Posted on 11/30/2022 1:54:31 PM PST by DFG
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Wednesday released its preliminary report on the deadly plane air show plane crash in Dallas earlier this month.
Just after 1:20 p.m. on Nov. 12, five people on board a B-17 Flying Fortress were killed along with the pilot of a P-63 King Cobra during the Wings Over Dallas air show that featured several World War II-era planes.
A full investigation could take up to 12-18 months, according to the NTSB, and the report released Wednesday were the initial findings by investigators.
According to recorded audio for the airshow radio transmissions and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data, the air boss, who was directing the show, directed the Bell P-63F King Cobra, which was in a three-ship formation of historic fighter airplanes, and the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, which was in a five-ship formation of historic bomber airplanes, to maneuver southwest of the runway before returning to the flying display area.
The NTSB report says the air boss told the fighter formation to transition to a trail formation, fly in front of the bomber formation and head toward the 500-foot show line. The bombers were told to fly down the 1,000-foot show line.
The NTSB report says the 500-foot show line and the 1,000-foot show line were 500 feet and 1,000 feet from the airshow viewing line, behind where the audience viewed the show.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
Thanks; I will check it out.
The P-63 driver was totally unconscious or deceased and simply flew into the the 17 from the left rear quadrant. Period.
We lost more airmen in WWII to accidents of this nature that we did in combat. I think it is on the order of 15,000 just in CONUS non-combat dead from training. Overseas the accidents happened at a similar rate. Then factor in collisions just like this in combat.
In 1940 the accident rate was 50 per 100k flight hours.
Today in the USAF it is around 0.94.
We scarcely fathom the carnage of that war.
Here are two P-40s colliding also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7A4MzYxUtc
The fighter pilot is at fault as well as the air boss.
Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
The planes, fighters vs bombers, were supposed to be in two different size circles at two different altitudes.
Even though the fighter pilot flew out of his circle, had he been at the proper altitude, the accident still would not have happened.
Fighter pilot leaving his circle AND flying at the same height as the bomber.
Air boss supposedly told the fighter to advance ahead of the bomber. The fighter pilot increased his speed to comply (he should have refused the instruction) which caused him to go wide. Being at the wrong altitude caused the crash. Accelerating caused him to go wide and bank sharply, making it impossible for him to see the bomber.
“it appears the bomber was either ahead of its planned path or the P-63 was slow and behind”
Aka “We don’t know”. This observation leaves out the vertical separation entirely.
He’s done a number of interesting videos, a recent one was on countermeasures to Japanese ramming attacks against B-29’s.
That's incredible, assuming it's true. But I think an argument can be made that if a group of bombers is under fire and one zigs in the confusion while another zags, or if an escorting fighter is avoiding a pursuer and strikes a bomber, those losses should be counted as combat losses and not aviation "accidents".
You would think that NTSB investigators would be required to work 40 hr weeks ... think less than a couple years would be possible for competent investigators working full time.
THAT would be interesting.
THAT would be interesting.
You were over there at the same time I was, it seems. Ever remember seeing the CH-46’s? One of those had the rotors go out of sync, twisted it up like a soda can.
That’s one tragedy I thankfully did not see.
Breaking formation was a problem early on, with attendant risk of collision and loss of bombing accuracy. Newly arrived Curtis LeMay crunched numbers and calculated how many AA rounds were required to hit a bomber. His results showed that staying in formation, getting in and out in the shortest amount of time was the best. When pilots balked he told them he was flying the lead plane on the next mission.
Jeez, what a statement. You have no more info than anyone else but you know positively what happened.
Brilliant.
You are welcome. It is good to have analysis from someone who has flown in airshows.
The still frame shown in that article was not an image of the P-63; the cockpit canopy was set too far back - more like that of a Mustang. Probably fake news.
The U.S. lost 65,164 planes during the war, but only 22,948 in combat. There were 21,583 lost due to accidents in the U.S., and another 20,633 lost in accidents overseas.
Many more planes were lost due to pilot error or mechanical failure than were shot down by the enemy. More than 1,000 were lost while being delivered to their duty stations from the U.S. So the danger of non-combat flying did not end with the conclusion of training.
It’s an astonishing forgotten part of World War II. Dozens of reasons, high-performance aviation was relatively new, dozens of new aircraft designs being pushed out of the factory with minimal testing, sometimes with problems that were known to exist but the war time urgency over road redesign. And a gigantic number of 22 year olds flying some 1500 hp aircraft. Instrument flying was in its infancy, Weather prediction was truly abysmal. Radar was new and pretty much only used by the ground in some situations, but didn’t have a lot of application for pilots. It was a carnage
These are excellent points. If there wasn't a war going on, a lot of these planes or even pilots probably wouldn't have been cleared to fly.
(From what I've read of the B-29, that NEVER would have been cleared for use in a peacetime environment. Supposedly, the airstrip at Iwo Jima wasn't needed simply for shot-up planes to use as a divert field; it was because so many of them were ditching in the ocean [to and from Japan] because of mechanical problems.)
Completely wrong.
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