was, the trim was set for the condition the aircraft was running in, strait and level more less. More technically trimmed condition. Losing the trim tab, or loss of trim tab control causes a flutter. That causes the uncommanded pitch up. Reports are that the pitch up at that MPH caused a G loading which knocked out Jimmy. I could tend to agree, an abrupt pitch up at 450mph would be an almost instant G-LOC for any pilot.

In fact an anti-servo tab sounds like what is installed. Anti servo tab creating lift in the downward direction to counteract the elevator effectiveness would cause a pitch up when lost.
 
Zoom the photo. I don't know the P-51 tail but there's a piece missing and outboard of that there's a piece that looks like it's jammed aircraft-downward (anti-servo up elevator).

I had to zoom up significantly to see it.

Unzoomed it looks like a ragged edge outboard of the missing piece. That's what caught my eye. It's a deflected/angled piece that's got a slight shadow where it attaches to the horizontal stabilizer, I think.
 
Makes sense. Rotten situation all around, but I'm glad there is a suspected engineering problem to point to, rather than blaming the pilot himself -- something tells me that "broken plane" is more palatable to the sheeple than "broken pilot" -- at least when it comes to considering letting the races continue in the future.
 
Palmpilot said:
This doesn't answer your question, but just as a point of information, the CEO of the Reno Air Races said in a news conference a little while ago that the pilot was actually 74.
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But that's still far too old (by about 30 years) to have the physical & mental ability to do what he was doing...safely...around and over spectators.

At the end of the day his age may not have been a factor in the crash but no matter how skilled a pilot is, no matter how good of shape they keep themselves in, they're not as physically or mentally capable at 50 as they were at 20 and they're definitely not at 60...70...or 80.

Again, not very smart.
 
timwinters said:
But that's still far too old (by about 30 years) to have the physical & mental ability to do what he was doing...safely...around and over spectators.

At the end of the day his age may not have been a factor in the crash but no matter how skilled a pilot is, no matter how good of shape they keep themselves in, they're not as physically or mentally capable at 50 as they were at 20 and they're definitely not at 60...70...or 80.

Again, not very smart.
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Not the place or time to start an argument, but I will respectfully disagree.
Out of respect for the pilot that was lost lets move on.
 
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Got this from a friend who's a sport class racer:

Sport Class Racers,

This is from Lee, using Craig's computer. By now most of you have
heard of the terrible accident that has happened at Reno during the
Unlimited Gold Heat race this afternoon. This is the horrendous
event that we have all worked to put out of our minds as a possibility.

The sketchy details so far are that a trim tab came off the Galloping
Ghost--one of the very fast highly modified Mustangs. The failure of
the trim tab created a dramatic pitching moment causing the pilot to
lose control. The aircraft pitched up violently, rolled over and
descended vertically just in front of the box seating area. As of
this writing the word is 25 dead and over 100 injured.

There are not sufficient words to adequately express the anguish that
many of us feel.

Obviously the races are canceled for this year, and there is already
speculation that it may be the end of the Reno Races. I hope not.

RARA is busy dealing with this tragedy as well as accommodating the
NTSB which is already on sight. Hence I have had no direct
communication from anyone. I know that the field is closed at the
moment and will not reopen until at least noon tomorrow. I would
like to meet with all the members of the Sport Class who are
available tomorrow in the main Sport Class Hangar at 10:00. We will
update everyone with what we know and discuss whatever subjects we
deem appropriate. I hope to see al of this years Races at the meeting.

Lee Behel
 
timwinters said:
But that's still far too old (by about 30 years) to have the physical & mental ability to do what he was doing...safely...around and over spectators.

At the end of the day his age may not have been a factor in the crash but no matter how skilled a pilot is, no matter how good of shape they keep themselves in, they're not as physically or mentally capable at 50 as they were at 20 and they're definitely not at 60...70...or 80.

Again, not very smart.
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Aren't we missing the point? There was a tragic accident :mad2:
 
Geico266 said:
Not the place or time to start an argument, but I will respectfully disagree.
Out of respect for the pilot that was lost lets move on.
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Not meaning to start an argument...just making an observation...sorry...moving on.

kaosman40 said:
Aren't we missing the point? There was a tragic accident :mad2:
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Not at all, my condolences have been expressed, it is indeed a very sad event. But there are lessons to be learned from accidents. This is no different than those who posted after scouring the videos looking for the missing trim tab or those who voiced their concerns about the orientation of the stands at the races. I was just voicing my concern.

