The Fairey Firefly crashed at Duxford today, killing both pilots.
The video I saw shows it pulling out of a loop, hesitate, roll in vertical dive to come out the other way, then wobble the wings and fail to make it to level flight before hitting the ground.
Tragic end to two pilots, and the plane.
:-(
How unfortunate. My condolences to the families involved.
Where'd you see the video, I would like to track down the story.
Don
On channel 4 news I think - its on all the UK TV news channels.
Try
Go to 'latest show video' on lower right side, about 11 minutes into the show...
That link's text says.."...whether they ejected or were thrown clear..."
No ejector seats were retro fitted surely?
I wonder if the crash was caused by the hot weather, low air density, compression effects ? I know my model helis behave quite differently in hot weather, but does this scale up to real size helis/planes? My condolences to the aircrews families and friends.
Always a possibility until the investigation is conducted.
Yep! Sure does. Was part of a crash recovery team once for a KC-135 Tanker. The plane left Eielson AFB, AK fully loaded. Ground temp was around -20. During climb out they lost some of their hydraulics, declared an emergency and turned around. This caused a long final in which they hit a pocket of warm air and suddenly found themselves too heavy to fly. It bounced off the frozen river and into the forest and exploded. Not much left except several acres of burned trees and scrub.
It is indeed too bad. Especially for the families who have to live through their sorrows. However, life is full of risks. That's why they call it living! Without the risk life would simply be boring!
Find it at
Cheers, Fred McClellan the dash plumber at mindspring dot com
Here's the URL to the video... rtsp://a1984.r.akareal.net/ondemand/7/1984/8767/9a42e58e5884a3/www.itv.com/n ews/video/2000_12_crash.rm just copy and paste to your web browser...
type of high speed stall. Looked like the elevator was deflecting but the wing tips were stalling. God bless the survivors and crew. SR/CP
I think they had a problem.
maybe teh ailerons jammed - it was just refitted - it looks like they had a slow roll to inverted, and then couldn't work out how to get it right way up - trying first one and then another series up 'up sticks'.
Tooo slow at the top of whatever manoeuvre he was attempting. Stalling all the way down. Damn shame.
You pay your money, and take your chances.
xman Charlie
>You can see the elevator deflect fully upward
It was what's called an accelerated stall. The stall speed rises as G loading on the wing increases, and they'd have a high loading coming out of that maneuver and their airspeed was relatively low. The stall speed ended up being as high as the airspeed, and the wing stalled. You can see the enormous angle of attack if you note the angle of the chord line of the wing and the line of travel; it's about
30 degrees, well beyond usual stall angle of about 17 degrees. It's extremely unlikely that there was anything wrong with the airplane. Any wobbling of the wings would be uneven stall progression along the span and the pilot's attempts to correct it. We have a video here of various airshow crashes, some of them suffering exactly the same fate. There's not much the pilot can do when he gets himself into such a situation at low level. "Tip stall" is a pernicious, misleading misnomer. If the tips are stalled, the whole wing is stalled, since the stall starts at or near the root and progresses outward as angle of attack increases. DanHave something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
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