The fighter was not turning on final to land….he was probably doing better than 250-300 knots. He may have been doing an overhead entry to get into the pattern but he was not on final approach. His wheels weren’t down and he wasn’t even close to the speed you need to drop the gear.
Deliberate? Not unless he was trying to commit suicide. Trying to dust them off with a close pass? If that was the case he would have been looking at the B-17 and done something to miss it….harder pull, roll out and pull up, etc. Look at the video showing all the other fighter a/c that flew in front of the B-17 and note the flight path they took relative to the B-17. If the mishap fighter was looking at those other a/c, he would have been looking out the the top of his windscreen or canopy. Meanwhile the B-17 would not be visible underneath the nose.
In the late summer of ‘72, the day I was supposed to solo in the T-34, there was a midair between two T-34s in the landing pattern at what used to be Wolf Field, one of our practice fields. One a/c descended right on top of the other that happened to be hiding right under the nose. Killed all four. Welcome to Naval Aviation young fella!
Jorge mentioned collision bearing earlier. Even if it was “possible” for the fighter to see the B-17, if he was on collision bearing or a collision course, the B-17 would have remained in the same spot on the canopy just getting bigger making it harder for the eye to pick up. There’s no relative motion to get your attention. You wouldn’t see it until a fraction of a second before impact. Wouldn’t even have time to say, “oh chit!”
Last edited by navlav8r; 11/14/22.
NRA Life,Endowment,Patron or Benefactor since '72.
The fighter was not turning on final to land….he was probably doing better than 250-300 knots. He may have been doing an overhead entry to get into the pattern but he was not on final approach. His wheels weren’t down and he wasn’t even close to the speed you need to drop the gear.
Deliberate? Not unless he was trying to commit suicide. Trying to dust them off with a close pass? If that was the case he would have been looking at the B-17 and done something to miss it….harder pull, roll out and pull up, etc. Look at the video showing all the other fighter a/c that flew in front of the B-17 and note the flight path they took relative to the B-17. If the mishap fighter was looking at those other a/c, he would have been looking out the the top of his windscreen or canopy. Meanwhile the B-17 would not be visible underneath the nose.
In the late summer of ‘72, the day I was supposed to solo in the T-34, there was a midair between two T-34s in the landing pattern at what used to be Wolf Field, one of our practice fields. One a/c descended right on top of the other that happened to be hiding right under the nose. Killed all four. Welcome to Naval Aviation young fella!
Jorge mentioned collision bearing earlier. Even if it was “possible” for the fighter to see the B-17, if he was on collision bearing or a collision course, the B-17 would have remained in the same spot on the canopy just getting bigger making it harder for the eye to pick up. There’s no relative motion to get your attention. You wouldn’t see it until a fraction of a second before impact. Wouldn’t even have time to say, “oh chit!”
I suppose we'll eventually find out, but it looks like this was part of the air shop as a fighter doing an intercept ? Definitively not intentional. But, I can certainly buy the 63 never even saw the 17, but it just doesn't seem possible. that 63 seems to have good vis, but given aspect and the long nose (The MiG 17 & 19s had the same issue when an aircraft is either directly below or slightly below the nose. That is a good video, but look the 1000 and 26 min timelines, while I agree with the narrator's theory, I still think he had an initial visual on the 17, was maybe worried about too many "Gs" given it's a vintage aircraft and misjudged his radius of turn and turn rate.
A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”
On the video above it sounds like they had two daisy chains going at the same time in concentric circles with the bombers on the outside and the fighters in a smaller circle on the inside. The bomber was then under the nose resulting in the P-63 losing sight sight even if he had it previously. Or…..he might have eased the turn, increasing his turn radius to let the P-51 to pull away a bit and re-establish the correct interval. I think his focus was on trying to get in position behind the second P-51 with his scan focused at 1200 high.
NRA Life,Endowment,Patron or Benefactor since '72.
That IS a great explanation. I agree with him, whoever choreographed that whole parade thing did a damn poor job of melding aircraft of different speeds together. It was fuqking chaos. I’m very disappointed in the CAF.
Again, this is a terrible accident and I’m very sorry for everybody involved.
I’ve had reservations about the CAF for a long time. I was invited to become a pilot with the CAF a number of years ago. I was told I had to pass the check ride and sponsor the airplane that I was to fly. In other words, if I paid enough money I could fly the airplane. Am I the only one that thinks this is not the proper way to choose your pilots? I’m not saying the pilots of these airplanes involved were inexperienced, but how can you gain experience to fly these types of aircraft in an airshow? It was like a fishbowl crowded with airplanes with wildly different performance profiles. It was a fuqking clusterfuqk, an accident waiting to happen. Damn it anyway, it cost six men in their lives and we’ve lost two very rare aircraft. And now the CAF‘s mission has been terribly compromised.
It’s been suggested it’s time to retire these airplanes to static displays. The environmental protection agency is taking care of that for us by forcing the phase out of 100LL fuel. Soon, there will not be any fuel for the engines these aircraft use, they were designed for 130 octane which of course is not produced anymore, so they use 100 octane leaded fuel which the EPA has told us has to go away. That should pretty much render these airplanes unflyable.
On the video above it sounds like they had two daisy chains going at the same time in concentric circles with the bombers on the outside and the fighters in a smaller circle on the inside. The bomber was then under the nose resulting in the P-63 losing sight sight even if he had it previously. Or…..he might have eased the turn, increasing his turn radius to let the P-51 to pull away a bit and re-establish the correct interval. I think his focus was on trying to get in position behind the second P-51 with his scan focused at 1200 high.
THIS in BOLD above.
A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”
One thing I haven't heard mentioned yet. Is what happened within the accident... and it might be macabre, but I've looked at quite a few of the video's and stopped them and then played them in slow motion. And from what I could see it looks as if the P-63 came up to the B-17 as said in that tight turn and belly-up to and colliding with the B-17 shearing off the tail section right behind the wing leaving the forward section still attached to the wing. But what is not easily seen with the P-63 is it looks like after shearing off the B-17's tail, the P-63 lost its own wings and went right up into the fuselage of the B-17 and hitting the ground together. I couldn't spot any sign of the P63's fuselage immediately after shearing off the B17's wings, but a lot of debris from its own wings.
You can use slow motion in a YouTube video, by running it to near completion and stopping it using the ll stop function, and then slowly clicking on the progress bar behind the ball that sshows where it was stopped, and just graduall keep clicking behind it back tracking if you will be showing it all in slow motion.
You can make out the fuselage of the P-63 in the opening still of BFaucett’s earlier post shot from about 1:00 of the B-17. It’s hi and left and the fuselage looks somewhat intact with the tail lower than the nowe.
Last edited by navlav8r; 11/15/22.
NRA Life,Endowment,Patron or Benefactor since '72.
You are right, from the frontal view it looks like it went in and came out the right side of the B-17 tearing out the side right up to the cockpit. But it is definitely visible from that view.