Moving on.
 
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Going back to the flutter/trim tab/pitch up issue (and stacking "if's").

If the trim tab fluttered, the easiest way to stop flutter is to slow the aircraft. The easiest way to slow the aircraft is to make a relatively high G pull-up. It is possible that the pull-up was initiated, but before the flutter stopped there was another failure in the control system, or that the pilot suffered g-loc during the pull.

<update>.

The other, more likely scenario is that the airplane was trimmed very nose down at 500 mph. When the tab failed, the aircraft suffered an extreme pitch-up, either further damaging the control system or aft fuselage (pictures show the tailwheel extended, which tells you that something happened - lots of g's or a structural failure) or the pilot g-loc'd.
 
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Still checking on several friends that were in attendance (fingers crossed).
Very sad.

Best,

Dave
 
Jay Honeck said:
Sounds like the latest news is that he lost his trim tab in flight.

So...did the pull-up cause the loss of trim tab, or did the loss of trim tab cause the pitch up? I hope they have better quality video of the aircraft than we've seen, or it's going to be pretty tough to determine. There's not much left to analyze.

:sad:
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Take a look at the picture on the MSNBC site. It appears that the trim tab is, in fact, missing.

There are a bunch of ill-educated and "everything to keep us safe" comments on one of the Washington Post articles. "You go to these shows assuming the government has done everything to ensure that we will be completely safe...."
 
Happened to Bob Hanna flying Voodoo a few years ago. Coming down to the scatter pylon at 450+ the elevator trim tab departed. The airplane violently pitched up and Bob said all of a sudden his head was between his knees. He said he was extremely lucky to regain control.
Sad that that happened and I hope Reno can continue.
 
Just got off the phone with a friend... third hand info:

My buddy's wife got an image of the trim tab departing the plane. He was an ER doc and jumped the fence to help, coming from the pits 150 yards away.

They are going to get the image to the go-team at some point.
 
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yakdriver said:
Happened to Bob Hanna flying Voodoo a few years ago. Coming down to the scatter pylon at 450+ the elevator trim tab departed. The airplane violently pitched up and Bob said all of a sudden his head was between his knees. He said he was extremely lucky to regain control.
Sad that that happened and I hope Reno can continue.
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Didn't Bob pass out, then regain consciousness at 9000' or something like that, regain control, and land?
 
My condolences and yes, there seems to be an abnormal string of these tragedies. Be safe everyone.
 
wsuffa said:
Take a look at the picture on the MSNBC site. It appears that the trim tab is, in fact, missing.

There are a bunch of ill-educated and "everything to keep us safe" comments on one of the Washington Post articles. "You go to these shows assuming the government has done everything to ensure that we will be completely safe...."
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People demand absolute safety, and blame the government when they don't get it, but willingly text, talk, eat, and put on makeup at highway speeds, and sometimes die or kill others. Yet, that is OK with them.
 
kyleb said:
Going back to the flutter/trim tab/pitch up issue (and stacking "if's").

If the trim tab fluttered, the easiest way to stop flutter is to slow the aircraft. The easiest way to slow the aircraft is to make a relatively high G pull-up. It is possible that the pull-up was initiated, but before the flutter stopped there was another failure in the control system, or that the pilot suffered g-loc during the pull.

<update>.

The other, more likely scenario is that the airplane was trimmed very nose down at 500 mph. When the tab failed, the aircraft suffered an extreme pitch-up, either further damaging the control system or aft fuselage (pictures show the tailwheel extended, which tells you that something happened - lots of g's or a structural failure) or the pilot g-loc'd.
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You don't pitch an aircraft going 470mph up and pull excessive G to bleed energy. It would load the airplane too abruptly. There are conflicting reports that he called a mayday. That hasn't been confirmed. If he did, it would make sense that he commanded the pitch up as that is standard race protocol when a racer declares a mayday. Take a high line and sort it out. The pitch up does look very very excessive which leads me to believe it was not a commanded pitch up. This led by the fact a racer is absolutely not allowed to fly over the crowd line, if he was conscious or had the situational awareness to do so, he would have stayed over the course.

It doesn't look like Jimmy had the time to even realize what was going on, you don't see any abnormal aircraft movement before the pitch up. My guess is that it failed and instantly causes the pitch up. Thats a guess, but the photographic evidence I have seen from the team are pretty detailed.

To add to this, there are several pictures of the aft end of the fuselage that has severe wrinkling. Initial thoughts were that the boil off system used, exploded. I think everyone has dismissed that but there was something catastrophic that failed or was failing.

