P51 engine out and off field landing

[fly_tornado]

[Thruster88]

A straight in approach may have been a good move

 

 

[facthunter]

Didn't look like a very good effort.. Nev

 

 

[fly_tornado]

in depth analysis, i think the engine cutting in and out really messed up his planning process, after all who wants to bend a $1.5M plane?

 

 

 

[facthunter]

If you worry about the cost of the plane you shouldn't be flying it.  Your brain is not addressing the priorities correctly, which is AVIATE and do the best job you can. with what you have in the situation. Height speed wind paddocks trees fences etc. That Plane had ONE engine, and without it working it's coming down soon.  Should be at the back of your mind all the time you are flying in it . Nev

 

 

[IanR]

There has been a big focus recently in reviews on partial engine failure. Last two AFRs I have done have included it. As the guy says in the video in some ways it can be worse than a complete failure 

 

 

[fly_tornado]

If you worry about the cost of the plane you shouldn't be flying it.  Your brain is not addressing the priorities correctly, which is AVIATE and do the best job you can. with what you have in the situation. Height speed wind paddocks trees fences etc. That Plane had ONE engine, and without it working it's coming down soon.  Should be at the back of your mind all the time you are flying in it . Nev

look at the video, it's a borrowed P51 

 

 

[facthunter]

I can see the "effect" of the situation  Borrowed etc, on the difficulty of a decision but the solution is still the same. It's all a question of risk management and minimalizing the "worst" outcome possibility. It's not unlike a bad weather situation to some extent..Do you outland and sit the storm out or risk going IFR and not managing it? The intermittent or failing engine cannot be relied on. Do you pass a "suitable"  (but not ideal) forced landing field, and fly over bad  (worse) country to try to make the sealed runway. You get TEMPTED to try but what is the best airmanship?. Landing with some engine  is better than deadstick but unreliable means you can't COUNT on it. You probably don't know what you WILL do till the actual situation arises. I don't know how someone testing you can simulate that either. IF the engine is simulated fail you can have it if it goes pear shaped. It's not the same as when it 's for real. Nev.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

I think when he saw that motorway he would have been thinking about Shoreham airshow crash and decided to not risk it

 

 

[facthunter]

You can't rule out all roads but they do have some known risks. In the outback They can  have distinct advantages.  I was going to use a road once but used a paddock instead. Tree overhang and wires  was the reason I rejected it.. In retrospect I  still consider it the right decision in THOSE circumstances.. There are no hard and fast rules except there are no hard and fast rules. Nev

 

 

[danny_galaga]

He knows what he did right and what he did wrong. He wasn’t injured and didn’t hurt anyone else so that’s a good result

 

 

[facthunter]

 Publishing it and discussing it gives everyone a chance to  consider the problem, which is good. This type of plane has a deadstick  manoeuvre speed that is quite high so there's a requirement for more space and a better surface IF you need to outland.. There's a lot of energy to dissipate (Squared  Law) so potential for high forces to apply. It's absolutely necessary that the seat belt be very tight, to prevent head injury.. The strong structure is a plus but a bit of luck is needed to  land that style of craft in a  quickly chosen paddock. and not end badly.  Nev

 

 

[danny_galaga]

Hehe. When I first watched the clip I thought ‘how the hell did he survive that?!’ But then I realised I had just seen the footage of the cam attached to the canopy, which had come away, tumbling in a the dirt 

 

 

[ClintonB]

Was it a gear down outlanding? The surrounding terrain was way better than it could have been, ie flat farmland versus trees and hills.

 

shame about aircraft, great he survived.

 

 

[danny_galaga]

I think he said he put the gear down when the engine had another spurt of power and then died again so he put it up again presumably to reduce drag. He was coming down fast so it would be easy to imagine with the gear down it might have nosed over. At least this way he remained upright and clearly able to walk away. Isn’t that the definition of a good landing? 

 

 

[facthunter]

 it's often quoted but I think it relates to a bygone age. and perhaps to the first solo experience rather than say, an airline flight.  Nev

 

 

[M61A1]

I think he said he put the gear down when the engine had another spurt of power and then died again so he put it up again presumably to reduce drag. He was coming down fast so it would be easy to imagine with the gear down it might have nosed over. At least this way he remained upright and clearly able to walk away. Isn’t that the definition of a good landing? 

In the clip he said he put the gear down when he thought he might make the runway, but retracted it as soon as he realised he was going into a paddock to reduce risk of nosing over.

 

 

[danny_galaga]

 it's often quoted but I think it relates to a bygone age. and perhaps to the first solo experience rather than say, an airline flight.  Nev

Well I do have a smiley face on that quote 

 

i think in in the circumstances he did quite well. Plane will get repaired and he didn’t need to be 

 

 

[facthunter]

 You can usually repair a plane unless it burns thoroughly  The value is one thing but the fact you can't produce new ones  (rarity) is an extra factor. There are many planes with only a few left in the world, and when you look at OPERATIONAL ones it's an even smaller list. There are a lot of problems with flying older warbirds or anything old with metal and materials degradation not just fatigue. There's also the problem of pilot currency. These things cost multiple thousands of dollars / Hr to fly as well as a lot to have them serviceable. Single engine and fast is at the high risk end . Merlins had problems when they were new but they are better than some . The only plane they operated in civil  operations was a modified re engined  DC-4 /C54  which wasn't allowed to operate in a lot of countries because the magneto DRIVE wasn't duplicated and had quite a lot of failures even during the war. The skew gear shears and the show goes very quiet.. The engine would have only had a service life of about 400 hours back then and most never got near it in wartime operationally.. Cooling system maintenance is  a bit of a problem as well... It's all a great challenge and IF we want to see them we should  support them whenever possible as it's pretty much privately funded.  Nev

 

 

[Teckair]

I was told by a ex Mustang pilot in those days it was a court marshall if you did a out landing with the gear down. I thought it was more good luck than good management that paddock was there when he couldn't make the turn onto final.That said he did well to abandon trying to make the strip that was not going to end well. I reckon 8 out of 10 for that effort. 

 

 

[facthunter]

They have a really strong and wide undercarriage and I've seen some pretty severe landings on grass, but it  was an aerodrome and predictable surface wise.. Without the gear the prop is gone and the air intake will dig in and probably detach. I don't know the recommended technique actually. It's common to land with partial gear extended (if that's all you have) to absorb some of the landing and deceleration forces with larger jets which have much higher landing speeds. I think the P 51 would need about 110+ knots at least . I had a friend crash a Wirraway cropduster at night and he got head injury  and  an achilles tendon damaged. The plane ended up inverted in a cotton crop. Nev