B-52 Nats crash

I watched it happen also. Clouds of smoke and lots of silence, looked like a stall to me on a very tight turn. Cost to owner? We think around £15k Big aircraft. John

Was the the one with 8 jet engines?

In any case, it sounds like it was a most unfortunate event. My sympathy to the team.

Marty

If it used scale controls, it could have been the know fact that B-52s have very poor roll control al low speed. There's a video on the web showing a full scale B-52 rolling in thru some powerlines before striking the ground.

and scroll down to B-52 crash

David

Actually the 1:1 BUFF is one of the few planes that can fly before its flight controls will work. You can unstick at an airspeed that is below what the control tabs on the major surfaces have effectiveness. If all is working it will soon accellerate to a safe speed. but if you loose an engine pull the handles.

If you look at the video from both crashes they look almost identical. At low speed and altitude the crew on the full scale bird were in a hopeless steep left hand bank, being flown by a General getting in flight time. Crew never had a chance. That low and slow the control surfaces just don't work. Donald

Are you talking about the full-scale B-52 crash in 1994?

If so, it was not flown by "a General getting in flight time." It was a pilot with a long history of mishandling the aircraft:

Marty

"Are you talking about the full-scale B-52 crash in 1994? If so, it was not flown by "a General getting in flight time." It was a pilot with a long history of mishandling the aircraft:" Yes I was. I am recounting what was broadcast on TV if I was wrong in what I said I am sorry. It was an horrific accident and I can still sit here and see it in great detail from memory. I worked on BUFF'S for almost two years in the late sixty's and still can't believe the mistake the pilot made.. Donald

He had a three-year history of violating tech orders: busting minimums, over-banking, climbing too steeply, and performing wing-overs. (Over-banking may have contributed to the crash of the model, too, as you said in your first post.)

"Killed in the crash were Lt Col Arthur "Bud" Holland, the Chief of the 92d Bomb Wing Standardization and Evaluation branch. Lt Col Holland, an instructor pilot, was designated as the aircraft commander and was undoubtedly flying the aircraft at the time of the accident. 4 The copilot was Lt Col Mark McGeehan, also an instructor pilot and the

325th Bomb Squadron (BMS) Commander. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests considerable animosity existed between the two pilots who were at the controls of Czar 52..

"This was a result of Lt Col McGeehan's unsuccessful efforts to have Bud Holland "grounded" for what he perceived as numerous and flagrant violations of air discipline while flying with 325th BMS aircrews. Colonel Robert Wolff was the Vice Wing Commander and was added to the flying schedule as a safety observer by Col Brooks, the Wing Commander, on the morning of the mishap. This was to be Col Wolff's "fini flight," an Air Force tradition where an aviator is hosed down following his last flight in an aircraft. Upon landing, Col Wolff was to be met on the flightline by his wife and friends for a champagne toast to a successful flying career. The radar navigator position was filled by Lt Col Ken Huston, the 325th BMS Operations Officer."

Well.. in wartime he would probably have got a medal, the shakes, and been grounded earlier.

In peacetime he finally stepped over the limit and ran out of luck...

all it takes is one unexpected thing when you are on the limit, and you are over the limit...and with no airspeed and no altitude...nowhere left to go.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting reading. The overriding impression s of someone who really cold fly the plane well, but always got away with it to the extent he thought the rules didn't need to be applied to him.

Hubris and nemesis.

Patently the plane COULD be flown WELL in excess of rated limits. So who really knew what the limits actually were?

Thats my final point: When limits are applied too restrictively, they get broken. Amd then the whole system falls into disrepute.

I would say on casual inspection of the airpsace over MY house that military pilots break altitude restrictions routinely. Well the RAF do. The USAAF does not tend to fly their training missions so locally...

Just proves the old adage: There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. But there are no old bold pilots!