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An email I got about this:


To those of you who know that we work the Reno Air Races every year, this is a recap of Tom's experience watching the crash of the Galloping Ghost P-51 during the third lap of the Unlimited race Friday afternoon.

She was working in the 99s sales tent when the crash occurred. Another fellow and I had left the sales tent and were in Section A Reserved Seating bleachers to watch the Unlimited race, the last race of the day. We watched through 2 laps, and when the first three P-51s flew past the finish pylon, why, we were just salivating over the sweet sound of those Merlin V-12s cranking out zillions of horsepower, with Strega in the lead doing about 490 mph. That's when we heard the announcer say, "Hey, what's going on?!?"


We looked up and saw a P-51 going vertical - way too high on the nose for a regular Mayday departure from the race pattern (in video on TV later I saw that it wasn't actually vertical, but about 50-60 degrees nose high, which is still way too high on the nose). Its direction of travel appeared to be parallel to the runway, thus parallel to the grandstands, but it wasn't - as it topped out, it rolled onto its back and accelerated in what appeared to be a straight down descent (on the TV news video later, it looked like it was in about a 50-60 degree nose down attitude).

Only problem is that Gary and I were looking right at the prop spinner as it was pointed straight at us. Gary's thought was, "Tom and I are going to die." When I saw it coming "straight down" my thought as I stood up was "Well, which way do I run," knowing that running in bleachers isn't easy and that the plane was approaching pretty darn fast. It was actually sort of surreal as I was watching it approach. I guess this was a little bit of time compression, as I clearly had thoughts about what I should do while it looked like it was coming right to us, but then I detected the slightest change in direction of travel and knew that it wouldn't hit us.

The airplane was going really fast all through these few seconds. It veered away from us and appeared to impact the ground at a very steep nose down angle (TV video looked like about 70-80 degrees nose down). Its impact point was just outside the box seats in front of the grandstand, somewhere in the area of Section E to G. There was a great, loud WHUMP and a huge "explosion" of dust and tiny airplane pieces. The shock wave of the impact spread 50' or so into the box seats, but the aircraft debris was scattered toward the runway instead of toward the box seats and grandstands.

I'm guessing that it didn't get under 350 mph during this whole time. It may not have gotten under 400 mph.

Gary and I started down the stairs to go the the site and render assistance when we heard the announcer tell everyone to stay where they were and that emergency equipment was on its way. We were quite a ways from the carnage, so we stopped and went back to the sales tent.

Later we talked with one of the fellows who had worked with us in the sales tent on Monday and Wednesday, and he was close enough to go render aid. We don't know how long he stayed before the emergency personnel chased him off, but he said it was hard to tell where to start because there were so many people down. Two of the other 99s went to help - one an RN and the other an EMT trained flight attendant.

That's about it. We closed the sales tent, did our normal shutdown of the tent, and came home. That's a pretty abbreviated version that took over an hour to shutdown.

Conjecture. It was rampant on the radio as we were crawling along the road into Reno. Best ideas were that the plane bobbled a bit (two pilot eye witnesses) and that the elevator trim tab departed the plane, rendering it uncontrollable. That makes sense considering flight control flutter when nearing or exceeding Vne, Velocity Never Exceed. If fluttering occurs without correction, moving parts can depart the airplane.

Tomorrow and Sunday's races are cancelled. This tragedy may spell the end of the Reno Air Races. There have been 17 pilot fatalities since the races started in 1964. This is the first time there have been spectator fatalities.
 
ScottM said:
What is a "boil off system?"
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GG was the only airplane to use this system. What they did was install radiators in each wing and submerged them in water. As the water gets hot it boils off and is replaced with cooler water from a tank (I think). If you notice a standard mustang, the radiator is on the bottom of the fuse, GG didn't have this for aerodynamic reasons. This I'd also why in videos you see steam coming from her. That was water boiling off out of that hole in the pic I posted.
 
Inverted said:
GG was the only airplane to use this system. What they did was install radiators in each wing and submerged them in water. As the water gets hot it boils off and is replaced with cooler water from a tank (I think). If you notice a standard mustang, the radiator is on the bottom of the fuse, GG didn't have this for aerodynamic reasons. This I'd also why in videos you see steam coming from her. That was water boiling off out of that hole in the pic I posted.
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Interesting, I have never heard of such a system. I take it the trade off in having to carry extra water is offset by being able to run the engine harder and thus hotter?

Also, a question I have had since this was first reported, is the airplane really a WW2 P51 or is it a new one built to P51 plans? It is obviously modified just based on the removal of the lower air intake for the engine cooling system.
 
I think Jimmy was out long before he hit the ground.

Look at the images posted several posts back. No head in the cockpit. Even in the inverted pic with tab missing, he's got his head in his lap.

Did age play a part in the malfunction? I don't think so.

Did age play a part in the recovery? I think so.

80 is a bit long in the tooth to be doing 500mph at 75'AGL..
 
ScottM said:
Interesting, I have never heard of such a system. I take it the trade off in having to carry extra water is offset by being able to run the engine harder and thus hotter?

Also, a question I have had since this was first reported, is the airplane really a WW2 P51 or is it a new one built to P51 plans? It is obviously modified just based on the removal of the lower air intake for the engine cooling system.
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I think aerodynamically it was most benifitial. They completely removed the bulky radiator cowling on the bottom.

The plane was a real deal Mustang. The plane has been racing since the late 40's.
 
BellyUpFish said:
80 is a bit long in the tooth to be doing 500mph at 75'AGL..
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FYI he was 74. It was misreported that he was 80. Not that it changes your question at all, which is one that will have to be looked at. Just wanted to point out that the initial age reports were wrong and what his correct age was.
 
ScottM said:
FYI he was 74. It was misreported that he was 80. Not that it changes your question at all, which is one that will have to be looked at. Just wanted to point out that the initial age reports were wrong and what his correct age was.
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Wikipedia had his birth year as 30, but it's changed to 36 now..
 
Inverted said:
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I was presuming that this was taken near to impact -- but a friend pointed out that the tail wheel is not down yet, as it is in the other just-before-impact photos.

Makes me wonder -- was he trying to put the gear down to regain control? Does the tailwheel pop out before the mains, and the mains just didn't have time to deploy before impact? Or did he hit the gear lever when he was slammed forward by the G-forces?

Any idea how long before impact this picture was taken?
 
BellyUpFish said:
80 is a bit long in the tooth to be doing 500mph at 75'AGL..
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And an airplane that's been racing for nearly that long is certainly getting long in the tooth also.

70+ year old pilots flying
60+ year old airplanes on a layout
that takes them over or near the spectators.

This just seems to be a bad recipe.
 
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ScottM said:
Interesting, I have never heard of such a system. I take it the trade off in having to carry extra water is offset by being able to run the engine harder and thus hotter?
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Basically, its a flash evaporator, to dissipate the heat. Rather than cooling with air in the scoop (which was removed), you just carry water and boil it off to cool. Similar to how the Space Shuttle was cooled when the payload doors were closed.
 
Inverted said:
You don't pitch an aircraft going 470mph up and pull excessive G to bleed energy.

To add to this, there are several pictures of the aft end of the fuselage that has severe wrinkling. Initial thoughts were that the boil off system used, exploded. I think everyone has dismissed that but there was something catastrophic that failed or was failing.
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Who said anything about "Excessive". Not I.

On the aft fuse wrinkling, Reno racers experience oil canning due to the extreme torque applied by engines producing 2x the power the airframe was designed for. Oil canning in flight and popped rivets during a race are not uncommon at Reno, at least according to a number of stories I've read over the years. The fuselage oil canning may be SOP if you're running 3,000 hp and 500 mph at an altitude where a normal Mustang might have 1,700 hp and go 350 mph.
 
Just a thought before bed...

In any other sport, a 74 year old participating would be ooooh'ed and ahhh'ed and gushed over on the local news in one of those last five minute filler stories to make everyone feel good.

In aviation, it's always "He shouldn't have been flying" commentary. Even from peers who'd G-LOC well before this guy would have.

Sickening ageism in aviation. If he felt he could do it and his family and friends did too, then I say good. Go fly, sir.

I guarantee that guy was in better shape than me, and at least 80% of the spectators, just knowing the G's he had to pull to go around the course.

Understandably, the spectators being killed or injured adds to the negative sentiment, but sitting a few hundred yards away from machines doing 500 MPH carries a certain obvious risk.

Kudos to the first responders. Just timing the video last night, there wasn't a single immobile victim without a trained professional and a backboard at their side, seven minutes into the emergency. 11 minutes in, 3 choppers and 13 ambulances were inbound on the audio recording of Reno EMS dispatch. The EMS folks deserve a handshake and someone to tell them that was a job well-done.
 
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